Written Response - Workshops 7 & 8 - GLIT 6728

Written Response – Workshop 7 and 8

In response to my readings for these workshops I have focused on the craft of teaching and the skills required developing literate learners. Heath’s article exemplifies situations both in the home and school environments where learning is limited for students/children if there is not a well rounded, relevant, active transmission of information focusing on addressing the decoding, meaning, and critical analysis of texts. Situations where students undergo the steps of answering pre-determined, explicit-type questions do not foster the deeper understanding of texts and skills necessary to survive in the twenty-first century. Heath’s study with the Roadville and Maintown communities and their experience with bedtime stories display an example of students in a passive role of learning and how it is imperative for them to learn to become more active information givers.

In addressing these points, I believe it is important to address the role of effective teachers, the type of questions students are trained to address through early interactions with parents and the continuation of this type of discourse in the school environment and its possible stifling effects on the literate learner. Finally, the necessity of addressing all roles of the literate learner as presented by Luke and Freebody and how this compares to the learning environment of the Roadville and Maintown children will be highlighted.

The role of a teacher and the craft of teaching have a great deal to do with the success by which students learn. Evidence has shown that students learn best from a teacher who reveals rather than one who tells. Teaching by telling is defined as a teacher standing up in front of a class, on many occasions the students’ desk or chairs are in rows and the students are to listen and learn. This type of teaching is a passive activity and can be described as being a one-way path of communication between the teacher and student. In comparison, teaching by revealing is similar to Frank Smith’s demonstrations/ modeling pedagogy of teaching. The teacher is learning, the student is learning and they are revealing their learning to each other. The teacher models the strategies and skills that are required in becoming literate learners. Errors and mistakes made by both the teacher and student are more productive and everyone learns from them. This teaching – learning process is active and includes constant communication between both teacher and student.

An important aspect of my job this year is to help support and model the Gradual Release of Responsibility instructional approach. This instructional approach includes modeling and scaffolding students’ learning until the student has successfully mastered the skills and strategies required to become independent literate learners. The first step in this instructional approach is the modeling and think aloud used during a read aloud. The students watch as the teacher models the skills and strategies good readers use. As the teacher moves the students through the instructional stages, the shared reading/ writing block is when the teacher and students participate 50-50. Both the teacher and student are doing together- students’ learning is scaffold by the teacher. Learning is consolidated and independently practised during the independent reading/writing block of the instructional approach. Students who require more assistance and modeling will receive focused individualized help during the Guided reading/writing block.

Literacy is a complex interaction of skills and resources that the literate learner draws upon to make meaning from texts of many types. Allan Luke and Peter Freebody offer one approach to understanding this interactive process in their “four sources model” (1990). The four resources are also referred to as the “four roles of the literate learner”. This approach explains that to be literate, students must learn to (1) to make meaning from texts, (2) to break the “code “of texts, (3) to use texts to acquire knowledge/information and perform tasks, and (4) to analyze and critique texts. One family of practice does not stand alone; students integrate all four at the same time when they read, write, listen and speak. An effective program of literacy instruction will address all of these roles.

It is important for teachers to integrate these roles in a context that is meaningful and relevant to the students in all subjects across the curriculum. The roles are not meant to be addressed in a linear sequence, for example by addressing code breaking skills first and then moving to meaning maker, etc. All students can develop critical and analytical thinking skills as they are acquiring literacy skills. Effective teachers will intentionally, purposefully, and explicitly plan and teach keeping in mind all four roles of the learner. Students will experience difficulty and boredom in school when there is an imbalance or an overemphasis on one of the roles.
Students who are taught to focus on decoding skills (code user) will not develop the skills required in becoming meaning makers or text analyzers. When students reach the later primary and early junior grades comprehension is weak. Students experience a great deal of difficulty with the more complex texts and the understanding of the text features that accompany more difficult texts.

A prime example of this was described in Heath’s article: What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at home and School. Children that grow up in mainstream communities learn certain customs, beliefs and skills in early enculturation experiences with written materials. The bedtime story is a literacy event which helps set patterns of behaviour that repeat themselves throughout the lives of mainstream children.

This is an example of Primary Discourse in which children understand who they are, things they need and how people similar to them, value and believe. These children learn through patterns (initiation-reply-evaluation) through different literacy events i.e. bedtime story. These patterns are then repeated throughout lessons in a classroom. The student is often asked question that are pre-specified and answers are pre-determined in the minds of teachers.

Reading texts and asking children to repeat from texts and to answer lower- order thinking questions of explicit nature do not facilitate the development of skills required to be meaning makers or text analyzers. The text is used to remind students how to behave, to compare similar life situations, lessons to be learned from a recount of a story, and connection to similar real life situations are connected to stories read. These students have difficulty answering questions that require an opinion, an emotional commentary, extend understanding of one text and connecting it to understanding of another text, an inference – higher order thinking type of questions. Students do not know how to answer these types of questions and do not know how to ask their teachers questions to help them take apart the questions to figure out the answers. These children have learned to decode the words and apply the patterns of “initiation-reply-evaluation” type of responses. They have not learned the interactive process of “four roles of the literate learner”.

Heath also describes that during the bedtime story- the parent will seek “what – explanations”, asking what the topic is, establishing it as predictable and recognizing it in new situational contexts by classifying and categorizing it in our mind with other phenomena’. (pg. 264) In learning to read, children move through the sequence of skills that teach what-explanations. This view of teaching also correlates with the passive transmission and explained by Barnes in “Transmission and Interpretation”. The “what-explanation” requires no correction, no comments and the product of the questioning are the purpose. The learner plays a very passive role and teachers see themselves as having access to knowledge that students don’t have and can easily obtain from memorization and literal regurgitation of text. What lacks in this view of teaching is the students’ active role in learning. When expected or required to interpret, persuade, or to take responsibility for their learning and actions, the students lack the skills or strategies to do so.

A large problem with this passive transmission view of teaching is that students enter into a “fourth grade slump” (Heath). They succeed in the first few years of their education. They are able to answer questions from a text, follow the rules of decoding and literal meaning of texts; however, they have great difficulty gaining meaning from higher order thinking and deeper understandings of texts. Students have not developed the skills and strategies required to deepen their understanding and meaning of images, graphs, diagrams equations, and gestures. The ability to produce meanings in different situations, contexts, or practices has been compromised and students are not adequately prepared for their everyday life and understanding of everyday literacies.

Effective teachers will provide the texts children encounter in schools; these texts must resemble the texts they see in everyday life. In order to deepen their understanding and move literacy understanding from the text to the image, visual literacy requires explicit teaching. Visual literacy includes the understanding that images are not simply illustrations or decorations. They exist purposefully to add meaning to a text and are their own system of meanings. To develop literate learners, we need to teach our children to read images as well as text. The meanings and understanding require semiotic understandings based on both situation and context. Different skills and strategies must be taught in order to understand visual images. In order to lessen the gap, and to align everyday life with school life, as educators we need to bring everyday literacies into the schools (i.e. CD covers, You tube, political cartoons, graphic novels). Some considerations in helping understand visual literacies would include the learning of composition and perspective, symbolism, significance (colour and position), framing (sequencing from right to left), modality ( reality level to level of abstraction), and design elements ( font, border, orientation, Para textual information ) (Frank Serafini 2009).

A problem exists when the acquisition of discourse in the home environment is not mastered and then learning in schools is not supported by the home environment. In other words, the learning in the school and home environments is not aligned.

The development of literate learners is a complex integration of a variety of factors: effective teaching that acknowledges all aspects of the role of the learner (meaning maker, code user, text use and text analyzer), active transmission and communication between the teacher and student; opportunities to model skills and strategies necessary to comprehend (of both text and visuals) the variety of texts of the twenty first Century.