Chapter 11: "This Wooden Shack Place": The Logic of an Unconventional Reading

Hull and Rose define their chapter as one about student interpretations of literature that “strike the teacher as unusual, a little off, not on the mark.” The focus of their chapter is sociocultural, concerning a Jamaican/Trinidadian-American student at risk named Robert, and his "unconventional" interpretation of a contemporary poem. They report that Robert is from a lower middle class, inner city SES. His Verbal SAT score was 270. Robert had, however, been bused to a more affluent school setting for middle and high school, achieving a GPA of 3.35. Robert was a student of one of the authors, Mike Rose, in “the most remedial” special freshman preparatory composition class at UCLA. As he taught the class, Mike Rose collected data on remedial writing instruction, and set up times to confer with and tutor various students, whose sociohistorical data he also collected.

Hull and Rose’s chapter analyzes and reflects upon Robert’s “misreadings” as he attempted to construct meaning in a conversation with his teacher, Mike Rose, after reading the poem, And Your Soul Shall Dance, written by the contemporary Japanese-American poet Garrett Kaoru Hongo. (see below)

And Your Soul Shall Dance


Walking to school beside fields
of tomatoes and summer squash,
alone and humming a Japanese love song,
you’ve concealed a copy of Photoplay
between your algebra and English texts.
Your knee socks,saddle shoes,plaid dress,
and blouse, long-sleeved and white
with ruffles down the front,
come from a Sears catalogue
and neatlycomplement your new Toni curls.
All of this sets you apart from the landscape:
flat valley grooved with irrigation ditches,
a tractor grinding through alkaline earth,
the short stands of windbreak eucalyptus
shuttering the desert wind
from a small cluster of wooden shacks
where your mother hangs the wash.
You want to go somewhere.
Somewhere far away from all the dust
and sorting machines and acres of lettuce.
Someplace where you might be kissed
by someone with smooth artistic hands.
When you turn into the schoolyard,
the flagpole gleams like a knife blade in the sun,
and classmates scatter like chickens,
shooed by the storm brooding on your horizon.

The authors are interested in 1) the way the “mismatch” in Robert’s interpretation of certain lines of the poem is revealed in a taped conversation between student and teacher, 2) in what they learn about Robert’s background and life experiences from his interpretation, and 3) the broader implications for teaching they might realize from investigating the development of his thought processes.

Hull and Rose observe that Robert and his classmates, on the whole, were able to grasp certain themes early on in the poem, but not able to construct an overall, unified understanding. The authors also found that certain students, Robert among them, were offering interpretations and reflections on the poem which indicated to the instructor, Mike Rose, that they might not be attending carefully to the text. It seemed to the instructor that the students were “misreading” the poem, and thereby not appreciating the dramatic tension between the girl’s desert farm surroundings and her “Photoplay” dreams. Although the authors agreed that Robert had a sense of the poem, he faltered about a third of the way through, unable to unify all the elements.

As he audiotaped Robert’s responses to his questions about the misinterpretations, Rose found his assumptions about Robert’s understanding were incorrect. The poem referred to farm machinery, irrigation ditches, and the girl’s mother hanging wash by “a small cluster of wooden shacks.” Rose had assumed, as the taped conversation began, that Robert would infer from reading these lines that the girl’s family was poor. Rose attempted to guide Robert toward this conclusion. Knowing the girl’s family was poor and that her ambitions and dreams were far beyond her status would then lead to an understanding of the dramatic gap between the girl’s modest circumstances and her “soul dancing” dreams and ambitions; the “storm brooding on [her] horizon.”

Robert, however, was more aware of “the trees” than of “the forest”: he concentrated on the visual elements of the “wooden shack place” , and the “eucalyptus trees block this wind, you know…”, (so the clothes can dry.) Robert was also not sure if the girl and her family were poor. The authors observe that Robert did not sense the touch of irony in the poem's mention of the girl's clothing coming from a Sears catalogue. From his background and perspective, he saw her Sears catalogue wardrobe as supportive of his belief that her family was not necessarily poor.

The authors described Robert as using his strong visual sense to guide his thinking: visualizing sentences before writing them, drawing charts and pictures, and “reasoning through the use of scenario.” Since Robert’s background was one of poverty, the poet’s use of the wooden shacks as a dramatic device was not as powerful as it might have been for a student from a more privileged socioeconomic stratum. For Robert, modest housing such as the poem depicts is more familiar.

(One wonders if Robert might also have seen farms and desert areas in the many years he was bused from Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley area schools, and called upon that strong visual background knowledge cinematically as he worked to understand the poem.)

The authors observe that “Robert was able to visualize …animate the scene in a way that Rose was not”, eventually enhancing Rose’s reading of the poem, even as Rose attempted to guide Robert to a unified interpretation of the poem’s dramatic elements. Robert constructed meaning in a more visually immediate, although more strictly legalistic, (word by word) fashion.

The authors write that teachers, as well as many poets, have spent years being "socialized" in the literature departments of American universities. Teachers bring to the classroom certain expectations about the kinds of responses they would like to elicit from students. Teachers hope that by carefully guiding and shaping student responses, they will expand students’ thinking and world knowledge, providing students with ”fruitful” new insights into undiscovered cultures, peoples and points of view. The article reveals that teaching of students from marginalized backgrounds is a two way street. The teacher, usually the imparter of knowledge, must also be student when analyzing a response to literature that could be characterized as “unconventional”. Like Hongo's image of the “flagpole gleaming like a knife blade in the schoolyard”, Mike Rose and Robert bring to their reading two sharply divergent ways of thinking coming from two very different sociocultural perspectives. The authors discover, through conversation with Robert and analysis of his “jurisprudential” interpretation of the poem, that his unusual interpretation stems from individual life experiences that his middle class teacher, Mike, does not share, even as he, Robert, does not share Mike’s more wide-ranging knowledge base and understanding of the conventional meaning of the poem inspired by the poet’s vivid images. (The authors note that they the terms “middle class” and “conventional” with some reservation.)

Mike begins to understand that what he had originally perceived as a simple “misreading” by Robert, actually reflected a kind of logic and coherence that Mike might have missed had he not delved more deeply and analytically into Robert’s more visually-oriented thinking processes and then related those processes to Robert’s life experiences. Robert’s interpretation of “this wooden shack place” is not a typical understanding, but it is not fruitless or unsuccessful in a larger context. The authors comment that even though teachers must keep their “structure, goals and accountability”, using a social-textual reading can also direct a teacher’s focus to another facet in the prism of interpretation. They discovered how one student’s ideas, although divergent from the conventional interpretation of six other invited readers “socialized in American literature departments”, are shaped by his life experiences, and form his own logic and coherence, influencing and driving his “unconventional” analysis.

The authors conclude that a meaningful pedagogical model would more deeply involve teacher and student in a process of questioning, reflecting and “making knowledge”. Such a model could lead to enrichment for both the teacher (whose new knowledge of the student's perspective would modify his/her reading and presentation) and for the student (who would be guided into new insights) The process might be less “efficient”, but ultimately provide a more valuable and rewarding classroom experience.

Chapter 15: The Texts of Beginning Reading Instruction

Sarah Ruth Sullivan
August 27, 2007
Chapter Summary
From Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, Fifth Edition.
Edited by Robert B. Ruddell and Norman J. Unrau

Chapter 15 “The Texts of Beginning Reading Instruction”
By Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Leigh Ann Martin
Note from Sarah…as I read this chapter, I had several points where I could not make sense of the text. I decided to post my thought process in these instances; you will see when I write in italics and bold that’s “me” talking!

Hiebert and Martin’s chapter, found in Section Two, “Processes of Reading and Literacy,” under Part 2: “Foundations for Literacy Development” builds on research related to children’s word learning and examines the research on the effects of different types of texts on emergent readers. In this chapter, Hiebert and Martin explore several dimensions of text evaluation, including the number of unique words in a text, how engaging the text is, the nature of the language used in the text, the presence of illustrations and the kinds of contributions these dimension make to a child’s reading acquisition. The authors seek to answer the question as to what factors affect text difficulty and therefore influence the reading acquisition process for children, particularly for those students for whom literacy development occurs primary in school. Specifically, the authors center their investigation on three questions:
1. How is reading facilitated or hindered by different texts?
2. How are different types of words acquired?
3. Considering that texts have changed over the past two decades, how well do current texts match the patterns established by text and word-learning studies?
Effects of Particular Text Types on Children’s Reading Development
The authors warn at the outset that there is a surprisingly small amount of studies on the effects of texts on beginning reading development. They contend that most of the existing studies are limited in scope and often flawed in their design, principally because text effects have been confused with instructional method. Many of these studies, therefore, have not measured what they set out to in terms of the effects of various texts on reading acquisition.
With the above-noted caveat in mind, the authors begin by describing the reality that basal readers, which come prepackaged from publishers, have been the basis of reading instruction in the United States. In 1992, over 85% of schools reported using basal reading programs (Shannon, 1997), and this figure appears to have remained stable since then (Baumann, Hoffman, Duffy-Hester, & Ro, 2000).
Hiebert (1999) identified three types of texts for beginning readers:
1. High-frequency texts (words such as here, can and he are overrepresented)
2. Phonics texts (support word recognitions through a preponderance of decodable vocabulary)
3. Literature-based texts (emphasize the meaningfulness of the entire text)
a. One form of literature-based text is called “predictable” texts due to the repetition of certain phrases or sentences.
Of the three types of texts for beginning readers, the authors focus their review on predictable texts because of their dominance in textbook programs over the past 15 years, despite the fact that there has been little empirical evidence supporting their efficacy.
I do not know why the term basal text is not mentioned here in the list of three types of text. I have no idea what the authors even mean by the term “basal reader” because they don’t define it. They start the chapter by saying that basal readers are used in over 85% of instruction, but then when Hiebert describes the kinds of texts (above) she does not mention basal readers. I thought maybe “basal readers” means any kind of prepackaged published texts for beginning readers (so all three types of texts described by Hiebert could be basal), but this is not true as later in the article the authors compare basal readers with predictable texts, so these are obviously not the same thing. It is really confusing and I wish the authors started with clear definitions before losing me in the details.
And if basal readers comprise 85% of instructional texts (listed above as Shannon 1997), then why do they list “predictable texts” as dominating textbooks in the last 15 years? Which has dominated instruction, basal texts or predictable texts? This is confusing writing in my opinion.
The authors contend when basal readers have been compared with predictable texts, beginning readers display more fluency with predictable texts than texts from basal reading programs or phonics texts. However, the authors point out that this fluency is actually an artifact of the predictable pattern of the text. For example, study by Leu, DeGroff, and Simons (1986), found that the contextual supports of the predictable texts helped poor readers improve their reading rates and comprehension to the level of good readers ONCE the children had mastered the pattern (but not before). The authors also note that predictable texts appear to encourage an overreliance on the pattern.
The authors point out that children’s miscues fail to indicate how well children remember words they have read in predictable texts. The studies attempting to compare predictable texts with other texts in terms of word learning did not isolate the text from other instructional components that may have affected the children’s abilities to remember words. A significant result was found in a study by Hoffman et al. (1999) in which the decidability and predictability of texts did affect beginning readers fluency, accuracy and rate. Reviews of literature do typically conclude that phonics-based instruction produces reading achievement superior to approaches that emphasize high-frequency words or meaningful stories (Adams, 1990; Chall, 1995; Foorman et al., 1998), however, the relative contribution of particular types of texts to lessons or writing activities is unclear .
Research on Children’s Word Learning
The authors contend that there is more extensive research on children’s word learning with word lists and phrases than there is within whole texts. This is due to the fact that the experiments on single words can be more controlled than whole text investigations; however, this limits the generalizabilty of findings in research to the realities of homes and classrooms in the real world. Three types of word learning, corresponding to Hiebert (1999) characterization of texts, are reviewed:
1. Highly meaningful words (corresponds to high-frequency texts)
2. Highly regular words (corresponds to phonics texts)
3. High frequency words (corresponds to predictable texts)
Type 1-highly meaningful words (corresponds to high-frequency texts) – Young children are first interested in words that represent concepts of personal meaning to them, usually proper nouns indicating meaningful persons in their lives.
The authors note that similar to Ashton-Warner’s (1963) self chosen vocabulary, the themes of beginning reading textbooks from the 1930s-1980’s were chosen to be meaningful and relevant to young children; these meaningful themes were conveyed through high-frequency words.
Again, these writers switch their terms mid-paragraph. They begin this paragraph on highly meaningful words and end up switching to talking about the use of high frequency words use to convey meaningful themes.
The meaningful themes of these textbooks were conveyed with generic high-frequency words (for example in the Dick and Jane readers). This approach changed in the 1980s with “authentic texts” where the emphasis has been on the engagingness of the text as a whole with less attention given to the repetition of meaningful words.
The theory behind meaningful word learning is that the first words to which children attend because of their meaningfulness in their lives lay the foundation for the next stage in which they attend to alphabetic relationships. The authors contend that while research is still inconclusive on this type of word learning, it does seem to indicate the efficacy of teaching at least a core set of meaningful, high-imagery words in beginning texts.
Type 2 - highly regular words (corresponds to phonics texts)- As illustrated by Adams’ research in 1990, efficient word recognition in an alphabetic language depends on the beginning reader gaining insight into the alphabetic nature of the written language; that word spellings map onto word pronunciations (Adams, 1990). These mappings can occur at several levels: word, syllable, sub syllable, morpheme and phoneme. While researchers agree that beginning readers need guidance in the alphabetic patterns of written English, there is not agreement on the appropriate content of the unit of the alphabetic relationship. Some researchers believe the first unit of study should be the individual phoneme, others contend that since phonemes can be “unstable” due to their phonemic environment, and that rimes should be the initial unit of study.
Type 3-high frequency words (corresponds to predictable texts) – The authors contend that much of written text consists of a small group of words-prepositions, connectives, pronouns and articles. These high frequency words often have irregular letter-sound relationships. This has caused a controversy in phonics text publishing, with some believing in restricting the occurrence of high-frequency words, while others argue that restricting the use of high-frequency words prevents beginning readers from developing a flexible stance towards reading that can handle both regular spelling pronunciations and high-frequency exceptions.
Research on Features of Existing Texts
The authors consider three characteristics of current texts: the number of total and unique words in texts; the proportion of unique words that are phonetically regular, multisyllabic and highly frequent; and the engagingness of the text. The authors note that while researchers have yet to link these three factors with the ease or difficulty for reading acquisition, a “compelling case” can be made theoretically for each of these dimensions.
1. The number of total and unique words in texts – Historically the total number of words and the number of unique words among those total words has been used as an indicator of the demands of reading programs on beginning readers (Chall, 1995, and others). The authors point out, however, that the number of words is a general indicator at best of the task posed by the text for beginning readers.

2. The decodability of words – Chall’s 1995 observation that basal readers did not provide sufficient phonics experiences caused researchers to probe into the relationship between the phonics instruction of teachers’ editions and the phonics patters in the words that appear in children’s texts. While texts can be judged as decodable because of elements presented in lessons in the teachers’ edition, there is a substantial amount of phonics data that beginning readers must be able to navigate to be successful with texts of beginning readers.

3. The engagingness of texts – Alvermann and Guthrie (1993) proposed engagement as a defining construct in literacy. Engagingness describes the potential of a text for creating engagement. Hoffman, Christian, et al. (1994) identified three ways in which the potential of a text for engagingness can be measured: design, content and language. For beginning readers, design engagingness is centered on illustrations. After design engagingness, other factors likely influence their sustaining interest in the text, for example, if the content is unfamiliar, complex or trivial, a text may not continue to be engaging. Further, if the language is bland, children’s engagement with the text may drop off. The authors point out that while text engagement may depend in part on race, class, ethnicity and personal interest, it is important to consider whether texts hold promise for engaging at least some of the children within a group for whom the text is being developed.
Next Steps
The authors point out that their review of the literature reveals that there is not a substantial amount of research on the features of effective beginning texts. One reason may be the gulf between the publishing industry and educational systems. The authors contend that publishers and researchers need to collaborate in addressing critical questions on appropriate texts for beginning readers. They describe the most urgent of these questions to be centered around:
· texts for the initial period of independent word recognition
· Issues related to decidability (what should the unit of information be? How many exemplars are needed of a unit? At what speed can beginning readers assimilate new information, especially those for whom good instruction and materials are critical to their literacy?
The authors end with a warning that unless systematic research on text features is conducted, the vacillation evident in texts published in the last 20 years will continue (Hiebert, 2000). It is critical to probe in this field in order to ensure that children are brought into literacy with the best possible texts and the best possible experiences with those texts.

Chapter 12: Preschoolers' Developing Ownership of the Literate Register

The article, Preschoolers’ Developing Ownership of the Literate Register, by Beverly E. Cox, Zhihui Fang, and Beverly White Otto is a databased review that looks at how preschoolers develop the ability to code switch between oral and literate registers. Register is a technical term denoting a certain conventional pattern or configuration of language that corresponds to a variety of situations or contexts. Halliday (1978) equated register with “code switching.” Code Switching is the ability to switch between the language used in oral communication, often more lax, and that of literate (written) language, which uses more precise word choices. Within each register a person would want cohesive harmony, which is the intertwining and repetition of semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic cueing systems in a text.

An extensive research study had been done during the 1970s and early 1980s that was soundly criticized for its persistent view of cohesion as simple counts of specific devices (e.g., noun/pronoun pairs). This view, the critics argued, limited the studies’ explanatory power (Hasan, 1984; Mosenthal & Tierney, 1984). In addition, questions of ecological validity were raised because these studies often used specially written or very brief texts manipulating the cohesion devices to examine subjects’ interpretive expertise.

The previous study supported two hypotheses related to income and literacy development. First, it was predicted based on research with schoolchildren that if preschoolers can code switch to the cohesive options of literate register text when the situation requires it, that it would occur among those emergent readers which would more closely approximate that of conventional reading. Second, it was expected middle income would provide indicators of stronger preschool literacy and use of context-appropriate cohesive options.

The basis of the research centered on these four questions:
1. Do some preschool children independently, and in response to a verbally described change in context, modify their own oral monologue’s cohesive options appropriately to construct a literate register text for others to read?
2. If so, is such sophisticated control over oral/literate register options related to differences in economic factors (i.e., low or middle income) and/or differences in experience indicated by emergent reading performance?
3. What is the impact of other variables, naturally present within the sample: age, gender, or assumed, for example, differences in cognitive ability (i.e., being judged average or gifted)?
4. Are there qualitative differences in the children’s use of cohesive choices to develop literate register texts that align with their emergent reading ability?

The Present Study
· Examined preschoolers’ familiarity with cohesive harmony that differ by the context in which they are used.
· Brings new theoretical perspectives, design, and investigative tools to the study of cohesion and literacy.
· It merges sociolinguistic (e.g., Halliday, 1978, 1985a) and sociocognitive (e.g., Vygotsky, 1962, 1978) theory to address issues of ecological validity and past inadequacy of analytical tools.
· The study addresses the preschool age group that was generally ignored in the earlier work and how they use cohesive harmony through using children’s original texts, rather than specially written texts with experimental manipulations. Researchers also wanted to know how this brings both quantitative and qualitative indicators, grounded in linguistic theory, to bear on how cohesion is related to emergent literacy.

Theoretical Groundings for Research
Halliday believed language is a sociosemiotic system—a meaning-driven symbol system with its roots, evolution, and individual development in social interactions and functions.

Sample Information
-Forty-eight children (twenty-one 4-year-olds, twenty-seven 5-year-olds; 21 females, 27 males) from two preschool sites participated in the study. These sites were selected because if the same emergent reading categories existed at both sites and children within each category were very similar relative to cohesion knowledge.
- One site, a university, was middle income and had both a regular and a gifted program for children. All, with the exception of one African American child in the gifted program, came from homes that were European American in background. Overall, 20 children participated in the study.
o Twelve of the children (four 4-year-olds and eight 5-year-olds) attended the university’s regular preschool; gender was equally distributed within each age group.
o Eight other children attended a special preschool program at the same university for children identified as gifted.
-The other site, operated by the county, served primarily low-income families (70%). Overall, 28 children from this program were also participants in the study.
o Fifteen were 4-year-olds, 9 were males and 6 were females.
o Thirteen were 5-year-olds, 8 were males and 5 were females.
o 24 were European American; 3 were African American, and 1 was Hispanic.
-At all sites: the children were native speakers of English and knew how to handle storybooks and had literacy-related experiences at home as well as in the preschool.

Results
-Middle-income children used more literate register cohesive harmony and fewer noncohesive options than did low-income children in their literate register texts.
- Statistical significance showed the children from middle-income families or whose emergent storybook reading more accurately resemble conventional reading and use more appropriate cohesive choices and less inappropriate ones for the literate register text than did the others.
- Those who did use fewer contextually appropriate and more inappropriate cohesive options at a statistically significant level were children from low-income families and whose emergent storybook reading was less like conventional reading.
- Emergent reading data shows a relationship between the written-like category and an application level of familiarity with literate register cohesion holds despite other factors (e.g. income, cognitive and aptitude).
- Insignificant findings for the oral register text’s cohesive and noncohesive harmony indices, regardless of independent variables (i.e., income, age, gender, emergent reading category, or judged cognitive aptitude); this suggests all the children in this study were roughly equivalent in their use of cohesion to produce a readily interpretable face-to-face oral monologue.
- Familiarity and experience with various registers affects their use and therefore, it can be presumed preschoolers are lacking in the successful use of registers.
- With this assumption, if the literate register texts’ cohesive harmony indices were statistically significantly lower than the oral ones, it would suggest the children were not able to make the cohesive and wording choice adaptations needed to code switch. In contrast, if the literate register texts attained a similar level of cohesion to the oral ones, it would indicate some degree of successful code switching.
- The children as a group did not make their dictated literate register texts as cohesive as their oral versions.

This study is relevant to me since I work with Kindergarten students. This helps me to know the development that takes place in the preschool years. Since I work with mostly middle to low income students, this study brings to light the differences and similarities that occur within these classes and if it truly does have an impact on their development. Also, as I work with students in higher grades, I can give instruction on proper use of these registers through use in my classroom.

Chapter 16: Fluency: A Review of Developmental and Remedial Practices by Khun and Stahl

Sarah Ruth Sullivan
August 21, 2007
Chapter Summary
From Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, Fifth Edition.
Edited by Robert B. Ruddell and Norman J. Unrau

Chapter 16
“Fluency: A Review of Developmental and Remedial Practices”
By Melanie R. Kuhn and Steven A. Stahl

Kuhn and Stahl describe literacy as a series of qualitatively different stages through which readers develop proficiency reading print. One of the stages of this process, fluency, is the subject of this chapter review. Becoming a fluent reader involves moving beyond labored word-by-word decoding to the rapid, accurate and expressive rendering of text. The purpose of Kuhn and Stahl’s chapter is to review the literature examining how children move toward fluent reading.

Although many models of the stages of reading development have been proposed, Kuhn and Stahl focus on Chall’s (1996b) stages of reading development. Chall describes six stages through which readers proceed, each of which centers on a particular concept in reading development. Note that stage 3 (in bold print) is the focus of this chapter review.

1. Emergent literacy - readers realize that print represents language and carries meaning
2. Initial stage of conventional literacy - readers begin to develop sound-symbol
correspondence
3. Confirmation and fluency “ungluing from print” - readers develop
automaticity with decoding and begin to make use of prosodic features
(phrasing, stress, intonation)
4. Reading for “learning the new” - curriculum shifts from learning to read to reading
increasingly complex texts to gain knowledge (usually presented from a single
perspective)
5. Reading for “multiple viewpoints” – readers use their knowledge base to develop critical
evaluation skills using multiple perspectives and texts
6. Reading for “construction and reconstruction” – readers critically evaluate and synthesize
multiple view points to form or revise their own perspective and mental model

Stage 3, “ungluing from print” describes the process wherein new readers focus on automatizing their decoding ability. It is referred to as a “confirmation” phase because readers are not learning a new skill; they are practicing a known skill, decoding. During the confirmation/fluency stage, readers practice their decoding skill in order to gain comfort with print. The goal of the confirmation practice is the automatic (and unconscious) application of decoding skills. Fluent reading is a prerequisite for reading comprehension because comprehension requires complex cognitive attention. If a reader has not developed fluency, their cognitive energy is depleted by the mental labor of decoding, and therefore cannot be used for the complex construction of meaning involved in comprehension.
Since the goal of reading is to construct meaning, Kuhn and Stahl discuss the role fluency plays in comprehension. They list two primary theories regarding fluency’s contribution to comprehension; the first deals with automaticity and the second deals with the role of prosody.

Contribution of Automaticity – Effective readers recognize words automatically. They do not need to spend cognitive energy decoding or “sounding out” words; thus they can devote all of their attention to constructing meaning. The question, therefore, is how learners make the shift from deliberate decoding to automatic decoding. Kuhn and Stahl report that according to automaticity theorists, the best way to enable this transition is through extensive practice; the implication being that in order to develop fluency, emerging readers must have successive exposure to print.

Contribution of Prosody- The authors note that automatic decoding is a necessary but insufficient factor in fluency; in order for fluent reading to occur, readers must do more than read the words quickly and accurately; they must also read with expression. Reading with expression, or prosody, is comprised of features such as pitch or intonation, stress or loudness, duration or timing. Prosody also includes the chunking of words into phrases or meaningful units according to punctuation and other syntactic structures. Kuhn and Stahl contend that prosody may be the link between fluency and comprehension due to the fact that in order to read a sentence with intonation, one must recognize syntactic role of each word in the sentence. When readers are able to apply syntax to reading, they have made the link between oral and written language. Chunking words into appropriate syntactic phrases signifies that readers have understood what they read.

In order to examine the relative importance of automaticity and prosody to the development of fluency and comprehension, the authors examined instructional research done by The National Reading Panel (NRP-2000) as well as research not included in the NRP’s report.
The NRP examined literature in two areas of fluency – guided oral reading and independent silent reading. Guided oral reading was defined as approaches that involve students reading with feedback and guidance. Examples of this method include repeated reading, impress reading, paired reading, shared reading and assisted reading. The NRP concluded that there is significant evidence of the effectiveness of fluency instruction that includes oral reading and feedback.

Independent silent reading was defined as providing time for children to read by themselves, for example through Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) periods. The NRP found that the literature they reviewed did not provided conclusive evidence of the effectiveness of this approach. The authors point out however that there has been criticism of the NRP’s methodology regarding the studies on SSR. They consider four groups of studies not included in the NRP’s review due to research conditions outside of the NRP’s criteria (the NRP did not accept correlational studies or studies of non-native English speakers). The authors contend that taken together, these studies provide strong support for the importance of practice (gained by SSR) in reading on overall reading achievement.

To further investigate the role of fluency, the authors examine both the NRP’s studies as well as other studies not included in the NRP’s report. The articles that emerged from their search fell into four broad categories:
1. Theoretical bases of fluency development
2. Research pertaining to the validity of fluency theories
3. Recommendations for classroom practice
4. Intervention studies
Of these four broad categories, the authors concentrate the rest of their chapter on intervention studies to determine the overall effectiveness of fluency instruction. They included a total of 71 studies in their review which were separated into two overarching categories: those built on independent learning or unassisted strategies and those labeled assisted strategies that provide learners with a model of fluent reading behaviors.

Unassisted Repeated Reading-
This is a strategy based on independent practice of text. The basic method of repeated reading was developed by Samuels and Dahl (both in 1979) based on a process in which students read a 100 word passage repeatedly until they reached the criterion rate of 100 words per minute. The authors report that given Samuels’s and Dahl’s original goal was to develop a procedure that would allow for increased in reading rate as well as in the improvement of learners’ accuracy, the method of repeated reading proved successful. The authors note that the basic results for comprehension mirror those for fluency as it was generally found that where there was an increase in fluency, there was also an increase in comprehension.

Assisted-Reading Strategies
Like unassisted strategies, assisted strategies emphasize practice as a means of improving accuracy, automaticity and prosody as well as comprehension. Methods of assisted strategies include choral reading in which the student and teacher read the same material simultaneously and at a rapid rate. The student sits in front of the teacher, and the teacher reads directly into the student’s ear. Researchers found that assisted reading is quite successful in improving the fluency of struggling readers, though it has been pointed out that the procedure is time-consuming and thus can be impractical for whole class instruction.

Another method was reading-while-listening in which the students listen to a taped fluent reading while following the text with their eyes. The authors note that one of the primary concerns regarding read-along is that there is no way to ensure active engagement on the part of the learners. In some studies, time spent listening to tapes in class did not improve comprehension, but the authors note that when students were held responsible for being able to read the text fluently, they did actively participate in the process and took pride in their abilities and success.

The authors also discuss the use of closed-caption television programs to improve fluency. In this method, students were expected to practice short portions of the script to develop fluent rendering of the text after they viewed the program with closed captioning. The clinicians of this study considered the lessons effective in promoting the learners’ fluency.

Classroom Approaches which modify the above listed unassisted and assisted reading strategies:

Partner reading – the repeated reading approach is modified so that two readers can work together in order to receive immediate feedback.

Purposeful repeated reading – increases student motivation to reread by giving them a real purpose for doing so, for example creating cross-age reading situations. In this scenario, older struggling readers practice fluency with easy texts in order to eventually read to young children.

Oral Recitation Lesson (ORL) – The goal is to use oral reading as a means of developing students’ prosody, rather than being used as an assessment (as it had been in the traditional basal lesson). In this procedure, the teacher begins by reading a basal story aloud. Next the class discusses the story in order for students to build comprehension. The teacher then rereads the story with the children following along and echoing back each paragraph. Next, the students are assigned a portion of the text to master, with the understanding that their reading was supposed to be expressive. The final step involved the students reading their passage to the group. The authors discuss several studies that were based on this instructional model. These studies generally reported the ORLs to be beneficial, though these approaches need to be examined in more controlled research.

The authors point out that several studies have compared repeated and non-repeated reading and have found that there is no difference in effects between repeated reading of a small number of texts and non-repetitive reading of a larger number of texts. These researchers therefore concluded that it is not the repetition that leads to the increase in fluency but simply the time spent reading connected text in any form.

In their discussion section of the article, the authors contend that the research clearly indicates that when fluency instruction was compared with the traditional instruction used with a basal reader, fluency instruction improved children’s reading fluency and comprehension, but when comparing various approaches to fluency, the evidence is less definitive. Overall, the fluency strategies discussed were effective (to varying degrees) in assisting readers to make the transition between labored decoding and fluent rendering of text. This holds true for both normally achieving readers and those who are having difficulties in becoming fluent. The authors do make the point however; that the research results are consistent with Chall’s stage model in that fluency instruction seems to work best with children from between a later preprimary level and late second-grade level. Beyond or below that level, the results are not as strong as children need to have some entering knowledge about words to benefit from rereading, but not be so fluent that they cannot demonstrate improvement.

In concluding the chapter, the authors note that they have come to view fluency instruction as successful in improving the reading achievement of children at a certain point in their reading development. They further note that despite its effectiveness, they have observed little of this instruction in schools. If the goal is to move readers from labored decoding to the construction of meaning, the authors recommend that educators integrate fluency instruction into the classroom more frequently.

Chapter 8 "The Children of Trackton's Children: Spoken Lanuguage in Social Change

Hi Team Won : )
Debbie S: Thanks for your message about my contact info. I appreciate your intention to "keep me safe"!

Well folks, I know you've been eagerly anticipating my summary of Chapter 8...so here it is. If you feel you need further explanation or clarification, please post me a question. I am working on my next chapter (16) and hope to post that later tonight. Happy reading! Thanks again for the good work you all did.

Sarah Ruth Sullivan
August 21, 2007
Chapter Summary
From Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, Fifth Edition.
Edited by Robert B. Ruddell and Norman J. Unrau

Chapter 8
“The Children of Trackton’s Children: Spoken and Written Language in Social Change”
By Shirley Brice Heath

Heath’s chapter, found in Section Two, “Processes of Reading and Literacy,” explores the effect social context has on the development of language and cognitive processes. In this chapter, Heath demonstrates how changing from a rural culture to an urban one changes the forms and functions of language. When communities are changed, the meanings of cultural membership change, as well as the process of language socialization and social values and beliefs.

Heath references her prior study, “Ways With Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms” published in 1983, which gives ethnographic accounts of how the children of the working class community Trackton, in southeastern United States, learned to use language at home and school between 1969 and 1977. When Heath studied this community of black families in the 1970’s, their economic and social lives revolved around a rural community in which many adults worked in the local textile mills. Heath describes the black families in Trackton as intact socio-cultural groupings whose cultures were not “deficient” but were different from the mainstream pattern. The differences gave this black community a unique, identifiable value system and socialization process.

In Heath’s present study described in this chapter, she returns to Trackton to study the changes in that community and how these changes affected the language of children. The economic recession of the early 1980s severely reduced the number of textile mills in Trackton and caused a social upheaval and move to an urban culture which completely altered the lives of Trackton’s children and hence affected their language socialization.

In order to compare the lives and language of the children of Trackton studied during the 1960s/70s with the next generation studied in the 1980s, Heath focuses on two children, Zinnia Mae and Sissy[1]. Both girls were part of the early study and became the focus of Heath’s later study wherein she analyzed the social context surrounding Zinnia Mae and Sissy when they became mothers. Heath uses these two generations to illustrate how the change in the community affected language socialization.

Heath describes the study of language socialization as having two goals: developing an understanding of how language is used to socialize the young and determining how youngsters learn to use language. She focuses her analysis on three questions:

· Were the “meanings of cultural membership” learned by Zinnia Mae in her childhood
retained and carried over to the socialization of her children?
· What are the resources for adaptation within “different symbols or cultural texts”?
· What are the comparative differences between the socialization of Trackton’s children in
the 1970s and those children of the 1980s?

In the first study in Trackton, when the economic life revolved around the “good pay” of the textile mills, families remained away from “the projects” of public housing and instead tended to rent small, two-family units. This arrangement made for a close community where families spent their time outside of work at on their porches, with a great deal of interactions between adults and children. In these days, the adults surrounded their youngsters with talk and shared activities. Heath writes that the character of the African-American parenting language at the time was not “simplified” for children. There were no special routines of question-and answer or baby talk games. Instead, the adults expected children would learn to talk “when they need to.” Heath describes the black families in Trackton as intact socio-cultural groupings whose cultures were not “deficient” but were different from the mainstream pattern. The differences gave this black community a unique, identifiable value system and socialization process which was linked to a continued faith in education, the future of their youth, the centrality of religion and the power of the bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood.

This unique bond of empowerment dissolved by the late 1980s, according to Heath. The collapse of a stable economy contributed to an image both within and beyond the black community of poverty, dissolution and strife. Instead of the hopeful, close community of Trackton in the 1960s and 70s, the children of the 1980s were raised in an increasingly isolated and negative environment.

Heath provides a case study of Zinnia Mae in order to illustrate how language was affected by the change from a rural community with an intact cultural identity and closeness between families to an urban, isolated situation. In 1985, soon after she turned 16, Zinnia Mae moved from rural Trackton to urban Atlanta where she lived in a high-rise public housing apartment unit with her three young children, a daughter, Donna who was 16 months old and twin sons who were two months old. There, on the urging of Heath, between mid-1985 and mid-1987, Zinnia Mae taped over 400 hours and wrote approximately 1,000 lines of notes about her activities.

In sharp contrast to the abundance of community interaction in Trackton which had been facilitated by the closeness of houses and life spent outside on the porches, Zinnia Mae and her children lived a very isolated, non-verbally interactive existence. Because of their living conditions with their single mom, the children rarely left the apartment and did not have other children over to play with them. The lives of both mother and children revolved around the television, with infrequent visits by Zinnia Mae’s girlfriends. Zinnia Mae’s children did not engage in the interactive performing, joking and storytelling that marked the social context of Trackton’s children a generation prior.

The amount of talk between mother and children was very low in comparison to the way life had been in Trackton. Heath writes that in a random selection of 20 hours of the tapes, only approximately 14% of the recording sessions included talk between Zinnia Mae and the children. Zinnia Mae met the physical needs of her children, but did not stimulate verbal interaction as she usually waited for the children to address or approach her. When Zinnia Mae did initiate talk it usually was designed to give them a brief directive or question about their actions. The language socialization resources of Trackton and Zinnia Mae’s apartment contrasted sharply in almost each aspect of the process. The physical and social isolation of the family forced the majority of the interactions to be dyadic (occurring between two people) rather than “multiparty” as was the case in Trackton’s open community of adults and children. By herself, Zinnia Mae was not able to assume a key role in enabling her children to learn to use language across a wide variety of styles and functions, nor did she engage in guided or collaborative tasks with her children.

The language development of Zinnia Mae’s children did NOT match the pattern of Trackton’s children observed in the 1960s. Since her children did not have the benefit of multiparty, dynamic language interactions, they did not move through the stages of language socialization seen in Trackton’s children:

1. A repetition stage, in which children repeat chunks of speech heard around them
2. A repetition with variation stage, in which children manipulate the speech they picked up
from those around them
3. A participation phase, usually reached around 2 years of age, during which they attempt
to create their own talk to bring into adult conversations, thus becoming an active part of
an ongoing dialogue

Zinnia Mae’s daughter, Donna, though not formally evaluated by Heath, showed significant deficiencies in her language abilities. In contrast to the Trackton children of the 1960s who were raised within a close-knit community of adults and children, the language socialization of Zinnia Mae’s children “holds little promise that they will enter school with the wide range of language uses, varieties of performance, types of genres and perspectives on self-as-performer that Trackton’s children had."

Heath suggests that Zinnia Mae’s case study points to the power of groups and allegiances beyond the immediate family to give a sustaining ideology of cultural membership. Whereas the children of Trackton had a common foundation for language and socialization from the black church, as well as the dynamic conversations of community members who gathered on the porches, Zinnia Mae’s children did not have the contacts or interactions necessary for complex language socialization.

As was evidenced in the case study, Heath writes that sociological research underscores the importance of dynamic verbal contacts to the academic and mental health of young minorities – especially African American children. Indeed, alienation from family and community (like that experienced by Zinnia Mae’s children) appears to play a more critical role students’ academic success than the socioeconomic markers of income level or educational attainment of parents.



End note

[1] While the chapter details the case studies of both Zinnia Mae and Sissy, this summary will treat only Zinnia Mae as the evidence from both cases points to the same conclusions, and Zinnia Mae’s case will serve the purposes of illustrating these conclusions for this summary.

just checking in to Team 1

Hello Team One!

First of all, a "shout out" to Debbie Shanks for organizing and setting up Team 1 and our Blog! Thank you so much!

Wow, Debbie S. and Debbie B. for your first posts!

I feel so fortunate to have you working with me and appreciate the thoughtful material you have posted thus far.

I'll get reading and get posting to support the team with my work!

Peace and love, Sarah

PS. If you ever need (or want) to contact me directly, the best email to use is ssullivan@pittsfield.net

cell phone (413) 441-1369

snale mail to: 55 Chivers Drive Dalton, MA 01226

Article Seven: Exploring Vygotskian Perspectives in Education: The Cognitive Value of Peer Interaction

Elice A. Forman and Courtney B. Cazden explored the writings of Vygotsky’s perspectives of the impact of the social foundations of cognition and the importance of instruction in development. Although Vygotsky’s perspective’s include the social relationship known as “teaching” occurring when there is a one-on-one relationship between one adult and one student, the authors of this article point to the important and not so well explored “teaching” through peer tutoring, peer conferencing and peer collaboration. Research is sparse in the United States regarding the value of peer interactions and the possible cognitive and intellectual learning it can accomplish.

In the beginning of this article, Forman and Cazden introduce us to Soviet Union researcher Makarenko. Next the authors explore Vygotsky’s pupil, Levina and her view of the possible cognitive benefits of peer tutoring. An additional experiment on peer tutoring involving observations of a second grade classroom by Kamler is included. Genevan psychologists Doise, Mugny and Perret-Clermont’s research on the effects of peer collaboration on logical reasoning skills associated with Piaget’s stage of concrete operations are also explored. Forman and Cazden include current research from Forman, Russian researchers Lomov and Kol’tosova and Japanese researchers Inagaki and Hatano that also support peer collaboration.

In conclusion, Forman and Cazden note that their article doesn’t mean that teachers are not needed. The authors conclude that the incorporation of general human experience in the teaching process is really the most important aspect of mental development and must ultimately be grounded in adult-child interactions. However, peer interaction also has an important role and function between social and external adult-child interactions and the individual child’s inner speech. By shifting current practices of mostly adult-child interactions in schools to include opportunities for peers to work together, children will have the opportunity to broaden what they have been taught to include cognitive and intellectual learning via self-dialogue.

Notes:
*Vygotsky: The social relationship known as “teaching” occurs when there is a one-on-one relationship between one adult and one student. Internalization occurs when “the very means (especially speech) used in social interactions are taken over by the individual child and internalized. Social interaction by and of itself does not lead to the development of problem solving, memory or other forms of cognitive development. Many of writings involved adult-child interactions. Acknowledges that discrepancy might exist between solitary and social problem solving; zone of proximal development-the difference between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Zone of proximal development happens when interpsychological regulation is transformed into intrapshchological regulation.

*Schools can not afford to hire one teacher for every student; therefore group instruction is necessary. This poses a problem for the classroom teacher in meeting individual student’s needs. Most school lessons involve the teacher giving directions and the student nonverbally carrying them out; the teacher asks questions and the student answers, often in one or two words or phrases. Students are not encouraged in a typical classroom environment to reverse roles and give directions and ask the questions of the teacher. Although classrooms are often crowded social environments, group work is rarely encouraged. This lack of encouragement within the classroom environment may be due to no clear rationale of the benefits of group work at this time.

*Theoretically, most developmental research studies completed in the United States thus far have focused on the value of peer interaction in the socialization of behavior and personality; less focus has been completed on the possible value of cognitive development.

*Makarenko:researcher in the Soviet Union also investigating the importance of the value of cognitive development in peer interaction.

*Two types of interaction among peers put on a continuum, each depends on the amount of knowledge or skill the students bring to the table during group work.
· Peer tutoring or consultant (SU) - One child knows more than the other and is therefore expected to share their knowledge with the less capable peer. Tutor helps inform, guide, and/or correct the tutee’s work.
· Peer collaboration-Knowledge of peers is equal or as close to equal as possible and a give and take work relationship is expected. A mutual task in which the partners work together to produce something neither could have produced alone.

*Communication with less knowledgeable peer during peer tutoring may not only motivate the student acting in the role of the teacher, but also may be a means for the more knowledgeable student to internalize their own mental processes, via inner speech, what was taught receptively by the teacher.

*Peer tutoring must be effectively modeled in a learnable fashion by the teacher in order for positive interaction and results. The teacher first models a task by providing questions until the student can complete the task independently. Secondly, the teacher allows the student to repeat the instructions for the task with appropriate prompts from the teacher for accuracy. Finally, the decay of “old” or “given” information provides the student the opportunity to internalize the task through inner speech and the student is now ready to teach a peer. When accurately teaching another, the student’s inner dialogue has been truly established.

*Levina: notes and protocols collected only include child’s speech directed back at experimenter; perspective that the need to communicate to a less knowledgeable other- such as a peer-would motivate the student; instruction of peers could be an intermediate step between receptively being directed by the speech of another and productively and covertly directing one’s own mental processes via inner speech.

*Peer conference: students work together to review written work. The writer reads their work to partner. During the reading, the writer revises work either independently or through peers questioning resulting in a more concise product.

*Kamler: found that in order for peer conferences to be successful, initially the teacher needs to consistently model the kind of interaction in which the children can learn to speak to each other- must be “learnable” by children; reciprocal model of peer assistance; makes concept of audience visible.

*Peer Collaboration: even further from traditional classroom organization; not much research in Western industrialized societies due to focus on the individual achievement of students; none of the researchers looked systematically at student’s interactions during collaborative problem solving; to test hypothesis of peer interaction enhancing intellectual performance due to individuals recognizing and coordinating conflicting perspectives of a problem, research needs to look at the process of social coordination that occurs during problem solving in order to isolate the social conditions that are most responsible for the cognitive growth; most research on peer collaboration has been based on Piaget’s idea of placing more importance on peer interaction than on Vygotsky’s adult-child interaction.

*Lomov and Kol’tsova and Inagaki and Hatanto: conclude through research on peer collaboration that peer interaction enhances the development of logical reasoning through a process of active cognitive reorganization brought on by cognitive conflict; peer interaction helps individuals acknowledge and integrate a variety of perspectives on a problem and this process of coordination produces superior intellectual results.

Perret-Clermont: can not only look at peer collaboration as a joint activity, but must also look to the confrontation between different points of views of the peers involved; systematic observations of peer collaboration continues to be needed; the impact of different types of social interactions; and in particular of partner’s strategies, on the strategy which the subject adopts in order to carry out the task needs to be included in future research.

Forman: studies look at how the reasoning strategies of collaborative problem solvers differ from those of solitary problem solvers and how some collaborative partnerships differ from others in both social interaction patterns and cognitive strategy usage using a chemical reactions task; one type of social behavior code (procedural interactions) and three types of experimentation strategy codes looked at during experiments; studies did not include measure of cognitive conflict so social coordination resulting in cognitive conflict that in turn affects problem solving skills can not be derived from her studies; too many variables. When collaborators assume complementary roles, they start to look more like peer tutors. The similarities include: the need to give verbal instruction to peers, the need for self-reflection due to a visible audience, and the need to respond to peer questioning and challenges-a reciprocal model of peer assistance is apparent in the collaborative problem-solving context.
*Procedural interactions – all activities carried out by one of both children and focus on getting the task completed.
· Parallel procedural interaction – children share materials and exchange comments about task but do not monitor work or share own thoughts with partner.
· Associative procedural interaction – children try to exchange information about some of the combinations each one has selected during task by no attempt is made by either partner to coordinate roles each takes while performing task.
· Cooperative interaction – both children constantly monitor each other’s work and play coordinated roles in completing task procedures
*Experimentation strategies included:
· Random or trail and error – a relatively ineffective, unsystematic approach to an experiment.
· Isolation of variables – effective for solving a few problems in experiment.
· Combinatorial- most effective to solving problems in experiment; highest level of cognitive ability.

*Piaget: identified four factors necessary for a theory of cognitive development: maturation, experience with the physical environment, social experience, and equilibration or self-regulation; equilibration seen as most fundamental; peer interaction and social experience derive their importance from the influence they can exert on equilibration through introduction of cognitive conflict; disequilibrium is cognitive conflict.

Chapter 6- "Writing and the Sea of Voices"

Chapter 6
“Writing and the Sea of Voices: Oral Language In, Around, and About Writing”

Dyson discussion takes the reader through a young writer’s inner speech that mediates the writing process. Children generate their ideas and writing through talk with others. She brings us through the writings of a 6 year old.
• Depending on their orientations researchers analyzed how language was acquired and utilized. Through observations, studies yield various concepts in examining the ‘sea of talk’, how speech functions during composing and how it relates to social relationships and culture. Researchers developed ways to code and describe functions of speech during early writing. Young children talked while in the development of their inner speech.
• Talk is self-regulatory; it is the raw material and a tool to manipulate written material. It is used for regulating, planning, encoding, monitoring, orally rereading, etc.
• As two girls work on a writing project, they use speech to manipulate speech. They verbalize their tactics in a way that models the scaffolding that an adult has provided. Based on Vygotskian theory, researchers consider the dyadic encounters between students/teachers that have provided the ‘think alouds’ that support children’s language, both orally and written. Many times this scaffolding is provided during an activity called ‘writing conferences’. These conferences center around ‘versions of reflect, expand and select.’ But what if, in the classroom, all children don’t share sociocultural backgrounds with their teachers. As researchers and educators stepped back from dyadic encounters, there came into question ethnographic perspectives on language and literacy in communities and on social activities or events themselves.
• Formal social activities or events provide conventions of how to act and what to do with and through texts that are passed on orally. Informal events reveal and sustain social relationships. When any events talk about or use print, they are known as literacy events. They have a purpose, a way of relating to others, expected moods, expected test topics and structures.
• This shift from dyadic encounters to literacy events requires rethinking oral or written language to the relationship of learning to write. In dyadic instructional encounters, an ‘expert’ helps learners to write, hoping that the learner will eventually internalize the skills and become independent. In events, there may be many participants with many different roles and may not ‘disappear’ and leave the writer alone, but change within the relationship or nature of event.
• Learning through events requires numerous social activities and participating by listening, observing, receiving explicit instruction, engaging in the event with an expert and receiving feedback from an ‘audience’.
• But classrooms themselves are a kind of community and don’t necessarily follow the dyadic encounters. There can be a ‘collective’ zone of proximal development molded by diverse events in different study units. Learning entails both interactive use of oral and written language. Text talk is guided by oral participation.
• However, classrooms resort to the ‘default’ teach/student interaction and continue to provide minimal support for classroom writing or composing. Students write short, factual information that is not exchanged, elaborated or integrated. There is a ‘right’ way and a ‘wrong’ way. Teachers that embraced high social activities and active participation in the classrooms such as play-acting or writing produced enriched writing. Students saw that their writing had a purpose and the activities became socially organized events.
• As children increase writing, their talk and drawings as well as peers themselves, began to permeate through their writings. They may not always heep their writing in an official capacity but sometimes allow their unofficial or sociocultural ‘culture’ to seep through.
• As children evolve in their writing, there comes a point where ‘Critical literacy’ practices begin to grow. These practices involve separating themselves from their writing, making decisions about what particular words to choose or how to use them. They begin to become aware of social and ideological alternatives eventually making ‘waves’ in the sea.
• As writers begin to taste other voices in the sea, their words/voices/writing begin to absorb the various flavors. Teachers can provide a sea of voices in their classrooms by offering various voices or sources in a unit of study (i.e., paintings, songs, books, plays, videos, etc.) All of these various activities create a collective zone of voices about writing.

Update and added information on our blog

Hello Everyone,

I have learned a few more things about this new blog adventure. In order to add a posting to this blog, you have to be "invited" (not my rule, the blog rules). Everyone is invited to join, as mentioned before. There are some things that I have to do in order for you to be invited to post. If you have not received an invitation, please write my e-mail address and let me know that you want the availability to post. If you are interested in posting, then an invitation has to be completed before you are allowed on the blog as an author.

Some of you have indicated that you would like to comment on the posts and complete your own article reviews, this is fine to do. In order to comment, you just have to go to the article you would like to comment on. Under the article is a comment button. Click on the comment button and add your comment in the box provided

In order to post or add a comment you must enter your user name and password. You are not allowed to add a comment or post anonymously. You have to register if you do not currently have a blog name and password. It is really easy to do. Blogspot will walk you right through it. I'm telling you, if I can do it anyone can!

Please jot me a line on my e-mail if you have any questions that I can help you with. I try to check my e-mails daily. There is also a help section on the blog. It is helpful and this is where I learned about adding people to the blog. The help section has questions and answers for those of us that are new to blogging too. I just found it today, but you might want to check it out if you are just joining us.

I have been in contact with Michael, as you can tell by the addition of his posting. He has indicated that he will track the progress of our blog and asked me to contact the cohort via e-mail. I will be sending out another e-mail, but this time to your simmons e-mails. If anyone knows of someone from the cohort that does not know about the blog, please let them know-thanks.

For those of us who "freak out" Michael also said that "summaries vary from student to student. As long as a person is able to 'talk through' a book chapter, using their outline, then it is acceptable." That made me feel better as Debbie B. is concise and I am a bit chatty (how unusual ha). We both can "talk through" our book chapters, but have presented our summaries in very different formats.

Please keep in mind that this blog is not to add any additional stress on anyone. This blog is for sharing and for fun. I currently have six people "invited" including Michael. Let us know if you are willing to share and the rest will be history (at least for those of us who are digital immigrants ha ha).

Onward and upward,

Debbie Shanks : )

New Post

Debbie - Thank you for setting-up this blog for the Williamstown group. I will follow along and contribute. Michael

Article Five: The Place of Dialogue in Children's Construction of Meaning

Submitted by: Debbie Bonanza

Although researchers have defined four stages of language development, Halliday focuses on the last three phases in the development of language:
Phase 1: Symbolic-protolinguistic, ‘protolanguage’
Phase 2: Transition (protolinguistic to language)
Phases 3- Symbolic-linguistic

· Before Halliday’s Phase 1, there is a “presymbolic stage” that occurs within the first few weeks of life. In the early development of language, language develops through a series of interactions between himself and a significant other eventually achieving a ‘personal identity’. The interactions contain no content but do carry meaning that is jointly constructed. Within 4-5 months, a transition to the symbolic phase begins to occur. A “third party” is introduced that is a ‘happening’ or ‘commotion’, an interaction with the child’s environment. The significant other begins to respond to the ‘happening’ in her own tongue. Through language, the ‘third party’ begins to acquire reality.

· Between 7-10 months, the child enters Phase 1: Symbolic-protolinguistic, ‘protolanguage’. The child is not only discovering his own body, but his environment. He is now beginning to crawl and has the freedom of space and time. During protolanguage, the child begins to understand the relationship between the system and the instance by the dialectic relationship that ensues.

· Between the ages of 1-2 years of age, the child enters Phase 2- transition. Protolanguage coincides with crawling and language coincides with walking. The difference between protolanguage and language is that language has grammar, a symbolic system that is in between content and the expression.

· As the child enters the last phase, his grammar evolves to the point in which information can be shared and discussion can ensue. The child begins to use pragmatic and declarative modes to communicate a demand or a simple statement that requires no action,

· At this point, to understand what the child is trying to communicate, you must have shared the same experience. Conversation evolves through the ones that shared the experience. Once the system of meaning-making is mastered can a listener understand the experience the speaker is communicating. Knowledge is transferred from a knower to the non-knower.

· As the child learns to refine his language, significant others help by asking “wh” questions. Eventually the questioning and answering that go both ways, aides in the development of dialogue.

Article Four: Reading as Situated Langauga: A Sociocognitive Perspective

Submitted by: Debbie Bonanza

Gee describes reading as a process embedded within the context of social interactions and culture. He believes that reading and writing can’t be separated from oral language interactions, that it is connected to culture, social interactions, and to society itself.

· The purpose of language is to share information. Traditionally, language was viewed as translating the language into your own words or your own mental images. Gee suggests that today, language is viewed as the experience of and the action or situation in the world to a particular person. Language is stored in the brain as images or videos tied to a perception both of the world and our own being. As our experiences or perceptions change, so do the images or tapes. New experiences are integrated with old experiences; therefore creating a ‘learning ‘ experience that makes sense to us. These images color out experiences and what we use to give meaning to words and sentences. They provide value and perspective. As we listen to language, we customize the context, which is not just words but purpose(s) of action and interaction. We pull what we need to make sense of the context. We build our image in accordance to all the words and environment that surrounds the world.

· The second function of language is that words and grammar exist so that people have different ways to communicate different or contrasting perspectives on experiences. Children learn perspective language by listening to the dialogue of advanced peers and adults. As they develop, they begin to realize others may have different perspectives and internalize them. Later, children can rerun the situation and imitate the perspective to other more advanced peers and adults eventually learning to use symbolic means that others used. Reading must be related to situations outside of the text and instruction must integrate diverse perspectives of real/imagined materials and social words.

· Languages are comprised of more than situations and perspectives. People recognize different social languages through different patterns like styles, registers, syntax, vocabulary, etc. Readers need to be able to map these elements to a specific style of language used in characteristic social activities. This type of mapping has a more detrimental affect on reading failure than poor phonics mapping. To be able to use a specific social language, you have to understand how its design features are combined to carry out the specific social activity (i.e., medicine, law, rap, informal talk w/friends, etc.) Social language can be both oral and written and is always connected to the characteristic social activities, value-laden perspectives and socially situated identities of groups of people or communities of practice.

· Discourses (with a capital D) are being able to produce social languages and genres not just consuming (interpreting) them. Discourses are like an identity tool kit full of specific devices (i.e., way with words, values, actions, interactions, etc.) that you can use for specific identities and activities related to that activity. Discourses can be by themselves, blended together, related by relationships of alignment or tension. Through Discourses, people acquire cultural models or theories about the world socialized in or shared. These models tell others what is normal for that particular Discourse and what is abnormal, therefore being heavily value laden.

· Children’s Discourses are a result of their own cultural models and social interaction, usually their family. There is a significant correlation between early language abilities, early phonological awareness and success in reading. Family, community, and school environments provide cognitively challenging communications that hopefully enhance verbal abilities. All children have language and vocabulary but may be of a different Discourse of cultural model. Children who tend to fail in school may lack the specific verbal abilities tied to specific school-based practices.

Article Three: Literacy Policy and Policy Research That Make A Difference

Submitted by: Debbie Bonanza

Sheila W. Valencia and Karen K. Wixson review policy research, specifically state level in regards to literacy standards and assessments.

· As the years go by, policymakers continue to create more and more educational policies in hopes of increasing literacy. “49 of 50 states have adopted content standards in reading and writing, 48 of 50 have enacted policies on statewide testing and the number of phonics bills introduced annually increased 900% between 1994 and 1997.”

· Policies themselves vary in terms of ‘locus of authority’ which means where the policy originated or who has authority over it as in statewide standards and assessments, scope, how far-reaching is it and where it applies (i.e. a particular school, program, practice, or even systemic focuses), and focus, what they target (i.e. graduation requirements, specific groups of students, or curriculum).

· Researchers were swayed by their bias in policy, measurement, or literacy. They published in different places, targeted different audiences, little overlap in bibliographic citations, asked different research questions, used different methodologies, etc.
* Policy researchers focused on the system through surveys and interviews
* Measurement researchers focused on assessment components of reform, relying on statistical analysis and some self-reports, interviews and artifacts
* Literacy researchers asked questions about instruction/learning in relation to literacy research and theory. These researchers looked more at teaching practices rather than policy.

· Policies that do focus on literacy do influence teachers’ beliefs and practices but not always in way expected or desired direction. Factors included teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, economic/social/political conditions of school or district, the stakes attached, and support provided. However, new assessments/standards do not ensure improved teaching or learning.

· The review indicated a need for research in specific subject matter and tension between policy research viewed from global (national, state, or district) and local (classrooms).

· Policy research can’t focus just inputs (policies) and outputs (outcomes) without finding out what happens with the quality of teaching and learning. Three arguments to support why it is problematic to judge policy value by looking only at outputs:
* High-stakes test scores- not always a true reflection of student learning, what do tests measure and what do results mean?
* Focus on change- change does not automatically constitute improvement, change is incremental as are the results, compliance in change does not necessarily reflect a change in methods to a change in teaching practices
* Moral imperative- leaving teachers to fend on their own (the black box), teacher training and support improves quality of instruction thereby signifying that policies must be tied directly to increasing capacity of teachers and administrators.

· To bridge the divide between global and local perspectives, the context in which teaching and learning occur and how the policy environments influence teaching and learning must be examined.

· A model denotes how policies affect the quality of teaching and learning in context. It shows how policies filter through state, district, and school context and policy environments before entering the classroom. But the filters travel in both directions, a reciprocal relationship and eventually, practices themselves can influence policy. These different contexts can support or undermine goals. Therefore global research needs to consider all the contexts, that considers the influence of the conditions and interactions to the local end that influences the quality of teaching and learning.

· In conclusion, policies must be educative (what learning is needed to act); provide in-depth professional development for teachers and administrators, both state and local; and address accountability systems that don’t interfere with targeted improvements. Studies need to go both ways, multiple perspectives.

Article Two:A Historical Perspective

A Historical Perspective on Reading Research and Practice

Patricia A. Alexander and Emily Fox provide a look back at the last fifty years of reading practice and research. They break each era into the conditions for change, the guiding view, the resulting principles and rival views of learner and learner processes. Alexander and Fox conclude by pointing out that when we look at theory and practices of the past, we can better understand current practices and also use our knowledge to help shape reading research and practices for the future.

The Era of Conditioned learning (1950-1965)
Conditions for change
*Reading became a recognized field of study with systematic programs of research investigating the processes of reading acquisition.
*Social, educational, political and economic factors instigate change
*High birth rate during and right after World War II brings record numbers of children into the public school system.
*Sputnik- brings to forefront need for American students to compete globally and need for understanding why some children had trouble with reading acquisition.
*Research community brought in to apply same principles of analysis that explained and controlled the behavior of animals in laboratories to how children learn language.
*With involvement of research community the processes and skills involved in reading will be clearly defined and broken down into parts that can be systematically taught and practiced.
Guiding View
*Skinnerian-strict behaviorist perspective that learning is a conditioned behavior, not a result of growth and development of the student.
*Strict behaviorist perspective was that repeated skill and drill brought on predictable response or learned behavior from students with no cognitive involvement in the part of the individual.
*Davie Hume-narrow concept of “training” students with desired behaviors and the environmental stimuli that brought on desired behaviors (students can be trained to read with no cognitive thought).
*The goal for reading research was to unlock the desired behaviors involved in reading so that learners could be “trained” in each of the identified skills necessary for successful reading.
*Finally, further analysis of struggling readers was needed to derive appropriate behaviors to be presented in smaller increments to students that have difficulty.
Resulting Principles
*Literature and reading material concentrates on the many sub skills required for reading.
*Cornell University Project Literacy program results in behaviorist emphasis on investigating observable behavior that focuses on reading as a perceptual activity.
*Perceptual activities identified through Project Literacy are identification of visual signals; translating visual signals to sounds; assembling sounds into words, phrases and sentences.
*Phonics instruction seen as important part of beginning reading acquisition.
*Interest in developing and validating diagnostic instruments and remedial techniques counters emphasis on skills acquisition.
Rival Views of Learner and Learning Process
*William James-reading is a mindful habit; human thought mattered in human action and introspection and self-questioning necessary tools for uncovering those thoughts (p. 36).
*Reading seen through the psychological eye instead of through the physiological eyes of measuring behaviors observed.
*Reasoning involved in reading, not just learned behavior.
*Gestalt theory of top down, wholes to part instruction; focus on the whole rather than on its parts for reading instruction.
*Chall identified top-down as “linguistic” proponents, and emphasized whole word recognition, context in comprehension and word identification important parts of reading.

The Era of Natural Learning (1966-1975)
The Conditions for Change
*Unrest in reading community with Skinnerian behaviorism theory and the “training” of students through skills and drills.
*Increased interest in the student and the process of learning brought on by neurology and artificial intelligence.
*Attention brought back to inside the human mind as opposed to the environment as a means of learning.
*U.S. federally funded nationwide cooperative research ventures and brought together different reading projects that compared various approaches to reading instruction for beginning learners (First Grade Studies).
*Linguists and psycholinguists influenced new setting for reading research.
*Linguists followed Chomsky’s views that language acquisition had less to do with the environment and more to do with individuals being “hard-wired” to acquire language.
*Psycholinguistic researchers felt that the behaviorists views of “training” students to read through environmental stimuli for reading acquisition destroyed the natural communicative power and the natural beauty of reading.
Guiding View
*Learning seen as a natural process. Language develops through meaningful use.
*Human beings biologically programmed to acquire language if given the correct conditions.
*Norm Chomsky-humans are born with preexisting templates that guides language use.
*Chomsky influenced by research in neuroscience and cognitive science.
*Psycholinguistics emerge in the reading community based on the shift of language as a natural process from a conditioned behavior.
*Psycholinguistics focus on semantics and how meaning is acquired and used during the reading process; focus beyond oral language into print or reading as well as writing.
*Labov and Shuy look at variations of everyday language use; the contrast of everyday language use of children of different social classes and the language demands within the classroom setting began to come to the forefront of educational research and practice.
Resulting Principles
*Shift from language as a learned behavior, to language as a natural human occurrence. *Language has a natural and rule governed structure.
*Language arts instruction to include not only reading, but writing as well.
*Learner seen as an active participant, not a “trainable” passive learner of the behaviorists train of thought.
*New goal was to figure out the unexpected responses of the reader when attempting to make sense or decide meaning from what is being read.
*Goodman and colleagues develop miscue analysis.
Rival Views of Learner and Learning Process
*Researchers invested in cognitive science and artificial intelligence also interested in the internal structures and processes of the human mind.
*Rival researchers focused more on how the processes and procedures could be best represented symbolically and transferred onto computer programs (intelligent machines) that could act like the human brain.
*Written language involves the manipulation of a symbolic system not needed in oral communication or in other problem solving domains like history and biology.
*Rival researchers found similarities in human language processes were probably linked to the acquiring or learned knowledge and processes together with innate mental capabilities.

The Era of Information Processing (1976-1985)
The Conditions for Change
*Growing attention by the research community to the structure and processes of the human mind -strong cognitive roots.
*Increase in U.S. federal funding for basic reading research.
*Creation of research centers devoted to reading research.
*Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign involves psychology and reading-related researchers (English, literature, communications and writing) in studies.
*New reading research not interested in the naturalness of reading and the mixture of literacy fields
Guiding View
*Information-processing theory with unprecedented research on the construct of prior knowledge; an undercurrent of psycholinguistic still prevailed.
*Immanuel Kant-Kantian philosophy that “the mind is no passive recipient and product of sensations, but is an active agent” (pg 42).
*Processes or “laws” explaining human language as an interaction between symbol system and mind.
*Text-based learning about knowledge.
*Individuals input, interpretation, organization, retention, and out-put of information assisted with organization and storage on information presented from the environment inside the mind.
Resulting Principles
*The reader’s knowledge base influenced perspectives on what was read or heard.
*Readers now viewed as active participants with minds of their own; support of individuals interpretation of written text.
*Comprehension delved into; story grammar, text cohesion, text structure and text genres now viewed as important information to the reader.
*Schema theory introduced viewed as most potent legacies of time.
*Schema theory-Kant philosophy that gave readers knowledge power, pervasiveness, individuality and modifiability and are building blocks of cognition.
*Students minds can significantly be modified via direct intervention, training or explicit instruction.
*General text-processing strategies of , mapping, self-questioning and predicting now viewed as important information for the learner.summarization
Rival Views of Learner and Learning Process
*Naturalistic and holistic view of reading by psycholinguists prevailed.
*Shift away from neurological basis to teach, concentrated on naturalism of materials and procedures of instruction in reading.
*Louise Rosenblatt-The Reader, the Text and the Poem; nonaesthetic reading where the reader’s attention is directed outward to what should be retained from the text read, what ideas will be tested on and what actions will be required of the reader after the text has been read.
*Aesthetic view focused on the literary experience where the readers attention is centered directly on what they are living through during their relationship with that particular text.

Era of Sociocultural Learning (1986-1995)
The Conditions for Change
*Computer-like, mechanistic aspects of learning now being rethought.
*Studies of information-processing theory in cognitive training programs conclude that they did not pan out in the ways expected; student improvement minimal or nonexistent.
*”Laws” of text processing didn’t account for particular populations, different text formats and differences in classroom conditions.
*Social and cultural anthropologist like Vygotsky and Lave give new viewpoints for literacy research and a growing acceptance in literary community of the increase diversity in ethnographic cultures throughout student population.
*Outcome of learning now viewed as less important than the actual learning process.
Guiding View
*Views now focused on the masses rather than the individual; universal laws of learning unique to particular social, cultural and educational groups.
*Learning a socioculture, collaborative experience; learner a member of the learning community.
Resulting Principles
*A new look at schooled and unschooled knowledge to guide understanding and use of language.
*A learner’s knowledge not always a positive influence on learning, may get in the way of learning if misconceptions exist.
*Sociocultural nature of schools and classrooms where teachers played an important role as facilitator utilizing scaffolding to increase knowledge, interest and strategic abilities in any given area.
*Terms like learning communities, socially shared cognition, shared expertise, guided participation, situated action and anchored instruction exemplify current sociocultural views for learners.
Rival Views of Learner and Learning Process
*Rivals agree on the importance of considering social and contextual forces in literacy, differences were more in the importance given to social interactions.
*Knowledge not just shaped by social experiences and interactions; knowledge would happen when students are involved in discussions or collaborative-learning activities.

The Era of Engaged Learning (1996-Present)
The Conditions for Change
*Linear as well as nonlinear text available for leaner’s.
*Growing number of hypermedia and hypertext now available.
*Student motivation increased by database management systems that guides or prompts readers to other informational sites and sources.
*Motivation research views learners’ interests, goals, self-efficacy beliefs, self-regulation and active participation in reading as well as text-based learning; rethinking learner as a motivated and engaged reader.
*Reading now viewed as a domain that relates to all readers, not just young or struggling readers; new view extends past initial stages of reading acquisition to a range of reading-related, goal-directed activities throughout a lifetime.
*The old “learning to read” and “reading to learn” stages are a thing of the past; now a shift has been seen that encompasses a more integrated and developmental perspective of lifetime learning to read.
Guiding View
*Reading not just text-based anymore, but encompasses nonlinear, interactive, dynamic and visually complex material through audiovisual media.
*Still have a great deal to learn about nonlinear media and its beneficial use in classroom instruction.
*Now need to look into pedagogical techniques and learning environment adaptations to help not only readers that have difficulty with print, but also readers who have difficulty with hypertext.
*John Dewey -reader is a motivated knowledge seeker; learning involves integration of cognitive and motivational forces.
*Trend back to the individual learner and personally meaningful, socially valuable body of knowledge important.
*Students no longer viewed as “readers” after acquiring basic linguistic skills or fluency, but keep growing as readers while their linguistic and subject-matter knowledge, as well as their strategic capabilities and motivation mature into adulthood.
*Learning to read well a lifelong developmental process.
Resulting Principles
*Reading now viewed as a cognitive, aesthetic, or sociocultural activity that is interactively involved in reading development.
*Students should be exposed to the range of textual materials, both traditional and nontraditional, inside their classroom environments.
*The phenomenal amounts of information and text types now produced places new demands on learners.
*Genuine developmental theory of reading needs to be developed that not only encompasses early literacy acquisition, but also spans into proficient adult reading.
Rival Views of Learner and Learning Process
*Reconditioning view invested in the identification, teaching and remediation of subskills underlying reading acquisition driven by high-stakes testing and the drive for national standards.
*Support for this reconditioning basic skills and components of reading gaining support from researchers in special education and others that support struggling readers.
*Neuroimaging techniques allowing these researchers the ability to examine the neurological structures and processes of struggling and special needs readers.
*Attempts to pinpoint the specific neurobiological and physiological patterns related to specific reading outcomes continue to being looked into by rival researchers.

Reflection
As I think over what was read about the past 50 years of research and practices, several thoughts come to mind. One thought that was present as I wrote down important information was how each progressive era has built on each other in some way. As the article mentions, each researcher has investigated a wider range of phenomena and often at a greater level of complexity. As each era investigated a particular perspective of reading and the learner, progress has been established in increments.

Each era and research group had particular interests that was made clear through their work. The behaviorists investigated the behaviors needed to read and felt that students could be manipulated by skills and drills. They viewed students as passive pieces of clay that could be molded by the environment. Linguist and psycholinguistics helped shape the era of natural learning. Focus was now moved back into the individual learners mind and how they were "hard wired" to acquire language. Cognitive researchers viewed learning as a step by step process that could be taught not through skill and drill practice, but instead “laws” of human language were sought and prior knowledge was important. Federal funding for basic reading research had a lot of influence on this era. The sociocultural era looked not at the individual, but at the individual as part of a larger group. Particular social, cultural and educational groups were investigated, thus forming the trend of this era. Finally, I couldn’t help but wonder how this current era will play out with the introduction of hypermedia and hypertext. We have yet to master traditional text and the best approach to instruct learners, now we have the additional nonlinear format and vast amount of information to add to the “reading” pot.

As a special educator, I am part of the final group mentioned in the article. I can’t help but feel compelled to find the “secret” to teaching reading acquisition and found this article interesting from that point of view. The political and special interest undertones of each era led me to wonder if a “secret’ will ever be found. I do agree that the old learning to read and reading to learn mentality has to be revised not only by the researchers, politicians and educational society, but by society as a whole. With the introduction of hypermedia and hypertext, we have to rethink our classrooms, instruction, and personal views that we bring into our teaching.

Educators are not too unlike the researchers of each era. We each bring a particular perspective into our classrooms and must, to the best of our knowledge, provide the students in our charge with the finest instructional practices we have. It has become clear to me while reading this article that the more I know, the more I don’t know. Fortunately, we are learning and trudging through this together. Sharing our ideas and beliefs with each other will provide different perspectives that may assist us while teaching our diverse student population. Although research continues, and it always will, we can plow through this next era of teaching with the information we glean from our classes and from each other to provide the best possible learning environments for our students.

Having said that, we are also like the researchers in that we have district policies, state funding issues and political influences that far exceed any power we may have . In Massachusetts, as in other states, our high-stakes testing influences greatly the type of instructional materials, implementation and focus of our teaching. Many of us lack materials and resources to provide our students with the basics. It is even more difficult to provide students with what they need to succeed when you don’t have the resources to provide them with desks and chairs to sit on. As districts are “held accountable” for high-stakes testing and funding is increasingly diminished based on poor test results, it becomes an almost unfathomable challenge to teach students at all. It is through our knowledge that we, as educators, can make a difference. We need to continue to share the information and research articles with our administrators and work to implement small changes that are within our reach. Hopefully, with each of us igniting a small spark in our districts, a bigger flame will be eventually seen and education will be fueled by the enthusiasm and caring that we “little people” provide our students. Maybe, just maybe, the “big wigs” will ask those of us in the trenches what we think and what we feel would be most effective with our students. Hey, I have to dream don’t I?

Thank you for your contribution to this blog. I welcome your comments and additional important information. I am not a researcher, as is not doubt clear from my summary, but I gave it a good shot. Debbie B. is going to give the next two articles a whirl. Comments can be added to any post at any time. Feel free to jot down you thoughts at any time.

Have a super weekend,

Debbie Shanks : )