Rereading With a New Job

Get Ready

Reading twice the same way adds almost nothing. Give each reading a different job.

Today’s story

The Last Day of the Pool

A story about a swimming pool closing. About 230 words.

Words to know

valveA part you turn to let water flow out or to stop it.
railA metal bar that people hold on to or lean on.
weak teaTea made with very little tea, so it is a pale brown.

Read and Answer

Read one page. Then answer the question in the yellow box.

Page 1 of 3

The Corn Street Pool opened in 1908 and closed on a Tuesday in August. For the last hour, anybody could swim for free. There were more people in the water that afternoon than there had been on any day Idris could remember. He had been coming since he was four.

The tiles around the shallow end had turned the color of weak tea after a hundred and sixteen years of water. The corners nobody could reach with a brush were green. Long bars of light fell from the high windows across the water. The noise bounced off the roof the way it always had. Everybody sounded like they were shouting from farther away than they really were.

At four o’clock, the lifeguard blew the whistle, and everybody got out. Nobody argued about it.

They opened the valve at 4:30. Idris sat on the edge, feet in, and watched the water drop past one tile, then another, until he could not feel it.

Why does knowing the ending change the opening?

Page 2 of 3

The deep end went last. It took almost an hour, and by the end, fourteen people were left, standing at the rail and not talking much.

Underneath, where the water had been, there was a drain, a lost pair of goggles, and a penny.

Somebody said it was a shame. Somebody else said the roof had needed fixing for years.

Page 3 of 3

Idris walked home the long way.

Read It All

Answer all the questions to open the whole story.

My Notebook

Finish the story first. Then write two things you noticed.

What You Learned

Rereading the same way adds almost nothing.
Give your second reading a different job.
When you reread, you already know the ending.

For the grown-up

Rereading is only useful when the second pass has a different job. Rereading identically produces familiarity, which feels like understanding and is not. Naming the job — what happens, how it is built, how it sounds — is what makes the difference.

Reread a picture book with a young child for structure rather than plot. The same trick works at every age.