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Developing knowledge for literacy learning
The knowledge that students need to develop for literacy learning includes background knowledge and literacy-related knowledge.
Successful readers and writers do much more than process information. They bring their experience and existing knowledge, accumulated both in and out of school, to their reading and writing in order to construct meaning and develop new understandings.
As already discussed, children’s knowledge is built within social and cultural settings, and there are socially determined patterns of knowledge. However, each learner’s body of knowledge is unique; there are multiple pathways by which learners become literate.
The knowledge and experience that learners bring to their reading or writing, including the vocabulary they have developed, give them a starting point for connecting with a text or clarifying the ideas they seek to convey. Introducing a topic for shared writing or a text for guided reading by inviting conversation about the pictures and content, for example, helps young learners to make connections with what they already know.
The diversity among students in our schools presents a challenge for teachers – to identify and build upon the knowledge that all their students bring to the classroom. Teachers should always be aware that what the learner brings to the learning task is as important as what the teacher teaches.
From their earliest attempts at reading and writing, children develop their literacy related knowledge. As they begin formal instruction at school, they need to know how texts work (see below). They need to learn that spoken language is made up of sounds and words, to learn the spoken and written forms of the letters of the alphabet, and to understand that these relate to the sounds of spoken language (see pages 32–37). They also need to know about the visual features of print (see page 34).
When children have frequent experiences of reading and writing, they begin to realise that there is a relationship between what they hear and the written text they create or read. Through listening to and talking about stories or through creating them, children learn the importance of sounds, of particular words, and of the flow and rhythm of language and story structure. They learn that words and the ways people say them can evoke an emotional response. They learn that texts can delight and inform and that it is worthwhile to listen to, to read, to view, and to create them.
Children learn that:
This knowledge enables children to develop certain expectations and to make predictions about the form and structure of the text that they are going to read or write. Their knowledge of the purposes and structures of texts increases as they progress, enabling them to develop an analytical and thoughtful perspective as readers and writers.
Learners need to know how to use the sources of information in texts, along with their prior knowledge and experience, to decode and encode written English, make meaning, and think critically.
The three interrelated sources of information in written language that readers and writers use are:
These sources of information need to be considered in relation to one another.
Children build up knowledge of words and their meanings through their experiences of spoken language in everyday life. Words acquire meaning in relation to the child’s experience. Before they start school, children have absorbed the meanings of many words. They have learned the names of the people, objects, and events in their lives, and they have also learned to interpret subtle differences in meaning, for example, between “Sit up”, “Sit down”, and “Sit still”.
Most will have a sense of English idiom (if English is their first language) and will understand that “Hang on a minute” does not imply holding on to anything.
Children who experience rich conversations with adults, siblings, and peers and who hear lots of stories and rhymes meet a great number of words in different contexts and build up a store of words they can use fluently. Some children’s exposure to language may be more limited, and their vocabulary development may be slower. A child usually comes to understand what particular words mean through experience, but teachers can help to expand children’s awareness of how words work by discussing the precise meanings of words as they arise in classroom activities, by planning text-based experiences (see chapter 5), and by encouraging quality conversations (see pages 88–89). Such experiences enable children to build a growing range of words that they will recognise in their reading and use in their writing.
Using illustrations with text helps learners to build meaning. Children’s first writing is often captions for pictures; this develops their concepts about how pictures and words work together. The illustrations in a book may carry crucial information to help a young reader understand unfamiliar content and settings, or they may provide a subtext that offers a different perspective. In many factual texts, the photographs, illustrations, and diagrams are essential features for readers seeking a full understanding of the information.
Children learn and develop language patterns from infancy. Well before a baby can distinguish or articulate a word, its babble imitates the “tune” of the language it hears. Later, as children learn to talk, their grammatical structures are mostly correct. Sometimes when they apply rules to make their meaning clearer, the results don’t fit the irregularity of the English language but still demonstrate learning progress. For example, saying “Daddy rided”, rather than “Daddy rode”, shows an understanding of the standard form of the past tense in English.
Knowing the structure or syntax of a language helps readers to predict a word or the order of words in a sentence. A child who is using syntactic information knows what type of word is missing in the sentence “The dog ---------- over the wall.” The language of most five-year-olds enables them to use syntax well in predicting and checking the accuracy of words they read in their first language. Similarly, when children begin to write, they try to record what they might say. They are governed by syntax because the words we hear, speak, read, and write are organised into grammatical sequences. Children’s understandings of written language structure increase progressively through planned literacy activities.
Visual sources of information for readers are the visual features of the print itself. Visual information in a text includes letters, letter clusters, words, sentences, and the conventions of print, such as direction, spaces between words, the shapes of letters and words, and punctuation marks. It does not include illustrations.
The term “grapho-phonic information” encapsulates the idea that the information used to decode a printed word or to write a word is partly visual or graphic (the learner recognises the printed shape) and partly aural or phonic (the learner recreates the sounds of letters and words). The learner draws on prior knowledge to remember which visual configuration goes with which sound. Refer to page 32 for information about phonics and to pages 35–37 for information about letter-sound relationships.
When they write, students must attend to the detail of each word. They add to their store of knowledge about how certain visual shapes relate to certain sounds as they look closely at the features of letters and notice combinations of letters that occur often.
The term visual information refers to visual aspects of print, such as letters, words, spaces between words, and punctuation marks. The term visual language is used to describe signs, symbols, illustrations, gestures, and so on that are used to communicate meaning.
Fluent readers and writers draw on their prior knowledge and use all available sources of information simultaneously and usually unconsciously. Beginning readers and writers need to be taught to draw on these sources and to use them efficiently.
Hayley was reading the sentence “At last the wolf woke up”. She read fluently until the written word “woke”, which was unfamiliar. She recognised that the sentence structure required a verb and that the word began with “w”, so she tried “walked”. The next word, “up”, was familiar, and Hayley realised that “walked up” would not make sense in this context, so she self-corrected to “woke up”.
Students learn to use and integrate the sources of information effortlessly in their reading and writing when they have:
Further discussion and examples of effective instruction that enables learners to use and integrate the sources of information, along with their prior knowledge, may be found in chapter 4, Instructional Strategies, and chapter 5, Engaging Learners with Texts.
Note: Students learning English as a new language find it more difficult, initially, to use semantic and syntactic information in English. They are still developing their knowledge of the language that is associated with given contexts in written English and of the patterns of the English language. It is important that they are encouraged to develop such knowledge through oral language activities and supported in learning how to use visual and grapho-phonic information to decode and encode words so that they can read, write, and experience success.
The concept of awareness is central to understanding the nature of literacy learning. Students are not always aware of how to use the knowledge and skills they have acquired in literacy activities. Sometimes they may have developed awareness but may not yet be able to put it into words.
Children enter school with varying degrees and kinds of awareness. Some children arrive with a high level of general awareness of written forms of language, some have awareness of certain forms of language, and some may have little awareness of the ways in which they themselves and other people use language. Teachers need to ensure that their instruction and their planning of activities build on the awareness that different children bring.
Children develop social understandings as part of their critical awareness. They need to become aware of the ways in which texts shape values and position audiences. Children can be helped, from the very early stages, to think about what they are reading or writing, for example, to consider an author’s choice of language and how it affects the reader.
In order to be able to read and write fluently, students need to develop awareness in each of the three aspects identified in the framework on page 24: learning the code, making meaning, and thinking critically. The kinds of awareness that literacy learners need to develop include:
As students develop their knowledge and strategies, they build awareness of the uses of written language for many purposes. They become aware, for example, that they can use writing to express emotion, to empathise, to argue or persuade – or simply for pleasure. Similarly, they learn that texts can have many purposes and forms and can give great satisfaction and enjoyment. All this enhances students’ ability to comprehend and to think critically.
Beginning readers and writers demonstrate their awareness of:
Students develop their awareness through many literacy activities and interactions with the teacher and their peers. Teachers should consciously build learners’ awareness by noticing what the learner is attending to and interacting with them to support their learning. An effective teacher knows how to “catch the child in action”, as Marie Clay has put it. Chapter 4 discusses some ways of doing this.
Teachers should help their students to identify the knowledge and strategies they use and to deliberately control their use of them. Students do not always develop such awareness automatically. For example, it’s necessary to teach students to crosscheck when they are reading or writing. Students also need help with what to do when they are “stuck”. Handing the responsibility back to the student obliges them to think about what they know and can use and helps them to take increasing responsibility for their own learning (see the examples on page 130 in chapter 5).
As they learn to decode and encode, to make meaning, and to think critically, learners develop knowledge, strategies, and awareness, which may be described as the core components of literacy development.
Learners need a continually increasing body of knowledge as they acquire literacy. This knowledge is of two kinds:
Learners need a repertoire of strategies for literacy. Readers and writers use various strategies in combination with their knowledge in order to decode and encode, make meaning, and think critically. For example, they use processing strategies, comprehension strategies, and the strategies that are part of the writing process.
Learners need to develop awareness of what they know and can do and how to deliberately apply and control their knowledge and strategies.
Closely related to the concept of awareness is that of metacognition. This term is often used to describe the processes of thinking and talking about one’s own learning. Being able to articulate what they know and can do helps students to set themselves new goals and meet new challenges.
Students develop knowledge, strategies, and awareness for literacy learning in an integrated way, not sequentially. For example, in order to attend to word-level information (a reading strategy), they draw on their knowledge of how print works and their awareness of phonics and letter forms. At the same time, working out words in these ways adds to their knowledge of how words are formed and to their awareness of effective strategies for solving words.
The development of learners’ knowledge, strategies, and awareness does not occur during literacy sessions only. Learning occurs, and should be planned for, across all areas of the curriculum.
It’s essential for young readers and writers to develop a sight vocabulary, that is, a store of words that they recognise automatically. At first, students will learn to recognise high-frequency words and personal-interest words.
The development of a sight vocabulary is a key factor in enabling beginning readers to move on. A store of sight words frees the reader from having to process every single word and allows them to work with phrases and sentences. When learners can recognise or write words immediately, they are free to concentrate on meaning as they read or write. Having a store of sight words also helps learners to acquire further sight words. (See the section on page 36 about relating parts of words to sounds.)
However, even the most experienced reader will need to use word-level information at times – for example, when meeting unfamiliar technical terms. And, for beginning readers, reading accurately takes priority over reading fluently. Gradually, with guided practice, they will learn to recognise most words in a text automatically. Learners acquire a vocabulary for reading and writing through:
All literacy learners need to: develop concepts about print, learn to read and write letters and words, learn about visual language in texts (including electronic texts), develop a sight vocabulary, learn to relate sounds to print and to relate parts of words to sounds, and apply their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to their reading and writing. All students need explicit instruction to ensure that they develop this essential learning. Those who start school with less experience of print than others in the class may need more intensive instruction.
Emergent readers and writers of English texts need to acquire a knowledge of the essential conventions of print (that is, the conventions of written text). They learn that:
As they learn about letters and words, students need to focus on such aspects as:
Although students may develop much of this knowledge through text-based experiences, teachers will need to teach and reinforce many aspects by explicit instruction. This may occur in a mini-lesson (see page 90) to meet an immediate need that has arisen, but learning should normally occur within a programme of planned reading and writing activities.
In the early stages of reading and writing, children tend to refer to letters in a variety of ways. To provide a consistent identifier, teachers should use the letter names when referring to letters.
As students learn to recognise various visual-language features of texts, they can apply this knowledge to constructing meaning in their reading and conveying meaning in their writing. Students need to know about:
Electronic forms of text have particular visual-language features. When we read or write electronic forms of text, we draw on our prior knowledge and on the same sources of information as in printed text: syntax, semantics, and grapho-phonic and visual information. However, some conventions and text features are specific to electronic presentation, especially menus, icons, visual symbols, and complex ways of integrating graphics and text. Students need guidance in how to navigate electronic text, just as they do for finding their way through tables of contents, indexes, and other print features when reading or for using them in writing.
Children’s conversations with adults and with one another are a critical component of literacy learning. Because oral language is such a powerful influence in early literacy development, teachers need to create purposeful opportunities for children to talk.
Emergent readers and writers need to recognise that the stream of sounds they hear in speech is made up of separate words. In written form, there are gaps between the words. Some children will begin to notice these separate words and gaps early, during storybook reading sessions at home or at school. When they see writing modelled at home or at school, and when they write themselves, they consolidate their understanding of words and how they are put together.
Teachers can develop children’s awareness of words, letters, and sounds by drawing attention to these features when reading to them and during shared reading and writing – for example, by focusing on words and phrases that rhyme or have the same first letter or sound. Young children are highly motivated by such activities because they are enjoyable and are often familiar from their early childhood experiences.
Useful activities include:
When competent readers meet an unknown word, they tend to break it into sound patterns or look within it for words or word parts that are familiar. Beginner readers usually focus on the initial letter of a word, but it’s often useful for them to try to identify parts of the word rather than concentrating on individual letters. Children are often able to work out unknown words by distinguishing between the first part of the word (the onset) and the rest of the word (the rime) as in b-oat, d-og, s-ocks. Once children gain a repertoire of known words, they are better able to recognise familiar patterns in words and can use these patterns to help them solve, pronounce, and write new words. For example, a writer who knows “lunch” is able to work out “munch” by using the spelling pattern that represents the rime “unch”. This chunking of information is generally much more successful than trying to sound out a word letter by letter or thinking of one letter at a time when writing. (See also the section on spelling, on pages 144–148.)
Children’s early writing requires them to consider both direction and the details of letters and words that they may not have noticed when they were “reading” texts. As children begin to write, they draw on everything they know about letters and sounds within words (their phonemic awareness and their knowledge of phonics) to match their written words with spoken words. Using approximations in spelling is an important feature of this process.
Children’s early writing provides invaluable opportunities for learning about relationships between letters and sounds (phonics). Beginning writers are constantly engaged with the problem of how to write down spoken language – how to represent its sounds and how to spell words. Clearly articulating each sound in a word helps children to make connections between the sounds, the letters, and their own knowledge of spelling patterns.
Children are likely to recognise whole words in speech and reading before they can write them. As they write, they use a variety of methods to attempt unknown words. These include employing phonics (using letters to represent the sounds they hear) and using features such as spelling patterns and regular endings, from words they already know, to help them spell unknown words. This growing knowledge of spelling (orthographic knowledge) contributes greatly to children’s fluency in writing.
As they become fluent and experienced readers and writers, children recognise an increasing range of patterns, and they become aware that different letters or letter clusters can represent the same sounds. More sophisticated word study further on involves exploring word families, prefixes, suffixes, and irregular spellings.
Expertise in spelling is essential to writing. Teachers need an understanding of the knowledge strategies and awareness students require to be come competent spellers. This involves knowledge of:
Writers need to develop the ability to use conventional spelling in order to write clearly, fluently, and accurately. This involves moving through a number of stages. To become a proficient speller, a writer has to develop various kinds of knowledge, strategies for spelling unknown words, and awareness of how to use their knowledge and strategies.
Learning to spell is a developmental process; it goes hand in hand with learning to write. Young learners normally begin with scribbles. Then, as they come to understand that writers use letters to write down the words used in spoken language, they may write strings of letters so that their writing contains “words”. As they develop further knowledge of how the alphabet is used, they learn that letters are used to write down the sounds that make up words and begin to use letter-sound correspondences in their writing. Beginning spellers usually learn to write the beginning or end sounds of words, which are often consonants, before they can isolate and write medial sounds, which are usually vowels (see Relating parts of words to sounds, on page 36). Reading and writing experiences provide young learners with knowledge about spelling patterns (orthography) and about the rulesand conventions that apply to words (morphology). They then use this knowledge in further learning.
Students are exposed to correct spellings through reading a wide range of texts. However, not all students develop the detailed knowledge that they need simply through exposure to print. Students need to be taught explicitly how to use the common orthographic and morphological structures of written English for spelling (encoding) words in English.
The teacher needs to support students to enable them to:
Students use their phonemic awareness in spelling to break words into phonemes. The child who is able to write every sound in an unknown word is demonstrating phonemic segmentation skills. For example, a child might spell “jump” (with four sounds) g, a, m, p (for the four sounds).
Students use their knowledge of letter-sound relationships, that is, of phonics, to write the letters for the sounds they have identified.
Students need a knowledge of orthographic patterns – that is, of the spelling patterns that represent sounds in words. The teacher can help the students to develop this knowledge by encouraging them to make analogies to known words that sound the same or look the same. Beginning spellers need to be exposed to ways of writing all sounds (not just those that are commonly associated with the alphabet letters) since they will be trying to write words such as look, out, now, house, toy, boot, train, and tree.
“I tuk my nyou t_ to the prk akros the rod from my hows.”
“I took my new toy to the park across the road from my house.”
The child does not know how to write the“oy” and “ar” sounds. They have used what they know from “put” to write “took” and from “you” to write “new”. Phonetically and orthographically, this is an excellent attempt, but it also tells the teacher that the child needs to learn that “ar” and “oy” are separate sounds that have particular ways of being written in words.
Students need a knowledge of the morphological structure of written English, that is, of the rules and conventions that underlie conventional spelling patterns. Teachers need to show their students how to transfer knowledge about conventions of print from one word that they have learned to spell by sight to other words that have a similar sound or use the same convention.
A child has learned to spell “played” and “jumped” using the “ed” ending. Although the “ed” ending sounds different in these two words (“playd”, “jumpt”), the child has worked out that the “ed” ending is added to words that mean something has already happened even though the words might sound different at the end (“t”, “d”, and “id” in “endid”). When they meet a new word that describes something they did yesterday, one that they do not recognise as a sight word, they can use the correct convention to spell the word ending (“Yesterday I hopped all the way down the path”).
Through engaging learners with texts, teachers can model and explain the use of such conventions as apostrophes in contractions, adding “s” for a plural, and putting two “p’s” in stopping (doing the same when they want to write “hopping” or “shopping”). Students who apply this knowledge demonstrate a developing awareness of morphological structure.
Teachers need to support their students in moving from producing strings of letters to spelling approximations and then to accurate conventional spelling. They can do so in the following ways.
Models of accurately spelled words can be recorded in individual spelling notebooks (personal dictionaries). New words should be added regularly for students to refer to and revise, as appropriate to their stage of spelling development. The student should understand the meanings of the words they are learning to spell, which should arise from their reading and writing experiences. Words from their personal writing have meaning for students and so are relevant for their spelling notebooks.
Most teachers make a range of high-frequency words readily accessible, for example, on a wallchart or on large cards. A class dictionary, in alphabetical order, is a valuable resource for the group to use during shared writing and for students to refer to when writing independently. Entries can be made after talking through the students’ approximations, and the dictionary should be constantly used and expanded.
An approximation is a word that a child writes using spelling that is not completely correct but is as close as they can manage to the word they want to spell. It is generally good practice to suggest that children “have a go” at writing a word by themselves before seeking help. This will encourage them to use the knowledge, awareness, and strategies that they have (see page 26).
Teachers should regularly model ways of attending to spelling. Because beginning spellers do not know how to spell many words, they need to use the sounds in unknown words to guide their spelling attempts. The ability to discriminate between and segment sounds in words is a critical skill and is based on phonemic awareness (see page 32). Teachers can model how to break words into sounds and then write these sounds using known letters and letter patterns. When there are two or more possibilities for spelling one sound, teachers should demonstrate or explain that for this word, this particular pattern is used to write the sounds. For example, when writing the word “they”, many students who can spell “play” and “day” will write it “thay”. The teacher should model the correct spelling – “they” – and explain that, in this word, the long “a” sound is written “ey”, not “ay”.
As students gain more knowledge of spelling, they can be shown how to use dictionaries, word lists, and electronic spellcheckers to ensure that conventionally correct spellings are resulting from their decisions.
Students need to become aware that they should spell the words they use in their writing correctly. However, spelling must also be kept in context.54 The writer’s main aim is to convey meaning. Too much concentration on accurate spelling, especially during draft writing, can reduce the focus on conveying a meaningful message and may make students tentative and unadventurous in their writing.
Analysing the nature of spelling attempts in children’s writing will show the teacher the skills and knowledge the child has and the gaps they need to fill.
Everything a teacher needs to know about children’s developing spelling knowledge is displayed in their writing. The best starting point is to look for what they are able to do when they write unknown words.
Helping students to make connections between what they know and what they are reading improves their comprehension. Teachers can model making such connections, and prompt students to make links with their own knowledge and experience, when they are introducing and discussing texts for reading and in writing and oral-language activities. When activating students’ prior knowledge for a particular purpose, teachers can help the students to hypothesise, infer, and build their own interpretations as they read.
The points listed under the headings “What readers do” and “How teachers can support learners” are examples rather than comprehensive lists of what readers do and what teachers might say to support them.
Hypotheses are expectations or predictions that the reader forms about the text. They are formed before and during the reading. Proficient readers test and revise their hypotheses as they encounter and act upon new information in the text. Depending on the learning goal, a hypothesis may relate to any aspect of the text, for example, its structure, theme, and characterisation, its possible content, or how it engages the reader.
The teacher can usefully model forming a hypothesis when introducing a text. Testing and revising the hypothesis can be modelled later on, during the reading and discussion. This process encourages students to think critically about their own hypotheses, to seek and give feedback about hypotheses, and to revise them in the light of new information. Students often form a hypothesis as a result of asking their own questions about the text.
In this book, the term predicting is used for one of the processing strategies, and the term forming and testing hypotheses is used for one of the comprehension strategies. Predicting in this sense is usually at the word, sentence, or paragraph level, while hypothesizing involves deeper thinking about aspects of the whole text, such as a scientific concept or the development of a character.
Fluent readers spontaneously and continuously pose questions for themselves and attempt to answer these questions (for example, by forming hypotheses) as they interact with the text. They “talk to themselves” about what they are reading, and they do this automatically. They pose questions for themselves about the unfolding content of the text, about the meaning of parts of the text (including particular words and phrases), or about the significance of specific language features.
Questioning helps to reinforce the habit of reading for a purpose. The teacher can raise students’ awareness of the importance of formulating appropriate questions for themselves by, for example, modelling this strategy during shared reading and asking the students to formulate their own questions that relate to a shared learning goal. Asking questions helps readers to engage with the ideas in the text and with the writer and gives focus to the reading task. After students have read a text, it is useful to help them evaluate the effectiveness of the questions they posed for themselves, to identify the benefits they gained by asking questions as they read, and to give them feedback for further learning.
When readers visualise, they connect the ideas in the text with their prior knowledge and experience to create images in their minds. This often means thinking about their senses and using their imagination to see, hear, feel, taste, or smell parts of the text in their minds.
Creating an image can make a text come alive for the reader. The ability to visualise what is being explained or what is happening draws readers into the text. Studies have indicated that creating an image in the memory helps the reader to retain what is read and use it later on.
Readers experiencing difficulties often need help with creating mental images and may not realise how this can help their comprehension. Teachers can support students in visualising by asking questions such as “What image do you see in your head?”, by explicitly drawing attention to descriptive language or a sequence of ideas, and by sharing their own images. Visualising can be supported by creating graphic representations or mind maps of a text.
Inferring means using content in a text, together with existing knowledge, to come to a personal conclusion about something that is not stated explicitly in the text. When the writer provides clues but not all the information, we read “between the lines” to form hypotheses, revise these, understand underlying themes, make critical judgments, and draw conclusions.
The teacher can help students to make inferences by raising their awareness that reading involves more than just literal meaning and by modelling inferential thinking during shared reading or during discussions in guided reading. Or the teacher may pause, when reading a text with students, to draw out clues from the text and prompt the students to make connections between different parts of the text in order to reach a conclusion that makes sense. It’s important to ask students to give evidence from the text that supports their inferences.
It is important for readers to recognise that behind every text is a writer, and that the writer has a purpose or reason for writing and a particular point of view. For example, the purpose of the writer may be to:
By supporting students in identifying and reflecting on an author’s purpose and point of view, teachers can help their students to recognise that writers bring their own experiences and insights to their writing. Such activities contribute richly to students’ awareness of the functions of texts and of how authors position readers. They also help students to build the habit of responding thoughtfully to what they read. Students then carry their awareness and thoughtfulness into their writing and use it to help them plan and articulate their own purpose and point of view when writing a text.
Identifying the main idea means determining what is central to a text – what the writer most values or wants to emphasise. In a narrative, this might be the theme or themes, which will probably relate to people and how they live their lives. In a transactional text, it might be the key information or the particular idea about the topic that the writer wants readers to understand. In some transactional text forms, such as reports or letters to the editor, the main idea is often made explicit at the beginning. In fiction, the main idea is more often implied, in a variety of ways, throughout the text. A text may have more than one main idea or theme, but this comprehension strategy involves identifying the idea or ideas that are most important throughout the text, not ideas of lesser importance and not those that feature only in one section of the text.
Identifying the main idea does not mean identifying the topic or content of a text. For example, a story might be about a character breaking his leg, but the main idea (theme) of the text might be about the way the character overcomes adversity or discovers the value of friendship. Often it is relatively easy for a reader to state what a text is about, but it may be more difficult to decide what the main idea is. The reader needs to interpret the writer’s thinking by making connections to their prior knowledge, hypothesising, inferring, and synthesising several aspects of the text in order to identify the main idea.
Summarising helps the reader to see how information or events are related and to understand the content and structure of a text. The reader identifies the important information or events in a text or part of a text and remembers, retells, or records them in a shortened form, which enables the reader to make connections within the text. A summary brings together the essential content of a text succinctly as a clear overview or outline. For example, a written or oral summary may describe the beginning, middle, and end of a narrative or the main facts from an information text or a specific paragraph.
In order to summarise a text effectively, the reader needs to have a clear idea of its structure and to be able to differentiate between important points and supporting details. To do this, the reader identifies key words, facts, events, or ideas and notes which parts of the text contain the details that go with each of them. When summarising, the reader puts the important points into their own words, using language as economically as possible and avoiding repetition. A summary may support in-depth work with the text.
With certain texts, summarising may not be a useful strategy to support students’ understanding. Some poems or sets of instructions, for example, do not include key points with supporting detail.
When readers take apart a text they have read, examine it from their own viewpoint, and put it back together again, they make it their own. When they compare different texts, drawing out similarities and differences and deciding on the reasons for these, they create a new web of knowledge. As they analyse and synthesise, readers identify ideas, information, or features in a text, reflect on these in relation to their existing knowledge and cultural values (or to ideas from other texts), and form conclusions, interpreting the text’s meaning by drawing ideas together. Analysing and synthesising is a creative process that can enable readers to take ownership of the texts they read and the ideas and information in them.
Analysing and synthesising is a valuable strategy to use when bringing a more critical perspective to a text, for example, during a second reading or subsequent, closer readings.
Thoughtful readers respond to the texts they read in a personal, informed way. They generalise from the ideas and information in a text and make judgments about them in the light of their prior knowledge and experience (including their experiences of other texts), their cultural values, and their purpose for reading. They examine and evaluate the ideas and information in the text and may consequently go on to confirm, extend, or change their personal views. They may disagree with the message of a text or explain why they find an argument unconvincing (for example, if they feel that the writer has used unsound evidence in an attempt to influence or “position” their thinking).
As students develop information literacy, they learn to recognise relevant and valid information, interpret it, and evaluate it in terms of its usefulness and reliability (see page 38). Thoughtful readers also evaluate the writer’s style, including their choice of language and other text features.
Watch the video and think about these questions.
Deliberate acts of teachingIdentify and discuss examples of where the teacher's use of deliberate acts of teaching enables Eric to articulate and extend his thinking.
Engaging learners with texts
Instructional focusAnalysis of asTTle data revealed that the students needed to develop in a number of areas, especially structure and awareness of audience. Surface features also needed attention, but at this time I wanted to focus on ideas.
Using this information, I decided to focus on reporting, the topic being reporting on the school day for their parents. I chose parents as a familiar audience and the topic of reporting on the school day to enable us to explore the features of a well-structured report. From the students' writing it became apparent that, while they attended to structure and writing for an audience, the language used in their writing was mundane.
I shared with the class my evaluation of their writing and that as a result our goal over the next two or three weeks would be: to make language choices in descriptive writing to create a vivid image for the reader.
I chose the topic 'My Special Place' (within the syndicate-wide topic of 'New Zealand: A unique place', to help students understand how to make language choices to write descriptively in a meaningful and personal context. I used published authors' work as models, and made links in our reading programme to explore how a writer makes language choices to have an impact on the audience. I also used the shared writing approach for whole-class modelling during which we jointly discussed and selected language to make a piece of my own writing have more impact.
Students wrote their descriptions of their special place, and now the focus (reflected in these interactions) was on effective language to describe their feelings about their place.
Focus studentsI reinforced the whole-class work during intensive sessions with a group of focus students. The above data, and subsequent focus on structure and audience in writing a report showed that, while these students had lots of ideas, they were experiencing difficulty in expressing these in a meaningful written form. On the previous day we'd begun jointly constructing the ideas of one student, Eric, from his description of his special place (his Grandmother's house) and the sounds he hears there. The shared learning intention for the lesson from which the following interaction is taken was:
I planned to meet our learning intention in two steps in order to make the learning manageable and to model the process of making language choices and composing written text.
Read teacher Amanda Frater's thoughts on what she achieved in the session and an analysis of the teacher-student interaction by literacy expert Peter Johnston. Peter (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is Professor of Education and Chair of the Reading Department at State University of New York at Albany. His position as an advocate for teachers and students developed from his early career teaching primary school in New Zealand. His many publications include Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse 2004), Knowing Literacy: Constructive Literacy Assessment (Stenhouse 1997), andRunning Records: A Self-Tutoring Guide (Stenhouse 2000). Amanda Frater's reflections I think modelling and thinking aloud in the whole-class shared writing sessions was powerful for the students as I was the one doing the thinking and revealing how I was making language choices. Students participated in this process helped them to make the links between oral and written language and extended their vocabulary. My recent shift in thinking was the realisation that I needed to break the learning into manageable chunks: quality versus quantity. It is important for the learning to be manageable so that the students keep control of the task and the learning and don't feel that they must write, say, a whole page. This was particularly important for the target students. Therefore I worked with these students in phases,identifying descriptive vocabulary and then composing a sentence. It helped Eric to maintain control of his writing, and I was pleased about this. I also realised the importance of helping students to clarify their thinking before focusing on the selection of important language choices. The broad focus for their learning was to understand how writers construct text. That 'grey bit in the middle' is the hardest for teachers. You can identify next steps, but knowing how to get there is the major challenge. I had assumed that, once they got their ideas, they could write them down. But I saw that while the discussion had been good, it wasn't reflected in their subsequent writing. I realized that they needed a bridge first, to express their ideas and record them, then to construct the ideas into sentence form. Eric required lots of prompting and careful, directed questions to help him focus his thinking. I was trying to help him identify the best choices and uncover his reasons behind those language choices. At the beginning we were probably going around in circles a bit so I was reminding him of the word choices he made in the previous lesson, where he had described the sounds and stated that being at his Grandmother's place made him feel safe. However, he was continuing to feed in a whole string of new ideas and he would have kept going. I knew he needed to refocus as he still hadn't really established why his Grandmother's place was special to him. In the previous lesson, he had highlighted the sound of the hail on the roof. I felt it would be helpful for him to imagine himself there, so he could really think about what it was like being inside and hearing the hail on the roof, and be able to express his feelings. That's why I helped him make the connection. He still wasn't able to express exactly why he felt safe there, nor was he able to articulate the significance of the hail, so I modelled how I thought I would feel inside when it was hailing. He picked up quickly on my thinking aloud and linked the idea of feeling safe to what we had previously constructed as a group and recorded on the chart. Without my realising it, he was trying all the time to link what I was asking him to visualise to what was already described in his writing on the chart. He then described what it could be like if he was outside as a way of providing a reason for his choice of words 'safe and comfortable'. At the end I asked the whole group to respond as readers to Eric's writing, as making language choices that would give the reader a strong image was our learning intention. In retrospect, it may have been better to focus the question on language choices rather than on generating new ideas, which took Eric onto yet another new idea. However, Thomas' question and the way he picked up on the visual support - adding in 'and comfortable' on the chart would have triggered his thinking -was probably of value too. Peter Johnson's comments Teacher:What I want you to do now, Eric, is think about why is this place special to you? How do you feel when you are sitting in the lounge listening to these sounds? I find that articulating why something is special to me can be a difficult task. I wonder how much access Eric has to why his grandma's house feels special. I wonder whether 'what makes being at your grandma's special to you' might turn Eric's attention to the events and experiences rather than the logic. Once he has assembled these he might be able to show rather than tell why it is special to him. Turning attention to Eric's feelings and putting him in the situation is a good way to explore the specifics. Amanda says 'these sounds' which indicates there has been more conversation before this about details of his grandma's house. Eric: I feel, like, happy. Teacher: Why do you feel happy? Eric: Um, because, there Im just, like, by myself, with my Grandma. Its like. I get to, like, think what to do, what I can do, like, the next day or something? I wonder what would happen here if Amanda asked Eric to say more about that. Teacher: Yesterday, or the day before I remember you saying to me that you felt quite safe. Why do you feel safe? This positions Eric as an important person. His teacher actually listens to him and remembers what he has to say. Normally I think 'Why?' is a useful prompt because it helps kids think through the logic of events. I am less sure of its value here because it might be asking the child to unpack something he has no access to, like asking why someone likes chocolate. Eric: Um, because I go there a lot. I feel better there. I feel comfortable there. Teacher: Oh, I like that word 'comfortable'. So, Eric, you've told me that when you go to your grandmother's you feel safe and comfortable. I'm going to circle those words. Can you tell the group why you feel safe and comfortable at your grandmother's? This comment turns the children's attention to words and the idea of savouring them and choosing interesting ones. I am intrigued by the fact that the word 'comfortable' turns up a couple of other times in the transcripts, perhaps because the kids' attention is turned toward that word rather than to words more generally. I wonder how to expand to that larger view of words. Perhaps showing why we like a particular word (images, mouth feel, etc.) and by pointing to words like this often? The question is useful in that it leaves open the possibility that he says that he can't. Again, saying why can be difficult to articulate. Eric: Because I go there a lot and, um, I feel safe there, like, I feel good. Teacher: OK, can you imagine yourself sitting in your grandmother's house on a day where it's hailing. Does the hail somehow make you feel safe and comfortable? This directs his attention to imagine himself into the situation. It should be good for getting to specifics. Just being in his grandma's house makes him feel safe and comfortable. The hail changes the course of this conversation away from Eric's grandma's house and his experience and moves it towards danger and so forth for the next 16 turns. Eric: Yeah. Teacher: Why? Again, 'why do you feel this way?' is often a hard question. Eric: 'Cause, um, I don't know'. Teacher: When I'm inside and I can hear the rain or the hail on the roof, it does feel safe because you'll know - you know that you're inside, and you're not outside where you can get really wet, and you're in quite a warm environment. I think this is a useful way of bringing Amanda's experience alongside Eric's. (I, personally, love this feeling of comfort too -especially the hail or rain on the tin roof.) I think the usefulness is in showing that you have the same sort of feelings but with other situations. The language shifts from I to you. This should still be an 'I' story so that it doesn't impose it on Eric but simply offers a connection. Eric: Because if I was outside I might get hurt, because if it drops, like, really hard like, um, as it gets heavier. Eric has taken on explaining the hail experience rather than his grandmother's place experience. Teacher: OK. Eric:It, like, cause it's like ice cubes are kind of big, and they could hit you if they fall from a far, from a high distance, maybe it could hurt you. Teacher: So you're introducing this idea of danger. This language keeps the authority with Eric -even though it is not Eric who introduced this idea of danger. Notice how readily he picks up ownership of it in these next lines. The other kids, like Thomas, have bought into it too. Eric: Yeah! Teacher: So when you're in your grandmother's house you have that? Eric: Yeah, so it's safer inside, that's how. Thomas: And it's not so dangerous. Teacher: OK. Eric: Yeah. Teacher: So, could we say you're away from danger? Asking permission to use particular words to represent the experience and including it not as Eric's choice but as a group activity -which it is -encourages the group to be included in this decision (though the transcript doesn't show whether this happens). It also keeps the writing choice conditional. It would be good here to offer a choice of words so that they have to make a decision regarding the value of a specific choice. The choice of 'we' offers support to Eric in making the decision, but also takes some of his authority away. But this may be appropriate in this case since, with the addition of the hail, it is no longer exactly his story. Eric: Yeah. Teacher: If I was reading your piece of writing, I'd be wondering, if you said that you were safe and comfortable at your grandmother's house, I'd want to find out why and you just gave me the reason. You said the reason you feel that way is that you're escaping from danger. The conditional at the beginning is a way to introduce an imaginary reader. It allows overriding the fact that Amanda now knows this stuff and no longer needs it as a reader. However, when possible, I think the personal response - when I read this, I think - is more powerful because it draws on and builds a relationship of authority. I'd want to find out- builds the connection between readers - expectations and needs, and writers' choices. Repeating and attributing ('you said') again builds authority. I suspect, though, that this won't ring fully true for Eric. Teacher:So, as a group looking at this piece of writing, what other questions do you have for Eric about being at his grandmother's house? Have you got a question, Thomas? This opening phrase establishes as given that the group has a collective identity and that the group is attending to the piece of writing. It is given and therefore not really able to be contested. The question invites the group to explore Eric's experience of being at his grandmother's house which is the real topic. Thomas:Yeah, um, you know how he says that he feels comfortable, and that it's familiar to him? Um, does he often go there cause he wants to be with his Nana, or does he just go there cause he finds it real special? What an interesting question. Thomas is asking him whether the specialness is about the place or about his grandmother. Notice how he is directing the question not to Eric, but to the teacher who must then give permission to Eric to answer the question. He then responds to Amanda, not Thomas. Teacher: OK, do you have an answer to that? Eric: Um, yes, I feel it's to visit my Nana and give her some company, because she lives by herself. Teacher: OK. Eric: So, yeah, and it feels - it's special to me going there. Teacher:OK, so we're starting to find out some more ideas. I might put down that you're giving your grandmother company, because I think that's an important idea. Good question, Thomas.This does open the possibility of bad questions which will deter some kids from asking them in case they offer a bad one. An alternative would be to explain how the question helped Eric with his writing.
Watch the video and think about these questions:
Deliberate acts of teaching How does the teacher's use of questioning, prompting and giving feedback (a) support the students towards meeting the shared learning intention?(b) provide a language for them to think and talk about their writing?
Knowledge of the learnerWhat evidence is there of planning based on data? Consider the alignment of learning needs identified by data, the shared learning intention and the task. Why is this alignment so important?
Using this information, I decided to focus on reporting, the topic being reporting on the school day for their parents. I chose parents as a familiar audience and the topic of reporting on the school day to enable us to explore the features of a well-structured report. From the students' writing it became apparent that, while they attended to structure and writing for an audience, the language used in their writing was 'mundane'.
I chose the topic 'My Special Place' (within the syndicate-wide topic of 'New Zealand:A Unique Place', to help students understand how to make language choices to write descriptively in a meaningful and personal context. I used published authors' work as models, and made links in our reading programme to explore how a writer makes language choices to have an impact on the audience. I also used the shared writing approach for whole-class modelling during which we jointly discussed and selected language to make a piece of my own writing have more impact.
The first step, in the previous clip, was to help Eric to express and develop his ideas about how he felt at his special place. This clip shows the second step, namely, the joint composing of a sentence to reflect Eric's ideas.
Read teacher Amanda Frater's thoughts on what she achieved in the session and an analysis of the teacher-student interaction by literacy expert Peter Johnston. Peter (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is Professor of Education and Chair of the Reading Department at State University of New York at Albany. His position as an advocate for teachers and students developed from his early career teaching primary school in New Zealand. His many publications include Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse 2004), Knowing Literacy: Constructive Literacy Assessment (Stenhouse 1997), andRunning Records: A Self-Tutoring Guide (Stenhouse 2000). Amanda Frater's reflections: I think modelling and thinking aloud in the whole-class shared writing sessions was powerful for the students as I was the one doing the thinking and revealing how I was making language choices. Students participated in this process helped them to make the links between oral and written language and extended their vocabulary. My recent shift in thinking was the realisation that I needed to break the learning into manageable chunks: quality versus quantity. It is important for the learning to be manageable so that the students keep control of the task and the learning and don't feel that they must write, say, a whole page. This was particularly important for the target students. Therefore I worked with these students in phases, identifying descriptive vocabulary and then composing a sentence. It helped Eric to maintain control of his writing, and I was pleased about this. I also realised the importance of helping students to clarify their thinking before focusing on the selection of important language choices. The broad focus for their learning was to understand how writers construct text. That 'grey bit in the middle' is the hardest for teachers. You can identify next steps, but knowing how to get there is the major challenge. I had assumed that, once they got their ideas, they could write them down. But I saw that while the discussion had been good, it wasn't reflected in their subsequent writing. I realized that they needed a bridge -first, to express their ideas and record them, then to construct the ideas into sentence form. In previous lessons we'd practised composing sentences. However, I noticed that it was still difficult for the students to orally construct a complete sentence when feeding back from their think, pair, share. I then provided support by modelling a way of starting the sentence which was quickly transferred by Jamie into a complete sentence. The sentence built on Eric's vocabulary choices and also reflected the conversation of Eric and Thomas. It was important for all in the group to recognise this. I wanted Eric to have ownership of the writing. This can be difficult when a group is developing the writing of one student together. That is why I pulled the focus back to Eric as the writer and he did take the ownership back. Peter Johnson's comments Teacher: What I want you to do now is, you're going to turn to a partner and you're going to come up with a sentence that will describe how Eric feels at his grandmother's house. OK. You're going to say it out loud and give it back to me and we'll write it as a sentence together. Off you go. Student discussion Teacher: What was your sentence, Danica? Danica: That he feels safe, cause, oh. Teacher: As a sentence? 'I feel safe' could be one way of starting it. 'Could be' is a way to contribute to a conversation while keeping the topic open. It recognises a possibility as one option rather than as the solution. Of course this depends on the tone of voice and the expected relationships between teacher and students.'Could be' can imply this is an option but not the option I had in mind. This does not seem to be the case here. Jamie:I feel safe because I'm inside away from danger. Teacher: What was it? "I feel safe?' The teacher here is writing down what Jamie is saying, conferring substantial authority. Jamie: 'because I'm inside away from danger. Teacher: Let' read that. 'The sound gets louder as the hail gets heavier.' So, already in that first sentence Eric's building up this picture of it getting very, very heavy. 'I feel safe because I'm inside away from danger.' Could we add something else, what other feeling did he have with the word 'safe'? Eric is established as the author and Amanda is attributing agency to him. Eric: Um, comfortable? Eric remembers the specific word, partly, I guess, because the teacher pointed to it at the outset. Teacher: OK. So where could we put the word 'comfortable' in? This focuses the choice to be made on one decision in the writing process. The word 'could' invites multiple possibilities - very different from 'should' or 'Where does it go?' Child: Maybe after -where the other sentence stopped, maybe you could have something similar? So the reader can, like, know what it's, like, what's happening? Tentativeness markers like 'maybe' mark the suggestion as a draft to be picked up by others. This can be picked up from teacher's language. But note also the uncertainty in the child's voice -the questioning inflection, as if, 'Is that right?' Eric has made the connection between writers' choices and their consequences for readers. Teacher: OK, so Eric has decided, and he's the writer, that he wants to add in 'I feel safe and comfortable because I am inside and away from danger'. As readers, what has Eric just done? What do you think, Thomas? Eric is asserted to be the author, the one making composition decisions. (In his mind, Eric might or might not go along with this.) This is an identity invitation. Saying 'as readers' provides an invitation to take up the stance of readers responding to the author's choices. Asking Thomas what he thinks softens the previous sentence a bit, making it not so much a matter of Thomas getting the right answer. Thomas: Um, cause by putting 'I feel safe and comfortable' like, if, without that, like, if you were reading it and you didn't know that he felt comfortable, it could be, like, he just feels, like, that he's just getting away from the danger and he - you don't really know if he feels comfortable inside. But adding 'comfortable' you know that he actually feels comfortable being inside. 'By putting [X]' he [accomplishes Y] This is a statement conferring agency upon Eric and the process of authoring. Teacher: OK, I like your thinking. That was really good. By adding in 'comfortable', not only is he safe in this place, he's really relaxed and he likes to be inside and there is this real feeling of 'I'm at ease being in this place'. 'I like your thinking' focuses attention on the thinking rather than a correct answer. The response 'that was really good' is unnecessary and runs the risk of undoing the previous sentence with unfocused public praise. It opens the possibility of someone saying something 'really bad.'Amanda's concluding words offer another potential phrasing and word choice by extending what Thomas says.
Deliberate acts of teaching, especially prompting Consider the wait time and scaffolding. At one point, Amanda supplies what Eliesa needs. What is involved in making professional judgments such as this?
ExpectationsFrom this interaction (and the two previous interactions), how would you describe this teacher's expectations of her students both as people and as literacy learners?
Engaging learners with textsHow might this interaction have contributed to Eliesa's understanding of the comprehension strategy of visualising? What links to the reading programme could be made?
I chose the topic 'My Special Place' (within the syndicate-wide topic of 'New Zealand: A Unique Place', to help students understand how to make language choices to write descriptively in a meaningful and personal context. I used published authors' work as models, and made links in our reading programme to explore how a writer makes language choices to have an impact on the audience. I also used the shared writing approach for whole-class modelling during which we jointly discussed and selected language to make a piece of my own writing have more impact.
ConferencesI scheduled conferences to explore each student's language choices as they created images of their special place.
Eliesa, the student in the following interaction, brings many strengths to his writing, having a good grasp of structure and a sense of audience. He uses descriptive language and has rich ideas and images. In fact, he was trying to fit too much descriptive language into his writing, which lessened its impact. Eliesa's home language is Tongan.
My purpose in this interaction was to build Eliesa's understanding of the need to be precise in language choices to convey images, and also to be selective in deciding what to include, keeping in mind the impact on the reader. I planned to focus on one idea in his writing, to encourage him to think about each word or phrase.
Read teacher Amanda Frater's thoughts on what she achieved in the session and an analysis of the teacher-student interaction by literacy expert Peter Johnston. Peter (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is Professor of Education and Chair of the Reading Department at State University of New York at Albany. His position as an advocate for teachers and students developed from his early career teaching primary school in New Zealand. His many publications include Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse 2004), Knowing Literacy: Constructive Literacy Assessment (Stenhouse 1997), and Running Records: A Self-Tutoring Guide (Stenhouse 2000). Amanda Frater's reflections I think modelling and thinking aloud in the whole-class shared writing sessions was powerful for the students as I was the one doing the thinking and revealing how I was making language choices. Students' participated in this process helped them to make the links between oral and written language and extended their vocabulary. My recent shift in thinking was the realisation that I needed to break the learning into manageable chunks: quality versus quantity. It is important for the learning to be manageable so that the students keep control of the task and the learning and don't feel that they must write, say, a whole page. This was particularly important for the target students. Therefore I worked with these students in phases, identifying descriptive vocabulary and then composing a sentence. It helped Eric to maintain control of his writing, and I was pleased about this. I also realised the importance of helping students to clarify their thinking before focusing on the selection of important language choices. The broad focus for their learning was to understand how writers construct text. That 'grey bit in the middle' is the hardest for teachers. You can identify next steps, but knowing how to get there is the major challenge. I had assumed that, once they got their ideas, they could write them down. But I saw that while the discussion had been good, it wasn't reflected in their subsequent writing. I realized that they needed a bridge - first, to express their ideas and record them, then to construct the ideas into sentence form. In one-to-one conversations, it's important to help students feel comfortable to discuss their writing, as their writing is personal to them. This was in my mind as I sat down to work with Eliesa. In working with him, I've found that asking him to read his text aloud helps him hear the language and process the message. Also, he is the writer and this is a way of showing that I value his ownership. I can give immediate and specific feedback on his word choices as a reader, and can deliberately relate what he is doing to the learning intention. I chose to focus on the interaction around the palace because I wanted Eliesa to see how, with careful selection of a few words, he could make an image stronger for the reader. I suggested that together we needed to work out where to add in the new text as I could see that he was finding it difficult to focus in on one detail. I was signalling, as I often do in such circumstances, that we would solve the problem together and he didn't have to do it alone. On reflection, I think that the difficulty that Eliesa exhibited was due to my asking him for a sentence and then suggesting that he add words 'the king' to an existing sentence. I think this confused him. I used the language of our learning intention in our conversation. This was important because it helped to focus Eliesa on the purpose for the writing and the expected learning. Peter Johnston's comments Teacher: Can you remind me what you're writing about, Eliesa? Amanda does not immediately ask to see or hear what has been written, which would be attending to the performance rather than to Eliesa and what he has to say. She inquires about what Eliesa is writing about. This opens a conversation that positions Eliesa as a respected person with interesting things to say. It also makes it possible for Eliesa to hear himself tell another draft of what he is writing. The contrast between what he now says and what he has written opens a space for him to revise without teacher direction - leaving him in control of the composition. 'Remind me' is different from 'Tell me' because it recognises that Amanda has encountered Eliesa's piece before and it is her frailty that makes her not fully remember it rather than her not attending to Eliesa's important composition. Amanda consistently speaks to individual children using their first names. This does invite the feeling that they are someone, recognised and respected. It seems trivial but it shouldn't be taken for granted. Rereading the conversation without these names has a very different feel. Eliesa: Um, my special place was, um, my Dad's van. Teacher: OK, and what makes it special to you? I wonder whether asking a more open question might get more detail and then this more focused question would be able to capitalise on the detail. Suppose the prompt were simply 'Tell me about it.' Eliesa: Um, because, it's away from my brothers and my sister like arguing, like, singing songs that are out of tune, and my parents asking for, like, make them cup of teas and also cleaning up. Teacher: OK, so it's a place you can go and escape to. Offering a possible summarising statement. It is offered in a way that shows Amanda is attending closely to what Eliesa is saying. Eliesa shows that he takes it this way in his validating 'Yeah.' Eliesa: Yeah. Teacher: So, when you're in that place, does anybody know that you're there? This is a question of genuine interest, which extends their relationship of respect. Eliesa: Um, no, only my cat. Teacher: So you're only there with your cat. And again. Eliesa: Yeah. Teacher: OK. Did you start writing about how it felt to be in this place? Turning attention now to where Eliesa is in the process of recording his experience so he can talk about the writing itself. Eliesa: Yeah. Teacher: Do you want to read that to me? I think it was down here somewhere, wasn't it? This indirect request is intended to soften the direction. This doesn't work for all cultural groups. Some hear this literally. The second question shows familiarity with his piece and shows that she pays attention to what he does, so he has to, too. Eliesa: (reads) 'I like it because it's comfortable, peaceful, and nobody can know me. It just feels like I'm in a small palace.' Teacher: OK. Why did you choose to say that it was like being in a small palace? What did you want the reader to know from that? 'Choose to,' emphasises the authorial agency. The next question further emphasises the agency by focusing on the expected consequences of the author's action. Eliesa: Oh, like, like it's just me and, like, it feels like that I just want, like a small kingdom, and, when you're, like, king, you have your palace and it's just you living in there. Teacher: Oh, so you're this king inside the van! This is a reflective restatement that extends Eliesa's palace metaphor, at once offering new language possibilities and building respect by showing close attention to what Eliesa has to say. Eliesa: Yeah. Teacher: So, as a reader I want to hear about you being this king, OK, because that's such a great image for me and I can start to understand why that place would be very special to you. So, together we need to work out a way of being able to add that, um, image into your writing. Where do you think that would fit? The first sentence turns attention back to the writing by identifying herself as a reader. Amanda shows interest in Eliesa's pursuing her extension of his metaphor and shows a connection between her interest as a reader and Eliesa's choice of words. This sentence also brings the connection back to the topic -the purpose of the piece. The words 'together we' insist on a collaborative view of the writing. They offer support -'you're not alone in this' - but at the cost of individual agency. Adding the image to Eliesa's writing takes for granted that Eliesa does want to add this to his writing. It does not offer him a choice. The last sentence offers him a choice, but not to leave it out. Eliesa: Um, after the palace and just tell them why I feel like being in a palace? Teacher: OK. Can you think of a sentence now that would back that idea up? This keeps the momentum going, not allowing the opportunity to not include it. Eliesa: Like, um because... Teacher: I think down here, 'It just feels like I'm in a small palace'.'It just -you could add something in here about being the king. What do you think?... Could I give you a suggestion? It just feels like I'm a king. Have a go at adding that in. This section is very forceful. Following the invitations to think of a sentence and where to put it Eliesa has no time to do so, no opportunity to reject the idea. Although Amanda asks permission, to make a suggestion -both important politeness conventions to maintain Eliesa's authority- however, there is the insistence that he write the suggestion. Eliesa: (writes, then reads) - ' a very small palace.' Teacher: OK, so to your sentence we added, 'It just feels like I'm a king'. Why do you think it was important for the reader that you added in the words of 'the king?' This divides up authorship. The first piece is Eliesa's, the second piece is composed by Amanda and Eliesa. The question asserts that it was important for the reader to know that Eliesa feels like a king. It does not allow Eliesa to contest the presumed importance because it is given information. The only part in question is why it is important. Eliesa: Because I feel like a king, and probably in palaces you mostly have a king in them. The 'probably' and 'mostly' suggest some caution on Eliesa's part. Teacher: OK, so you want your reader to know that you're the ruler of this van? This is an assertion by Amanda of Eliesa's goals. He may not agree, in which case it would undermine his ownership of the writing. Eliesa: Yeah! Teacher: OK. And I can see that now as the reader. That's made the image a lot stronger for me. Builds a strong connection between reader and writing strategy, emphasising what happens in readers' heads. Eliesa: Yeah. Teacher: That's a cool piece of writing.This is a 'close the conversation' statement. It is unspecific praise, which can have a down-side. Since it doesn't show what is cool about the piece of writing, it doesn't allow the author to later view his work through specific qualities himself. He has to go back to the teacher to see if this new piece is cool, too.
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