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…
(ETL402 was dropped in the middle of this post due to family circumstances)
