Promoting
Literacy
fo r
Roma Children
and
Y o u n g P eo p l e
Critical Thinking International, Inc.,
For
RWCT—Bulgaria
Next Page Foundation
Zagreb, Croatia. July 30-31, 2005
This material may be duplicated for training
purposes in Central Europe, but it may not be
reproduced for commercial publication.
© Copyright Critical Thinking International, Inc., 2005.
http://www.criticalthinkinginternational.org
Cover photo: School in Bucharest, Romania. December, 1998.
Promoting Literacy
fo r
Roma Children
and
Young People
Table of Contents
Introduction
What Difference Does Literacy Make?
Literacy makes a difference in the way people think
Literacy affects people’s opportunities in life, too
Literacy builds vocabulary, and vocabulary controls what you can think
about
What is reading ability, and how does it develop?
Emergent Literacy
Assessing Concepts about Print
Beginning Reading
Building Fluency
Reading to Learn and For Pleasure
Mature Reading
Why do educators put emphasis on younger readers?
What factors limit readers’ success in literacy?
Home Language
Lack of Exposure to Books and the Practice of Literacy
Lack of Family Support for Education.
Literacy builds vocabulary, and vocabulary controls what you can think about
Teaching Young People to Read
Providing an Orientation to Literacy
The Read-Aloud Experience
The Language Experience Approach
Creating Language Awareness
Teaching Students to Read for Meaning
Activities for the ANTICIPATION Phase
Focusing questions
Think/Pair/Share
Anticipation Guide
Paired Brainstorming
Terms in Advance
Reading Aloud
Showing Items of Interest
Activities for the Phase of BUILDING KNOWLEDGE
Talking Through a Text
Questioning the Author
The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity
Dual Entry Diary
Bringing Stories to Life Through Drama
Activities for the CONSOLIDATION Phase
Save the Last Word for Me
Literature Circles
Sketch to Stretch
Shared Inquiry Discussion
The Discussion Web
Debates
Value Line
Techniques that Highlight Aspects of the Comprehension of Fiction
Story Maps
Character Clusters
Character Maps
Following Dramatic Roles
Reading for Structured Opposites
The Story Chart
Readers Theater
Creative Dialogue
Helping Struggling Readers
Promoting Literacy through Public Performance
Choral Reading and Reciting
Poetry Slams
Inviting Students to Write Poetry
Teaching the Process of Composing
The Writing Process
Writing Culturally Relevant Books for Young People
Guidelines
Pattern Books
Metaphors
“Slices of Life”
Situations
Building Partnerships With Publishers
Types of Reading Materials for Young People
Types of Publishing Arrangements
Standard commercial marketing
Subsidized publishing
Funded Publishing
“Community Capital” Projects
Pedagogy of Racial Minorities
The Development of Racial Identity
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
References
Introduction
The task of promoting literacy is a noble one. Literacy opens to those who
have it the accumulated wisdom of people from all times and places. Literacy
brings its users to new levels of consciousness, and presents them new
possibilities for being actors in the world. Literacy invites its users into the
global conversation.
Promoting literacy among young people is a task that can be pursued on many
fronts. In this book we argue that in order to promote literacy, one needs
certain background information. One should understand and know the
advantages of being literate, and also the nature of reading, and how a
student learns to read.
Promoting literacy among people who have been oppressed because of their
cultural identity requires understanding something else: the nature of
identity development among oppressed young people; and the nature of
racism.
One also needs certain strategies and techniques. These include lively
techniques for teaching reading, and most especially of teaching students to
read with understanding and with a critical eye; ways of writing books for
young people, especially books that highlight cultural content; strategies for
building partnerships between writer, publishers, teachers, and community
activists; and methods for making literacy visible and attractive in the
community.
What Difference Does Literacy Make?
Advertising campaigns show us images of the embarrassed grown-up, standing
on a city street with a decoy newspaper under his arm that he can’t read, staring at a
street sign he can’t decipher, afraid someone will recognize him for an illiterate. Such
people exist, but the problem of limited literacy is far more widespread and more
subtle than the stereotype suggests. Rather than the totally illiterate people of the
stereotype, in many countries far more people read and write, but read and write so
poorly that they seriously limit their opportunities. Literacy affects people’s lives
several ways.
1.
Literacy makes a difference in the way people think. Studies by A. R. Luria, in the
1930’s (Luria, 1976) showed that being literate makes profound differences in
people’s reasoning, their awareness of language, their awareness of themselves, and
even their ability to formulate questions and learn about things they don’t know. The
Brazilian educator Paolo Freire (1968) found much the same thing: people who were
not literate practiced “magical consciousness” and rather fatalistic thing—they didn’t
see themselves as agents as their own lives, capable of acting for their own destinies.
Studies with readers show that those who read and talk about books with others show
greater self-awareness and critical thinking (Almasi, 1995); tend to engage ideas more
deeply (Eeds and Wells, 1989; Goatley, et. al., 1995); and are more likely to perceive
themes in what they read: that is, they are more likely to “get the message” (Lehr,
1995).
2.
Literacy affects people’s opportunities in life, too. Large scale studies in the United
States have shown that, on average, the better adults read, the more likely they are
to be employed, to hold a professional job, have good health, stay off public
assistance and out of jail. They better they read, the more money they make. All of
this goes the other way, too. Those who are in menial jobs, unemployed, on public
assistance, or in the penal system are disproportionately drawn from people with low
reading skills1. The figures on the next page were taken from the National Adult
Literacy Survey in the United States, (Washington: National Center for Education
Statistics, 1992), in which more than 20,000 adults over the age of 16 were given
extensive literacy tests and assigned to five levels of reading ability, “1” being the
lowest, on three kinds of tasks: reading prose, interpreting documents, and making
sense of materials that required some quantitative reasoning. The respondents’
reading ability was compared with demographic factors about them, such as their
income level, type of employment, and whether or not they received public
assistance or were incarcerated.
1
National Adult Literacy Survey.
3.
Literacy builds vocabulary, and vocabulary controls what you can think
about. One way low literacy limits people’s opportunities is by limiting their
language. Limited language limits what a person can notice and think about.
Studies have shown that in the English language, the language that is used in
print is far richer than the language used in everyday speech or on television.
Even the vocabulary in books written for readers is more sophisticated than
the table talk of college-educated adults. Moreover, print has many words that
never occurred in speech, in several large scale studies (Stanovich, 1992).
Words like “isolated,” “probability,” “prohibit,” and “null and void” are found
in print, but almost never used in oral language. Each of these words casts
light on a slice of experience that we could not easily grasp without having the
word. Not knowing what an “isolated case” is can lead a person into
superstition. Not understanding “probability” keeps people spending their
grocery money on the lottery. Not having the word “prohibit” can land people
in jail; and not knowing what “null and void” means can leave a family without
a lease on an apartment, without a place to live 2.
What is reading ability, and how does it develop?
What goes into teaching a person to read? At its simplest, reading is the act of getting
meaning from a written text. In order to read successfully, readers must be able to
collect or construct meaning from written symbols.
Readers recognize squiggles of ink on a page as letters and words. This activity
is called word recognition.
To become skilled at word recognition, readers need to be aware of the
smallest sounds in language, called phonemes. In turn, phonemic awareness, as this
aptitude is called, prepares readers to look for matches between sounds and letters.
Learning letter-to-sound correspondences is the study of phonics.
Readers work with the words they recognize, and somewhere in the interplay
between what they see on the page and what they expect from what is in their heads
they construct an understanding of what they read—comprehension.
Comprehension in turn is made up of several processes and kinds of knowledge,
including knowledge of vocabulary, world knowledge, the ability to make inferences
and construct meaning, and the ability to follow text structure.
Readers eventually come to recognize words quickly and accurately, while
constructing an understanding of what they are reading. Rapid and efficient reading is
known as reading fluency.
Also, it is hoped that as they have learned to read they have made books a part
of their lives and found authors they especially enjoy. This is the habit of reading.
Eventually, they may learn to hone their minds by weighing an author’s words,
reflecting on arguments, and coming up with their own interpretations of what they
have read. This is called interpretation, or critical reading.
Here is an illustration of these components in action. Suppose a third grader is
asked to read this passage:
“Come quick,” whispered Mother, from across the street. “The guard is
looking the other way.”
2
Gordon Wells, quoted in Stanovich, 1992.
Rebecca clutched her doll close to her chest, crouched low, and
scrambled across the empty street toward the lamppost that hid her
mother. Just then a search light from atop a darkened building swept
the street she had just crossed.
“Gestapo,” said her mother, hugging the panting child. “They’re
everywhere.” Rebecca squeezed the Star of David around her neck and
trembled.
A number of things have to happen for this passage to be read successfully.
Word Recognition. Of course a reader will have to recognize most of the words for
the meaning of the passage to be easily available to her. If she is reading the passage
on her own, she should find no more than four words in this passage she did not
recognize (That is, she should easily recognize 95% of the words). If she is reading the
passage with the support of a teacher, she would be expected to find no more than
eight unknown words (a 90% recognition rate), according to many reading specialists
(e.g., Gillet & Temple, 2003). As will be seen, understanding a passage is much more
than the sum of understanding the words. Nonetheless, if the child has to pause and
puzzle over the meanings of more than a few words in a passage, her comprehension
will be impaired.
How is this word recognition done? By the time she has reached third grade, a
child will have stored thousands of words in memory so that she can recognize them
instantly. Reading specialists call this store of instantly recognized words her sight
vocabulary. This reader has been accumulating these words since she was in
kindergarten, and as she progresses through the grades, she will be learning more new
words--thousands more new words--every year.
How is she going about learning new words? In several ways. For example, this
child failed to recognize clutched on a first exposure, so her teacher reminded her to
break it into parts: cl + utch + ed. As a third grader, this reader is highly skilled at
phonemic segmentation. She has no difficulty breaking the words in her speech into
separate sounds, and she is ready to find matches between letters on the page and
speech sounds. But also because she is a third grader, her knowledge of phonics is not
just a matter of matches between individual letters and sounds, but of matches at the
level of patterns of letters combining vowels and consonants. Therefore, she was able
to find the pattern –utch, which she could pronounce by relating it to a word she
knows--Dutch. She knew the cl- consonant blend from many words she can read: clap,
click, clock, cloud, etc. She also knew the past tense ending -ed from her past reading
and study of words. Once she had worked out the pronunciation of this unfamiliar
word, clutched, she will recognize it as a word that she has heard and used in speech
but not read before. At third grade, she is using phonics; but her word knowledge
includes not just letter-to-sound relationships but knowledge of larger spelling
patterns, and even of grammar as a factor in word structure.
The word Gestapo, on the other hand, presents a different problem. Here she
not only has to work out the pronunciation of this unfamiliar word, but once she is
able to pronounce the word, or an approximation of it, she still will not be able to
associate the written word with a word she uses in speech. Thus she will have to use
other strategies--in this case, context clues--to decide what the word means. The
sentence in which the word appears is
“Gestapo... They’re everywhere.”
She knows that Gestapo is referred to by “they,” meaning that the Gestapo are
most likely people. From the context of the passage, she knows to equate the
Gestapo with the guards who were scanning the street with their searchlights.
Because this reader had surmised that the girl in the passage with the Star of David
was Jewish, she reasoned that Gestapo were guards or police who hunted Jews at
some time in history. Perhaps they were German soldiers or police, and the setting
was the time around World War II. In this second example this reader has learned not
only to pronounce a previously unfamiliar word, she has derived an approximation of
its meaning. Form the context of the passage, she has learned a new item of
vocabulary.
It has been shown in this example that recognizing words is a complex business
involving several strategies. And the example features a third grader who is a
reasonably successful reader. When younger readers are just beginning to recognize
words, still more strategies enter the picture.
Comprehension. Understanding a text is more than the sum of understanding the
words. Now consider the processes by which a reader does come to understand the
text. Please look again at the passage we shared at the outset. How would a reader
go about understanding it?
First, she would be helped by her knowledge of vocabulary (Pressley, 2000).
She uses her knowledge of words like guard, searchlight, and Star of David to help her
construct the meaning of the text. And, as was just seen, she reasoned that the word
Gestapo provides a new name for a concept she already had: the Nazi police. Knowing
vocabulary provides the reader with building blocks to help her construct her
understanding of the passage. But items of vocabulary are not enough by themselves.
Although vocabulary is necessary to understanding the text, the reader must also
create a context in which choices among competing meanings of words can be made.
Without a context to give these words meaning it is not known if a chest refers to a
box or a rib cage, if scrambling is a way of preparing eggs or of moving our bodies, if
post refers to mail or a pole, or if sweeping is an act of cleaning or a kind of motion
across a surface. Here, then, is something of a paradox: although our knowing the
vocabulary helps us construct a meaning for the text, the meaning that is constructed
for the text also helps us understand the words.
Second, the reader has background knowledge or cognitive schemes that help
her understand the passage. Words like “whispered,” “guard,” and “search light” are
more than vocabulary items. Together they help our young reader evoke mental
frameworks for understanding that the situation described in the passages is one of
danger, of stealth to avoid detection. It is important that she was able to supply this
framework herself, because the situation of stealth to avoid detection was not stated
explicitly by the text. From the mention of Star of David, our reader also supposed,
without being told explicitly, that the passage has to do with the flight of Jews from
persecution by the Nazis during World War II--something she knew about because she
had read about it in other books.
Third, she makes inferences about what is going on in the text. Although the
text never said Ana was a young girl, our reader noticed the detail of the Ana’s
clutching her doll and her depending on her mother for guidance, and inferred that
she was young. And although the text left a gap between Ana’s scrambling across the
dangerous street and being hugged by her mother, our reader was able to infer that
she made it safely across the street into her waiting mother’s arms.
Fourth, our young reader is able to visualize or form mental images of what
the words into the text described. She pictures a darkened street (even though the
text never said explicitly that the street was dark), with dark silent buildings on each
side. She imagines a nearly silent scene. If she were asked, she could draw a picture
of the street; she could call to mind what it looked like.
Fifth, if the teacher asked the young reader to tell her what she had read, the
reader would be able to say, “’A young Jewish girl snuck across the street and got
away from the guards.” In other words, she was able to find the main idea of the
passage.
Sixth, in retelling what she had just read about, our young reader makes it
clear that she thought the girl was the main character--the hero, or the protagonist-of this text, and that the rest of the text might tell about her attempts to escape
from the Gestapo, the Nazi police. In other words, she assumes she is reading a story,
and she uses her knowledge of the structure of stories to make predictions about what
will follow in the coming pages. Her knowledge and use of the structure of the text
is one more important part of her comprehension of it.
Reading Fluency. Another aspect of her reading that is related to word recognition
and comprehension together is her reading fluency. This child would not be
considered a competent reader of this passage unless should could read it fairly
quickly and accurately, and also with some inflection, some changes in the tone of
her voice that roughly paralleled the emotional or meaningful contours of the text.
Reading fluency is both an indicator of and a contributor to successful reading. If you
hear the child reading smoothly and accurately, you can infer that she recognizes the
words efficiently. If she also reads with appropriate inflection, you can also infer that
she is comprehending the text to some degree (although you occasionally see a child
who will concentrate on rendering a text aloud with accuracy and pay little attention
to the meaning!). In this case, her fluency is an indicator of her ability to recognize
words and to comprehend text. It is also known that if a reader reads the text
fluently, her fluency will contribute to her understanding. That is because having a
“well-oiled” ability to read strings of words smoothly and accurately leaves the mind
plenty of capacity to appreciate the meaning of the text (Perfetti, 1985; Pressley,
2000). To illustrate this point, imagine two bicycle riders, one to whom riding comes
naturally and the other a novice who is still struggling to balance, pedal, and steer
the bicycle all at the same time. Which one do you suppose will enjoy the scenery?
Reading experts have found it worthwhile to give readers practice in reading
for fluency, because a well developed capacity for relatively fast and accurate
reading facilitates understanding. It is also a transferable ability: Becoming a fluent
reader carries over from one text to another. That is why thoughtful teachers will
provide readers plenty of opportunities to read texts that are fairly easy for them.
Critical Literacy. Critical literacy is another aspect of literacy that our third grader
might or might not call into play. Critical literacy means to read with polite
skepticism; to read “against the grain” of a text; to examine its hidden assumptions
and to bring to light the devices by which the text might be intended to work its
effects on the reader (Luke and Freebody, 1999).
Critical reading leads us to ask questions such as:
--what is being taken for granted in this story?
--whose voice is being heard in this text? Whose voice is not being heard?
--what is being left unsaid?
--why did the author write this text, anyway?
--what does the author’s message appear to be?
--what questions might I ask about that message?
--what other interpretations might I make of this text?
Critical insights our young reader might reach could include some like these:
just as Indians used to be portrayed as riding on horseback and shooting arrows at
wagon trains, Jewish readers are frequently and stereotypically portrayed as trying to
escape persecution. Surely there are other interesting things about their lives that
writers could be written about. Also, in American readers’ books, the example of
ethnic persecution that is most often given has to do with Jews more than fifty years
ago. Of course the Holocaust was consummately important and should not be
forgotten. But there are other cases of ethnically motivated persecution going on in
the world in our own time, and they get little of our attention, particularly readers’
attention. Shouldn’t the focus on issues of justice be broadened to include issues
contemporary problems that one can actually do something about?
In summary, it has been shown that the act of reading, as practiced by one
third grader, has several components, and each of these components has its own
complexity. In order to read, she must recognize words--and word recognition entails
not only having words stored in memory for instant recognition, but knowing how to
pronounce a word from its sequence of letters and word parts, and being able to infer
the meaning of words from their context. Reading also involves comprehension, which
in turn includes knowing vocabulary, having and appropriately calling to mind
frameworks of prior knowledge, making inferences, visualizing, getting main ideas,
and knowing and making use of the structure of the text. Furthermore, skilled reading
also includes fluency: reading quickly, accurately, and with appropriate inflection.
Fluency is a sign of skilled reading, and the ability to read fluently also enables
meaningful reading. Finally, reading ability can include critical reading: reading with
polite skepticism, or reading against the grain. In the chapters that follow, you will
see all of these aspects of reading in more detail. But first, it must have occurred to
you that the issues involved in reading might look different if one were describing a
youngster just learning to read, or a middle school student using his reading ability to
study a science text. Now look at the way reading ability develops as students
progress through the grades.
Phases of Reading Development
To use the word “development” to describe reading implies that the learner
doesn’t simply wait passively to take in reading instruction from a teacher, but rather
enjoys the interaction between growth, experience, and discovery that can be called
developmental learning. Developmental learning proceeds according to four factors:
 Cognitive growth of the learner, which opens up capacities for growth;
 The provision of relevant models of skilled performance and challenges in her own
performance from her surroundings; and
 Active discoveries initiated by the learner herself.
Developmental learning follows predictable pathways--although a learner’s
development along those pathways is more predictable in the early stages than
in the later ones.
To say that learning to read is developmental implies that all readers go
through roughly the same set of stages as they learn to read. It implies that their
maturation plays a part, but that the stimulation, encouragement and modeling of
reading and writing behavior they receive are important, too. It implies that while the
teaching learners experience can be beneficial, teaching alone will not result in
meaningful learning without the learner reorganizing and expanding their own powers
through activities of discovery.
Emergent Literacy
The earliest period or stage of learning to read and write has come to be called
emergent literacy. In early childhood, before readers enter formal instruction, they
discover useful insights about literacy; and these insights become the basis upon
which their later learning can be built, even the learning that is orchestrated by their
teachers in school. In the emergent stage, learning about literacy involves:
 learning about the nature of reading;
 learning what books are, what kinds of experiences come from them, and how
they are put together;
 learning about language itself, that it comes in patterns like stories and
poems, that even though you can’t see it, it is real enough to be captured in
books and revisited again and again;
 learning that language comes in units of words and even smaller units, and
that the language one speaks while reading bears some kind of relations to
marks on a page.
New Zealander Marie Clay has long been our favorite example of a kidwatcher,
a teacher who observes children very, very carefully and appreciates how they see
the tasks of learning and what they do to learn. Kidwatchers make good teachers,
because they help children solve puzzles, because their instruction fits nicely with
children’s own efforts to discover how literacy works and how to get good at it.
Clay offers us this account of a novice teacher giving a reading lesson to a
group of beginning readers:
Suppose the teacher has placed an attractive picture on the wall and has
asked her children for a story, which she will record under it. They offer
the text, “Mother is cooking,” which the teacher alters slightly to
introduce some features she wishes to teach. She writes:
Mother said, “I am baking.”
If she says, “Now look at our story, 30% of the new entrant group
[children who are just beginning reading instruction] will attend to the
picture. If she says, “Look at the words and find some that you know,”
between 50 and 90% will be looking for letters. If she says, “Can you see
Mother, most will agree that they can, but some see her in the picture,
some can locate M, and others will locate the word Mother.
Perhaps the children read in unison, “Mother is...” and the
teacher tries to sort this out. Pointing to said, she asks, “Does this say
is?” Half agree that it does because it has s in it. “What letter does it
start with?” Now the teacher is really in trouble. She assumes that the
children will know that a word is built out of letters, but 50% of the
children still confuse the verbal labels word and letter after six months
of instruction. She also assumes that the children know that the lefthand letter following a space is the “start” of a word. Often they do not.
(Clay, 1975, pp. 3-4).
As this illustration makes clear, there are many concepts about print that
children must have in place so that in a reading lesson they can orient themselves
properly to a book, and direct their attention appropriately. These concepts include
understandings of the lay-out of books; the relative roles of print and pictures; the
orientation of print on the page; the meanings of terms used in reading instruction,
like, “beginning,” “end,” “first,” and “last;” where to find the Atop” and “bottom”
of a page; the terms “word” and “letter;” uppercase and lower case letters; and at
least a beginning understanding of punctuation.
Assessing Concepts About Print. The child’s knowledge of the concepts about print
can be tested by showing him a book that contains both pictures and print and asking
him a series of questions to probe his ability to orient himself to the book and the
print it contains. Note that you will need a book that has the following features:
a double page spread with print on one page and a picture on the other;
a page with a single line of print;
a page with two or more lines of print;
a page that has both upper case and lower case versions of two different
letters;
and several punctuation marks including periods, a question mark, an
exclamation point, and quotation marks.
You will also need two index cards. It is advisable to prepare a record sheet ahead of
time for keeping track of the child’s responses.
Knowledge of the lay-out of books: Hold the book out to the child, with
the spine toward him. Say, “We’re going to read this book. Show me the
front of the book.” Note whether the child lays the book in front of him so
the front of the book is properly faced up.
Knowledge that print, not pictures, is what we read. Show the child a
double spread with text on one page and a picture on the other. Say, “Show
me where we read. Point to the spot where we begin reading.” Note
whether the child points to the text or to the picture.
Directional orientation of print on the page. Show the child a page with
at least two (and preferably three) lines of print. Say, “We’re going to read
this page. Show me where we begin reading. Point to the place. Show me
where we go after that. Now show me where we go after that.” Note
whether the child points to the upper left-hand word, then sweeps across to
the right, then goes the whole way back to the left and down one line, then
across to the right. (A correct response will include an entire Z-like
pattern). Then you read the page.
Knowledge of the terms, “beginning,” “end,” “first,” and “last” with
respect to words on a page. Turn to a new page and say, “Show me the
beginning of the story on this page. Show me the end of the story on this
page. Show me the first word on this page. Show me the last word. Note if
the child points to the appropriate words. Then read that page.
Orientation to “top” and “bottom” of a page. Turn to a new page. Say,
“Point to the top of this page. Point to the bottom of this page.” Note
whether the child points to the right places. Then read the page.
Understanding of the terms “word” and “letter.” Turn to a page that has
one line of print. Take an index card in each hand and say, “Look. I can hold
these cards so you can only see one or two words, or one or two letters.
Here. You try it.” [Hand the cards to the child. “Show me one word. Now
show me two words. Show me one letter. Now show me two letters. Note
whether the child responds correctly. Then read the text.
Knowledge of uppercase and lower case letters. Turn to a page that has
upper and lower case versions of two different letters. Point to an upper
case letter and say, “Find me a little letter like this.” Then point to the
lower case version of the other letter. Say, “Find me a big letter like this.”
Note whether the child responds correctly. Then read the text.
Knowledge of punctuation. Find a page with a period on it. Say, “What is
this? What are we supposed to do when we get to it?” In turn, find
quotation marks, a question mark, and an exclamation point. As you point
to each one say, “What is this? What does it tell us?” Note which ones the
child understands.
Learning to read in school without a fully developed foundation of emergent
literacy concepts has been likened to trying to climb stairs with the first several steps
missing. Because teachers are aware of the importance of emergent literacy, they are
now able to teach all readers in a way that gives them another chance to develop
emergent concepts about literacy. And they can provide finely tuned tutoring to
readers who need it, so that more readers can get off to the best possible start in
learning to read and write.
Beginning Reading.
Once in late kindergarten and first grade, most readers enter the phase of
beginning reading. Most prominent in this stage is their learning to read words, but
readers are also learning to understand what they read. Indeed, the task of learning
to make words emerge from different combinations of letters on the page is so
challenging that teachers often must remind readers to Ago back and read that line so
it sounds like talk,” or ask them: “Does that make sense?”
That readers are ready to learn words and coordinate reading them with
making sense of what they read shows that this stage of beginning reading comes
after much prior learning. After all, emergent readers must come to understand that
print and not pictures talk (Clay, 1975) and that a reader is not free to say just any
words when paging through a text, but must come up with pronunciations of the
words whose representations are printed there (Sulzby, 1985). They have a sense of
the patterns of stories and poems, and they know how to follow them to make
meaning.
With these understandings in place, readers are able to concentrate on words and
develop strategies for sounding them out, as well as develop sight vocabularies (stores
of words in memory that they can recognize “at sight,” or without having to work
them out letter by letter). They are ready, though they often need reminding, to find
humor, suspense, and surprise in what they read--in other words, to make meaning.
Building Fluency.
By late first grade or early second grade, readers have enough experience
reading words and following messages that their reading is becoming fluent: more
rapid and more accurate. For the child who has often been read to, this period can be
a joyful affirmation of her own competence. After a period of struggling to read texts
that were far simpler and less meaningful than the stories she had long heard read to
her, she is at last able to do for herself what adults had to do for her. For a child who
is not so lucky, however, this period can be a hard trek through unfamiliar territory,
as the fascinations of reading only gradually. For the first child, teachers will find
their main task to keep providing more books to a hungry reader. For the second
child, the teacher will have to celebrate gains, but gently and insistently push the
child to read, and to read more challenging texts.
If the teacher is successful, then both readers will rapidly amass sight words
and steadily increase both the quantity and speed of their reading. They will be
preparing themselves for the next stage of reading, which is called “reading for
pleasure/reading to learn.” Even so, wide differences will begin to open up here in
the amount of reading readers do, and the size of their sight vocabularies.
Reading to Learn and For Pleasure.
By the beginning of third grade and increasingly in fourth grade, a threshold is
crossed, and the emphasis shifts from learning to read to reading to learn--and, one
might add, reading for pleasure. By now, readers will be expected to read and follow
directions and to gain information from texts. At the same time, they may be
expected to read chapter books and novels, and have something to say about them in
their response journals and in their “book clubs” what other name their discussion
groups are called.
While a period for reading and writing instruction is still provided every day,
more and more time is given over to free reading and discussion, as well as for writing
workshops. These activities are useful, even essential, because readers must practice
literacy in order to develop it. Nonetheless, there is still a place for teaching the
students how to comprehend, interpret, and compose. There is also still a place to
make students aware of the structure of written words and the way our English
vocabulary works. This is because word knowledge is not gained in the early years and
then done with. On the contrary, because the collection of words readers encounter
in text significantly change at around fourth grade (from mostly words from Anglo
Saxon to words from Latin and Greek), there are new concepts to be learned about
words though this period.
It is at fourth grade that problems in reading have traditionally become
obvious. That is because reading shows up as a problem that is affecting students’
learning in other subjects. It is also because the unsuccessful struggles to learn to
read well have led readers to frustration and poor motivation. Indeed, readers’ self
esteem may have begun to suffer, because they haven’t succeeded in a skill that is
highly valued in school (Stanovich, 1986). While troubled readers can and certainly
should be helped to overcome their difficulties, doing so is time consuming at this
stage, especially since there is much content to be learned by now throughout the
school day. Since they now understand how earlier experiences contribute to
readers’, many teachers, and whole programs such as Reading Recovery, are placing
their greatest emphasis on getting readers off to a good start in reading, so the
problem of the “fourth grade slump” can be avoided wherever possible.
Mature Reading.
After fifth grade and certainly by sixth grade, readers who have made normal
progress as readers have gradually shown other abilities that are characterized as
mature reading. They read with an appreciation of the author’s style, and enjoy
reading passages aloud to friends, or try to imitate an author’s style in their own
writing. They read with an awareness of issues and themes, and see a novel not only
as a series of events but as a metaphorical commentary on life. They may read
several books on a theme, and talk perceptively on the ways the authors’ perspectives
affected the different presentations. They may practice critical literacy, may argue
back against the theme of a book, or be offended by its sexist or racist overtones. In
any case, they are more analytical, more philosophical in what they look for in texts
and in the ways they respond to them.
They are also more strategic. They can read for information, and they have
strategies for previewing, questioning, marking, note-taking, reviewing, and studying
books they read for information.
As was noted at the outset of this section, one characteristic of developmental
learning is that the earlier periods of development are more predictable and more
commonly experienced than the latter ones. That is certainly true with respect to
mature reading. Some readers may show evidence of mature reading by the time they
enter fourth grade. Many more show it by seventh or eighth grade. But many others
rarely do this kind of reading.
In summary, this chapter has discussed reading in terms of some of its core
processes: word recognition, comprehension, fluency, and critical literacy. It has also
looked at reading in terms of the stages readers pass through: emergent literacy,
beginning reading, building fluency, reading to learn and for pleasure, and mature
reading. Later sections of this book will revisit each of the aspects of reading that
must be developed. Then you will see how teachers help readers lean to read and
write at every grade level.
Why do educators put emphasis on younger readers?
In recent years educators have focused special attention on younger
readers for the simple reason that early experiences matter. Readers who
enter reading instruction well prepared are more likely to respond well to
that instruction. And readers who are successful in learning to read in first
grade tend to keep making progress in literacy from then on. The reverse is
also true. Readers who enter school with limitations in language development
and early literacy concepts tend not to respond well to reading instruction.
And their poor start may grow into reading failure.
When Connie Juel (1994) followed 56 readers from first grade through
fourth grade, she found that most of those who were well prepared as they
entered the first grade continued to make progress in learning to read
throughout study. But nearly all of those who started behind their classmates
had failed to close the gap three years later. In fact, their deficits, which
were comparatively minor in first grade, had become patterns of failure:
inadequate knowledge of component skills, ineffective reading strategies,
and discouraged attitudes.
Keith Stanovich (1986) has called these patterns “Mathew Effects,” after the
Biblical observation that the rich shall get richer and the poor shall get poorer. When
this principle is applied to learning to read, it means that the concepts about
language and literacy readers bring with them into kindergarten and first grade make
it easy and natural for them to learn each new ability they need, so they willingly
practice reading because they feel good at it and they enjoy it. But it also happens in
reverse. If a child’s early literacy concepts are in short supply, she will struggle to
acquire each new ability that literacy demands. Difficulty will soon breed aversion,
and the child will not practice in order to improve his or her abilities
Overall, this is a pretty sobering picture. Readers have a far greater chance of
learning the basics of literacy in the early grades if they already have an
accumulation of experience with language and print by the time they come to school.
If they fail to get off to a good start in the very first years of school, they are unlikely
to close the gap and become proficient readers, unless extraordinary measures are
taken. Fortunately, we have a fairly good idea what those steps are.
We know much about what is missing from the lives of readers who get off to a
poor start in literacy, and we know how to help. Teaching strategies have been
developed that really do help develop readers’ language and literacy. Studies have
shown that readers who receive the one-on-one tutoring from well structured
programs learned language and literacy concepts at a faster rate than their
classmates who lacked such help, and their skills can be boosted to the point where
they learn along with their peers.
What factors limit readers’ success in literacy?
Home language. Even when readers speak the same language as the home,
there are different patterns of language use among different social groups
that put some readers at a disadvantage when they come to school. Research
in the United States has suggested that readers from poorer and less
educated families get fewer opportunities for verbal interaction than do
middle class families. Hart and Risley’s research team (1995) took one-hour
monthly snapshots of the language used around readers in professional
families, working class families, and families on welfare to get an answer to
that question. Their finding as displayed in the following table.
Differences in Language Exposure of Preschool Readers
Professional
Working
Families on Public
Families
Class
Assistance
Families
3000
1,400
750
Words spoken
to the readers
per hour
Total words
addressed to a
child in the
first four years
Verbal encouragements
from parents (“Yes,
that’s good!”)
Verbal prohibitions
from parents (“Stop!”
Don’t!” “Quit!”)
50,000,000
30,000,000
15,000,000
750,000
300,000
100,000
130,000
170,000
280,000
Readers from families receiving public assistance were talked to only a
third as often, and readers from working class families half as often, as
readers from professional families. Readers from professional families
received nearly eight times as much praise and encouragement as readers
from families receiving public assistance, and three times as much as readers
from working class families. Here is how the researchers summed up their
findings:
The differences we saw between families seemed to reflect the
cultural priorities parents casually transmit through talking. In the
professional families the extraordinary amount of talk, the many
different words, and the greater richness of nouns, modifiers, and
past-tense verbs in parent utterances suggested a culture concerned
with names, relationships, and recall. Parents seemed to be preparing
their readers to participate in a culture concerned with symbols and
analytic problem solving… In the welfare families, the lesser amount
of talk with its more frequent parent-initiated topics, imperatives,
and prohibitions suggested a culture concerned with established
customs. To teach socially acceptable behavior, language rich in nouns
and modifiers was not called for; obedience, politeness, and
conformity were more likely to be keys to survival.
(Hart and Risley, 1995, pp. 133-134).
But we don’t want conformity and obedience from poor readers. We
want them to break out of the limited economic roles their parents have been
forced to play.
What difference does it make if a child is not engaged in conversation
very much? One consequence is a limited vocabulary. The more parents talk
with readers, the more words readers learn. Readers from low-income
undereducated families come to school with half the vocabulary as middle
class families (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, 2002). Vocabulary development
important because words have a Janus-like quality of representing what
readers have already learned and also what they are likely to learn. Looking
backwards, vocabulary represents the accumulation of concepts and
categories into which readers’ thinking has been differentiated-- that is, an
accumulation of knowledge. Looking forward, vocabulary represents the
wealth of phenomena that readers will be able to notice, categorize,
communicate, and remember. That is, vocabulary represents much of their
potential for learning.
Lack of Exposure to Books and the Practice of Literacy Another factor that
puts some readers at a disadvantage in learning to read is not being read to
at home. When parents read to readers, the readers- Learn what books are like
 Learn concepts about print
 Learn vocabulary
 Develop personal interests
 Increase their comprehension of language—especially the special “decontextualized” language of books, and the grammatical forms that are
used in written language
 Increase their attention span
 Learn to enjoy books
In the Romanian language, as Codruta Temple recently observed,
The texts that first-graders are expected to be able to read at the end of
first grade are… quite challenging in terms of vocabulary (they have many
neologisms as well as archaic and regional terms). The syntax is
reasonable, although it is not that of spoken language (with verb
tenses and types of subordinate clauses that one encounters almost
exclusively in written texts). Such texts might be accessible to
readers who have had a lot of exposure to a lot of varieties of written
language and who speak the standard dialect at home, but far less
accessible to readers with fewer literacy experiences outside the school
and whose home dialect is not the standard one, such as those living in
rural areas. (Personal communication, June 18, 2005).
Better educated, middle class parents read to their readers far more on the
average than do poorer and ender-educated parents. But it also matters how adults
read to readers. As Shirley Brice Heath found in her study in a rural community in the
United States, one group of parents (in middle class, fairly well educated families)
read to their readers some time every day, and also interacted with the readers as
they did so: they stopped to comment on the story, they asked the readers questions,
they commented on what they readers said. Another group of parents (in low income,
less well-educated white workers’ families) also read to their readers frequently, but
they read without interaction. The third group of parents (in low-income, less well
educated, and under-employed black families) expressed interest in their readers’
education, but rarely read to them and had few books in the home. The readers of
the first group of parents succeeded very well in learning to read in school. The
readers of the second group of parents had moderate success in learning to read; and
the readers of the third group had the least success.
Readers’ home environments make other differences in how well they
support readers as they learn to read and write. The National Reading Panel
(Snow, et. al, 1998).points to three important ways that homes encourage
readers to learn to read.
One way is by placing value on literacy. Readers want to be good at
the things that please their parents, the things that parents are good at. If
parents take obvious pleasure in reading—if they spend part of every day
reading, and often stop and share passages aloud with each other, readers
will want to read,.
Another way families encourage readers to learn to read is by
encouraging them to achieve at reading. Parents who press their readers to
achieve set expectations that are just challenging enough, give them support
to meet those challenges, and then praise them when they succeed. For
example, when reading aloud with a child, a parent says “Now I read those
first couple of pages. You read this page—you can do it… Good!” From these
interactions, readers not only learn about literacy, they learn how to meet
challenges, and to work hard for success. They become motivated to be
better readers and come to enjoy reading as a recreational activity.
A third way that families help readers to read is by having literacy
materials available. Readers not only need to have books read to them; they
need to page through them on their own and explore them, get to know
them. Parents of young readers who learn to read easily in school have
readers’ books in the home, either those they have bought, or that are
borrowed from the library. They may subscribe to readers’ magazines, and
buy posters pictures related to particular stories that appeal to their readers.
Readers do not experience these types of encouragement to the same
degree. If a family is poor, if the parents have less education, or if there is
only one parent in the home, readers may have fewer of these family
supports going for them (NCES, 2003). In an ideal world, the parents’
educational level shouldn’t hold readers back, because it is the job of
schooling to educate readers, and not just parents. But readers’ success in
learning to read often seems to be limited by their parents’ educational
attainments.
Lack of Family Support for Education. There are many ways parents can be involved
in their readers’ education. They can do the kinds of family literacy activities we have
already mentioned: reading to readers, talking to them interactively, listening to
their stories, and singing songs with them. They can bring readers’ books into the
home. They can regulate their readers’ television watching, and make efforts to talk
to their readers about what they watch. They can take their readers to museums, or
simply point out things to them as they walk around town.
When readers reach school age, parents can cooperate directly with the
school’s educational program. They can set aside quiet space and time for the readers
to do their school work. They can make sure readers complete the assignments that
come home from school. They can offer help on homework when readers need it.
They can communicate with the child’s teacher, by attending parent
conferences, and give the teacher insights about their child’s interests and personal
characteristics that may prove useful to the teacher in constructing lessons for the
child. When necessary, they can support the teacher in reinforcing a behavior regime
for the child.
When parents cooperate with the schools, readers’ achievement goes up,
attendance goes up, and drop out rates go down. But parents differ markedly in the
extent to which they cooperate with the schools. The National Center for Educational
Statistics recently wrote:
While 72 percent of schools with a low concentration of poverty
reported that "most or all" parents attended the school open house, 28
percent of schools with a high poverty concentration reported such high
parent attendance. Similar differences were found on this variable when
schools with low minority enrollments were compared to those with high
minority enrollments (63 versus 30 percent).
(NCES, 2003)
Schools with 50% poverty enrollments report these causes for lack of parent
involvement:
 Lack of parent education to help with schoolwork,
 Cultural differences,
 Socioeconomic differences,
 Language differences between parents and staff,
 Parent attitudes about the school,
 Staff attitudes toward parents, and
 Concerns about safety in the area after school hours.
(NCES 2003)
Many readers have parents who are poorly educated themselves.
Parents who do not read well are not able to support their readers’ learning,
because they cannot easily read to them or help them with homework. They
may participate infrequently in school activities—at least in part because they
may not be able to understand the written materials that are sent home from
school3, but also out of feelings of inadequacy. For instance, one parent told
one of the authors that even though she loved volunteering as an aide in her
son’s preschool classroom, she would feel shut out when he moved into
kindergarten the following year—even though the kindergarten class was in
the same building. She said she wouldn’t feel welcome. And besides, she
asked with obvious worry, what would happen if they asked her to read
something aloud to the readers?
Some parents feel not just embarrassed but alienated from the school
because they had negative experiences there. Says one father:
They expect me to go to school so they can tell me my kid is stupid
or crazy. They've been telling me that for three years, so why should
I go and hear it again? They don't do anything. They just tell me my
kid is bad. See, I've been there. I know. And it scares me. They called
me a boy in trouble but I was a troubled boy. Nobody helped me
because they liked it when I didn't show up. If I was gone for the
semester, fine with them. I dropped out nine times. They wanted me
gone.
(Finders and Lewis, 1994, p. 51).
Happily, when parents are encouraged to get involved in their readers’
education while they are young, they are more likely to keep up the habit
later. Boosting parent involvement is rightly a goal of intervention projects
for readers.
3
We sometimes have classes run readability tests on notes addressed to parents that come home from
elementary schools. They usually test out at an eighth to twelfth grade reading level, well beyond the reach of many
parents of children in those schools.
Teaching Young People to Read
Many people think of teaching people to read as a fairly straightforward
process of teaching students the letters and their sounds, and “Voila!” they will read!
But that view leaves a lot of things out. First, there are many developments that
should occur before a child is ready to make use of that simple insight that letters
relate to speech sounds, and that readers somehow use that knowledge to look at
groups of letters and pronounce words from them. Before she can benefit from
reading instruction, a child should understand—
 that language is real and can be captured by print,
 that a special kind of language exists that can create its own world of
reference and not depend on its surrounding context for understanding
 that the language we speak comes in units of sentences, words, syllables, and
phonemes,
 that print relates to words by their constituent sounds (print is not, on the
contrary, a drawing of an idea),
 that reading is taking meaning from print, and
 that print is arranged in books from top to bottom, left to right, front to
back—at least it is in books written in European languages.
These insights are gained during the phase of emergent literacy, although they may
not be taught directly because many teachers won’t think to teach them. But if the
concepts are not learned, the child might easily fail to learn to read.
On the other hand, even if a student can convert the printed words into
speech, that is no guarantee that she or he will understand what they say. There are
sophisticated thought processes involved in understanding or comprehending text.
And although these processes are often left to chance, if students don’t know them,
they will not read successfully, either.
Space does not permit a thorough presentation of reading instruction here. We
will focus on two often-neglected aspects of teaching reading: providing children with
a sound orientation to literacy, and teaching reading comprehension.
Providing an Orientation to Literacy
In its report Becoming a Nation of Readers, the Commission on Reading
declared, “There is no substitute for a teacher who reads children good stories”
(Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson, 1984). That is our sentiment exactly!
Research indicates that reading to children has many positive outcomes. First, it
whets their appetite for reading. Young children who are read to discover the rewards
of reading and are motivated to learn to read. Second, literature nurtures children’s
language development and comprehension abilities. Through read-alouds, children
become acquainted with the cadences of written language and discover how print
functions, especially if the adult reader draws attention to print conventions. Finally,
through read-alouds, children acquire the real-world knowledge that is so critical for
success in school.
Read-alouds support children’s literary development: Children are
introduced to conventional story openers (“Once upon a time”); they discover literary
devices such as the transformation motif; and they meet stock characters such as the
sly fox and the tricky coyote. Read-alouds are the ideal vehicle for encouraging
children to think in response to literature, and when discussion is a part of the readaloud experience, children learn how to participate in literary conversations.
Like the Commission on Reading, we believe that read-alouds are an
essential instructional activity for children of all ages. Although older children may
have acquired basic understandings of how print functions and how stories are
structured, their language, reading, and literary development must continue. Also,
there are many books that developing readers do not have the skill to read on their
own but will delight in if the books are read aloud to them.
Reading Aloud to Children
Reading aloud is one of the most useful things adults can do to nurture children’s
growth in literacy. Many of the abilities considered essential to literacy can be
developed as children listen to a book read aloud by a practiced adult. Among the
main benefits of being read to are these:
It expands their vocabulary. As Stanovich (1992) has pointed out, there are
words that are more commonly encountered in books--even children’s books-than in conversation or from watching television. Listening to books read aloud
helps children learn a literate vocabulary.
It develops their ability to comprehend written language. Reading
comprehension is made of component skills that include perceiving main ideas
and supporting details, making inferences, venturing predictions and
confirming them, and visualizing in the “mind’s eye” what is suggested by the
words. Even young children can begin to develop these abilities from listening
to a book read aloud and taking about it.
It gives the enthusiasm for literacy as they participate in the teacher’s excitement.
When children are first learning to talk, parents slow down and exaggerate
their speech and their gestures as if to say: “This is how language works. This is
how we show excitement and interest. This is the way we soothe each other.”
Similarly, when adults read books aloud with expression we have the
opportunity to show children how written language conveys the full range of
emotions. This will not only make literacy appealing to children; it will also
show them how to derive meaning and associate emotions with the language of
print.
Reading aloud at least twenty minutes should be a regular feature of each day.
You certainly don’t need advanced training to read a book aloud successfully with
children! Nonetheless, good preparation is rewarded by a more satisfying experience
all around. First, we would recommend that you remind yourself of the benefits of
reading aloud we described above. Second, we suggest following these steps when
reading aloud to children.
Preparing the Book for Reading: Read the book through yourself before you read it to
children. Decide if it is suitable for this group. Does it have enough excitement or
depth to hold the interest of a whole group? If it is suitable, decide how you want to
read it--with humor, with drama, with questions to whet curiosity? If there are voices
to bring to life, decide how you want to make each one sound. If you decide to stop
to ask for predictions or discussion, decide where the stopping places should go. If
there are any words or ideas that will be unfamiliar to the children, make a note to
pronounce them carefully and explain them to the children.
If the book has illustrations large enough for the children to see, practice
reading the book through while you hold it in front and facing away from you, where
the children will be able to read it.
Preparing the Children. Make sure the children are seated comfortably where they
can see and hear you. Most teachers prefer to have the children sit on a carpet in
front of them. Remind the children, if you need to, of the behavior you expect of
good listeners: hands to themselves, eyes on the teacher, and ears for the story.
Beginning to Read. Show the children the cover of the book. Ask them what they
know about the topic. If you want to arouse more curiosity, quickly show them some
other pictures in the interior of the book (but not the last pages--keep the children in
suspense about those). Ask them to make predictions about what will happen, or what
they expect to find out in the book.
Turn to the title page. Read the author’s name, and the illustrator’s. Talk
about what each one contributed to the book. It may help to point out that if only
one name is given, then the illustrator and author are the same person. Otherwise,
they should know that the author and illustrator both have important things to do to
bring the book into being (Publishers usually pay authors and illustrators equally, and
usually encourage them to work independently of each other). Remind the children of
any other books they know by this author or this illustrator.
While Reading. As you read the book through the first time, ask for comments about
what is going on. How is the character feeling? What is the character’s problem? What
do they think she can do to solve the problem? Ask the students to predict what will
happen. Read a few pages, then stop again. Ask how things look for the character
now. What is she doing to solve her problem? How is it working? What do they think
will happen now? Why do they think so? Stop right before the end and ask for last
predictions. (You can add to the suspense if you take an obvious quick look at the last
page, but don’t let them see it. Then ask the children to predict what will be on the
last page.
After the First Reading. Ask the children if the book turned out the way they thought
it would. What made them think it would turn out that way, or why were they
surprised? What did they like about the book? How did it make them feel? Why?
Rereading. Read the book a second time through. This time, you may want to take
more time to look at the ways the illustrator pictured the action. Ask children to
repeat any chants that are given in the book. If there is time, ask questions about
characters and motives and other things you and the students find interesting about
the book.
After Reading. Put the book on display in the library corner and encourage children to
read it later during scheduled time in the reading center or between other activities.
The children may especially enjoy taking turns reading it to each other.
Dialogic Reading
The technique of dialogic reading is a technique that is used when you are
reading one-on-one with a child. It is a good way to for introduce children to print,
and also help their language grow (Whitehurst and Lonigan, 2001). Dialogic Reading
helps put the child in the active role as a storyteller and not just a listener. The
activity is carefully structured to work with children’s thought processes and expand
their awareness, and also to be easy for a tutor to remember.
Two acronyms, PEER and CROWD, are used to remind us of the steps in Dialogic
Reading.
The PEER technique is nicely suited to younger children. The acronym PEER stands for
Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, and Repeat. The tutor proceeds by
 Prompting the child to name objects in the book and talk about the story. In
other words, you might point to a picture and say, “What’s that?” or “Hmmm.
This looks interesting. What do you think that bear is doing?”
 Evaluating the child’s responses and offering praise for adequate responses
and alternative for inadequate ones. Now you listen to see if the child gives a
fluent answer. Does she know the name for what’s in the picture? Can she tell
you a sentence about it? Or does she offer just a short phrase?
 Expanding on the child’s statements with additional words. This is a chance
to “follow in order to lead,” as we described above. If the child says “Dog!,”
now you are in a position to say, “Yeah, that’s a cute cuddly dog, too. See his
cute tail and his happy eyes?”
 Asking the child to repeat the expanded phrase or sentence. Now you can
say, “Can you say, ‘That’s a cute dog’?”
For more verbal children, you can use the CROWD technique. The acronym CROWD
stands the prompts or questions that ask for Completion, Recall, Open-ended
responses, Wh-prompts, and Distancing. Let’s explain.
1. Completion prompts, are prompts in which the tutor leaves out a word or
phrase for the child to supply. For example, when you are reading Bill Martin
Jr.’s, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, you might say “I see a
yellow _____ looking at me.”
2. Recall prompts. Here the child is asked about things that occurred earlier in
the book. For example, after finishing the book you ask, “Do you remember
some animals that Brown Bear saw?”
3. Open-ended prompts. Here the child is asked to respond to the story in his
own words. For example, you might say “Now it’s your turn: You tell me what
is happening on this page.”
4. Wh-prompts. Here the adult asks what, where, who, and why questions. For
example, you might ask, “What is that yellow creature called?” Or “Who do you
think Brown Bear will see next?”
5. Distancing prompts. Here the child is asked to relate the content of the
book to her life experiences. For example, we might ask the child, “Do you
remember when we saw a yellow duck like that one when we went on the field
trip to the pond? Was it as big as this one?”
Taking Dictations from Students: The Language
Experience Approach
Taking dictations from students, long considered part of the languageexperience approach (Stauffer, 1970), is one of our most effective techniques for
teaching learners about literacy.
Using the dictation method we can demonstrate
very directly the whole purpose of writing and reading: to encode and decode
meaningful messages, and to help us record experiences so that we can retrieve them
and review them later. Taking dictations enhances students’ language awareness, by
slowing down their words and capturing them in print. We can show them how print is
laid out on the page, that language comes in units of words, and that words come in
phonemes. We can show how letters represent sounds and words. In short, by using
dictations we can teach language awareness, phonemic segmentation, and phonics.
Taking and rereading dictations teaches students to recognize words, too.
A dictation exercise works best with a group of six to eight students, so
everyone can participate. Working with a smaller group, too, allows us to group
students at roughly the same level of literacy development. In a first grade
class, then, we might work with one group who know most of their letters but
who have not learned to read many words. Another couple of groups might be
comprised of beginning readers who are rapidly acquiring sight words. The
method of dictation uses the following steps.
A Stimulating Event. We prepare the children for the activity by engaging them
in a stimulating event, such as listening to a storyteller. Then, we encourage
them to talk about the experience. We ask questions about their favorite parts
of the event. We take care to draw out their names for things: the vines, the
leaves, the stem, the shell, the color orange. We make sure we discuss the
event until the children can talk freely about it and have ready words for their
experiences.
Writing Down the Students’ Language. We tell the children that together we
are going to write an account of the event. They are going to dictate-- that is,
slowly say some sentences, some words about their experience-- and we are
going to write them down, so later we can all read them.. Now we ask the
children what they want to say. We ask a volunteer to give us a sentence. If a
child gives too long a sentence, we help him shorten it to about five words. We
ask the class to join us in repeating each sentence several times, so they will
remember what it said when it is time to reread the sentences. Then we ask
the child to tell us the first word we should write down. We repeat the word
slowly invite the other children to tell us the first sound they hear in that
word. Then we ask them to name the letter that makes it, then write the
letter. Note that this part of the exercise can be extended for children who are
just discovering the alphabetic principle and letter-to-sound relationships. With
more advanced children we can spend less time sounding out the spellings of
words. The goal of the exercise is to capture the whole text and read it back
several times, all in this one sitting, so if we want to emphasize breaking words
into sounds and matching those sounds to letters, we will have to work with a
shorter text.
We ask the children to give us four to five sentences (though very early
readers may give fewer--perhaps only one sentence), and we write each one up
in the way just described. Once the sentences are all recorded, we go back and
ask the children what would be a good title for this account. We write the title
above the lines on the chart paper (we left room for this--if we had our wits
about us!--when we began recording the dictations).
Rereading the Dictation. Rereading the text is usually done in four steps, and
each step is repeated twice.
$
First, the teacher reads the text, at a slow normal reading rate,
pointing to each word with a stylus as he reads.
32
Next, the teacher invites the children to choral-read the text; that is,
teacher and students read the text in unison as the teacher points to the
words.
$
Now the teacher has the children echo-read the text as the teacher
points to the words. That is, the teacher reads the line aloud, then the
teacher silently points to the words as the children read the line aloud.
$
Finally, the teacher asks an individual child to read a line or more of
the text.The teacher may work more with the text at this point. He may
point to a word in a line and ask a child to read it--a good way to
exercise the child’s concept of word (an early reader will silently
mumble his way through the line, word unit by word unit, until he
reaches the indicated word so he can say it aloud. He may ask a child to
come forward and point to a word that he already recognizes.
The teacher may now ask for volunteers to illustrate the class text, and
passes out markers for them to use. The illustration will help remind the
children of the topic of the text when they revisit the text on subsequent days.
$
Other Sources of Dictations. Dictated experience accounts have the advantage
of recording students’ own experiences in their own words--which is a source of
excitement and motivation for many students (Ashton-Warner, 1963). But
dictated accounts have the drawback of being disjointed and unpredictable, as
might be expected of a text dictated by a group. Young readers like to read
predictable and patterned text, and find such text easier to read. A
compromise approach, then, is to have students learn a patterned text orally,
then dictate that text to the teacher and proceed with the steps outlined
above.
One source of patterned texts for dictation is songs and poems. Students
can learn song verses, dictate them for the teacher to record, then sing them
as the teacher points to the words. Students can make up their own verses to
songs, too; and songs with their highly patterned verses are easy and inviting to
innovate upon. Another source of patterned text are retold stories. After the
students have heard a story read aloud to them a couple of times, they can
retell a short and memorable version for the teacher to record and read back
with them.
Making Individual Reading Materials from Dictations. Following a group
dictation, teachers can prepare smaller versions of texts to give each student
for individual reading. These texts, typed by the teacher or parent volunteer
on a word processor and photocopied, can be used many ways. Pairs of
students may “buddy-read” two copies of the text with each other. Students
may take the texts home with them, with instructions to the parents such as
those found below.
33
===================================================
A Letter to Parents
Dear parent,
Today our class learned a new poem. Your child has brought home a
copy of it to read to you. We hope you will enjoy hearing it. By the way, we are
still learning to read in our class, so if your child has trouble reading the poem,
here is what you can do to help:
$
Hold the copy of the poem so that both of you can see it.
$
Read the poem in a slow but natural voice and point to the words as you
read them.
$
Now ask your child to read the poem with you.
$
Then ask your child to read the poem by himself or herself.
$
Give your child lots of opportunities to read the poem aloud
$
Praise your child for a job well done!
===================================================
Creating Language Awareness
All of us speak in a dialect, a variation of a language that is shared by a
regional group, a racial group, a vocational group, and so on. Most languages
also have what is referred to as the standard dialect. This is sometimes a
controversial claim, since the standard dialect is based on the speech of the
more educated and usually more powerful people in a society. It may be more
straight-forward, then, to speak of the grapholect: the language of print
constitutes a dialect of its own, which can be called the grapholect.
Learning problems may result when the dialect a person speaks is very
different from the grapholect. Confusion may result with young learners when
they do not realize that the dialect they speak is different from the dialect
that their writing system normally records (Sim-Sim, 1998).
A Portuguese educator, Ines Sim-Sim, devised a method for working with
students whose spoken dialect differed markedly from the written dialect. She
first recorded their speech, as in the Language Experience Approach, and wrote
down exactly what they said. Next, she said the same sentences aloud in the
grapholect of Portuguese. She placed the two versions side by side, and asked
the students to read the written version of what they said (in their own
dialect), and then to read the written version of what she said (in the
grapholect). They discussed the differences between the two forms.
Sim-Sim explained to the students that their own speech was valuable and
perfectly acceptable for use at home and among friends, but that they should
be aware that when they read and wrote, they should be aware that they
would be using the grapholect. These lessons were not learned all at once, of
course. Sim-Sim and her colleagues devised daily lessons that helped build
children’s awareness of and control over the grapholect, in their reading and
writing.
34
Teaching Students to
Read for Meaning
In an earlier section of this guidebook there was a brief description of
reading comprehension. There it was noted that teaching for comprehension
involves encouraging readers to:
 summon up their prior knowledge about the topic--their relevant
cognitive schemes—and develop a sense of anticipation, asking
themselves what they already know about the text and what they want
to find out about it;
 actively construct meaning by seeking answers to their questions and
connecting the details in the text to what they already knew, as a
coherent understanding forms in their minds;
 looking back over what they constructed from the text—perhaps
rehearsing the meaning so they will remember it, or reexamining and
rearranging their preconceptions about the topic; or thinking about what
they can do with the meaning they made from the text.
In teaching students to read with comprehension, it helps to plan for
three phases of teaching, each corresponding to one of the three basic
activities just mentioned. We will call those three phrases anticipation,
building knowledge, and consolidation (Neisser, 1975; Estes and Vaughn,
1986; Steele, Meredith, and Temple, 1997).
Anticipation: Before they read, readers should take notice of the topic of the
reading and remind themselves of what they already know about it. Readers
should wonder what new information they might learn from this reading. If it is
a fictional text, what do the title and the illustrations suggest might happen in
the story? Who will it be about, and what problem will it entail? What other
works do they know by this author, or in this genre, and what does that
familiarity lead them to expect? If it is an informational text and the students
don’t have very much prior knowledge about the topic, the teacher will need
to give them some preliminary information about the topic and help them
organize their thinking about it. All of these activities take place during a
preliminary phase of the lesson called the anticipation phase.
Building Knowledge: As they read, readers should compare what they
expected to learn with what they are learning from the text. Readers should
revise their expectations or raise new ones as the text reveals more
information, raises more questions, or plants more clues. Readers should think
about what they are reading and identify the main points. They might reflect
on what the text is meaning to them personally. They should certainly fill in
any blanks in the text--that is, make inferences about what the text is saying-and they might question it, and argue with it. All of these activities take place
during a phase of the lesson called the building knowledge phase.
35
Consolidation: After they read, readers should think back over the material.
They may summarize the main ideas. They should certainly compare what they
found out with what they thought about the subject when they first
approached the reading. Readers should interpret the ideas, if they are not
immediately obvious. If the text is evocative in some way, readers might make
personal responses to the ideas--apply those ideas to the way they normally
think, or to the realities of their own lives. Readers may test out the ideas--use
them to solve problems, or think up other solutions to the problems posed in
the text. All of these activities take place during the phase of the lesson called
the consolidation phase.
According to the Anticipation/Building Knowledge/Consolidation or
ABC model described above, teachers should plan strategies to use before,
during, and after students read a selection in order to make the most of their
students’ comprehension of that selection.
Let us turn now to the teaching approaches that can be used in each
phase of the Anticipation/Building Knowledge/Consolidation model to support
students’ comprehension.
Activities for the ANTICIPATION Phase
Our teaching goals in the anticipation phase are to prepare the students
to read a text with comprehension. We want them to:
 be reminded of what they already know about the topic, the author, and
the genre of the text: that is, to summon up their prior knowledge that is
relevant to the text they are about to read;
 raise questions about the text and set purposes for reading;
 be prepared with the vocabulary they will need to make sense of the text.
Several teaching approaches can be used to achieve these goals.
Focusing questions. Questions that make a connection between what the
students already know and what the reading will cover are valuable ways to
prepare for a reading. In keeping with our goal of encouraging principled
knowledge, it is advisable to steer questions toward the main ideas of the
passage.
A group of fifth graders are reading Pam Conrad’s Pedro’s Journey
(1992), a fictional account of Columbus’ historic voyage. Before the students
begin reading the first chapter, the teacher might ask, “If you were about to
sail three ships across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, at a time when nobody knew
for sure what was on the other side of the ocean, what three pieces of advice
would you give yourself?” The students may discuss the question as a whole
group, or using the Think/Pair/Share procedure (see below). Doing so activates
thoughts and ideas that will help them make sense of and appreciate what they
will encounter as they read the book.
36
Introductory Talk. The teacher can give a brief talk or tell a short story that
introduces the topic of the reading. Before the readers read a chapter from
Carl Hiassen’s novel, Hoot!, for example, the teacher might remind the
students of laws that have been passed to protect endangered species, and
how there is often tension between business interests and those who would
enforce those laws. Such a talk, called an advance organizer by psychologist,
David Ausubel (1963), can provide readers with some prior knowledge about
the topic of the reading, and also help them organize the knowledge they have.
Think/Pair/Share. Focusing questions can be still more effective when a
mechanism has been provided for all students to consider and answer them.
Think/Pair/Share (Kagan, 1989) is a cooperative learning activity in which the
teacher puts an open-ended question to the class, preferably by writing it on
the chalkboard. Readers are given two minutes to respond to the question
individually (Often they are asked to do this in writing). Next, each child turns
to a partner, and they share their answers. Finally, the teacher calls on two or
three pairs to share their answers. Then the class begins reading the text. In a
think/pair/share activity, every student--even in a class of thirty or more
students--is motivated to think about the topic and to discuss it with someone
else.
Anticipation Guide. Anticipation guides are used with fiction or with
informational text. In using and anticipation guide (Estes and Vaughn, 1986),
the teacher prepares a set of questions with short answers (usually true/false
answers) that tap important aspects of the topic of the text. The questions are
distributed to readers on a worksheet, and they are asked, individually or in
pairs, to answer the questions as best they can before reading the assigned
text. After reading the text, they return to the questions at the end of the
class to see how their thinking has changed.
Paired Brainstorming. Where factual information will be shared, older
students can be asked to make personal lists of the facts they know or think
they know about the topic of the reading (Vacca and Vacca, 1986). After two
minutes, they turn to a classmate and combine their lists. The teacher can
make a master list of the class’s ideas, and leave their ideas on the chalk board
or on a piece of newsprint so the students can compare their ideas to them
after they have read the text.
Terms in Advance. A teacher may display a set of key terms that will be found
in a reading, and ask students to ponder their meanings as well as the
relationships between them. The students are asked to predict how this
particular set of terms might be used in the passage they are about to read. If
they are about to read the first chapter of Bud, Not Buddy Curtis, 1999), the
terms might be:
Orphanage
1932
Foster home
Father
jazz musician
“Dusky Devastators of the Depression”
37
Reading Aloud. Reading aloud the first few paragraphs or pages of a text that
students will then read silently is good practice in the anticipatory stage.
Hearing the text read aloud can help students “step into the envisionment”
(Langer, 1995), that is, imagine the setting and the characters of a work,
making it easier for them to read subsequent pages with comprehension. The
teacher may pause to discuss the setting, the dramatic situation, and
vocabulary items that might otherwise raise impediments to the readers’
comprehension.
Showing Items of Interest. Showing students photographs or real items related
to the text can raise their curiosity and evoke their prior knowledge—and
jumpstart something like an envisionment. Before reading Bud, Not Buddy for
instance, the teacher can read the class some passages from Stud Terkel’s oral
history of the Depression, Hard Times (Terkel, 2000), or play them a recording
of songs from the depression, such as “Buddy Can You Spare a Dime?”
Activities for the Phase of BUILDING KNOWLEDGE
Once students have had their expectations raised for what they are
about to read, they are ready for activities that will help them construct
meaning from the text, or build their knowledge. Several strategies for helping
student build knowledge are described in this section.
Questioning the Author. Isabel Beck and her colleagues (Beck, et. al., 1997)
designed a focused reading comprehension that both motivates students to
question what they don’t understand in a text and motivates them to do so.
The Questioning the Author technique rests on the realization that
readers sometimes fail to understand what they read, not because they are
incompetent, but because author haven’t made their meanings sufficiently
clear. When students listen to their peers reading their works aloud in a writing
workshop, they don’t hesitate to say, “I don’t know what you mean right there.
Help us understand.” They know-- because they are writers, too—that writers
sometimes forget to be considerate of their readers and fail to explain enough.
Yet when young readers come across unclear passages in a published text, they
often assume that the problem is theirs for not understanding, rather than the
author’s, for not being sufficiently clear.
To prepare to conduct the Questioning the Author procedure, the
teacher chooses a portion of texts that will support an engaged discussion of 20
to 30 minutes. The teacher begins the discussion by reminding students that
comprehension often breaks down because authors don’t tell readers
everything readers need to know, and that a good way to comprehend is to
think of questions you would ask the author if she or he were present, and
imagine what the answers might be. Then the teacher follows three steps:
38
1)
The teacher reads through the text in advance and identifying the major
understandings that the students should engage in this text;
2)
The teacher plans stopping points in the text that occur often enough to
devote attention to the important ideas and inferences in the passage.
3)
The teacher plans the queries or probing questions to be asked at each
stopping point—noting that these are tentative plans only--the actual
discussions will take cues from the students' own comments and questions.
The conduct of the Questioning the Author lesson proceeds in two
stages.
1.
Preparing the Students' Attitudes. The teacher discusses the idea of
authorship, and explains that texts are written by human beings who are not
perfect people and their texts are not perfect works. Things may be unclear.
Ideas may have been left out. Things may be hinted but not stated. It is the
readers' job to question the author. It may help to remind the students that
when they listen to a classmate sharing her writing in writing workshop, they
know that sometimes she will mention something without saying enough about
it. In a writing workshop students question their classmate, the author, so they
can understand the writing better. In a QtA session, students also question the
author --but since the author isn't present in the classroom, the class will have
to answer for the author.
2.
Raising questions about the text. Now the teacher has the students read
a small portion of the text. At a pre-selected stopping point, the teacher poses
a question or query about what the students have just read. Early in the text,
the teacher asks initiating queries, like these:
 What is the author trying to say here?
 What is the author's message?
 What is the author talking about?
Farther along, the teacher asks follow-up queries, like these:
 So what does the author mean right here?
 Did the author explain that clearly?
 Does that make sense with what the author told us before?
 How does that connect with what the author has told us here?
 But does the author tell us why?
 Why do you think the author tells us that now?
(From Beck, et.al., 1997.).
As the teacher asks these questions he or she asks several students to
contribute ideas. The teacher can prod the students to clarify their thoughts,
to elaborate their ideas, to debate each other’s ideas, and to reach a
consensus opinion. The Questioning the Author technique will be discussed
further in Chapter Seven.
39
The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity. The Directed Reading-Thinking
Activity (Stauffer, 1975) or DRTA uses the dynamic of prediction and
confirmation to create interest and excitement around a reading assignment-provided that the text is a work of fiction, with elements of surprise in it. The
DRTA is normally done with a group of six to ten students, since this size is
large enough to yield a range of predictions, but small enough for everyone to
participate. It is advisable that the students be roughly matched for reading
ability, since all students must wait for the slowest one to finish reading each
section.
The DRTA can be used by itself, or it can follow one of the activities we
introduced above in the anticipation phase. Some teachers precede the DRTA
with the terms in advance procedure or with the anticipation guide.
The teacher prepares for a DRTA by choosing four or five stopping places
in the text, yielding more or less same-sized chunks of text. The stops should
be placed right at points of suspense, places where the reader has been given
some information, and is wondering what is going to happen next (in other
words, where the commercial break would be placed in a television thriller).
One of these is normally right after the title. Next section demonstrates how
the DRTA proceeds.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How to Teach with the DRTA: Tell the students that you are about to read a
story together, using the method of prediction. The activity should be
enjoyable, but it is necessary that they follow your instructions closely. You
will tell them to make predictions about what they are going to read. Then you
will have them read short passages of the text and stop. It is very important
that they stop reading where you tell them to, and not read ahead until
asked.
Tell the students the genre of the story--realistic fiction, tall tale, folk tale,
etc. After naming the genre, ask them what kinds of characters they expect to
meet. Ask what kinds of events they expect to happen.
Read the title, and show them the accompanying picture, if there is one. Ask
them what they think will happen. Remind them that it won’t be possible to
know for sure, but ask them to stretch their imaginations and take a guess.
Press for the most specific answers you can get. Write some of these on the
chalkboard (Remember to leave room to write three more rounds of comments
after the later stops).
Before they read on, ask the students to consider the predictions they have
heard, and silently choose the one they think is most likely to happen. Then ask
them to keep their predictions in mind as they read to the next stopping place.
40
Now they should read (silently) to the stopping place, and turn their books over
when they have finished
At the stopping place, review several of the predictions and ask the class if
they seem to be borne out by the text, or contradicted. Ask for proof from the
text: which predictions are coming true? What evidence do they find in the text
that makes them think so? You can put check marks on the board next to the
predictions that are coming true, minuses next to those that are not, and
question marks beside those that are uncertain.
Ask them how things look now in the story.
After some discussion, ask them to make more predictions, choose the most
likely ones, and read ahead as in step # 4.
When they have reached the end of the story, review the predictions, and ask
the students what it was that made them guess what turned out to be the
correct predictions. What was it about the characters, or the plot, or the genre
of the story that helped guide their predictions?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note that in a DRTA the questions are worded in a very open way. The
teacher asks, What do you think will happen? Why do you think so? More
specific questions by the teacher would take some of the initiative for making
predictions away from the readers; and the point here is for readers to learn to
ask their own questions about what they are reading.
There are a number of ways to scaffold a Directed Reading-Thinking
Activity to make it more accessible to students. One is to read the text aloud,
instead of having the students read it. (For those of you who like to have exact
names for things, this variation of the method goes by a different name: the
Directed Listening-Thinking Activity). Another is to think aloud yourself.
Especially if the predictions are slow in coming, or seem to be going too wide
of the mark, you can offer a choice: “I’m wondering if X will happen or Y will
happen. Which one do you think will happen?”
Dual Entry Diary. The Dual Entry Diary (Berthoff, 1981) is a kind of journal
students use to record responses to readings. In order to make a dual entry
diary, the students draw a vertical line down the middle of a blank sheet of
paper. On the left-hand side they write a passage or image from the text that
affected them strongly. Perhaps it reminded them of something from their own
experience. Perhaps it puzzled them. Perhaps they disagreed with it. Perhaps
it made them aware of the author’s style or technique.
On the right-hand side of the page they should write a comment about
that passage: What was it about the quote that made them write it down? What
did it make them think of? What question did they have about it?
There are a number of ways these journals may be treated next.
Students may exchange them and comment on each other’s quotes. The
41
teacher may take them up (a few each day) and comment on them. Or the
readers may bring them to a discussion group where the students are reading a
common book and offer their comments to the discussion.
Bringing Stories to Life Through Drama.
Dramatizing a story, or a part of
a story, can be a very effective way for readers to visualize aspects of a text
and to unpack its meaning. The brilliant drama teacher Dorothy Heathcote
(Wagner, 1999) suggested several steps for dramatizing stories.
1)
Choose a few key scenes to dramatize. Dramatizations work well when
they are focused on individual scenes, rather than the whole work. Those
scenes should be critical ones, in which characters have something to gain or
lose.
(2)
Tease out the implications of a scene. Before students can act out a
scene, they should identify the sources of tension in it. That is, they should
think of the many things that are at stake for each character. The teacher
encourages the students to think of the one or two most important of these
tensions to work into their dramatization of their character.
(3)
Help students identify with the character. Actors often say it helps
their performance if they think of experiences from their own lives that are
like those of their characters. But young students may not have had
experiences that are very similar to those they are asked to act out. A solution
is to think of a situation readers may have experienced that is analogous to the
one to be dramatized. For instance, students probably have not had to coax a
frightened hitch-hiker into their automobile at night. But they may have tried
to coax a wounded animal to accept help. The teacher can remind them of the
experience they have had, and then tell them that they share the brotherhood
or sisterhood of those who have offered help to a frightened victim. The
student who acts the role of Lefty Lewis is encouraged to think of how it feels
and looks and sounds to coax a wounded animal to accept help.
4)
Provide side-coaching as students act out the scene. As the students
begin performing a scene for others to watch, the teacher offers suggestions
that help them get into their roles. He may tell them to remember how their
character is feeling or worries about or cares about--and to think of how they
will look and sound if they feel that way.
5)
Invite critiques of the performance. The students who
observe the dramatization should be invited to comment on
what came across to them. Ask the performers, too, what they
understood about the situation from acting it out. Other teams
can be invited to dramatize the same scene, to see if they can
portray the same tensions differently.
6)
42
Activities for the CONSOLIDATION Phase
The phase of the lesson we call consolidation follows the building
knowledge phase. By now the students have gone through the text and have at
least begun to comprehend it. We want them to go further, though, and do
something with the meaning. We want them to summarize it, interpret it,
debate it, apply it to new situations, and create new examples of it. We often
want students to practice higher order thinking with the issues from the text.
There are several teaching approaches available to us as we guide
students to consolidate and extend their ideas about what they have read.
When we are reading fictional texts, we like to use activities that allow them
fairly free responses, but also some techniques that guide their attention to
different aspects of the text. The more open response methods are “Save the
Last Word for Me,” literature circles, “corners,” the “value line,” and “sketch
to stretch.” The more focused approaches, in which the teacher guides
students’ attention, are the Shared Inquiry Approach, the discussion web, and
the debate. The more analytic approaches, in which the teacher guides to
students in taking a close look at some aspect or aspects of the text, include
story maps, character clusters, character maps, dramatic roles, and structured
opposites.
Save the Last Word for Me. “Save the Last Word for Me” (Short, Harste, and
Burke, 1996) provides a framework for a small-group or whole-class discussion
of a text. The procedure is especially good at encouraging readers to take the
lead in discussing their reading. The steps of the strategy go as follows:
1. After being assigned a reading to do independently, students are
given note cards, and are asked to find three or four quotations that they
consider particularly interesting or worthy of comment.
2. The students write the quotations they have found on index cards or
small pieces of paper.
3. On the other sides of the cards, the students write comments about
their chosen quotations. That is, they say what the quotations made them think
of, what is surprising about them, and why they chose them.
4. The students bring their quotation cards to discussion groups. The
teacher calls on someone to read a card aloud.
5. After reading the quotation on his or her card, student invites other
students to comment on that quote. (The teacher may need to help keep
comments on the subject of the quotation). The teacher also may comment on
the quotation.
6. Once others have had their say about the quotation, the student who
chose it reads his or her comments aloud. Then there can be no further
discussion. The student who chose it gets to have the last word.
7. The student can now call on another student to share his or her
quotation and begin the process all over again. Not all students will be able to
share their quotation, if the whole class takes part in the activity, so the
43
teacher will need to keep track of who shared quotes and make sure other
readers get chances to share their quotes the next time.
Literature Circles. Literature Circles (Short and Kauffman, 1995), Grand
Conversations (Eeds and Wells, 1989), and Book Clubs (Raphael, Goatley,
McMahon, and Woodman, 1995) are all terms for literary discussions in which
students’ curiosity about the text is allowed to play a directing role.
Typically, students in such discussions have read the same work; and
that work may be a short text they have already read or heard, or it may be a
longer work that is discussed while students are still in the middle of it. The
choice of texts for Literature Circles is critical, since not all works are equally
successful in evoking interested responses. Those that do often have a core
mystery, elements that invite more than more than one interpretation, and a
demonstrable connection to issues that matter to the students.
These discussion groups may be conducted with the whole class at once
at first, until students have grown familiar and comfortable with the
procedure. Then they may be conducted in smaller groups of four or five
students meeting simultaneously. Literature Circles are be conducted several
times a week. Early in the year, they may last no more than twenty minutes,
but as students gain experience and confidence talking about literature, they
may run for up to forty minutes, not counting the time it takes to read the
text. Every one is free to offer comments and questions in Literature Circles,
and students are reminded that they are free to address their comments and
questions to other students, and not always to the teacher.
The role of the teacher in a Literature Circle is mainly to be a spirited
participant; however, Martinez (in Temple, et. al., 2002) points to four
additional roles teachers play.
The teacher is a model. The teacher may venture her or his own questions or
responses to get a discussion going. The teacher is careful to speak as one
seeking insights, and not as a lecturer. The teacher’s statements might begin,
“I wonder about... “
The teacher helps students learn new roles in a Literature Circle. While all
students know how to have conversations, they may need reminding of ways to
participate in conversations in a classroom. These include rules such as these:
 sit in a circle so that everyone can see each other;
 only one person speaks at a time;
 listen to each other;
 stay on the topic.
The teacher moves the conversation forward. Without dominating the
discussion, the teacher may invite other students to comment on something
one student has said. The teacher may ask a student to clarify an idea. Or the
teacher may pose an interesting open-ended question that she or he has
44
thought about in advance (Such --interpretive questions were discussed in our
coverage of Shared Inquiry, above).
The teacher supports literary learning. Lecturing about literature is not an
adequate substitute for having students think and talk about it; nonetheless, it
helps if teachers supply students with concepts and terms they can use to give
form to ideas they are trying to express or insights they are struggling to reach.
A student may notice that there is a point in a story where tension is highest
because the main question in the story is about to be answered. The teacher
tells him this is a climax. Researchers have noted that students’ discussions go
deeper when they have literary terms available to them (Hickman, 1979, 1981).
Assigning Roles in Literary Discussions. When
conducting
cooperative
learning activities we sometimes assign students particular roles to play in a
group. Over time, when individual students learn to play the many roles of
encourager, timekeeper, facilitator, recorder, and summarizer they eventually
learn all of the aspects of a good participant in a group, because a good
participant may practice most of these roles at once.
Literature Circles may function better when students have particular
roles to play. Also, by performing designated roles, students may exercise the
many tasks that are carried out by an effective reader and discussant of
literature.
Harvey Daniels and his colleagues at National Louis University
(Daniels,1994 and 1999) have developed roles that students may play in a
literary discussion. Five suggestions will make the use of these roles more
successful.
The first is to teach the roles to the whole class, one at a time. The
teacher may read or tell a story, then introduce one of the roles, for
example, the connector. The teacher may then call attention to a
connection between something in the text and something in real life.
Then she will invite several students to do likewise. Over several days,
many of the roles can be introduced in this way, before students use
them in an extended discussion.
Students should be encouraged to ask questions from their roles, rather
than to say what they know. For example, the character interpreter
might invite the other students to construct a character map or a
character web about a character, and only venture his own ideas after
the other students have shared their own.
Choose only the most useful roles for a particular discussion. Sometimes
four or five roles are sufficient.
Rotate students through the roles. Each student should play many roles
over the course of several discussions; the accumulated experience of
45
playing many of these roles adds dimensions to each student’s awareness
of literature.
Be careful not to stress the roles more than the rich discussion of the
literary work. Having students carry out the roles is a means to the end
of sharing their insights about a work. Once the conversation is under
way, you should feel free to suspend the roles and let the conversation
proceed.
Sketch to Stretch. An ingenious device for having students of all ages respond
together to a literary work is “Sketch to Stretch,” from Short, Harste, and
Burke (1996). After the students have read and thought about a poem or a
story, the students are invited to draw pictures that symbolize what they
believe are the main ideas or central themes of the piece. One student shows
his or her drawing to a group of students, and they “interpret” to picture,
saying what they think it means and how its images relate to the literary work.
After the other students have had their say, the student who drew the picture
is invited to give his own interpretation of the picture.
Shared Inquiry Discussion.
The Great Books Foundation developed the
Shared Inquiry Method to accompany their literature discussion program (See
Plecha, 1992), which has been conducted in thousands of schools and libraries
for more than thirty years. Shared Inquiry is a procedure by which the teacher
leads a deep discussion into a work of literature. It is best done with a group of
eight to ten students, to maximize participation, but allow for a diversity of
ideas. The procedure follows the steps listed below:
Before the discussion takes place, the teacher has chosen a work or part of a
work that encourages discussion. Such a work should lend itself to more
than one interpretation (Not all works do this well) and raise interesting
issues. Folk stories often meet these criteria surprisingly well.
The teacher makes sure that all of the students have read the material
carefully (The Great Books Foundation insists that students read material
twice before discussing it. But a reading using some of the
comprehension methods described above can make the students very
aware of the contents of the passage, in our experience).
The teacher prepares four or five discussion questions. These should be what
Great Books calls Interpretive Questions, and they have three criteria:
a) They are real questions: the sort of question one might ask a friend as you
walk together of a provocative movie.
b) They have more than one defensible answer. (This criterion invites debate.
If it is not met, the discussion won’t be a discussion, but a read my mind
exercise).
46
c) They must lead the discussion into the text (A question like, Why was the
giant’s wife kinder to Jack than his own mother was? leads the readers to talk
about what is in the text first, even though they may then comment on what
they know from experience). A question like, Have you ever done anything as
brave as Jack? leads the discussion away from the text and out into twenty-five
different directions).
The teacher writes the first question on the chalkboard.
The teacher asks the students to think about the question, and then briefly
write down their
answers. (If the readers are so young that writing answers is laborious, the
teacher can say he will count to sixty before he calls on anyone, so they should
be thinking about their answers for all of that time). As the teacher invites
students to answer she may invite reluctant speakers to read what they wrote.
She encourages debate between students, pointing out differences in what
they say and asking those and other students to expand on the differences. She
may press readers to support their ideas with references to the text or to
restate ideas more clearly. She does not, however, correct a child or in any
way suggest that any one answer is right or wrong. Finally, the teacher does
not offer her own answer to the question.
The teacher keeps a seating chart, a list of the students’ names with a brief
record of what each one has contributed. When discussion of a question seems
to have run its course, the teacher reads aloud her summaries of the students'
comments. Then she asks if anyone has anything to add.
Once the discussion gets going, the teacher follows the readers’ lead and
continues to discuss the issues and questions they raise.
Even when they don’t use the whole approach, many teachers use aspects of
the Shared Inquiry Procedure in conducting book discussions. For example, they
may ask students to write down ideas to bring to a discussion, or they may take
notes during the discussion; or they are careful to draw out the students’ ideas,
and not dominate the discussion themselves. The Great Books Foundation
offers training in their methods in many places in North America. Further
information is available from www.greatbooks.org.
The Discussion Web. The Discussion Web (Alvermann, XXXX) is a cooperative
learning activity that involves all students in deep discussions of readings. The
discussion web proceeds with the following steps:
The teacher prepares a thoughtful binary question--a question that can be
answered yes or no with support. For example, if discussing “Jack and the
Beanstalk, a binary discussion question might be, “Was Jack right to steal from
the giant?”
The teacher asks pairs of students to prepare a discussion web chart that
47
looks like the one in the figure below. Those pairs of students take four or five
minutes to think up and list three reasons each that support both sides of the
argument.
Was Jack justified in
Stealing from the Giant?
Yes!
______________________
No!
________________________
______________________
________________________
______________________
________________________
Conclusion:
________________________
___________________________
___________________________
Next each pair of students joins another pair. They review the answers they
had on both sides of the issue, and add to each other’s list. Then they argue
the issue through until they reach a conclusion: that is, a position they agree
upon, with a list of reasons that support it.
At the conclusion of the lesson, the teacher calls on several groups of
four to give brief reports of their position and the reasons that support it. The
teacher can invite groups to debate each other, if they took different sides of
the argument.
Debates. With students in third grade and up, it is often useful to follow the
discussion web activity with a debate. The purpose of the debate is not to
declare winners and losers, but to help the students practice making claims
and defending them with reasons, even when others defend different claims.
Working with claims, reasons, and arguments; debating ideas without attacking
people--these are key elements in critical thinking.
To have a debate, you need a binary question--that is, a question that
has a yes/no answer (Since the Discussion Web we saw above also uses binary
questions, we often follow the discussion web with a debate). Here are the
steps.
1) Think of a question you think will truly divide the students’ opinions, and put
the question on the chalkboard for all to see. If you are not sure the question
will divide the students roughly equally, ask for a show of hands on each side of
the issue before going forward.
48
2) Give students an opportunity to think about the question and discuss it
freely.
3) Ask students to divide up: those who believe one answer to the question is
right should go stand along the wall on one side of the room; those who think
the other is right should stand along the wall on the other side. Those who are
truly undecided (that is, after thinking about it, they believe both sides are
partially right or neither side is right) should stand along the middle wall.
4) Explain or review the two ground rules:
a) Don’t be rude to each other (You may have to explain and demonstrate what
this means)
b) If you hear an argument that makes you want to change your mind, walk to
the other side (or to the middle). Here’s a hint to the teacher: as the debate
proceeds, you can model the behavior of changing sides with a pantomime: by
looking thoughtful for a moment after someone offers a good argument, and
moving to the other side.
5) Give the students on each side three or four minutes to put their heads
together and decide why they are on that side. Then ask them with a sentence
that states their position. Then ask them to appoint someone to say that
sentence.
6) Begin the debate by asking one person from each side (including the
undecided group) to state that group’s position.
7) Invite anyone on any team to say things (counter-arguments or rebuttals) in
response to what the other team has said, or more reasons in support of their
own side.
8) Monitor the activity to make sure the tone stays away from negative attacks.
Ask for clarification. Offer an idea or two as necessary from the devil’s
advocate position. Change sides. Encourage the students to change sides if they
are persuaded to.
9) When the debate has proceeded ten of fifteen minutes, ask each side to
summarize what they have said.
10) You may follow the debate with a writing activity: ask each student to
write down what she believes about the issue and why (Please see Chapter Two
for suggestions of ways to structure this writing activity).
Value Line. A cooperative learning activity that is an extension of the debate
procedure is the Value Line (Kagan, 1989). The Value Line is well-suited for
questions that have more than two good answers, where people might have a
range of answers along a continuum. Here are the steps.
1. You pose a question to the students on which answers may vary along a
continuum.
2. Give each student three minute to consider the question alone and write
down his or her answer.
3. Now you, the teacher, stand on one side of the room and announce that you
represent one pole, or extreme position, on the argument, and you invite
another student to voice an extreme position that is the opposite of the one
you articulated.
49
4. Now invite the students to line up between the two of you in places along
the imaginary Value Line between the two poles of the argument. Each stands
at a point in the line that reflects his position on the question. Remind the
students to compare their views with those immediately around them, to make
sure they are all standing in the right spots. After hearing others’ answers,
some students may elect to move one way or another along the value line.
5. Students may continue to discuss their responses with the students on either
side of them.
6. Identify three or four clusters of students who seem to represent different
views on the question. Invite them to prepare a statement of their position and
to share it with the whole group.
7. As an option, the formed line may be folded in the middle, so that students
with more divergent views may debate their responses.
8. You may follow this exercise, too, with a writing opportunity, in which
students write down what they think about the issue and why. In this way, the
Value Line serves as a rehearsal for writing an argumentative or persuasive
essay.
Techniques That Highlight Aspects the
Comprehension of Fiction
The teaching approaches we have considered up to now encourage
discussions of stories or enactments of them. It is also useful to lead students
in activities that teach them particular aspects of stories. Those that follow
below build students’ responsiveness to the structures of story plots (Story
Maps), to the ways characters are drawn (Character Clusters), to the
relationships between characters (Character Maps), and to the ways stories
function as symbol systems (Dramatic Roles and Structured Opposites).
Story Maps. As a rule, students read with better comprehension when they are
asked questions that conform to the main arguments or developments of a
text. When it comes to reading fiction, it helps if students are encouraged to
raise questions along the lines that the stories are organized, and that usually
means following the plot. The plot is a structured way authors organize places,
people, actions and consequences to make all of those things meaningful for
the reader. The elements of a plot are these:
the setting, the time and place the story happened;
the main characters, the person the story is about;
the problem, the challenge the main character faces, which it is his or her goal
to solve;
the attempts, the effort or series of efforts the character makes to solve the
problem, along with their outcomes;
the solution, the attempt that finally pays off in solving the problem--or the
event that otherwise puts an end to the action;
the consequence, how things are for the characters at the end, including what
the events of the story meant for them.
50
Researchers for many years have noted that students down to age five
and even younger use something like a plot or a story grammar to understand
and tell stories (Stein and Glenn; Sutton-Smith). We can help students use the
plot consciously in understanding a story by using a Story Map, a chart that
invites them to identify the keys parts of a story (See below).
Setting
Characters
Problem
Attempts
Outcomes
Solution
Consequence
Where did the story take
place? Why did this
matter?
Who is the story about?
Whom do we care about
the most?
What
problem
or
problem does the main
character face?
What does the main
character do to solve the
problem?
What happens after each
attempt to solve the
problem?
How does the main
character
solve
the
problem, or is it solved?
How is the situation at
the end of the story?
For students younger than second grade, it may be preferable to use a simpler
version of a story map, consisting of only the setting, the characters, the
problem, and the solution.
Character Clusters. Not only are stories developed through plots, but
characters come to life in them, too. A literary critic, Roland Barthes (1994),
once suggested that characters are mostly just bundles of attributes that
authors put into situations and play off against each other to show us what
happens. In essence, writers ask themselves, What would happen if a person
like X got stuck in a situation like Y with people like Z? Readers’ comprehension
and appreciation of stories can be enhanced if we show them some ways to
think about characters.
One way is the character cluster. A character cluster is a kind of graphic
organizer: a semantic web with the character’s name written in the middle,
main features of the character written as satellites around the character’s
name, and examples of those features written as satellites around the
features.
51
As when using other graphic organizers, the teacher should teach the whole
class how to do a character cluster first. Then they can use it on their own, as
a guide to thinking more deeply about characters.
Character Maps. When characters in stories interact with other characters
(which is most of the time), students may need some way of keeping track of
characters and the relationships between them. Character Maps are a way to
guide students’ thinking about relationships between characters. In a Character
Map, we write the names of two or more characters in their respective circles.
The circles should be spaced widely apart on the page. Then we draw arrows
between the characters. Along the arrow that points from Character A to
Character B, we write about how Character A feels about Character B. Along
the arrow that points from Character B to Character A, we write about how
Character B feels about Character A.
Following Dramatic Roles. As a French drama critic named Etienne Souriau
(1955) pointed out many years ago, a large part of the way we understand
characters in stories is by the roles they play in the plot. That is because
whether watching sports or reading fiction, it is normal for us to cheer the
hero, boo the rival, and have a warm place in our hearts for the trusty helper.
Authors of stories wittingly or unwittingly use these propensities of ours to
shape our reactions to characters: assigning this one the role of protagonist or
main character, that other one the role of helper, another one the role of rival
or enemy.
Making readers aware of the roles characters play in stories can help
them interpret the stories, and eventually, to better understand how stories
work. Below are three very common roles that occur in stories: the hero, the
rival, and the helper; along with one other common element, the goal.
The Hero is the person whose desires and needs drive the story forward. In
Jack and the
Beanstalk, to use that story as an example, the hero is Jack.
The Goal is the hero’s main need or desire. In Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack’s
goal seems to be to get money, or to get some independence and not be
thought of as a dolt.
The Rival is the person who stands between the hero and her or his goal. The
rival in Jack and the Beanstalk is certainly the giant.
The Helper is a person or persons in a story who helps the hero achieve his
goal. In Jack and the Beanstalk, there are a couple of candidates for the
helper: the mysterious old man who sells him the beans, and the giant’s own
wife.
52
You can use dramatic roles several ways to think about stories. One way
is to have students nominate candidates for each of the roles, and discuss their
choices in small groups or as a class. These discussions can become lively,
because not all role assignments are obvious. Is the helper in Jack and the
Beanstalk the mysterious old man, or the giant’s wife? If it’s the giant’s wife
(and the giant is the rival), why should she help the person who is striving
against her husband? Is Jacks’ goal to obey his mother, or to get money, or to
satisfy his curiosity, or to prove himself? Or is it all of these things? Discussing
these issues takes students deep into the story.
Another way of using dramatic roles is to help students take different
perspectives on a story. We do this by asking students to take a character who
seems to be playing one role, and ask how the story would seem if we imagined
that character playing a different role. For example, in Jack and the Beanstalk,
suppose the giant’s wife were the hero---that is, suppose we saw things from
her perspective. What is her goal? Who is her rival? Exploring these questions
can lead into some very interesting discussions of stories, and exercises the
comprehension strategies of inferring and interpreting.
Reading For Structured Opposites. It may be true that we find it most natural
to think of extreme contrasts first, and then to think of things in the middle.
We learn hot and cold, huge and tiny, before we learn tepid and middle-sized.
Storytellers tend to use extreme contrasts, too. As Bruno Bettelheim (1975)
observed, characters in fairy tales are either very good or very bad--few are
mixtures of the two. Stories tend to deal with the same great problems and
urges again and again, as the folkloricist Joseph Campbell (1968) brilliantly
showed us. Thus we can see similarities in those things that are most starkly
contrasted in stories, and then begin to ask what those contrasts remind us of
in our own experiences. The anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (1970) argued
that a useful way of interpreting stories is to look for their contrasts, ask what
things are similarly contrasted in other stories, and then find parallel contrasts
and tensions in our own lives, like this:
Take a story the class is reading. A folk tale works very well for introducing this
method.
Ask the students to think of two characters who are most unlike each other,
who are most opposed to each other. For example, if the story is Jack and the
Beanstalk, the two characters might be Jack and the giant.
Write the names of those two characters at the heads of two columns. Ask the
students to come up with all of the contrasting descriptive words about those
two characters (See the example in the figure below). That is, ask for a word
that describes one character; then ask for an opposite word that describes the
other character.
Now create two new columns beside each of the original two. Use one pair of
53
these columns to list other characters in literature or movies or on television
that are contrasted much as the original characters are. Use the other pair of
columns to list people in the real world--in history, current events, or in our
personal experience--that are similarly contrasted. Here is an example:
(3) Characters
similar to Jack
(1) Jack
(2) The Giant
David
Young
Poor
Seems weak, but
is surprisingly
successful
“On the way up”
in life
Old
Rich
Seems strong, but
is surprisingly
vulnerable
Robin Hood
American
revolutionaries
(4) Characters
similar to the
Giant
Goliath
Sheriff of
Nottingham
British army
“Over the hill”
The discussion that accompanies making these lists can be rich indeed.
The Story Chart. As a way to motivate readers to think more deeply about
themes and other features of the book, you may choose three or more books
that share similarities, and construct a story chart as a means of comparing
them. A story chart (Roser, et. al., 1995) asks the same question about all of
the books, as shown in the figure below. Readers discuss these and other
questions at the time they read each book. Then the teacher records a
summary of their answers in the space provided on the chart. After they have
read two books, they compare them according to the questions. Using a story
chart has been shown to lead even young readers into more analytical thinking
about what they read. Here is an example of a story chart:
Who got to go
on an
adventure?
Who got to
stay home?
What does the
story say to
boys?
What does
the story say
to girls?
“Jack and
the
Beanstalk”
“The
Sleeping
Beauty”
“East of the
Sun, West of
the Moon”
Readers Theater. In readers theater, students don’t act out stories; they
read (not memorize) scripted versions of stories and rely on their voices to
54
convey the characters’ emotions. The promise of an audience can add to the
success of readers theater because students are likely to be motivated to
practice and refine their readings in order to do well when they perform.
What the Player Does in Readers Theater. Readers theater is more formal
than story theater because the aim is for the players to present as polished a
reading as possible. Usually, readers need to practice reading a script
repeatedly to learn to read their parts fluently and interpret them with
sensitivity.
Although the players in a readers theater presentation don’t have to
worry about how to act out the story, they do have to be concerned with
character interpretation. What is the character like? How does he or she react
to the events in the story? How (if at all) does the character change over the
course of the story? What variations in speaking tone, volume, speed, or pitch
might convey particular emotions? Both the teacher and fellow students can
offer feedback after each practice reading, sharing what they especially liked
about the interpretations and offering suggestions for improvement.
Selecting Stories and Creating Scripts for Readers Theater. Both picture
books and chapter books can be used for readers theater. Books containing
extensive dialogue are the best choices. Some picture books are perfect for
readers theater; these ready-to-use picture books are written in dialogue form
without dialogue tags (“he said” or “she replied”) and contain no narration.
Picture books that contain some narration and a great deal of dialogue with
dialogue tags can be made into readers theater scripts quite easily. A few
picture are actually written as scripts. In looking for portions of chapter books
to turn into readers theater scripts, look for the same features you would look
for in picture books: minimal narration and extensive dialogue.
Older students can help to create scripts. You might want to use
teacher-created scripts initially, but once students gain some experience with
readers theater, show them how you select text and turn it into scripts.
Students will soon be reading stories with an ear toward whether they can be
readily made into scripts.
Creative Dialogue. There is far more to the act of reading than receiving
information from the text. An effective reader does not limit herself or himself
to uncritically accepting what the text has to say. In the process of reading, an
independent reader will respond with thoughts and feelings to the information
presented. She or he will compare and contrast it with previous knowledge and
experiences, analyze it critically, and make decisions based on what has been
read. Some of those decisions will be of an immediate nature, such as
55
continuing to read the text or not; other decisions are in the form of stored
resources to be applied later.
Readers are not well served by an approach to education in general, nor to
reading in particular, which places all the importance on the information
provided by the text or by the instructor and which asks them, as proof of
success, to merely repeat that same information. It is, of course, very
important that readers understand what they are reading and be able to recall
and retell it. But reading does not end there. Helping readers understand the
richness of the reading process and interact deeply with the text will not
interfere with their comprehension and recall; on the contrary, it serves to
improve those abilities, as well as to develop a great number of others.
We are pleased to share with you the process of Creative Dialogue, an
approach to literacy that we have developed based on the work of Paulo
Freire. We call this approach “Creative,” in reference to our understanding of
human beings as the shapers both of their own lives and of the society in which
we live. In essence, this approach is simply a recognition of what good readers
already do as they read. The internal dialogue in which independent readers
engage is not always obvious, yet it is nonetheless generally present. If
students succeed at learning to read, they will eventually arrive at this
interactive level, even when left to their own devices. However, if school
presents a limited, repetitive view of the reading process, students may get a
distorted idea of what reading is all about. This lack of engagement with
reading can itself become the cause of reading failure.
As explored by Paulo Freire (1970), traditional schooling is too often a process
of domestication; as such, it seeks to preserve the status quo and prevailing
social conditions. Transformative education, on the other hand, aims to
support the full development of human beings, the values of compassion and
generosity towards self and others, and the commitment towards creating a
peaceful, just, and equitable society. When reading is explored within this
context, it becomes much more alive and exciting.
Creative Dialogue is one of the fullest expressions of Transformative Education.
When we are engaged in Creative Dialogue, we are right in the midst of
exploring meaning, learning about self and others, brainstorming of alternative
possibilities, and reflecting deeply on what learning means for our own lives.
The tradition of learning through conversation is an ancient one, going back to
Socrates and Plato. Unfortunately, when written texts are introduced into the
learning process, they are sometimes used as a way to replace or silence
dialogue; instead, they serve best as a catalyst for a deeper and richer
conversation.
In the description that follows, Creative Dialogue is seen as having four phases.
Yet these four phases should not be seen as taking place in a strictly linear
56
progression, or as being completely distinct in real life. In an independent
reader, the four phases tend to happen almost concurrently. We present each
phase here separately to help teachers become more aware of the nature and
the importance of each one. We also want to call attention to those phases
that have tended to be the most neglected. Conventional education often
makes the mistake of postponing the last two stages until students are older. In
our view, this is both unnecessary and damaging. We hope that as you engage
in dialogue with your students, you will continuously explore how to create a
balance among all four.
Descriptive Phase. In this initial phase, the reader explores the information
that is in the text. The challenge for the teacher in this phase is learning how
to ask descriptive questions that ask students to reflect about the text. This is
different than asking simple recall questions. While both reflective and recall
questions are focused on the content of the text, there are significant
differences between the two.
Recall questions often take the form of: What happened? Who did it? Where did
something take place? These are the most common kinds of questions that are
asked to measure comprehension. And unfortunately, they are often the only
kinds of questions that are being asked of beginning readers. Their main
purpose is to let the teacher know whether or not the students have
understood the information by asking them to recall it and repeat the
information back to the teacher. These questions are not designed to promote
conversation.
Recall questions are not real questions, since the answers can be found in the
text and are already known by the teacher. As a result, they quite rightly lead
the students to doubt the $whole purpose of the dialogue. If students are
smart, and all students are smart, they will be thinking: “Didn’t we just read
this? Why are you asking me this? Don’t you know this already? Do you think I’m
stupid?” And worst of all, “Boring….”
There are more effective ways to assess readers’ understanding of the text,
without resorting to recall questions. Reflective questions invite readers to
think about the story, and to give evidence from the story to support their
position. The simplest kind of reflective question is to ask students what they
liked or didn’t like about a story. Yet there are more complex questions we can
ask.
For example, we might ask students what they see as the central problem in
the story. This is a real question, as different readers might have different
perceptions or ways of describing a central conflict. Alternatively, we might
ask students to describe the personality of a certain character. Or we could ask
57
them to make an inference about why a character feels a certain way or
chooses to act in a certain manner. In all these cases, students are invited to
present evidence from the text in support of their opinion.
In stories where a character undergoes a change or a transformation, we might
ask students what they think were the most important ingredients in that
transformation, to describe what the life of the character was like before the
changes, or to imagine how the character feels afterward in their new role. In
all cases, descriptive questions that are reflective, are both real and openended. They are real questions, in that the answer is not already known
beforehand; and they are open-ended, in that there are a variety of possible
answers. And their focus is descriptive, in that they ask students to explore the
characters, motivations, themes, and purposes present in the story.







What do like or not like about the story?
How would you describe _____? (one of the main characters in the story)
Why do you think that ______ (main character) made that decision?
What do you think is the major difficulty that _____ (main character)
faces? Why is that so hard for him or her?
Why do you think that ______ (main character) changed during the
course of the story?
What do you think that this story is about, and why?
What do you see as the moral or teaching of this story?
Personal Interpretive Phase. Even very young readers have an accumulated
wealth of experience as well as the capacity to respond to new information
with their own ideas and feelings. It is extremely important that conversations
about a story include opportunities for readers to relate the information in the
story to their own experiences, thoughts, and feelings. This helps connect the
reading process to readers’ own lives, thus making it personally meaningful. It
helps build readers’ self-esteem by allowing more of themselves to be seen and
valued by the teacher and by their classmates. Relating the reading to one’s
personal experiences also helps readers understand that learning is a process of
creating relationships with the information one is acquiring.
Although much has been said in the field of bilingual education about the need
for affective instruction that recognizes the emotional needs of readers who
speak another language, in practice the affective component is often
considered peripheral to the learning process. Transformative Education, on
the other hand, emphasizes the recognition of each child’s individuality as an
integral part of learning. Clearly, the process of making room to honor readers’
own experiences is intertwined with honoring readers’ families and
communities. When we recognize that readers’ identities are intimately linked
to their families and communities, we see that cultural validation is not
something we can “add on” as an afterthought. Instead, it is at the very core of
58
a child-centered approach that seeks to build upon what readers bring to the
classroom.
Often readers may be silent and withdrawn in the classroom, and it may be
difficult to engage them. In many cases, this is because readers are worried
about things that are happening in their own lives outside of school. When the
teacher invites students to relate the reading to their own feelings and
experiences, this often creates an opportunity for students to give voice to the
concerns that preoccupy them, and for the teacher to learn about the daily
lives of their students.
Questions appropriate for this second phase might look like any of the
following:





Do you know of (have you seen, felt, or experienced) something like this
in your own life?
Have you ever seen (done, felt, thought, wanted) something similar?
How is what you saw (did, felt, thought, wanted) different from what
happened in the story?
What would you have done (said, thought) if you were in that person’s
place?
How might someone in your family responded?
Critical/ Multicultural Phase. Once readers have compared and contrasted the
story with their own personal experiences, they are ready to move on to the
level of critical analysis. At this level, we are returning our attention to what
happens in the story, but now we seek to analyze more deeply, to explore
alternatives, and to make judgments based on our own values.
The level at which we can conduct our analysis will of course be determined by
the readers’ level of maturity and by their previous exposure to critical
thinking. Yet we need to be careful to not underestimate readers’ abilities
simply due to their age. On the contrary, readers benefit from being
introduced to critical thinking at a very young age. Of course, for readers to be
able to think critically about a subject, it is important that the content of the
conversation be within the range of readers’ experience. This is another reason
why readers’ books can be an excellent tool for promoting dialogue.
The kinds of questions we can ask readers about the choices made by
characters in a story include:




Why do you think this decision is or is not fair?
Why do you think this was or was not a good decision?
Why would this be a fair decision in all circumstances?
In what circumstances might it not be a fair decision?
59




Who benefits by this decision, and how do they benefit?
What do you think will be the results of this decision?
What alternatives do you see to this decision?
What might have been the consequences if the character had chosen an
alternative course of action?
Creative/ Transformative Phase. It is of utmost importance that we, as
educators, recognize readers’ extraordinary intellectual capacity. (And, in
order to do so, it is crucial that educators reclaim a sense of their own
intelligence.) Yet the ultimate goal of Creative Dialogue is not simply to
awaken readers’ critical awareness as an intellectual exercise. Instead, our
goal is to develop readers’ critical awareness so that they are able to make
decisions that will enrich their own lives and improve the world around them.
Once the readers have explored the story, compared and contrasted it with
their own feelings and experiences, and engaged in critical analysis, they are in
a position to explore the next stage of making decisions. In this final phase, the
purpose of the dialogue is to help readers think about the aspects of their lives
that they can improve, and to encourage them to make decisions with that
purpose in mind. Readers from pre-school on up are perfectly capable of
looking at their reality and asking themselves: what would I want to change?
What could be better? How can I improve it? In the early grades, these initial
queries might give rise to concrete questions such as: How can I make new
friends? How can I tell my friends I don’t want to be teased? How can I get
them to respect my things? What can I do to make up after we have a fight?
What can I do that will make me happier? What can I do that will help me learn
more?
We do not want readers to take responsibility for adult problems. We do want
them to begin to experience their own ability to make choices, to influence
their own lives, their relationships with others, and the world around them.
The kinds of questions we can ask them or invite them to do might look like the
following:





What kinds of problems in your own life do you want to solve, like
______ (main character) in the story?
What can you do to make your dreams and wishes come true, like
______ (main character) did in the story?
In what ways do you want to cooperate with others, just like _______
(main characters) worked together to reach their goals?
What kind of help from others do you want to ask for in your own life,
like ________ ( main character) asked for help?
What do you want to do in your own life when you have feelings like
________ (main character) did?
60

In what ways can you help others, the way that _______( main
character) helped others in the story?

By Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy. Taken from Comprehensive
Language Arts, Del Sol Publishing, 1998
Helping Struggling Readers
Before we leave the topic of teaching reading comprehension, we should
note that some students will need special help to profit from these activities.
“Struggling readers” deserve special consideration. Both skilled and struggling
readers use the same processes to read with comprehension that we have
described above. But struggling readers may need more support to make sure
they use all of these strategies and orchestrate them into fluent reading with
comprehension. Kameenui (1998) recommends that teachers of struggling
readers employ these steps:
1. Make strategies explicit. Through modeling, through “think-alouds” and
through regular reminding, show the students how to carry out each of the
comprehension we have described in the previous sections.
2. Supply scaffolding. Scaffolding is temporary support for students as they
learn to do a task or apply a skill. Scaffolding may be used temporarily, and
be withdrawn when students can function independently. An example of
scaffolding is a story map, in which students are asked to identify the
character, setting, problem, and solution in a story they are reading.
3. Connect ideas. Remind students of ideas they find in a text that they have
seen on a field trip, or in a lesson in another subject. Struggling readers
may be so preoccupied in the act of making sense of what they read that
they do not think about the larger ideas. They need the teacher to point out
to them the relatedness of ideas.
4. Provide background knowledge. Struggling readers may not have the
background knowledge they need in order to make sense of what they read.
A story about an early twentieth century immigrant’s journey from Europe
to America will make little sense to a student who doesn’t realize that
America is a continent that lies thousands of miles across the ocean from
Europe. Or that up until a few years ago, travel to America was so difficult
and expensive that people who made the trip here could not come back.
5. Review skills and ideas often. Struggling readers need to be reminded of
both the skills they have learned and the ideas they have gained. They need
to be reminded of both, and they need to apply the tasks and ideas in new
settings.
61
Promoting Literacy through
Public Performance
The premise of this section is that in order to make reading and writing
attractive to people in the community, we must show them to people in a good
light. All of the activities described up to this point in this guidebook will make
students better readers. But they still need to want to read in the first place.
The activities that are described below are intended to “showcase” acts of
literacy, and spread the appeal of reading and writing.
Choral Reading and Reciting
Much poetry is anchored in sound and is intended to be read or recited
aloud. This section shares suggestions for making an event out of oral reading
and reciting. Choral reading and reciting--the reading and reciting of poems by
a chorus or “voice choir”--can be great fun, and also serious business, as
students explore the dramatic possibilities of poems and of their own voices.
Whole Chorus Presentations. The trick to having a whole chorus of students
recite is to keep all the voices animated, not sing-songy. Students learn to
focus on their sound if they are challenged to make a poem sound a certain
way.
Suppose you ask students to recite the traditional poem “The Grand Old
Duke of York”:
The Grand Old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men.
He always marched them up the hill
Then he marched them down again.
And when they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down.
And when they were only halfway up
They were neither up nor down.
To focus their attention on the sound they want to make, tell students the
poem is about a group of soldiers marching along. Ask them, “Are the soldiers
wounded and weary, or are they marching snappily in an Independence Day?
Which? OK, then how should they sound? Do they sound one way as they are
marching proudly to battle and another way when they’re dragging themselves
painfully home again?”
62
Poems in Dialogue. Many poems can be effectively divided between two
voices. When students recite A. A. Milne’s poem “Happiness” in two voices-one child taking every other line--they can bring out the plodding, two-step
gait of a small child in big boots and a raincoat:
John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Macintosh-And that
(Said John)
Is
That.
The trick with more than one voice is to keep the poem moving on the beat.
Pairs of students can take parts and practice a poem until they can recite it
smoothly. You might need to clap out the beat for them the first time through.
(You might also have to tell students that in England a raincoat is called a
“mackintosh.”)
Poems in dialogue can achieve a dramatic effect. Harold Munro’s
“Overheard in a Salt Marsh” is written for two voices. The performers will need
to answer some questions about it: Where is this taking place? Who are the
characters and what are they like? How does each one feel? How does each
one’s voice sound? When does one speak quickly? When slowly and musically?
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?
Give them me.
No.
Give them me. Give them me.
No.
Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.
Goblin, why do you love them so?
They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of wind that sing,
Better than any man’s fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.
63
Hush, I stole them out of the moon.
Give me your beads, I desire them.
No.
I will howl in a deep lagoon
For your green glass beads. I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
No.
Poems as Rounds. As children, many of us sang rounds such as “Row, Row, Row
Your Boat.” Some poems work very well as rounds when they are recited--not
sung--by small groups repeating the same verse and starting at staggered
intervals.
The traditional poem “Can You Dig That Crazy Music?” can be recited by
two or three groups. If you want to use three groups, start by having all the
students say the verse through as a single group. Then have Group A read the
first line alone. As Group A begins the second line, Group B begins the first.
When Group A starts in on the third line, Group C begins the first and Group B
begins the second. The third time through, Group A gets to the last line and
keeps repeating it until Group B and then Group C reach and recite that line-then the poem is over. The results are amazing! Here is the poem with the
accented syllables marked:
/
/ /
Can you dig that crazy music?
/
/
/
/
Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Can you dig it?
/
/ /
Can you dig that crazy music?
/
/
/
/
Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Can you dig it?
/
/
/
/
Oh, look. There’s a chicken on a barbed wire fence.
/
/
/
/
Now, now. There’s another one, coming down the road.
/
/
/
/
Ma-ma, ma-ma,
/
/
/
/
Get that son-of-a-gun off my porch!
64
Poems with power. Poems that are performed are not always light or amusing.
Langston Hughes’ poem “Today” was penned in the 1950’s, when the
frustration and anger of urban poor was nearing its flashpoint:
“Today,” by Langston Hughes
This is earthquake weather.
Honor and
Hunger
Walk lean
Together.
A voice choir, divided into two groups, might perform the poem this way:
[All SHOUT this line]
This is earthquake weather.
[First group, decresendo] Honor and
[Second group, decresendo]
Hunger
[First group start high,
Walk lean
swoop low;
Second group start low,
Swoop high]
[All, loud whisper,
Together
drawn out]
Here are several poems by Roma poets that lend themselves to performance.
Django
By Sandra Jayat (France)
Django
Who would you be
If you were not Django?
Like us
You are a true Gypsy—
But you are the greatest
Django
Your guitar strums in our heads
Your music gives us hope
Of living n freedom
And grants us the right of the city
Django
When you wander along the roads
65
Bronze-skinned as a summer night
The river stirs
Turns to velvet
And dreams of swallowing
The stream that runs at your feet.
Birds on the twigs
Pick out
Your next blues
Django
Like us
You have no king
No set of rules
But you have a mistress:
Music
Django
When jasmine blossoms in the air
Of the manor of your dreams
You hasten to your caravan
Django
The Gypsy star
Came looking for you
Followed by an angel
Carrying your guitar
To make a cloud of music
Around Sarah
Django
Music is raining blood
Upon the earth.
Thousands of reeds
Repeat your name:
Django
Translated from French by Ruth Partigan.
Son of the Invisible People
Alexian Santino Spinelli (Italy). Translated by Sinéad ni Shiunéar
father
66
drops of milk red with blood
gush from the distant breast
they sour the palate, revolt the appetite
father
white snow, cold frost
descends from a violent sky
covering black skin with heat
father
the horse, the wounded horse
gallops gaining no winning-posts
its foaming sweat transformed to sour milk
father
putrefying feet warming in the mud
battering rains like wild nettles
scourge the twisted back
father
in the frozen night all the earth trembles
the shrieking throat of the dusty violin
echoes in the distance
father
sleepless wind tugs at the hair
hate-blackened moon blinds
father
the hoarse song of the plucked birds
on desiccated olive twigs
torments eternal rest
father
the sun, the sun red with fire
is a blazing ball
it dries the smile wet with tears
father
Romani song is repeating lamentation
it comes forward, labours and dances
sweet prolonged pain
father
lightning like fiery knives
comes down ruthlessly
67
rending the famished belly
father
the salt sea drowns, wise poverty
flounders, eyes of wood are transfixed
by images of cities already dead
father
rivers of sobbing tears
sweep away arcane melodies
storms wash over our fraught nakedness
father
infinite darkness bears light and justice
in equal measure
mute silence speaks of perpetual love
father
grant me a glance of one who does not want to see
that it may fade forever, completely dissolved,
enfolded with the invisible people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poetry Slams
For older would-be poets, poetry slams have introduced a competitive
element into writing poems and performing them for an audience. The
boisterous attitude of the performances and the lively responses of the
audience have helped bring poetry to the masses. The following information is
taken from Poetry Slam Incorporated. For more information, see their web
page at http://www.PoetrySlam.Com.
· What is a poetry slam?
Simply put, poetry slam is the competitive art of performance poetry. It puts a
dual emphasis on writing and performance, encouraging poets to focus on what
they're saying and how they're saying it. A poetry slam is an event in which
poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience.
Typically, the host or another organizer select the judges, who are instructed
to give numerical scores (on a zero to 10 or one to 10 scale) based on the poet's
content and performance.
68
· Who gets to participate?
The vast majority of slam series registered by Poetry Slam, Inc. are open to
everyone who wishes to sign up and can get into the venue. Though everyone
who signs up has the opportunity to read in the first round, the lineup for
subsequent rounds is determined by the judges' scores. In other words, the
judges vote for which poets they want to see more work from.
· What are the rules?
Though rules vary from slam to slam, the basic rules are:

Each poem must be of the poet's own construction;

Each poet gets three minutes (plus a ten-second grace period) to read
one poem, if the poet goes over, points will be deducted from the total
score;

The poet may not use props, costumes, or musical instruments;
Of the scores the poet received from the five judges, the high and low scores
are dropped, and the middle three are added together, giving the poet a total
score of 0-30.
· Are the rules the same from slam to slam?
Some slams have slight variations on the rules that Poetry Slam, Inc. has
developed, but most adhere to these basic guidelines. The key rule in slam is
that judges are selected from the audience, and those scores are used to
determine who advances.
· Who organizes slams?
Slams are typically organized by poets interested in cultivating poetry in their
communities. The vast majority work on a volunteer basis, and the price of
admission typically goes toward either keeping the show running or toward
special projects, like funding a slam team's trip to the annual National Poetry
Slam.
· How often do they happen?
It depends on the community, but typically, slams happen on a weekly, bimonthly, or monthly basis.
69
· How does it differ from an open mike reading?
Slam is engineered for the audience, whereas a number of open mike readings
are engineered as a support network for poets. Slam is designed for the
audience to react vocally and openly to all aspects of the show, including the
poet's performance, the judges' scores, and the host's banter.
· What can the audience do?
The official MC spiel of Poetry Slam, Inc. encourages the audience to respond
to the poets or the judges in any way they see fit, and most slams have
adopted that guideline. Audiences can boo or cheer at the conclusion of a
poem, or even during a poem.
At the Uptown Slam at Chicago's Green Mill Tavern, where poetry slam was
born, the audience is instructed on an established progression of reactions if
they don't like a poet, including finger snapping, foot stomping, and various
verbal exhortations. If the audience expresses a certain level of dissatisfaction
with the poet, the poet leaves the stage, even if he or she hasn't finished the
performance. Though not every slam is as exacting in its procedure for getting
a poet off the stage, the vast majority of slams give their audience the
freedom and the permission to express itself.
· What kind of poetry is read at slams?
Depends on the venue, depends on the poets, depends on the slam. One of the
best things about poetry slam is the range of poets it attracts. You'll find a
diverse range of work within slam, including heartfelt love poetry, searing
social commentary, uproarious comic routines, and bittersweet personal
confessional pieces. Poets are free to do work in any style on any subject.
· How do I win a poetry slam?
Winning a poetry slam requires some measure of skill and a huge dose of luck.
The judges' tastes, the audience's reactions, and the poets' performances all
shape a slam event, and what wins one week might not get a poet into the
second round the next week. There's no formula for winning a slam, although
you become a stronger poet and performer the same way you get to Carnegie
Hall — practice, practice, practice.
70
· How did poetry slam start?
In 1984, construction worker and poet Marc Smith started a poetry reading at a
Chicago jazz club, the Get Me High lounge, looking for a way to breathe life
into the open mike format. The series, and its emphasis on performance, laid
the groundwork for the brand of poetry that would eventually be exhibited in
slam.
In 1986, Smith approached Dave Jemilo, the owner of the Green Mill (a Chicago
jazz club and former haunt of Al Capone), with a plan to host a weekly poetry
competition on Sunday nights. Jemilo welcomed him, and the Uptown Poetry
Slam was born on July 25 of that year. Smith drew on baseball and bridge
terminology for the name, and instituted the basic features of the competition,
including judges chosen from the audience and cash prizes for the winner. The
Green Mill evolved into a Mecca for performance poets, and the Uptown Poetry
Slam continues to run every Sunday night.
· What if there's no slam in my city and I want to start one?
We recommend taking a field trip to a couple of different slams in your region,
and getting a feel for putting the rules in action. Once you have a venue lined
up, you'll need a host and a scorekeeper, and in many venues, you'll need your
own door person. Some slams divide those essential tasks among as few as two
people.
Once you've got your slam series rolling, you can register your slam with Poetry
Slam, Inc., and be included on this very Web site. To be certified, and thus
eligible to send a team to the National Poetry Slam, you must meet certain
criteria, including having a slam open to all, having run at least six slams during
the course of a year, and having an average audience of at least 30 people.
· What is the National Poetry Slam?
The National Poetry Slam is the annual slam championship tournament,
wherein three to five-person teams from all over North America and Europe
gather to compete against each other for the national title. It has become part
Super Bowl, part poetry summer camp, and part traveling exhibition. Staged in
a different city each year, the National Poetry Slam has emerged as slam's
highest-profile showcase.
71
· Does slam have a motto?
Former Asheville, N.C. slammaster Allan Wolf coined the phrase, "The points
are not the point; the point is poetry" prior to the 1994 National Poetry Slam in
Asheville. The phrase has become a mantra of sorts, reminding poets and
organizers that the goal of slam is to grow poetry's audience.
New York City poet Taylor Mali, a member of multiple championship teams, has
modified the motto to read, "The points are not the point; the point is to get
more points than anyone else," but we're pretty sure he's got his tongue
planted firmly in cheek when he says that.
· What is the difference between slam poetry and poetry?
That's not the right question to ask. There is no such thing as "slam poetry"
even though the term "slam poet" seems to have gained acceptance. Those who
use the term "slam poetry" are probably thinking more of hip-hop poetry or
loud, in-your-face, vaguely poetic rants. The more useful question to ask is
"What is the difference between spoken word and poetry?" Spoken word is
poetry written first and foremost to be HEARD. At any given slam, much of the
work presented could be called spoken word.
72
Inviting Students to Write Poetry
Here’s a paradox: Surveys show that children prefer to listen to and read
rhymed and rhythmic poetry, yet they have great difficulty writing rhymed and
rhythmic poems, at least ones that make good sense. When teachers help
students to write poems, they often share techniques that will lead the
students to write unrhymed poems. Not only is this the most likely way of
ensuring successful poetry-writing sessions, it also broadens students’
appreciation for modern poetry, since most poets these days--particularly those
writing for adults--do not write rhyming poems. The following are suggestions
for writing poems that are expressive but that do not rhyme.
Making Metaphors. Ask students to think of a person they believe has some
particular quality--say, a lively personality. (Have them hold off writing the
person’s name.) They should write the answer to each of these questions on a
line by itself:
▪ If this person were a stage of a fire, what stage (a tiny spark, roaring
flames, glowing embers)?
▪ If this person were a season of the year, what season?
▪ If this person were weather, what sort of weather?
▪ If this person were a bird, what kind of bird?
▪ If this person were landscape, what landscape?
▪ If this person were music, what kind of music?
▪ If this person were footwear, what kind of footwear?
▪ If this person were a car, what kind of car?
▪ If this person were a time of day, what time of day?
On the line below their last answer, have the students write the person’s
name. Now they tinker with these lines--move them around, add or take away
words, letting the poem speak for itself in the best way it can.
List Poems. Throughout the ages, many fine poems have been developed
around lists. Take this medieval prayer, for example:
From Ghoulies
And Ghosties
And long-legged Beasties
And Things that go bump in the night:
Good Lord, deliver us.
You can use the idea of listing by asking students to list all of the things they
know that are dark or lonely or round or scary. The effect is heightened when
they include both concrete and abstract things in their lists. For example, all of
these are round:
▪ Ripples in a pond when a pebble is thrown in
▪ A policeman’s beat
▪ The moon’s halo
▪ Subway tokens
▪ Surprised eyes
▪ A ghost’s mouth
73
▪ The world
▪ Life
It is best if students free-write the lists first, then arrange them for best
effect.
Incantations. From oldest times, the power of poetry has been used to summon
energy and spirit and marshal concentration to a particular end. (Some call this
magic.) In the eighth century, Saint Patrick of Ireland wrote a prayer that is
part enchantment (Kennelly, 1981):
St. Patrick’s Rune
I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even;
The flashing of the lightning free,
The howling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
And all the old eternal rocks.
Ask students to write an incantation to make someone brave, tough,
fast, lucky, or smart. Here is a format they can follow:
May the ______ of the ______ ,
The ______ of the ______ ,
The ______ of the ______ , and
The ______ of the ______
Be with me this day.
The Cinquain. A cinquain is a five-line poem tightly focused on one topic.
Writing cinquains is a way for students to explore a character in a story they
are reading. Here’s an example, based on the hero of “Jack and the
Beanstalk”:
Jack
young, wily
believing, climbing, winning
brave, or just reckless?
Giant-killer
Cinquains are written according to this formula:
1.
The first line names the subject in one word.
2.
The second line gives two words describing the subject.
3.
The third gives three action words related to the subject and
ending
in -ing.
4.
The fourth line has four words, which can be a four-word phrase
related to the subject.
5.
The fifth line is one word, a synonym for the subject.
74
In spite of the use of a formula, the results can be striking.
The Diamante. Diamantes are a variation on the cinquain form. Whereas a
cinquain describes a character as she or he is now, a diamante describes how a
character (or some other aspect of a story) changes over time. Let’s look at the
character “Jack” again:
Boy
young, simpleton
loafing, goofing, grinning
naive child/plucky hero
“Fetch the axe!”
proven man
Jack
The first half of a diamante relates to the character in the beginning of the
story. Then, midway through the poem, the descriptions change and relate to
the character at the end of the story. The pattern of a diamante is as follows:
1.
The first line is a one-word name for the character as he or she
was
in the beginning of the story.
2.
The second line gives two words describing the character in the
beginning.
3.
The third line is three action words (-ing words) describing the
character in the beginning.
4.
In the fourth line, the first two words describe the character in
the beginning. Then there is a slash, followed by two words that
describe the character at the end of the story.
5.
The fifth line has three action words related to the character at
the end of the story.
6.
The sixth line has two words that describe the character at the
end of the story.
7.
The seventh line is a one-word name for the character at the end
of the story.
Of course, there are many more ways to have students to write poems, but
space won’t permit us to describe them here.
75
Teaching the Process of Composing
Students need daily experiences with composition. Like learning to speak
a first or second language, learning to write is a gradual developmental
process. Just as we are thrilled with a baby’s first attempts at speech, we
should be delighted by a student’s first attempts to write.
For beginning students, composition may consist of dictating and/or writing in
a native language. Students may progress to labeling pictures and writing
important words, such as family names. Gradually, given encouragement and
ample opportunity to write, students begin to write longer pieces about topics
that are familiar and important to them.
Begin by creating a climate that promotes writing. A writing classroom is a
place where:
Students’ writing is valued. Teachers are genuinely interested in
what students have to say and encourage this interest among students.
Students’ attempts to write and to progress in writing are celebrated,
and mistakes are seen as a natural part of the development process.
Select a place of honor — an author’s chair or stool — where students
can sit when they share their writing with the class. You may sit in this
same chair when you represent the author in read-aloud activities.

 Students
write frequently for an authentic audience. Their writing is
meaningful, purposeful, and about topics they choose. Not only
teachers, but peers, parents, and persons in the school and greater
community provide an audience for student writing.
 The
environment is language-and literature-rich. Students are
surrounded with examples of good writing by both published authors and
peers. Students are read to daily, and books, authors, and writing are
hot topics for discussion.
The environment is print-rich. The physical environment offers
many reasons and opportunities to read and write. The room has
interesting charts, books, labeled posters, and written instructions or
rebus signs and symbols at a learning center. Much of the writing posted
around the room is the students’ own work. Students have many
occasions to write. Beginning students might sign their names on an
attendance sheet in the morning and write or copy their own notes to
parents to give them important information about school events.
Intermediate and advanced students might write messages to teachers
and peers, letters to request information on a topic they are studying,
records of their favorite sports teams, essays for job or school
applications, letters to pen pals and family members, or journal entries
about literature and content areas.

76
 Students
write in many modes. Students write lists; informative pieces;
personal narratives; descriptions of persons, scenes, or events;
directions; reports; notes; outlines; letters; poems; jokes; etc. Your
students are very different from one another; a wide range of writing
activities will help you address each student’s learning style.
The Writing Process
Six steps in the writing process are described here: prewriting, drafting,
sharing or conferring, revising, editing, and publishing. Not all steps are used
with all types of writing; neither are all used with every piece a student writes.
Certain stages may be changed or omitted depending on the student’s age and
proficiency at writing. For example, young children or inexperienced writers
are not expected to use revision extensively and often publish “first drafts.”
Experienced writers, on the other hand, often do not need elaborately
structured prewriting experiences but can prepare to write privately.
Step 1. Prewriting
Prewriting experiences help students to develop the need and desire to write
and to acquire information or content for writing, as well as necessary
vocabulary, syntax, and language structures. To help students get ready to
write, provide:
a. Talking and listening time, including language experience activities.
b. Shared experiences such as trips, plays, interviews, cooking demonstrations,
or films.
c. Wide exposure to literature appropriate to the students’ age and language
proficiency. For younger students, include predictable books and wordless
books.
d. Drama activities, including role-playing, mime, and storytelling.
e. Opportunities to study, discuss, and map story patterns and plots
f. Semantic mapping to elicit vocabulary and organize ideas.
g. Opportunities for students to prepare for writing by exploring what they
know — their own personal experiences or subjects they have studied in depth.
h. “Freewriting” — having students write anything that comes to them, without
stopping, for a short period of time.
i. “Sunshine Outline” — this graphic technique for outlining helps students
generate information to prepare for writing by asking the basic news-writer
77
questions. The students draw rays coming from a sun and write a question word
on each ray: who, what, when, where, why, how. Then the students write a
phrase or two that answers each question and use this outline to write their
pieces.
Step 2. Drafting
When drafting, students write quickly to get ideas down, working for fluency
without worrying much about mechanics. They are encouraged to think of
writing as mutable, not as “done” once it is put to paper. Students are
encouraged to spell based on the sound of letters and words that they know.
Remember to:
a. Write along with the students. Model being a writer and produce your own
pieces to share with students.
b. Encourage students to “spell as best they can,” using their knowledge of the
alphabet, phonics, familiar words, and information around the classroom. Your
students may be a little frustrated with this at first, but if you persist in not
providing too much help, they will become more confident writers. They may
use dictionaries, thesauruses, and the spell-check feature on the computer to
edit and revise at later stages in the writing.
c. Provide writing experiences daily. Journals or learning logs may be helpful.
d. Encourage students to refer back to maps, webs, jot lists, outlines they have
made during prewriting.
Step 3 - Sharing and Responding to Writing
In this step, students share their writing in small groups, large groups, or
individually with the teacher. Teacher and students give one another
encouragement and feedback or input in preparation for revision. Suggested
activities follow.
a. To model and teach the conferencing process, share and discuss an
anonymous piece of writing (written by you or by a student from another class
or year). An overhead projector is very helpful in this activity. Model how one
gives encouraging and specific responses in writing.
b. Use peer conference groups and train students to use “PQP” in their
responses to others’ writing—Positive feedback, Questions to clarify meaning,
and suggestions
to Polish writing.
c. Have students read their writing aloud in regular individual or small group
conferences. Reading aloud helps students evaluate their own writing in a
situation where they can get suggestions from others. Begin peer conferences
78
by demonstrating appropriate skills as in (a) above. Motivate students through
your regard and respect for their writing. Begin with pair groups and short,
structured times (e.g., five minutes), during which each partner finds
something he/she likes about the other’s piece.
d. Respond to students’ writing in interactive journals.
Step 4. Revising Writing
In this step, students revise selected pieces of writing for quality of content
and clarity of expression. Not all pieces are revised, only those in which the
student h as a particular interest and for which the student has a particular
audience in mind. Revision activities include:
a. Demonstrating revision techniques such as using editorial symbols on the
overhead or physically cutting and pasting a chart-sized paper or transparency
to rearrange text.
b. Using a word processor to make revisions.
c. “Mini-lessons” — demonstrations/discussions of qualities of good writing
(e.g., clarity, voice, sense of audience, appropriate sequencing, word choice,
lead, ending, transitions) in preparation for revision. Focus on one skill per
writing project; as students accumulate skills, they can revise for these aspects
in their writing.
d. Students applying revision guidelines and suggestions to their own work.
When appropriate, encourage students to share (Step 3) and revise (Step 4)
several times until they are satisfied with the content of their work.
Step 5. Editing
In this step, students, with the help of peers and teachers, fix up mechanics of
usage and spelling. Editing standards are different for students of different
ages and at different stages in their writing. This step is only carried out when
there is a purpose and an authentic audience for the writing, i.e., a piece is
going to be published.
Editing activities may include:
a. Making a chart for classroom walls or folders that list editing skills that have
been taught and that students may use as a checklist when they edit.
b. Creating an editing center with resources: editing chart, dictionary,
thesaurus, grammar reference, computer with spell check. Alternatively,
students could keep a chart of editing skills they have acquired.
c. Conducting editing mini-lessons and conferences with individuals, small
groups, and full groups. You might require an editing conference before a
student’s final draft.
79
d. Helping students make personal spelling, translation, or picture dictionaries
for their use in checking spelling or usage.
e. Peer edit exchanges or conferences.
Step 6. Publishing
Through publication, the writing is presented to the public and celebrated.
Although new language learners’ writing is often published in draft form,
writing of older and/or more proficient writers will be revised and edited
before publication. Middle and high school students probably need some
protection from adverse audience response — perhaps an editing conference
with you before work is prepared for presentation to outsiders. Publishing gives
students an authentic reason to write. Publish students’ writing often. Parents
might be willing to help you with the mechanics of bookbinding.
This is a way for parents who may lack confidence in English to help the
teacher and contribute to their students’ literacy development. See the boxed
list of suggested ways to publish student writing.
Ways to Publish Student Writing
• Put writing on walls and in halls
• Read writing aloud to the class, to parent meetings, or at assemblies
• Write stories or folk tales to share with younger students
• Make a video of students reading their pieces
• Bind students’ writings into individual books
• Bind contributions from each student into a class book, such as a poetry
anthology, short story collection, or nonfiction collection
• Put cards and pockets in the backs of student or class-made books for checkout from the class library
• Make a class newspaper or literary magazine
• Put student-made posters, book jackets, charts, etc. on the wall
• Mail letters
• Print a useful book to sell or give away in the community, such as an ethnic
restaurant
guide, a multicultural cookbook, or a local history
Source: Adapted from “Promoting Literacy by Any Means Necessary,” ESCORT,
the Eastern Stream Center on Resources and Training, State University of New
York at Oneonta, USA [http://www.escort.org].
80
Writing Culturally Relevant Books
for Young People
In many countries, the culture of minority groups, and feminine gender
in general, range from underrepresented to virtually absent from the portraits
that hang in hallways and the books found in the library and the classroom. A
book-writing project is a worth while activity to balance the representation of
cultural groups, so that all children and young people will feel that the school
is their place, too. Books have the capacity to present windows into other
cultures, and mirrors of ourselves to members of the same cultural group.
Below are some suggestions for writing culturally rich books for young
people.
Guidelines
1. Represent cultures with a mixture of culturally unique and universal
features.
2. Consider putting the main emphasis in the book on a problem or an issue
that is not directly related to ethnicity, or else construct the problem so
that all readers can relate to it.
3. Construct the characters like real, believable people, rather than
cultural caricatures.
4. Give some thought to the ways a culture should be represented: do
Roma characters live in wagons and play violins around campfires, or do
they live in urban apartment buildings?
Pattern Books. Cynthia Rylant wrote a book about growing up in a rural
mountain culture. The book was written around the pattern, “When I was
young in the mountains…”
Gary Soto’s book, Snapshots of the Wedding, showcases a Mexican
American wedding in a series of mock-up photographs, with a narrative
supplied by a fictional nine-year-old.
Metaphors. Ntozake Shange’s White Wash addresses the issue of racism
directly. It is a picture book account of a young girl who was captured by a
gang of white boys who painted her face white. The story deals realistically
with the trauma and shame, and the child’s slow recovery from the event, with
the help of her community of friends.
Jacqueline Woodson’s The Fence presents a microcosm of race relations
through the metaphor of white children and black children whose farms are
separated by a fence. They play next to it, and they sit upon it, but they do
not cross it: “Not yet. Maybe some day, but not yet.”
81
“Slices of Life.” Gary Soto’s Baseball in April poignantly and sometimes
comically relates a series of portraits of life in a Mexican American barrio: of
two boys playing ball on a losing team with an unreliable coach; of a teenage
girl whose mother fashions her a party dress from a cast off garment dyed
black with shoe polish; of a poor boy who tricks a wealthy couple out of $20,
and hen is so overcome with guilt that he donates the money to the church.
Situations. Woodson’s novel I Never Meant to Tell You This tells of a black
teenager, the daughter of a professional father, who befriends a poor white girl
living in an abusive family situation. The book is striking for its reversal of
expectations.
Walter Dean Meyers’ Monster tells of a Black teenage boy in jail facing trial for
murder for his part in a gang robbery. The story is told through an assortment
of diary entries and other random writings pertaining to the case. The
questions of the boy’s motives, and even of his guilt or innocence, are left
ambiguous and unresolved, inviting the readers to reflect on their own.
82
Building Partnerships
With Publishers
So far in this guidebook, our emphasis has been placed on the work of
teachers or other literacy workers. These people present books in attractive
ways, and teach young people to read them, if necessary, and to discuss them
and respond to them. The teachers or literacy workers may require training by
others, so that they know how to teach reading effectively.
However, in order to have a literacy campaign, it is necessary to have
reading materials in sufficient supply to support readers as their appetite for
reading grows. It is desirable if those materials have something to say, so that
they engage the readers and encourage thinking. Ideally, those materials
should be relevant to students’ experience as members of a cultural group
Many people help bring books into existence. Authors of books are
trained by others in their craft or they train themselves, and if they train
themselves, they are often socialized to their craft through affiliations with
other writes. Authors are recruited by editors, who help authors develop and
refine their works. Finished manuscripts are laid out and type-set by book
designers. Publishers construct a marketing plan, find funds to pay for the
production and marketing of the books, arrange with a printer to print a
certain number of books, pay for storage of the books until they are sold, and
also arrange for selling and distribution of the books. Local book vendors may
sell the books, or they may be sold directly to schools and libraries.
Types of Reading Materials for Young People
Reading materials for young people are published in several forms. Trade
books are books are intended to be sold on the open market. Trade books
come in several varieties. Some notable ones are picture books, that have
texts that range from simple to complex, matched with illustrations that carry
from a little to most of the meaning. Easy readers are written with text that is
simple enough to be read by a beginning reader. The text is usually
accompanied and supported by illustrations. Chapter books are short novels of
less than 100 pages, divided into somewhat self-contained chapters, so that a
young reader may read a chapter and reach some kind of closure. Novels for
young people have an almost infinite variety of formats. Books with all of these
forms are sold in book stores, although they may also be marketed directly to
schools. Traditionally, most books for children and young people were works of
fiction, but in recent years informational books including biographies, have
become more widely available. The more successful informational books are
less encyclopedic and more focused in their presentation. For example, a book
may tell of the eruption of a particular volcano, rather than everything about
volcanoes. Graphic novels, extended versions of comic books, have become
83
prolific in recent years. These books tend to have science fiction or mythic
content. Some of the most popular ones are manga, a form of illustrated books
that originated in Japan. Earlier generations of young people and adults have
seen inexpensive illustrated books that were marketed by the Disney
Corporation and others.
Textbooks for reading are anthologies of stories with accompanying
exercises. Magazines are published in many formats, too. Some are general
focus magazines that combine stories, poems, puzzles, and informational
articles. Others focus on sports or even a particular sport, or history, or
science. Others contain only stories. Newspaper inserts sometimes appear on a
weekly basis in local newspapers. These take advantage of the wide circulation
of newspapers to put reading materials into students’ hands.
Types of Publishing Arrangements
There are many ways to get books into production and out to young readers,
and the choice of the best approach depends on several local factors.
Standard commercial marketing may be the most obvious arrangement for
getting books from writers to readers, but it may also be the most difficult to
arrange. In the United States there is a large and well-established children’s
book industry, with nearly 5,000 new titles of books for young people published
each year, and 50,000 titles in print. Writers sometimes get their works
published by sending them uninvited to publishers for review, but the chances
for success are scant—as low as one in two thousand. Far more works are
brought to editors by writers’ agents (who are often former editors), or are
solicited by editors from already published authors, or republished from works
that have already proved successful overseas.
When a work is accepted for publication, the writer is asked to sign a
contract that grants her or him a share of the profits (called royalties) from the
work—-usually in the neighborhood of 15%. Authors are often sent an advance
payment against the royalties. A print run of 3,000 books for a new title is
considered standard.
Books are usually first issued in hardcover editions, and if the sales are
especially brisk, the book may be reissued in a paperback version after a year
or two. This is often done by a different publisher from the original, who pays
the author another advance against royalty, but at a lower rate. Print runs of
paperback books in some countries may reach 10,000 copies or more.
Commercially marketed books may be sold to libraries, to schools, and—
increasingly—to families, through bookstores that are open to the public. There
is a tension between books that are commercially successful—for example,
books written by rock singers or that have movie tie-ins--but esthetically thin,
and more artistically ambitious books. Fortunately, a thriving group of journals
review children’s books, and awards are given for best books in several
categories—for picture books, for books about different ethnic groups, for
84
books on science fiction topics, and many others. Movements within children’s
literature have sometimes prompted publishers to “do the right thing.” I
In the 1960’s, the Council on Interracial Books for Children persuaded US
publishers to publish more books about children from minority groups, for
instance. But commercial publishers must make a profit, and we cannot count
on the profit motive alone to guarantee the viability of every book that should
be published.
Subsidized publishing. In most parts of the world, the arts and humanities
receive support from government sources and donor agencies—the free
enterprise system doesn’t meet needs in all areas. An example of this is the
Swahili Children’s Book Project in East Africa. In many countries, especially in
Tanzania, there was an acute shortage of books written for children in the
Kiswahili language, which is the language used in primary schools. The CBP
makes arrangements with publishers to edit and publish books in Kiswahili for
children. The project asks the publishers to print 5,000 copies of each title,
and promises to buy 3,000 copies, the number needed for the publisher to
recoup their costs. The CBP distributes the 3,000 purchased copies at no charge
to literacy projects far from commercial centers, leaving the remaining 2,000
copies for the publishers to sell for their own profit. One of the goals of the
project is to encourage publishers to forge ties between writers, the
publishers, booksellers, and readers. The CBP projects that by buying the risk
from the publishers, the publishers will be encouraged to continue to publish
books for children and the booksellers will continue to sell them. However, CBP
staff have suggested that the subsidies will probably need to continue well into
the future.
Funded Publishing. When the need has been compelling and the funds have
been available, we have conducted publishing projects that were almost
entirely supported by donor funds, with little or no reliance on market support.
The Roma Publishing Project in Romania is one example of such an initiative.
With funding provided by the Soros Foundation, the Ethnocultural Diversity
Resources Center recruited from Roma communities potential writers and
illustrators of literacy materials and brought them to workshops to teach them
to write and illustrate books for young people. The writers and illustrators
subjected their works to a competition, and the best works were taken to a
printer for publication, and later used in tutoring projects and distributed to
schools. The printer published extra copies, and marketed them through
bookstores. Because the books featured Roma children, this represented
something of a breakthrough: they were perhaps the only books available in
Romania at the time for young people that featured Roma children. Might this
initiative give publishers the confidence to publish such books on their own, for
a profit? Such an outcome is desirable, but it is too soon to tell if it will
happen.
85
“Community Capital” Projects. The idea of community capital breaks down
the traditional divisions between the social service sector and the business
sector. Businesses have resources that can be invested in community
development projects--not only money, but physical resources such as
photocopy capacity, meeting space, paper, and office supplies. They have
human resources, such as translators, artists, editors, and bookkeepers—and
even tutors and makers of learning materials. And there are good reasons why
businesses should share their resources: businesses will usually be more
profitable in communities where people are educated, law-abiding,
employable, and well-off. Social service agencies thus have something to offer
to businesses, too. Not only are they working to improve their communities,
but they can give the employees of businesses meaningful outlets for their
talents by engaging them in community development projects. They can also
offer a way for businesses to project a positive image.
In community capital projects, then, social service agencies form
partnerships with businesses—often with several businesses at once—who
support a philanthropic activity not only with their treasure, but with their
time. Fundación Leer, a literacy group in Argentina, partners with several
businesses whose members perform direct services, such as translating foreign
texts, reading to children, and preparing learning games. The companies supply
food, space for workshops, and photocopying.
Another literacy project, CEPP, the Centro para Educación y
Participación Popular in Ecuador, partners with a Spanish multinational
textbook publisher who provides financial support including materials for
training workshops, and will soon publish a journal to promoter ideas for
teaching literacy. A university in Quito provides credit for the participants’
training.
Jump Start, an early intervention project that serves at-risk preschool
children, has formed a close partnership with Pearson, a large publishing
house. Pearson published Jump Start’s training manual for their tutors, and
another book for tutors that is sold on the open market, and the proceeds of
which are donated back to the Jump Start project. Employees of Pearson, and
two other corporations—the Starbuck’s coffee chain and American Eagle
Outfitters, a clothing chain, volunteer as tutors at Jump Start sites, and also
conduct activities that raise funds for the project.
Both of these projects receive some grant funding, but the contributions
of the other businesses stretch the resources much further.
86
Pedagogy of Racial Minorities
The Development of Racial Identity
Beverly Tatum is a psychologist who has studied the ways that young people
develop a racial identity. Her focus is Black children in the United States.
Here are the phases of Black identity development, according to Tatum (2003).
Age 3-4: At this age occurs the earliest noticing of racial differences. Children
notice racial differences, and try to explain them with bizarre reasons (a
child says she is dark skinned because she drank chocolate milk, stayed dirty,
or stayed out in the sun too long).
Gradually, children develop a sense of race constancy. They realize that their
race and racial characteristics are not passing things. Parents and teachers
should be careful how they use color words around children of this age: avoid
saying phrases like “white as snow,” “dark-hearted…” Parents start to insulate
children from hurtful images.
Adolescence: At this age the real work of racial identity formation takes place.
Identity formation proceeds through several stages:
 pre-encounter stage—(Age 10? and below). “The personal and social
significance of one’s racial membership has not been realized, and racial
identity is not yet under examination.”
 Encounter stage –(junior high school or older) precipitated by an event
or events that makes on aware of racism, “…the individual begins to
realize what it means to be a member of a group targeted by racism.”
“Birthday party effect.” “The prom thing.” Resisting stereotypes.
(Cognitive dimensions of consciousness).
So, “Why are the black kids sitting together?” “It is the peer
group who holds the answers to these questions.”
John Ogbu wrote that distancing is a response to anger and institutional
devaluing: students may form an oppositional identity (Tatum, pp. 6061). Adolescents are “operating on a very limited understanding of what
it is to be black, based largely on cultural stereotypes” (P. 62).
What about academic achievement?
 Oppositional behavior
 Racelessness
 Being an emissary
But why is academic achievement a white-owned thing? What would it take to
make academic achievement everybody’s property, everybody’s turf?
87
“What curricular innovations might we use to encourage the development of an
empowered emissary identity?” (Tatum, (p. 64).
The need for a genuinely pluralistic curriculum, early on.
“You have to be ready for the table…” That is, it is natural for students from
minority groups to congregate together.
But there can be alternatives to the table.

immersion/emersion stage—There is a “strong desire to surround
oneself with symbols of one’s racial identity, and actively seek out
opportunities to learn about one’s own history and culture with the
support of same-race peers” (p. 76).

internalization stage--, “characterized by security of one’s racial
identity.” “Individual is now anchored in a positive sense of racial
identity and is now prepared to perceive and transcend race.”

internalization-commitment stage—“individual has found ways to
translate a personal sense of racial identity into on-going action
expressing a sense of commitment to the concerns of Blacks as a group.”
==============================================================
Raising the Consciousness of the Majority
[Racism and oppression can entrap the perpetrators as well as the victims. In
the following article, Peggy McIntosh helps members of the dominant group
raise their awareness of their own privileges].
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
By Peggy McIntosh
Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the
curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are
over-privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged.
They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university,
or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's.
Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men
gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from
being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized
that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a
phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking,
there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly
88
denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about
racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught
not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an
advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males
are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored
way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white
privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing
in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege
is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports,
codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's
studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their
power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having
described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged
privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious.
Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white
women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are
just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to
count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been
conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an
unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was
taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her
individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth
Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally
neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to
benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."
Daily effects of white privilege
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily
effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think
in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion,
ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors
are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers,
friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in
this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these
conditions.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the
time.
89
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and
who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing
housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or
pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not
be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see
people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am
shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify
to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white
privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the
only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a
group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race
represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my
cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my
hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not
to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who
might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for
their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate
them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do
not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my
color.
90
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without
having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the
illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on
trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my
race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who
constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for
such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies
and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be
facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be
sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls,
toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling
somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard,
held at a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is
more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize
mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another
race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily
within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at
hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of
color will have.
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority
activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I
can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any
of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers
of people of other races.
91
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be
taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or selfseeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative
episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me
and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional,
without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to
do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race
cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work
against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings
of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the
problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only
to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to
experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more
or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or
hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our
household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of
family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life,
institutional and social.
92
Elusive and fugitive
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down.
For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject.
The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of
meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life
is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no
virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions
of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these
perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely
differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what
one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be
ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of
assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main
piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could
control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to
want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making
social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be
oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main
culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and
oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable,
and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress,
and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of
color.
For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually
think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by
birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work
systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers
dominance because of one's race or sex.
Earned strength, unearned power
I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power
conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to
escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably
damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or
that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just
society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the
humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.
93
We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which
we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected
will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one
belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen
as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since
only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results
from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as
attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned
advantage and conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male
advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others
like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly
distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred
dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to
do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many,
perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism
doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see
"whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only
advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily
experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability,
or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.
Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since
racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated
with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle
aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class,
race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the
oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective
pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.
One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take
both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member
of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did
not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in
individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems
conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to
think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a
"white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not
we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts
can palliate but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen
dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political
are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity
incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by
94
making these subjects taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity
seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of
dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness
about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as
to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is
equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of
confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in
power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have
most of it already.
Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for
me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness
on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such
knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we
will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our
arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader
base.
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for
Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White
Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See
Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh;
available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women,
Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.
This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.
95
References
Ada, A.F., and F. I. Campoy (1998). Comprehensive language arts. San
Francisco: Del Sol Publishing.
Alvermann, D.E. (1991). The discussion web: A graphic aid for learning across
the curriculum. The Reading Teacher.
Anderson, R.C., E.H. Hiebert, J.A. Scott, I.A.G. Wilkinson (1985). Becoming a
nation of readers: the report of the Commission on Reading. - Washington, DC:
The National Institute of Education.
Anderson, R. C, and P. D. Pearson (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic
processes in reading. In P. David Pearson (Ed.)Handbook of reading research.
New York: Longman.
Ausubel, D. (1963). The psychology of meaningful verbal learning. New York:
Grune and Stratton.
Barone, D. (1992), ’That reminds me of...’ Using response journals in an
elementary classroom. In Charles Temple and Patrick Collins (Eds.) Stories and
readers. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Barthes, R. (1974). S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang.
Beck, I.L., M.G. McKeown, L. Kucan. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust
vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford Press
Beck, I., M. McKeown, and L. Kucan, 1997). Questioning the author: an
approach for enhancing student engagement with text. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Berthoff, A.. (1981). The web of meaning. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Bettelheim, B. (1975). The uses of enchantment. New York: Vintage.
Bleich, D. (1970). Subjective criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Browne, N. and S. Keeley. (2000). Asking the right questions: A guide to critical
thinking. New York: Prentice Hall.
Block, C.C. (1999 ). Comprehension: Crafting understanding. In L. Gambrell, L.
Morrow, S. Neuman, and M. Pressley (Eds.). Best practices in literacy
instruction. New York: Guilford Press.
96
Calkins, L. (1994). The Art of teaching writing. Portmouth, NH: Heinemann..
Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with 1000 faces. New Haven: Bolingen Press,
1968.
Clay, M.M. (1975). What did I write? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Daniels, H. (1994). Literature Circles: Voice and choice in a student-centered
classroom. York, Maine: Stenhouse.
Daniels, H. (2001). Literature Circles : Voice and choice in book clubs and
reading groups. Augusta, Maine: Stenhouse,.
Duffy, G., and L.R. Roehler (1989). Why strategy instruction is so difficult and
what we need to do about it. In C.B. McCormick, G. Miller, and M. Pressley
(Eds.). Cognitive strategy research: from basic research to educational
applications. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Durkin, D. (1978-79). What classroom observations reveal about reading
comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 481-433.
Eeds, M., and D. Wells (1989). Grand conversations: an exploration of meaning
construction in literature discussion groups. Research in the Teaching of
English, 23, 4-29.
ESCORT (2002). Promoting literacy by any means necessary.” Oneonta, New
York: The Eastern Stream Center on Resources and Training, State University of
New York at Oneonta [http://www.escort.org].
Estes, T. H., and J. Vaughn (1986), Reading and reasoning beyond the primary
grades. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Frye, N. (2000). The anatomy of criticism: Four essays. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press (Originally published in 1957).
Gillet, J. W., C. Temple, and A. Crawford (2004). Understanding reading
problems: Assessment and instruction (6th Edition). New York: Longmans.
Goldman, S. R., and J. A. Rakestraw. (2000). Structural aspects of constructing
meaning from texts. In Michael Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson,
and Rebecca Barr (Eds.). Handbook of reading research, Volume III. Hillsdale,
NJ: Earlbaum,
97
Graves, D. (1982). Writing: teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Hart, B. and T. Risley (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday
experience of young American children. Baltimore: Brookes.
Hickman, J. (1979). Response to literature in a school environment, grades k-5.
Dissertation, Ohio State University.
Hickman, J. (1981). A new perspective on response to literature. Research in
the Teaching of English, 15, 343-354.
Hirsch, E.D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Iser, W.. (1974). The implied reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Juel, C. (1996). Learning to read and write in one elementary school
New York: Springer-Verlag.
Kagan, S. (1989). Cooperative learning resources for teachers. San Juan
Capistrano, CA: Resources for Teachers.
Kameenui, E.J. (1998). The rhetoric of all, the reality of some, and the
unmistakable smell of mortality. In J. Osborn and F. Lehr (Eds.), Literacy for
all: issues in teaching and learning. New York: Guilford, 1998.
Langer, J. (1995). Envisioning literature: literary understanding and literature
instruction. New York: Teachers College Press.
Lehr, S. (1988).The child’s developing sense of theme as a response to
literature. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 337-357..
Levi Strauss, C (1970). Structural anthropology. Garden City, New York: Basic
Books, 1970.
Luke, A. (1994). The social construction of literacy in the classroom.
Melbourne: Macmillan.
Luria. A. R. (1986). Cognitive development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
98
McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: a personal account of
coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies. Wellesley,
Massachusetts: Wellesley College.
Moffett, J. (1976). Teaching the universe of discourse. New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston.
National Adult Literacy Survey in the United States.(1992). Washington:
National Center for Education Statistics.
Neisser, U. Cognition and reality. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.
OECD, The OECD Programme for international student assessment. New York:
Office of Econmic and Community Development, 2001.
Ogle, D. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching method that develops active reading of
expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39, 564-570.
Palincsar, A. M., and A. L. Brown (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension
fostering and comprehension monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction
(1) 117-175.
Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press.
Peterson, R., and M. Eeds (1999). Grand conversations. New York: Scholastic,.
Plecha, J. (1992), The Great Books model. In C. Temple and P. Collins (Eds.)
Stories and readers. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Pressley, M., and P. Afflerbach (1995). Verbal protocols of reading: The nature
of constructively responsive reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum.
Pressley, M. J. Rankin, and L. Yokoi (1996). A survey of instructional practices
of primary teachers nominated as effective in promoting literacy. Elementary
School Journal, 96, 363-384.
Pressley, M. and R. Wharton-MacDonald (1998). The development of literacy:
the need for increased comprehension instruction in upper elementary grades.
In M. Pressley, Reading instruction that works. New York: Guilford.
Pressley, M. (1999). Self-regulated comprehension processing and its
development through instruction. In Gambrell, L.B., Morrow, L.M., Neuman,
S.B., and Pressley, M. (Eds). Best practices in literacy instruction. New York:
Guilford.
99
Raphael, T., V. Goatley, S. McMahon, and D. Woodman. Teaching literacy
through student book clubs. Book talk and beyond: children and teachers
respond to literature. Eds. Nancy Roser and Miriam Martinez. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association, 1995, 66-79.
Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, and the poem. Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Roser, N., and Hoffman, J.V. (1995). Language charts: A record of story time
talk. In Roser, N. and Martinez, M. (Eds.). Booktalk and beyond. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association, pp. 80-89.
Laberge, D., and Samuels, S.J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic
information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology.
Short, K. and G. Kauffman (1995). ’So What Do I Do?’ The role of the teacher in
literature circles. In N. Roser and M. Martinez (Eds). Book talk and beyond:
children and teachers respond to literature. Newark, DE: International Reading
Association, , 140-149.
Short, K., Harste, J., and Burke, C. (1996). Creating classrooms for authors and
inquirers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Sim-Sim, I. (1998). Desenvolvimiento do lenguagem. Lisboa : Universidade
Alberta.
Snow, C.E., M.S. Burns, and P. Griffin (198). Preventing reading difficulties in
young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Souriau, E. (1955). Les deux cent milles situations dramatiques. Paris:
Flamarion.
Spolin, V. (1986). Theater games for the classroom : a teacher's handbook.
Chicago: Northwestern University Press.
Stanovich, K. (1986). Matthew effects in reading. Reading Research Quarterly,
21, 360-407.
Stauffer, R. (1975). The language experience approach to the teaching of
reading. NewYork: Harper.
Steele, J., K. Meredith, and C. Temple. (1997) A framework for critical
thinking across the curriculum. Washington, D.C: The Reading and Writing for
Critical Thinking Project.
100
Sulzby, E. (1985). Children’s emergent reading of favorite books: A
developmental study. Reading Research Quarterly.
Tatum, B. D. (2003). Why are all the black kids sitting together in the
cafeteria? Garden City, New York: Basic Books, 2003.
Temple, C., D. Ogle, A. Crawford, and P. Freppon (2005). All children read.
Boston: Allyn And Bacon, 2005.
Temple, C., R. Nathan, N. Burris, and F. Temple. The beginnings of writing,
Third Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1992.
Temple, C., M. Martinez, J. Yokota, and A. Naylor. Children’s books in
children’s hands, 2nd Ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2006 (in press).
Vacca, Richard, and Joann Vacca (1986). Content area reading. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon.
Wagner, Betty Jane. Dorothy Heathcote : Drama as a learning medium.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
101