Little Red is a choose your own adventure style story aimed at engaging year 1 and 2 students in independent reading. The story is a re-telling of the traditional tale Little Red Riding Hood offering choices for the reader to make, via hyperlinks, to multiple different endings. The story and presentation style were chosen in response to a need for students to increase their stamina and engage in independent reading.
Reading for pleasure is a priority in the Victorian Curriculum, as shown in the description for English at year 1 and 2 which states, “Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment.” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority [VCAA], n.d., para. 2). Little Red fulfils this part of the curriculum as it is a familiar tale that encourages engagement from students with varying abilities. Enjoying reading is an important stepping stone to increasing literacy among children. Ghalebandi and Noorhidawati (2019) explain that time spent reading impacts on reading motivation and achievement. Therefore, the use of quality literature, digital or otherwise, to increase student stamina should be a focus for teachers.
Increasing student engagement and stamina when reading for pleasure was front of mind in the creation of Little Red. The text was created for students, familiar with using iPad apps, to read digital literature as part of the independent reading portion of the Reading Workshop. Observations of students reading books on iPad apps found they rapidly tapped through to the end of the story without reading or listening to the text, indicating that their engagement in the text and stamina for reading digitally was limited. Hypertext functionality was chosen for this project due to the potential for the interactivity to help engage and increase the reading stamina of young readers.
Giving students choice to determine the direction of the narrative is the key to their engagement with the story (TEDx Talks, 2013). The hypertext options within Little Red are limited to two so the reader is not too distracted and stays immersed in the story (James & De Kock, 2013). The choices are mostly presented as pictures with captions to support developing readers. Re-telling Little Red Riding Hood as a hypertext narrative with multiple endings prompts students to re-read the text multiple times to find all possible endings. This supports Loh et al. (2022) who suggests that students may increase their attitude towards reading when given the opportune to re-read familiar texts.
The ability to hyperlink was a key reason Book Creator was chosen as the platform for Little Red. Book Creator contains other digital features that are especially appropriate for year 1 and 2 students, with the ability for the text to be read aloud as each word is highlighted a deciding factor. These key features allow less confident readers to gain enjoyment for the story whilst also supporting their vocabulary and fluency skills, while more confident readers can engage with the text without the read aloud feature which can be turned off. The ‘read to me’ feature and the hypertext were determined as the most appropriate digital features of Little Red as including other superfluous features such as background music would not enhance the narrative and could distract the reader from the meaning of the story (Dobler, 2013).
Canva was the graphic design tool used to create the images in the text. This platform was chosen as it allows its Content License Agreement images to be used in multiple ways and published for both personal and commercial use (Canva, 2022). It was also flexible, easy to use and offers images suitable for all age groups.
Little Red has been designed to be used in a multitude of ways in my school environment, including;
• lessons on reading enjoyment and creating a reading identity
• alignment with digital texts already used through apps available on school iPads.
• ability to display the book on an interactive screen to the whole class that promotes discussions using the teaching strategy ‘turn and talk’ to decide on which hyperlink to choose can be used to create a more social aspect to reading
• reading in pairs to promote discussion about the possible options in the story that provides opportunities for students to practise their speaking and listening skills as well as negotiate with or persuade their partner
• Little Red can also be used as an impetus for students to engage with creative writing and write their own alternative endings to familiar stories.
• the possibility of adding it to the library to start the schools digital literature collection searchable by the catalogue.
The text Little Red, takes advantage of the digital literature offerings that best support the needs of the school to increase the engagement and stamina of student reading to not only improve their reading skills but develop an enjoyment of reading and desire for further reading adventures.
References
Canva. (2022). Canva’s Content License Agreement. Canva. https://www.canva.com/policies/content-license-agreement/
Dobler, E. (2013). Looking beyond the screen: Evaluating the quality of digital books. Reading Today, 30(5), 20-21.
Ghalebandi, S. G., & Noorhidawati, A. (2019). Engaging children with pleasure reading: The e-reading experience. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 56(8), 1213–1237. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1177/0735633117738716
James, R. & De Kock, L. (2013). The digital David and the Gutenberg Goliath: the rise of the ‘enhanced’ e-book. English Academy Review, 30(1), 107-123.
Loh, C. E., Gan, S., & Mounsey, S. (2022). What do children want to read? A case study of how one primary school library supported reading for pleasure. Journal of Library Administration, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2022.2117955
TEDx Talks. (2013, May 22). Blurring the lines: Storytelling in a digital world: Adam Stackhouse at TEDxCollegeofWilliam&Mary [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c0bEZS1jC4
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (n.d.). English, Curriculum.
https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/english/english/curriculum/f-10