A key aspect of both L3 and Accelerated Literacy pedagogies in the K-6 Australian classroom is providing ‘quality texts’ for a learning focus as a whole class. No matter what pedagogy is the flavour of the month in a given educational setting, utilising quality texts is the key to unlocking student potential.
In answering the question, ‘what makes a quality text?’ we must keep in mind that it is closely related to ‘what makes a good writer?’ In many classrooms over the last 5 years, I’ve witnessed teacher and administrator despair at the low quality of writing being produced by students…and yet the instructional texts being chosen by schools or educators have most recently been phonics based, ‘guided readers’ or ‘decodable’ readers / texts (see my previous post regarding my feelings about texts used to teach children how to read).
What makes a quality text? Well, I present the idea that: if you give children boring, out of context, un-relatable, poor quality texts in which to learn to read, you will get boring, out of context, un-relatable poor quality writing produced by students.
So, what makes a quality text / quality writer? See the quality book: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore (2012) by W.E. Joyce. (This was also adapted as an award winning short film (Joyce, 2011). This book is something I try to show every class that I teach while being a casual teacher (and otherwise). I show the movie, then I ask the students, depending on time, to explain why some books fly and some do not – ergo, what makes a quality text. They explain: its a book that is funny, exciting, interesting, takes them places they’ve never thought of or been to before, or that creates a picture inside their heads. In one class, they were using the 7 Steps of Writing strategies and could see the link to quality texts and quality writing clearly, answering ‘sizzling starts,’ etc.
Its not hard to help students make the link from quality reading to quality writing…we just have to work on getting rid of those boring books being used exclusively by educators and administrators…
A key factor that is often overlooked in the teaching of reading (such as the L3 / Reading Recovery / Phonics / Decodable readers debates) are the objectives of the K-10 English syllabus:
Image: K-10 NSW English Syllabus Objectives (NESA, 2012).
Of specific interest to me as a prospective teacher librarian, and indeed, all who attempting to grasp the content outcomes of literacy, are the concepts of
‘Students will value and appreciate the importance of the English language as a key to learning‘
‘Communicating through speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing and representing’
‘The personal enrichment to be gained from a love of English, literature and learning’ and
‘The independence gained from thinking imaginatively, creatively, interpretively and critically.’
As educators, we can get caught up in the content / outcomes / assessments / learning progressions / teaching students ‘how’ to do things like read and write, that we forget the ‘why’ objective(s) of teaching English in the first place: to unlock the door of learning, enabling enrichment of life through independent thought and communication.
Bitmoji Christy – Swoon
While reading Barone (2011), I was impressed by the determination of reading being more than just learning how to decode and learning how to comprehend – something that has been a bugbear of mine over the years while attempting to implement first, the Accelerated Literacy pedagogy, followed by the L3 (reading & writing) pedagogy in my stage 1 EAfS NSW Far West classrooms, the NSW Learning Continuums, followed by the ACARA Learning Progressions, as well as the recent push for teaching synthetic phonics and using decodable readers – leading to the question of whether the school library collection should be ‘levelled’ based on ability. (Learning to read / Reading to learn is something I discussed in a previous blog post). We must engage our students with texts and enable them to become lifelong readers! We must not just focus on the ‘how’ to read, but also the ‘why.’
So often, we explain ‘why’ or ‘what’ we are learning when it comes to writing or math outcomes…why do we not explain the purpose for reading lessons?
Barone (2011) explains the ‘why’ we read, something we should be clarifying in our ‘W.e A.re L.earning T.o’ lesson introductions, in greater detail: “Reading to learn to read: Young children and adults alike engage in reading in order to learn to read. Teachers, parents, or tutors carefully select books that are just right for independent reading or a bit challenging for reading supported by a competent reader. Reading for pleasure: Adults and children read just for the joy of entering an imaginative world. Or they read just for the pleasure and satisfaction of learning something. Reading to enjoy vicarious experiences: Some books allow readers to discover what it was like to participate in a historical event, live in a different environment, or survive hardships. Readers are able to take on the persona of a character to better understand an event beyond their personal realm. Reading to develop background knowledge. Frequently, readers pursue topics that inform them about the world and important events. It is not possible for adults and children to experience everything directly; books offer these opportunities. Reading to understand: Adults and children often read biographies and historical fiction to understand an event or person. Others read to better understand an aspect of science or a scientist and the motivation behind a discovery. Reading to understand who we are: By exploring how characters solve dilemmas, readers can reflect how they might respond to similar circumstances and thus come to know themselves better. Reading to ponder: Adults and children read to explore ideas and beliefs—for instance, the beliefs of a culture or community—to compare them with their own. Reading to appreciate: Adults and children read to appreciate the quality of a book or the art within. They reread a favourite phrase or explore an illustration for the pleasure they derive from it. Reading to engage in conversation: Reading opens opportunities for adults and children to exchange ideas. They argue about a character and why he or she did something. They disagree about whether they both liked the same book or author. Importantly, this exchange allows readers to enjoy and appreciate a book more fully. (and) Reading to solve problems: Books can help readers solve a current problem they are facing” (Barone, 2011, p. 4-5).
The role of the teacher librarian thinking prompts from the ETL401 Module 3.2 discussion forum:
“Prioritising the TL roles:.. TL roles that might ‘fly under the radar’… Lamb vs Herring vs Purcell vs Valenza… What to give up, according to Lamb and Valenza, in order to be a proactive TL… Purcell’s ideas of the prioritisation of the TL roles vs my ideas…” These things I found difficult to grasp in the form of these questions but I found Karen Balmer’s forum post on ‘Module 3.2 The role of the teacher librarian’ posted on the 21st March 2019, provoked the most thought.
I particularly liked Karen’s statement that “the role has evolved significantly… 21st century skills that TLs should be helping to develop in their students. There also seems to be general agreement with what Herring’s (2007) asse(r)tion that ‘school libraries do not exist in a vacuum…'”
I was concerned by Herring’s statement that unnecessary emphasis is placed on reading for pleasure – as I think Herring has missed the mark, in a pursuit to support teaching information literacy when the aspects of literacy (learning to read, and reading to learn – or reading for pleasure) should in fact be taught together (one purpose, not outweighing the others) and should not be seen as in any way separate. (More on that in this blog post.)
Like Karen Balmer, I agree with Purcell that our role should be that of a team or school (curriculum) leader, (curriculum) partner, information (literacy) specialist, teacher and administrator (of the library and strong teaching and learning) programs.
Finally, Karen and I prefer how Lamb puts being at media specialist of 21st century teaching and learning in the fore-front of the list of roles, including information technologist, administrator and (last but not least) a teacher, with the additional roles of ‘curriculum consultant, community collaborator and digital detective’ as varying in priority on any particular day, depending on the needs of the stakeholders. In this, Lamb identifies how the social aspects of the role, or collaborating with educators as colleagues is vital.
References:
Balmer, K. (2019, March 21) Module 3.2 The Role of the Teacher Librarian [Online Forum comment]. Message posted to: https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_42380_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_78883_1&forum_id=_147404_1&message_id=_2093678_1
Hold your horses cowboy! I’ve just been triggered!
Let’s begin with learning to read and reading to learn. The (ETL401) 5th module jumps straight to reading to learn and doesn’t really mention learning to read, but it is my belief that the two are intrinsically combined and that the education system currently fails students in separating the two (Robb 2011).
Learning to read: This separation of ‘learning to read’ (for some purposes, abbreviated to ‘decoding’-although it is sometimes not referred to as this, the focus has shifted to phonics and decoding) and ‘reading to learn’ (for some purposes, abbreviated to ‘critical thought'(CILIP 2016)) has been directly witnessed and practised by me and my colleagues for at least 5 years (I started in 2014), as part of the Early Action for Success (EAfS) funding program.
This program, in phase 1, poured money into (and continues to do so to some degree) several things like ‘Instructional Leader’ Deputy Principal level positions and ‘mentoring’ time off class, and a large portion of the money has gone towards training teachers in Targeted Early Numeracy (TEN) the ‘Language Learning & Literacy in the Early Years‘ (L3) narrow pedagogies for teaching kindergarten to year 2 students foundational literacy and numeracy skills.
[Sidebar 1: Originally, the TEN program was, in my opinion, almost completely a spin off of the Count Me in Too(CMIT) program (in which I am trained) and Developing Efficient Numeracy Strategies (DENS), using the Schedule for Early Numeracy Assessment (SENA) 1 or 2. Once trained in TEN, teachers, including myself, utilised CMIT, DENS and SENA to effectively teach the TEN math group games and lessons. Similarly, the L3 program is a spin off of Reading Recovery, linked to Best Start and focussed on kindergarten children (Howell & Neilson 2015).
Later, L3 teacher training was revised to suite ‘stage 1’ or year 1 & 2 students (which is where I joined the training). Currently, the EAfS program is in ‘Phase 2’ and has embraced micro-level data collection and the new National Learning Progressions …I am being critical here about L3 but not without foundation (Howell & Neilson 2015 p.8).
And don’t even get me started on the fact that the (now defunct) NSW Literacy Continuum provided for EAfS schools meant that we didn’t even crack open the NSW English Syllabusall year-much less the National Curriculum–we simply taught to and reported on the NSW Literacy and Numeracy continuums! Roar! Outrage! Sirens! Remind anyone of the teaching to the test arguments against NAPLAN? Well hello new Learning Progressions, which have replaced the previous continuums…but I digress…]
What all of this means to me at the moment, in terms of teachingInformation Literacy / ‘Reading to learn’, is that, in my current context, half of any given school is focussed on ‘Learning to read’/decoding using L3 guided reading groups, using decodable/phonics/guided readers, teaching students ‘how to read’/decoding without any thought into teaching students ‘reading to learn’/critical thought.
In fact, until a student reaches a particular level of knowing ‘how to read’ (measured in our schools as reading a PM Reader level of 15, based on a 95% success benchmark or ‘running record’ of their reading of a PM Reader that they’ve read at least once before) they may then begin learning skills of ‘reading to learn’/critical thought. For some students, particularly in schools in low Socio Economic Status areas (who, coincidentally, have low NAPLAN results that qualify them for EAfS funding) they don’t reach the PM Reader level of 15 until they are 8 or 9 years old (year 3 or 4) and thus, by that point, reading (so purely focussed on ‘how’ rather ‘why’) has lost all value.
Teach Information Literacy From the Start: What I propose is to teach students, regardless of their age or decoding ability to think critically about texts, using quality texts. It is very difficult to think critically about a (commonly fiction) text that is lacking depth like the little decoding readers that are all the rage at the moment (Adoniou, Cambourne & Ewing 2018). And there isan aspect of L3 that I thought did this particularly well, called ‘Initial, Modelled and Shared readings (IMS),’ However, I was the only teacher at one school who was making time for it amongst the time-heavy requirements of ‘guided reading groups’/how to read lessons. Let’s let that sink in for a moment: nobody had time for information literacy because teaching students how to decode boring levelled readers was taking up all of their time.
Information Literacy is teaching how to think critically and this is a key part of comprehension and reading for enjoyment. In L3 IMS for stage 1 students (the kindergarten version do something similar but not to the same degree and they call it ‘Reading to’ or similar), is not exclusively the rights of L3 (see this link for further reading) and so I will go into how to run the IMS lessons and how they relate to Information Literacy and a year one (age 6-7) classroom:
Quality texts: First, the teacher first picks a quality book like The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore (2012) by W.E. Joyce. (This was also adapted as an award winning short film (Joyce 2011)- which I just watched for the 20th time and was reduced to tears AGAIN, because I just realised the importance of Information literacy and Teacher Librarians! If you watch it, try to think of the grey people are ‘learning to read’ and the colourful ones are ‘reading to learn’).
In the world of the story: The teacher reads the book and nobody (including the teacher is allowed to comment).
Quality Talk Question Prompts: The teacher critically analyses the book and creates a list of possible ‘critical thought’ questions that will be expected from the students in the third reading of the book and has those ready as a reference for the second reading of the text to the students. (For an example of this, see one of my teacher prompt sheets.)
Modelled reading(s):The teacher reads the book aloud again, possibly even a third time to the students (who are not allowed to comment) but this time the teacher can either explain the meta-language or ‘difficult’ words in the text and then model thinking critically about the book with thoughts based on the prepared list of questions (without actually saying those questions out loud).
Shared reading: The teacher reads the book a final time and then releases the students to comment freely about the text in a round table / dinner scenario. For younger students, I use a behaviour management / talking technique of a smiley ball that gets passed to those who want to speak and if you have a turn speaking you put a popsicle stick in front of you. If you don’t have a turn speaking about the text, I can see clearly and offer prompts based on my prepared question sheet to help reluctant students.
Writing: I like to link this to writing lessons, sometimes filming the students
My AL Sentence Board for the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore
and typing their discussions (or using my Accelerated Literacy sentence board to work on writing conventions), so that they can use what they said about the text in their writing but this is just something that I do and not really related to IMS reading/L3.
So what this all means for me in practice as a TL,is that I need to continue to read to my students and continue to utilise information literacy / critical thought strategies (CILIP 2016) that are proven to improve literacy outcomes for students (regardless of their reading ‘levels’), including aspects of L3 and aspects of Accelerated Literacy because student access to quality (fiction and non-fiction) texts and the ability to practice Information Literacy skills is a key component to learning how to read AND reading to learn.
Next post: Information Literacy for reading to learn and inquiry teaching models…I promise…
References
Adoniou, M, Cambourne, B. & Ewing R. (2018). What are decodable readers and do they work? Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/what-are-decodable-readers-and-do-they-work-106067
Howell & Neilson (2015). A critique of the L3 early years literacy program. Learning Difficulties Australia, Volume 47(2). pp.7-pp.12. Retrieved from https://www.ldaustralia.org/client/documents/Bulletin%20Winter%202015.pdf
Joyce, W. E. (2012). The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore. London: Simon & Schuster.
Joyce, W. E. [Screen name] (2011, January 30). The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore. [Video File]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/Ad3CMri3hOs
