BCTELA

Nicole Widdess teaches in Richmond and is the Curriculum Co-Chair for BCTELA. She is committed to teaching diverse learners and is passionate about literacy. Her current focus is teaching students in the middle years.

Click here to open a PDF version of this article.

As one of the Curriculum Coordinators, I am pleased to share that our Curriculum Pack sub-committee has developed new submission criteria that reflect current thinking, research and pedagogy. These criteria are also aligned with the ideas and research presented in the pedagogical considerations section of BC’s new K-7 and draft 8-12 English Language Arts IRPs. We hope that the new criteria will support you, our members, in writing up and submitting units of study for publication.

When you submit a curriculum pack, a member of our committee will provide descriptive feedback to assist you in revising and readying your unit for publication. Once accepted for publication, you are eligible for curriculum resource funds ($400). If you are interested in crafting a unit to be published by BCTELA please be sure to review the criteria below. Please send your unit (or proposal for a unit) to Nicole Widdess at NWiddess@richmond.sd38.bc.ca. Once your proposal or unit has been reviewed, we will be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.

 

Overview

• Identifies essential questions and enduring understandings

o These are the big ideas/inquiries that will guide the unit and the skills/strategies (including cognitive and metacognitive) that will be used/developed by students

• This overview should demonstrate links to the 2006 K-7 and/or the 2007 Draft 8-12 ELA IRPs m cuts across outcomes from the 3 organizers and 4 suborganizers of the ELA IRP

Assessment

• formative assessment/metacognitive activities

o formative assessment practices that help students learn to analyze and critique their work and to set personalized goals in relation to shared criteria

o offer students opportunities to generate criteria and strategies that are both contextual and meaningful

o a variety of assessment activities, including performance-based assessment

• summative assessment m performance-based assessment that includes detailed rubrics and links back to enduring understandings

Lesson Sequences

• a clear, detailed outline of suggested lesson sequences including m gradual release of responsibility

o assessment-to-instruction m metacognitive activities (e.g. using and/or generating criteria, self-assessment, goal-setting, and reflection)

o reading, writing, and oral language activities

o well-structured lessons that help students connect, process, and transform and personalize texts, concepts, and/or understandings

Diversity Considerations

• suggestions for adapting based on students' individual strengths and needs

• ways to differentiate based on student interests and context (e.g. text choices, variety of output options, variety of instructional modes)

Additional Documents

• performance rubrics

• handouts used in the lessons

• resources used, and suggestions for alternative resources

Reflection

• what worked especially well

• what came before this and after this in the year

• how this unit built on or was able to be built upon by other inquiries/units

Would you like support in developing a unit that integrates strategic teaching, formative and summative assessment, gradual release and the use of diverse texts using learning outcomes from the new IRP? Consider attending the Saturday Institute at our Fall Conference October 25, 2008. The 2008 Conference will be held at the Delta Hotel in Richmond this year. BCTELA Executive members Krista Ediger, Joanne Panas, Leyton Schnellert, and Nicole Widdess will be facilitating an institute on backwards design tentatively called "Designing Units with the End in Mind." A description of this institute follows:

So many best practices...how do you put them all together to create engaging, pedagogically-sound units that will help your students learn what they need to? Come and spend the day with us-learn about inquiry and backwards design, modeling and gradual release, assessment-to-instruction-and put it all together in a framework for a unit you can use. To get the most out of this session, bring a topic for a unit and sample texts you might use, and any brainstorming you might have already done.

The Curriculum Pack sub-committee members are looking forward to a year of learning together as we explore the new English Language Arts IRPs and develop new curriculum packs to support their implementation.

Marzena Michalowska is a Later Literacy Mentor and Teacher of English at John Oliver Secondary in Vancouver).

(Click here to download a PDF version of this article)

Teachers' reactions to their students' reading of manga, the Japanese graphic novels, typically range from extreme disappointment

"There is no reading there; they are just flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures. And it is all backward too: they are going from right to left, starting at the end. You cannot possibly call that reading!"

to a rather muted and restrained enthusiasm

"Well, at least they are reading something. There is some writing there. Probably not very good quality though; nothing that we would really like them to read. And the pictures are like sugar coating: they make it easier to understand the story, whatever it is."

A very quick discourse analysis of the above statements will likely reveal the following operating assumptions. In order to be considered valid, students' reading should consist of reading primarily a print-based text, preferably a model of beautiful language (a classic?) Since there is little value in decoding images in manga - their role is mostly to repeat what the simplistic text already says - manga graphic novels can hardly be considered effective reading tools. Reading is both unimodal (dealing with one type of text at a time) and linear in nature; and finally, in a Language Arts classroom, visual literacy is not as important as print-based text literacy.

I would like to propose that if we actually agree with the above inferences, there is definitely a lot we can talk about. Let us then begin with the idea that reading really is about reading a print-based text, preferably one that introduces students to models of a superb language use. Most of us will agree that traditional texts often address universal questions and offer insights that are relevant and inspiring to today's readers. Reading such texts gives our students skills, competence and confidence to face various academic demands that await them in the post-secondary world. However, what about students whose life experiences and cultures are not reflected in traditional literature? Are they not going to feel marginalized, perhaps even dehumanized? They might resist reading such texts not because they are "struggling readers," but rather because reading them makes them feel insecure, inadequate, and inferior. In the words of Herbert Kohl (1994), the author of I Won't Learn from You, students often engage in a "struggle of wills with authority" because "what [is] at stake for them [is] nothing less than their pride and integrity." (7) Resistance to assigned reading becomes then an act of self-preservation that is far more important than any attempt of finding oneself in the context of F. S. Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, for example.

And what about reading a print-based text as the only valid text? If we embrace the new and expanded definition of the 21st century literacy as multiliteracy, or communication of ideas through a multitude of modes (channels), we also accept the idea that text is no longer confined to the written word, but includes oral, aural, performative, and visual representations of meaning. Consequently, our literacy pedagogy becomes redefined to include a variety of text forms (modes of representation) associated with the above expanded theory of meaning making. In such context, reading is no longer just about decoding print-based text and good reading is no longer just about reading lots of print-based texts. Reading is about decoding and constructing meaning with various texts such as still and animated images, symbols, signs, sounds, movement, as well as numerous digital texts. And now that we have opened our teaching door to a variety of texts, why should we welcome manga, a multimodal (written and visual) text?

Manga graphic novels can hardly be considered effective reading tools because there is little value in decoding images that illustrate what the simplistic text already says. I think there are two issues here that call for a closer examination: firstly, our difficulty in recognizing manga as a valid semiotic domain, or area worthy of study, and secondly our own knowledge of manga. Let's look at the first issue. If we accept that texts come in different forms, why not then include in our teaching texts and literacies that our students are familiar with? This way, we can show them that their knowledge has currency in our classroom and that we value what they come with. After all, students read what they can read and what they like to read. If we have a chance to build on their interests in order to maximize their growth, should we hesitate to do so? Also, do we not teach our students that there are different roads to reach a goal? Surely, we are not intimidated to take the road less traveled, are we?

Speaking about intimidation. Personally, I did not particularly like admitting to my students that I knew nothing about manga. I skillfully avoided the subject. Appearing knowledgeable and having little desire to undermine myself have always been my guiding teaching principles. And yet with all my background in language and literature, I could neither understand nor explain the manga attraction until one day when one of my students left behind his manga book. I picked it up with suspicion and tossed it quickly into the lost and found box. I came back to it, however, being consumed by sheer curiosity. I wondered what it was all about and what made it so special to my student. I decided to give it a try and read it. How much would it cost me? I surprised myself. I was immediately drawn into the story, because it gave me a sense of being a participant in it. The feeling of walking into it and becoming a part of it was so satisfying that I finished my first manga that same evening. Then, like a true reader, I moved onto another and another and another. I have known all along that one day I would cross over to the other side and become my students. And when that day arrived, I finally understood why they were secretly reading their manga while I was busy teaching them ‘real literature.' The road less traveled has turned out to be full of pleasant surprises and discoveries. I am still walking it because learning new things takes time. However, here are some knowledge gems I have found along my way.

Manga, the most popular type of graphic novel in North America, as a genre sits somewhere between film and prose, creating a bridge from one to the other. A lot of manga are smart, well written and imaginative. There is manga for every subject because everything can be expressed in manga form. The cinematic quality of manga images shown from rather unusual camera angels turns reading into a viewing experience. Manga's iconic characters with their simply rendered faces can easily be filled with any emotion the reader is experiencing. Looking at such characters is almost like stepping inside the life of Charlie Brown and discovering the hidden mysteries behind his simple existence. Manga characters live in very rich environments that have been created with a lot of attention and sensibility. Real world anchors such as school desks, clocks on the wall, or park benches emphasize the unexpected beauty of everyday things. The backgrounds are usually delivered in fragments, and we experience them much like in real life, with our eyes moving around, up and down, and finally assembling the world from fragments.

Unlike our home grown comics and graphic novels that are often filled with sound effects and characters' chatter, manga are characterized by the presence of many silent panels that provide us with contemplative moments of unmediated experience. Such experience, just like the characters' faces, can be filled with our own values and emotions. As well, the silent panels sometimes function as transitions between story episodes.

Again in contrast to our North American productions that often present motion in a somewhat bombastic way, at times showing characters literally breaking out of panels in their attempts to run, fly, or jump, manga authors have found a very different and rather subjective and visceral way of rendering motion. In manga, we, the readers, participate in the motion by becoming the moving object. And because we now are the moving object, a motorbike, for example, we can feel the bike's sudden stops, unexpected turns, and periodic vibrations. It is precisely because of such unusual representation of motion that people who read manga often compare it to watching a movie.

And finally what completes the manga attraction is the presence of a diverse genre of images. While reading manga, we are likely to come across collages, free standing, or cascading images. Such diversity of image genre does not allow us to get bored, constantly stimulating our senses. Clearly then, reading manga requires us to redefine what reading is; and while we are busy reworking our definition, let's allow our students' reading to be in service of their interests rather than to be a rehearsal for living. They are discovering something new. Let's not deprive them of the joys of discovery.

What have we, on the other hand, discovered about teaching visual literacy in a Language Arts classroom? Teaching it is not nearly as important as the teaching of print-based text literacy. Interestingly enough, writing with pictures predates writing with words. In some languages (Chinese) words began as stylized pictures. Similarly, cave paintings and hieroglyphs were the earliest forms of communication. Why have we forgotten then that there is an important calligraphic quality to pictures? Why are we reluctant to fortify the printed word with a printed image? Others do not seem that hesitant.

Both the political and the corporate worlds, for example, understand the extraordinary power of images. Just imagine looking at a picture of fallen soldiers coming home: multiple coffins draped in Canadian flags being carried by some clearly emotional pallbearers, grieving relatives, among them mothers holding little children in their arms, a solemn looking preacher whose hand is raised in a sign of a blessing. Because an image like that communicates a powerful political message to a country and its people, it is of little wonder then that our politicians may not want to expose us to too many such visions. Similarly, imagine looking at an image of a delicious and mouth-watering multilayer chocolate cake adorned with opulent coral roses and emerald leaves dribbling gracefully along its edges. Would we not want to try it? But to try it, we need to buy it; and, let us remember that most of what we actually end up buying is first introduced to us through visual ads that entice, inspire, and cajole us to do things that we normally might not have done. It is clear then that pictures are an important form of communication: they convey meaningful and profound ideas and concepts; and, if we agree with that statement, we should also agree that visual literacy should not be left off the teaching table by being undertaught.

Will we then take up manga in addition to our classics? If we are interested in exploring the challenges of a multimodal text, we probably will. If we are interested in overcoming our own habitus and developing our own and our students' visual literacy, we probably will as well. Let us then experience the joy of learning a new social practice and in the process validate the home literacies our students come to us with.

Bibliography

http://www.dnp.co.jp/museum/nmp/nmp_i/articles/manga/manga1.html : a website providing a comprehensive history of the manga genre

http://www.koyagi.com/Libguide.html: a librarians' guide to anime and manga

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/manga/index.html: a publisher website advertising manga published by the largest manga publisher in Japan, Kodansha

http://www.tokyopop.com/: a website containing reviews of manga

Kohl, H. I Won't Learn from You. The New Press. 1994.

Joanne Panas was a teacher consultant for Richmond last year, with a focus on adolescent literacy. She is currently teaching English at McRoberts Secondary in Richmond and working on her first novel. 

( Click here for Joanne's full article, including graphic organizers.)

Leyton Schnellert and Nicole Widdess' excellent article in the Winter 2007 edition of Update detailed where the idea for Second Shot classes came from, the research behind it, and some of the amazing work that went on in Nicole's class. As a district consultant in Richmond this year, I have been the support person for our Second Shot teachers and classes; as such, I would like to take this opportunity to follow up and share what has been happening this year with Second Shot.  

Overview of the IRI and Second Shot

As you may recall from Leyton and Nicole's article, Richmond applied for and received literacy grants from the Ministry of Education for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years; we have been approved for 2007-2008 as well. These grants are used to support the Intermediate Reading Initiative (IRI) in Richmond. The overall purpose of the IRI is to improve the literacy skills of all students, with a particular focus on grade 8 students transitioning into secondary schools and the additional literacy challenges that come along with that move. To that end, each secondary school in Richmond has a Literacy Leader, who has time in her or his schedule to support school teams and individual teachers as they work to improve their instruction in literacy skills across the curriculum.

Part of this larger picture, which is represented in the recently-updated IRI graphic (Figure 1), is the Second Shot class, which is part of the "Extend" portion of the triangle. This intensive instructional class focuses on students who "survive but don't thrive" in secondary school; often their reading challenges have been minor or masked in elementary school, but when they are faced with the increased amount and complexity of the reading they are required to do in secondary school, they tend to fall further and further behind. These students are offered, in addition to literacy-related instruction in their regular core classes, a "second shot" of literacy instruction and practice in grade 8 which increases the explicit instruction they need to improve.

It's important for me to emphasize here that Second Shot classes are intended to reinforce what is going on in the rest of the school, not fill in gaps of missing literacy instruction. Richmond schools are working to address shared goals set at the school level and across the curriculum in the regular classes; Second Shot classes are part of that school wide-effort. In Richmond, five of our secondary schools have offered a Second Shot class (as each school has its own name for the class, I will use the generic name "Second Shot" throughout this article). For some schools, this is their second year offering this class, and for some it has been their first year. We had new teachers in this role in three of our five schools this year, and the learning curve has been steep! In the next sections I describe some of our successes and struggles.

Sharing and Problem-Solving Together: October

In October 2007, the Second Shot teachers had a day together to discuss their progress, share ideas, and bring up issues of concern. The teachers shared a number of things that were working well for them, including: having one-to-one conferences with students; engaging students with each other through partner talk; incorporating a reading workshop classroom model; using lots of modeling and think-alouds; using graphic organizers; reading aloud to students; guiding students in their choices for independent reading; and using sticky notes to both hold thinking and communicate back and forth with students. Several teachers brought sample lessons and activities to share with the group.

One of the challenges that the teachers identified was that some of the students who had been recommended for the class (usually by their elementary school) were not actually the clientele for whom the class had been designed. For example, some students were reading quite well and did not need to be in the class; in some classes there were students who were reading at a level well below what the class is intended to address. A few students with significant challenges such as emotional or behavioural issues or severe learning disabilities were placed in Second Shot classes; teachers found that the learning needs of these students could be better met through different, more tailored supports in other settings. In essence, there was a lot of confusion-from elementary school resource teachers and grade 7 teachers, to secondary school counsellors and even whole secondary school staffs-about the purpose of the class and the students who would most benefit from the Second Shot experience.

Beginning in January, I solicited the input of all the Second Shot teachers to create a set of guidelines for student selection. Over several months, and with many revisions from the teachers themselves as well as from district staff, we developed a set of documents (see Figures 2-8). In April, I debriefed the documents with elementary principals, with elementary and secondary resource teachers, and with a team from each secondary school, including the Second Shot teacher, the Literacy Leader, and other interested staff. Secondary schools can adapt the documents as needed to their Second Shot program specifications; however, they are keeping the referral form the same for the sake of consistency across the district. The Second Shot teachers have used the documents in their transition meetings with elementary schools; feedback received from the group in June may result in further revisions of the documents for next year.

Second Shot Classroom Partnerships

Part of the role of district consultants in Richmond is not only to support initiatives and school teams, but also to work with individual teachers and classrooms; indeed, it is one of the most enjoyable parts of the job! From January to June I was privileged to be able to work in varying capacities with three of our five Second Shot teachers and classes. My roles included: co-planning lessons and units; helping teachers find suitable materials for their classes; co-teaching lessons; teaching lessons while the teacher observed; and working with individual students and small groups while the teacher worked with the rest of the class.

One classroom where I was able to have long-term involvement was Ian Felgar's Literacy Dynamics class at Cambie Secondary School. Ian and I co-planned a unit on Looking for X by Deborah Ellis, with the goal of teaching students inferring skills; this goal was chosen based on the results of a school-wide grade 8 performance-based assessment (PBA) in the fall, and the students' progress since that assessment. I was able to co-teach many classes with Ian and got to know the students well over several months. (See Figure 9 for an outline of our unit). This classroom partnership was very successful, and Ian and I will be co-presenting the unit and our experiences with this lovely group of students at the SFU Literacy Continuum Conference on August 23 and 24.

In another classroom partnership with Brenda Dewonck at McRoberts Secondary School, we adapted the basic outline of the unit Ian and I developed for use with another novel, Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen. Brenda's goal was to improve her students' inferring skills as well. As part of the assessment-to-instruction cycle, we created and administered a mini-PBA on inferring partway through the unit (see figure 10); using that, Brenda was able to determine what other instruction the students needed to improve their inferring skills.

At the end of the year, both Ian and Brenda were keen to know how their students perceived the Second Shot class, and very graciously allowed me to interview their students, asking questions about their affect, metacognition, independence, and application and transfer-four of the six goals of the Second Shot class (see Figure 11 for all the goals). This has yielded some rich qualitative and anecdotal data about the class; we will continue to collect both quantitative and qualitative data next year and will share it with all our secondary schools.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: June

This June, the Second Shot teachers met to review our year and think ahead to next year. Some Literacy Leaders, as well as new Second Shot teachers for the 2007-2008 school year, were also in attendance. Once again, teachers shared something they had done that worked well, and we celebrated our successes. We collected feedback on various structures associated with Second Shot, including: the student selection process; connections with elementary schools; connections with Literacy Leaders and the grade 8 team; the assessment-to-instruction cycle and the grade-wide PBA; instructional practices including modelling, scaffolding, and gradual release; and professional development. The feedback will be used to help us support Second Shot teachers in a variety of ways next year.

An important part of the meeting was a focus on the goals of Second Shot (see Figure 11). We had a chance to reflect on how well we had met those goals over the year, and what we might do differently next year. We emphasized that everyone had done some work on the goals, but that it was important to strive to reach all six goals in each unit, and ideally to focus on several of them in any given lesson. Using the work Ian and I had done in his class, I was able to show how we had worked on comprehension goals by teaching inferring; we also worked on goals around application and transfer (using a science-based text to teach fix-up strategies), affect (building their confidence with fun scaffolding activities) and metacognition ("Beliefs About Readers" activity and other reflections/discussions). I also noted how we might have worked on improving their fluency (by having them read aloud to us one-on-one), or their independence (by having them choose among several articles to read for background knowledge). The final piece of the reflection was thinking about the assessment-to-instruction cycle; most teachers used the PBA data to set their goals for the year, but saw the value in doing more frequent and specific formative assessments through the year to check in on students' progress, much like Brenda and I did with the mini-PBA on inferring (Figure 10).

Metacognition: How did we do?

As I mentioned earlier, I was able to do exit interviews with two of the Second Shot classes; a third class filled out the interview questionnaire on their own. I was able therefore to gather data from three of our five Second Shot classes this year (27 students) on affect, metacognition, independence, and application and transfer. Did students improve in these areas over the year? Although this was a pilot survey, the results speak for themselves:

• 63% of students report feeling more positive about reading than they did a year ago.
• 63% of students report that they would have missed learning something about reading or literacy if they had not had a Second Shot class.
• 81% of students report using literacy skills from Second Shot in their other classes.
• 74% of students report using new skills when faced with challenging texts.
• 70% of students report feeling at least somewhat confident that they can handle ("I can do it") and/or understand challenging texts.
• 56% of students report an increase in their enjoyment and amount of independent reading.

The words of the students say as much as or more than the numbers do about the effectiveness of this class in building confidence in the students and developing their enjoyment of reading:

• "I feel good about myself because I read a book." 
• "I feel better about reading because I learned new strategies."
• "I can read more challenging text."
• "I feel good about myself understanding it." 
• "I think I have improved in my reading." 
• "I know I can do this."
• "After I took this class it made me connect to the book even more than before because I understand what the author's trying to say."
• "I didn't read on my own before. [Now] I read a lot! Harry Potter, Bridge to Terabithia, Shiloh; I like mystery the most, [it's] more interesting."

And one final, telling detail that dedicated childhood readers everywhere will appreciate, relayed to me with a sheepish grin by a young man who "used to read a little bit" before taking a Second Shot class: "One time I stayed up too late reading and my mom yelled at me."

Jill Kedersha McClay is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.

(Click here to downlaod this article in PDF)

When our two daughters were toddlers, my husband always said that whenever one of them yelled, "Look, Mom! Look, Dad! Look at me!" we were bound to see something we didn't want to see: a little girl dangling one foot off the edge of a cliff, or displaying a mouth full of half-chewed spaghetti and meatballs, or the little one hoisting the older one off the ground in a back-breaking effort. Something to make us cringe, afraid to yell "stop that!" for fear of disrupting the tenuous balance they held. They were testing their newfound strengths and freedoms, and if such testing made their "parental units" cringe, well, so much the better.

Similarly, I see young adolescents testing newfound strengths and freedoms in their literacy world. The difference is that they are not clambering to be noticed, and so we adults may lose opportunities to guide them well. In this article, I want to consider some ways in which young people are engaging in exhilarating, precarious feats of literacy, unsanctioned practices of strength and ingenuity (and questionable taste) that sometimes make adults queasy, powerless, and frightened for them. What opportunities and perils does our literacy world offer to children and teachers? How can teachers encourage today's young people to engage in productive literacy relationships in safety, looking both ways while crossing the literacy streets? To consider these questions, I will highlight ways in which new literacy environments blur boundaries and transform some fairly traditional practices in original ways. Then I will suggest productive ways for teachers and parents to engage in literacy relationships and practices with young people. Such work is, I believe, a moral imperative, not merely a pedagogical one.

Literacy is all about relationships-it always has been and always will be. When Frank Smith (1985) wrote about children's desire to become members of "the literacy club," he understood that people seek out relationships through literacy. The contemporary literacy world offers us new ways to make relationships, in public and in private, with friends, kindred spirits, and strangers near and far. Literacy affords both immediacy and distance in our relationships, allowing us to enter a more expansive temporal frame. We can reach out to the past and future, not only in the grand sense of authors' works lasting for generations, but in a more personal sense of ordinary people holding our moments in time. Even the most immediate and personal of literacy practices-writing a diary-places us in the flow of time. We preserve diaries to re-read on a quiet night in the future and recall, perhaps with a changed perspective and clearer eyes, our self from days past. Personal notes and letters-from surreptitious notes passed in a boring chemistry class to the final draft of a life-changing love letter-are messages sent and received, which, if preserved, enable us to reflect on tangible evidence of our past.

Our literacy practices have always relied on technology, and each generation uses the technology available. The technology introduces some degree of distance into relationships. Such distance is both an attraction and a danger. Because of the technology, we open the door to posers and masqueraders-witness Cyrano's complicit identity theft of Christian in pursuit of the unsuspecting Roxanne. Like Cyrano, we crave opportunities to hide our physical flaws and to reveal our true inner essence. Today, the Internet allows such revelation in anonymity. It allows us to be most clearly ourselves while, as one young man put it, avoiding the "essentializing" categories of gender and age (Tobin, 1998).

So the ability to make relationships with strangers through new literacy technology is not a new phenomenon; nor is relationship via digital technology entirely new. In 1879, Ella Cheever Thayer published a novel, Wired Love, certainly a very contemporary sounding title (Collins 2002). The sub-title is A romance of dots and dashes, and Thayer's protagonist develops a relationship through the dangerous new medium of the telegraph. The novel details the developing romance between two telegraph operators, Clem and Nattie, in frontier towns of the American West. The couple's romance has several turns that are as new as today's blogs: other operators listen in and "flame" them, Nattie attempts to pass as a man online (but Clem "sees" through her ruse), and a flesh-and-blood impostor poses as Clem to a disappointed Nattie-another case of identity theft. Like many contemporary people who form a digital relationship, Nattie and Clem are awkward when they finally do meet in person, tongue-tied and uncomfortable (Jackson, 2005). Clem moves to Nattie's town, but she eventually complains, "I had more of your company on the wire." Their solution is to string telegraph wire between their apartment buildings, and they wire each other late into the nights. As You've Got Mail, and other chick flicks confirm, dots-and-dashes technology has its place for would-be lovers.

Cyrano and Clem notwithstanding, new literacy environments do allow us to make relationships in some new ways, and, as always, the newness is part of the attraction. But certainly many of the old verities are still in place. Young and old meet online, in chat rooms, MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), and palaces, playing with multiple personas and switching genders at will. There are bulletin boards and chat rooms for aficionados of every possible stripe, and support groups for every known interest, malady, or condition. Now, young people are not bound by the isolation of geography or familial and cultural restrictions; they can become members in communities, with these potentially life-saving connections.

 

Blurred or disappearing boundaries

 

New literacy environments allow relationships with unclear or no delineation of conventional boundaries, and many traditional literacy boundaries do not hold in traditional ways. Here I want to consider just two such boundary transgressions: the boundary between private and public, and between child and adult.

The boundary between private and public is now porous almost to the point of disappearance. Cell phones, blogs, and web sites all have a disconcerting habit of being heard and read by other than the intended audience, or, in the turbulent adolescent years, by the audience we intend one minute but not the next. Adolescents and adults alike are caught in disgrace when posting highly personal thoughts on their web sites and blogs. There is a quality of almost magical thinking with which bloggers assume that their blogs will only be read by authorized readers. But as the distinction between private and public gets muddied, young people are also perhaps working this muddiness with a different sense of social acceptability. One young adult commented to me on the benefits of posting on her blog the details of her anger at a friend:

"Well, if she reads my blog, she'll know I'm pissed at her and know why. That way, I don't have to confront her face-to-face and have an argument, but she can stop annoying me if she wants. I think it's a way of being considerate when I'm a little mad about something a friend has done."

It had not previously occurred to me that complaining about one's friend in cyberspace could be conceived of as a considerate act-but then again, I'm not the target demographic. And that is a key point for those of us who attempt to teach children and adolescents about relationships in the new literacy world: young people make their own conventions, and adults need to inquire about their thinking before passing judgments.

A generation ago, a person's diary was sacrosanct, and reading it would be an unforgivable invasion of privacy. But blogs are not only public diaries, they are interactive as well; readers post comments in response to the authors' original entries. Emily Nussbaum (2004) notes the generational differences in expectations and attitudes about private and public writings in her discussion of bloggers:

For many in the generation that has grown up online, the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it....The teenagers who post journals have (depending on your perspective) a degraded or a relaxed sense of privacy; their experiences may be personal, but there's no shame in sharing....If teen bloggers give something up by sloughing off a self-protective layer, they get something back too-a new kind of intimacy, a sense that they are known and listened to. This is their life, for anyone to read. As long as their parents don't find out.

One oddly fascinating interplay of private and public aspects of literacy comes with a cross-over of old and new forms of communication. Frank Warren (2004-06) encourages people to write a secret-something they have never told anyone before- on a post card and mail the card to him. First intended as material for an art exhibit, the collection grows steadily and Warren posts new cards online weekly. The post cards range from the silly and embarrassing to the life-consuming and tragic. People apparently find comfort in telling something intensely private but telling in a way that preserves their anonymity. The way in which this project has grown (now including a conventional print book) is a case study in the boundaries between public and private, as well as in the overlap of old and new media.

The disappearance of the boundary between child and adult audiences and materials is perhaps the most startling and unsettling aspect of new literacy relationships for teachers and parents. Children are now able to enter, unsupervised, the best and worst of the adult world, with no filtering or gate-keeping. They travel faster than we do, often arriving at new destinations before the adults in their lives even know of their existence.

The absence of such boundaries can be dangerous, as children and adolescents are susceptible to predators. Just as in the past, when we could not be certain whom they met inside the movie theatre, now we can't be certain whom they meet inside the chat room. Adolescents have always tested and savoured their power to operate independently of parental supervision, and now this normal adolescent desire combines with their typically superior technological skill to make a chilling danger that can cross from the virtual world to the real. When the Media Awareness Network asks parents if they know what their children do online, most say that they do. When the Network asks children if their parents know what they do online, most say that they don't (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). This divide reminds us that we cannot be present-physically or digitally-everywhere our children roam. It comes down to education and trust. Moreover, when the Network asks young people how long it takes them to determine to their satisfaction whether an online contact is "safe" or not, young people generally indicate a shocking (to adult sensibility) confidence in their ability to make such determinations within a few minutes of online acquaintance.

 

Relationships with new audiences

 

While teachers and parents readily focus on the contemporary blurring of time-honoured boundaries, I want to return to some of the sustaining and encouraging aspects of such blurred boundaries with respect to making new relationships through literacy. The immense popularity of fan fiction sites, for example, attests to some of the positive potential for relationships in online venues.

Not a new development, fan fiction writing became popular among science fiction fans in the days of Star Trek's television popularity. The early trekkie conventions were places where fans could circulate, in costume if they wished, and exchange fan fiction. As these conventions were held in the real world (contrary to appearances, perhaps!), aficionados needed money, mobility, and some independence to attend (Knobel & Lankshear, 2005). In the contemporary literacy world, fans of any particular fiction need only an Internet connection, and they can access an online community to trade analyses and commentary on current episodes of favourite television shows, movies, or novels. More significantly, they can post original fan fiction: their own episodes, spin-offs, or cross-overs. The distinction between amateur and professional is now "obsolete" in online publishing (www.wikipedia.org/fanfiction)

For fans of a particular fiction-in any medium-fan fiction provides a generally supportive environment in which to read abundant offerings of variations on the fictional characters and themes, and, more importantly, to gain a sophisticated readership for one's own fiction. Recently, Raylene, a student in my graduate class, took up my challenge to write fan fiction. A middle-aged elementary school teacher who had not previously known about fan fiction, Raylene gamely wrote a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) episode and posted it with great trepidation. Several weeks later, she reported being genuinely touched and encouraged by the feedback she had received from several readers. They praised her writing, cited specific aspects of the work that they appreciated, and encouraged her to post more episodes. The gentle critiques that accompanied the encouragement were indeed quite constructive, well taken, and given in a generous spirit; responders offered pointers on matters of forensic investigation that are germane to the world of CSI. I should acknowledge here that, as Raylene's writing teacher, I did not have the expertise to offer such in-depth pointers about forensic matters, nor did her classmates.

For young writers, this opportunity to relate to other fans of a particular fiction provides tangible evidence of belonging in this community; they can be accepted and respected for the power of their imagination and knowledge. On fan fiction sites, young writers interact on equal footing with adults who share their passions, giving and receiving detailed pointers for their development as writers of a given genre. The lack of distinction between adult and child audiences seems irrelevant when writers are focused on a shared appreciation of a particular fiction. Needless to say, it also makes such postings a risky business, as young writers are treated as equals and are not allowed much "slack" by other fan writers. Most fan fiction sites have clear rules about positive, constructive criticism, but there is no guarantee of gentle treatment.
Relationships in New Literacies Teaching

As I think about the ways in which new literacies environments offer possibilities for young people to make relationships, some clear implications for teaching arise. Adults sometimes feel inadequate in newer literacy environments and uncertain about the value of such environments; some continue to deny that there is much new or much of value. But one undeniable value is that these are the environments in which our young people are learning about literacy, and, to some degree, learning about relationships. Our place in this environment is vital-as teachers, parents, researchers, and literate citizens-and our experience gives us a role in helping young people navigate this terrain. So the first point about relationships in new literacies teaching is that we must enter into relationships as participants. To teach productively, our participation must also involve respect, attention to security, and broad perspective.

Participation: We need to be in the thick of it with our children and our students. The old traditional-vs.-contemporary debate is irrelevant, because contemporary literacy environments include both traditional and new ways of relating, ways that define literacy for the next generation. We can impose our older definitions of literacy if we choose-for the limited time that we will continue to hold power-as demonstrated by those external assessments that drive teachers' classroom practices. But soon enough the next generation's definitions will take over. It will be more productive for us all if adults have some dialogue with the next generation as they develop their ideas about literacy practices.

A great fuss was raised with the publication of the Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004). While charting a decline in the habits of literary reading in the US, the survey does not include engagements with online literature or other kinds of reading. John Lombardi (2005) recommends that teachers and professors should find out what young people actually do in the online world, noting the wild variety of material available online:

Then I go online. Here I find a complicated world filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Alive and constantly changing, engaged and engaging, requiring my constant decisions about what is worth reading or seeing and what is not. From the lowest pornography to tours of the treasures of the Library of Congress, from the stupidest blogs of the radical fringes, to the most sophisticated discussions of the decline of America's reading habits, everything is there.

(http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/23/lombardi)

We need to enter into new literacies practices with our students and our children, not only because it makes good pedagogical sense to do so. We are morally obligated to go there with them. The literacy world requires sophistication far surpassing the sophistication required to develop or delineate a poem's metaphor or to trace the foreshadowing in a novel. These are still valuable analyses and a source of great literary pleasure, but they are hardly sufficient. The very dangers that adults see in the relationships that are forged in new literacy environments make it imperative for adults to engage with young people in these environments. Adolescence is primarily about the making of relationships-with close friends and with the wider world, and it is a time when young people look with sharper, but still inexperienced, eyes at the adult world.

We need to consider how we enter into relationships with young people in these environments. It is imperative to go there with them as fellow explorers, not as authority figures. We certainly are not experts-adolescents and even younger children go faster than we do and are often more adventurous, more interested in exploration for its own sake, and less encumbered by our baggage. They travel lighter. But we can go there in dialogue, negotiating and sharing authority based on expertise. We can draw on their superior knowledge and experience in some aspects and contribute our superior knowledge and experience in others. We have greater perspective and experience in the real world; often, our young people have greater knowledge of the online world. Because they are making relationships in new literacies practices while young, they take these relationships as part of the given world; as the Media Awareness Network notes, for young people, "The Internet just is" (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). Furthermore, the Network notes that "Kids are ahead of their parents - and on their own - in their explorations of the Internet" (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). The disjuncture between what young people say and what their parents say in the Media Awareness Network surveys are all the evidence we need of the imperative to make relationships with our children while they make relationships online. Such relationships must be founded upon respect.

Respect: We need to take a more collegial stance in our literacy relationships with young people, negotiating authority with respect to their expertise. Respect is key, and we can earn it if we give it. In research involving a series of case studies of multiliteracies teaching and learning in classrooms, I have been struck in each of the case studies by one constant: when the teacher assumes a less authoritative stance, the students respond with respect (McClay, 2006). The multiliteracies work that the teachers established in their classrooms gave students many opportunities, as one teacher noted wryly, "to torpedo the project" (McClay & Weeks, 2004). But students did not take advantage of such opportunities; instead, they appreciated seeing their teachers as people who liked to learn new things and were eager to learn with them. Paradoxically, when the teachers assumed the less authoritative stance of "fellow learner," they actually enhanced their authority and credibility with their students.

Security and safety: We do need to help young people to attend consciously and realistically to security and safety issues. They won't see the same dangers that we do, but we can help them to be better attuned to danger in subtle forms. The inclination of too many adults who work with digital literacy environments with young people is to make the environments safe and unproblematic before we allow young people in, so as not to have untidy or inappropriate material barging into our classrooms. But some attention ought to be paid to the untidy, the inappropriate, the vulgar, even (perhaps especially) the downright fraudulent and immoral in order to teach our youth about these aspects. Our warnings and lists of safe and unsafe behaviours are not effective, as we have seen in the headlines and in the Media Awareness Network's surveys. But our discussions with young people when we enter online environments together can be more powerful, more effective, and more grounded in reality.

We also need to be clear in teaching young people about the real limits of their online power. We have had examples of hapless adolescents being arrested because of the content of their web sites and blogs. When children and adolescents enter the adult literacy world, they suffer adult consequences. They need to understand that their freedoms do not extend to posting hateful or libellous comments; the distinction between passing a note to a friend in class and posting the same comment online must be clear to them. These distinctions should become discussion topics of our classrooms.

Perspective: Adults can play a useful role by helping young people to see the old in the new literacies and the new in the old. Young people will decide what to preserve, and how to preserve it. Undoubtedly, they will do so in ways we would not, as in the case of my young friend who used the forum of her blog to complain about her friend. We old folks have the historical perspective, but they have the future. Ultimately, their decisions about standards and conventions will be upheld. Some of their conventions will seem raw or wrong to us, but many will be much cleverer and more useful than we would imagine. Marc Aronson (2003) discusses the need for adults to present young people with complex portrayals of human relationships in books. He considers various conceptions of "brotherhood" in fiction and nonfictions' books, arguing persuasively for a more complex, inclusive portrayal of the human family. He notes a distinction between children's and young adult literature, commenting that in children's books, the reader/child is part of a family. In adolescence, however, the challenge is for young people to become individuals and to leave their families. This challenge is difficult for adults:

"Inasmuch as we-authors, publishers, reviewers, parents, librarians, teachers-want our books for younger readers to pass on our ideals and values, we feel a kind of queasiness about YA books. After twelve years or so of trying to get kids to listen to us through books, we have three years of trying to help them think for themselves. We just don't know how to connect those two opposite agendas" (Aronson, 2003, p.132).

Young people do not only use television and books as references for their developing sensibilities. They also use online resources-at their fingertips they have the full wealth and poverty of the adult world, unfiltered through custodians of the public airwaves or of the publishing industry. As Aronson notes, we adults have a short period of time in which to influence young people as they develop their sensibilities and values. The very unfiltered view of the complete array of the adult world is part of the attraction of digital new literacy. In the environments of new literacy, young people are not mere viewers and readers, voyeurs of the presentations of adult life as we select and present it for their viewing, as they are when they watch television and movies. Online, young people have agency and the ability to act, to connect, to have impact.

There are no boundaries and no rehearsal period on the Internet-a web site posted is public, open to scrutiny and to comment from strangers of varying intentions. The adults who want to be influential in the lives of young people must engage with them in the literate landscapes in which they travel. We do not have many years in which to do so.

 

References

 

Aronson, M.(2003). Beyond the Pale: New Essays for a New Era. Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, No. 9. Lanham, Maryland, & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Collins, P. (2002). NewScientist, Dec. 21/22, 2002. pp. 40-41.

Jackson, M. (2005).
http://bostonworks.boston.com/globe/balance/archives/121904.shtml Accessed Oct. 4, 2005.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2005). "New Literacies: Research and Social Practice In B. Maloch, J. V. Hoffman, D. Schallert, C. M. Fairbanks & J. Worthy (Eds.), 54th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 22-50). Oak Creek WI: National Reading Conference, Inc.

Lombardi, J. (2005). http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/23/lombardi Accessed Aug. 15, 2005.

McClay, J. K. (2006). Collaborating with Teachers and Students in Multiliteracies Research: "Se have camino al andar". Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 52(3), 182-195.

McClay, J. K., & Weeks, P. (2004). Ensemble Improvisation: Chats, Mystery, and Narrative in a Multiliteracy Classroom. The International Journal Learning, 10.

Nussbaum, E. (2004).
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/magazine/11BLOG.html?ei=1&en=36132f7693f2b Reading at risk: A survey of literary reading in America. (2004).). Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts.

Smith, F. (1985). Reading Without Nonsense. New York: Teacher College Press.

Tobin, J. (1998). An American Otaku: (or, a Boy's Virtual Life on the Net). In J. Sefton-Green (Ed.), Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia. London: UCL Press Ltd.

Warren, F. (2004-06).
http://www.postsecret.blogspot.com/; http://www.media-awareness.ca; www.wikipedia.org/fanfiction

Joanne Panas is a Teacher Consultant (Adolescent Literacy), Richmond School District #38.

(Click here for a PDF version of this article)

There were so many choices of wonderful-sounding sessions to attend at the BCTELA conference, but one of my choices was a no-brainer. Dr. Jill McClay was my English Curriculum and Instruction professor way back when I was an Education student at the University of Alberta. We've kept in touch over the years, and of course I wanted to hear Jill's current thoughts on the issues of English and literacy. I settled into my seat with anticipation, knowing that whatever the topic, her presentation was sure to provoke lots of thinking!

Jill began by talking about the "new literacies" of technology, including blogs, instant messaging, sharing videos online, and many other kinds of literacy that go well beyond "print on paper." One of the most interesting and potentially alarming things Jill told us was the fact that eight- to ten-year-olds are the fastest-growing group of users on the internet. Two other statements struck me as related to that piece of information: "Relationship is the work of adolescents" (from Lev Vygotsky), and "Literacy is always about relationships" (Frank Smith). What we have then is a situation where young people are seeking relationships through online literacy, and as we all know, this can have positive and/or negative ramifications.

The core of Jill's presentation, however, was not to showcase cool new kinds of literacy, nor to inspire fear of the Internet, nor to invoke paranoia in parents and educators, but rather to ask a key question: "What is the ethos of this technological literacy?" In other words, a new culture is being created before our eyes, and we need to know what it's like, and what people are doing with it. What are the values of this community? What is its danger and its potential? How should we as a community of educators and parents respond to this new culture?

Jill gave us some examples of the ethos of the online literacy community. Fanfiction.net is one such community; in it, fans of many genres write their own versions of their favourite book, movie, comic, game, and so on, in the style of or in the spirit of the original. Others in the community read them and write reviews. In this way, relationships are created. In this particular online community, the ethos is that of good writing. There is no distinction between amateurs and professionals, young people and adults; all are welcome to write, read, and review. The people who run the site encourage constructive criticism and discourage bad writing, such as wish-fulfillment fantasy, and plot continuum errors.

Online literacy, Jill pointed out, tends to blur boundaries between speed and rhythm (emailmystery.com sends you a novel in installments), between public and private (read others' secrets at postsecret.blogspot.com), and between child and adult (fanfiction.net). Adults worry about these blurred boundaries, and with good reason. According to research done by media-awareness.ca, a non-profit organization that develops media literacy programs, kids can be exposed to inappropriate content and risky situations online, including bullying and sexual harassment. On the other hand, the same survey makes it clear that most young people have positive experiences online, and they use the Internet to foster existing social relationships and create new ones. How can we help keep kids' online literacy experiences positive?

Jill gave us some examples that made us realize that, regardless of the fears (and often, regardless of the rules) of parents and educators, kids are using the web and joining online communities; they are sharing their writing and secrets, reading those of others, and creating relationships. The Internet is not going away; in fact, access to the web is nearly universal in Canada, either at home, at school, or at public libraries and Internet cafes. Children are growing up with computers and they are far outpacing the adults in their lives in their use of the web, but not necessarily in their ability to assess and think critically about it. This is where we, the adults, come in. Jill's final point of the session was that we need to participate in web-based communities and literacy and respect, not dismiss, kids' online relationships. We need to learn the conventions of online literacy. Young people are not going to learn about online safety and security from us unless they see that we know what we're talking about, and that we are also part of that community.

At the end of the session, I had a lot of notes and a lot to think about. I am already part of one online community Jill mentioned, PostSecret, which I check weekly. However, I was unaware of most of the other kinds of technological/online literacies and communities she discussed. I had considered myself a competent user of the Internet; I know how to use search engines, I use email regularly, and have my favourite sites bookmarked. Jill's presentation made me realize how much more was out there, and that a lot of it could be very useful in the English classroom and beyond. But if I was so Internet savvy, and so were many other educators, what was keeping us from using the web in these ways? I realized that there are some practical barriers to that kind of knowledge base for many educators and parents. Time is a major barrier. Most of us don't have the time it takes to find these sites, figure out how to use them, and then actually join in at least semi-regularly. Access to hardware is another barrier for teachers; how can we teach Internet safety when many computer labs are too small for individual and sometimes even paired access, or have outdated computers with very slow connections, or are simply unavailable because other classes have priority? Finally, many teachers might use these sites on their own time, but when it comes to planning how to integrate Internet literacy into the curriculum, many teachers are simply at a loss. We need some guidance from those who understand both technology and curriculum.

So what can we do? One possible way to deal with the barrier of time is to connect with some interested colleagues (from anywhere-this is the Internet we're talking about!) and share your experiences with only one or two web communities in a kind of jigsaw. Teachers might get around limited access to computer labs by creating their own web-based community, so students can use the Internet on their own time, at home or in the library. For example, on-line literature circles could work; many school districts have their own intranet and can set up a conference with student access. Some districts have mobile laptop labs (and technical assistance), which can make computer-based projects a possibility for classroom teachers. Above all, teachers need training and support. Districts might consider giving workshops on the basics of Internet literacy communities. Most schools have at least one person who is Internet-savvy; that person may be able to get some release time to work with interested staff members. Regardless of our own concerns about technology, teachers are working with a generation that sees computers as part of daily life, and that includes literacy. We need to make the effort to get "with it" so we can ensure our students and children are navigating safely and effectively through this territory.

This list was started by Susan Ma and Celia Brownrigg.  It is meant to be open-ended and we hope it will enjoy many contributers.

 

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

- a great book to have.  McCloud acknowledges and tears down so many of our prejudices when approaching the graphic novel medium: comics.  The explanation of active readership (what goes on the our head when we read a graphic text) is easy to understand and integrate in to planning and instruction.  This is an excellent book for a novice in the graphic, or comics, form to start with.  It is written in the comics medium which facilitates McCloud's descriptions of the graphic form as well as subliminally reinforces the stance that "comics" is a medium suited to many types of content; don't mistake it as simply the message (sorry Marshall). This resource is a must-read for any teacher considering using graphic novels or other comics in class.

 

Panel Discussion: Design In Sequential Art Storytelling

Interviews with Masters of the Craft!  What's talking about graphic
novels without talking to the creators and storytellers?  The
interviews are very insightful.

 

 Graphic Novels in Your Media Library Center  by Allyson and Barry Lyga

This resource is notes from a teacher-librarian int he USA who uses graphic nevels in her classroom.   The Lygas' variety of grade coverage is good, covering grades two through ten, as well as their cultural coverage of both "eastern" and "western" graphic novels.  Check out their activity ideas too!

 

In Graphic Detail by David Booth and Kathy Gould Lundy

This resouce is exclusivly available to educators through Scholastic Education.  The approach in this book is particular to using comics in classroom activities.  While some of the examples used could be better, both authors are well-known educators and have great experience working with Canadian teachers and librarians.

Stacey Wyatt teaches Grade 5/6 in Richmond. She is currently working on her Masters Degree  at Simon Fraser University in Educational Practice. Some of her interests include student diversity, literacy education and assessment.

Contents:

Methodology

Student and Parent Surveys

Developing Criteria

Using Criteria

Reflecting on the Criteria

Conclusion

References

"When we set criteria for assignments,
we establish what counts. When we involve
students in setting the criteria, we increase
their understanding and ownership."
(Gregory, Cameron and Davies,
1997, p.58).

As an elementary student, I remember my teachers explaining an assigned writing activity, and then doing my best to work through the task in the hopes of producing
what my teachers wanted. At no point do I recall being involved in the process of building the criteria for the assignment, nor was I given an assessment rubric ahead of time to help me with the writing task. Today, as a teacher, I realize students need to know the criteria in order to be successful. Without having a clear picture of the expectations of the assignment, student progress is impeded and it is more difficult for them to succeed at the task.

This past year, I have spent time investigating my assessment practices. From current research, I understand how vital it is to have students involved in the assessment process, and in particular, to have students and teachers working together to develop the criteria to be assessed. In their book, Knowing What Counts: Setting and Using Criteria,
Gregory, Cameron and Davies found that "when students take part in developing  criteria, they are much more likely to understand what is expected of them, ‘buy in', and then accomplish the task successfully" (1997, p. 7). Clearly, students who do not know the criteria of the assignment have little direction for success and end up trying to guess what the teacher wants, much like my elementary school experiences. Obviously, I do not want this to be the case for my students.

Establishing criteria with my students and working collaboratively to develop the rubrics used to assess their fictional writing pieces is an area of my teaching practice that I have spent a considerable amount of time investigating. Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe note that "by considering in advance the assessment evidence needed to validate that the desired results have been achieved, teaching becomes purposeful and focused" (2006, p. 59). I believe this statement can also be applied to student learning as it, too, "becomes more purposeful and focused" when students know the criteria.

Both teachers and students need to know what they are working towards and how they are going to get there. By creating assessment rubrics together, teachers and students come to share a common language, students know what is expected, and they understand the purpose of the assignment. Thus, creating rubrics collaboratively with  my students became one of the parts of the assessment process I focused on improving this past year.

As my students and I used the assessment rubric for fiction writing, I was faced with my next query. I discovered that when I asked my students what they could do to improve their fictional story writing, they were adept at naming their next steps. They simply read what I had circled on the rubric we created. In reality though, many of my students didn't really know how to improve. This realization prompted my next inquiry questions: How can my assessment practices provide students with a clearer picture of their next steps in writing development? How can my students use descriptive feedback to provide them with their next steps in writing in relation to collaboratively developed criteria?

In order for children to move forward in their learning, they need to know what they are doing well, where they need to improve and how they need to go about improving. Through examining my assessment practices, I learned the type of feedback I was giving my Grade 5/6 students did not help to point them in the direction of what or how to improve in their writing. Listening to my students' conversations and watching how several struggled to identify the areas they needed to work on led me to investigate my practice further, looking specifcally at the nature of the feedback I give to my students and the quality of feedback they give to each other.

Methodology

Throughout this inquiry I used several strategies to collect my data. I conducted surveys with my students hoping to gain some insight into how the students felt about having their writing assessed by their teachers, peers and parents. I gave a questionnaire to the parents in my class asking them to recall their writing experiences as elementary children. Specifically, I wanted to know whether or not they remember developing criteria or being involved in self-assessment or peer assessment during writing instruction. I read recent literature on formative assessment practices, wrote in my journal and reflected on what I learned. Later, I read back through my entries looking for patterns in my reflections and changes in my thinking. I listened to the students' conversations while they were developing criteria, collected samples of their work and had discussions with colleagues.

Student and Parent Surveys

This year I moved from teaching a Gr. 4/5 class to a Gr. 5/6 class. Because I essentially moved up a grade with the students, I had taught 19 of the 28 students last year. We therefore know each other quite well and have developed a trusting and safe classroom environment. To start the school year, I began by surveying my students' attitudes about assessment and in particular asking how they felt about having their writing assessed by their teachers and peers. The data revealed that most of my students were comfortable having their teachers assess their writing as most commented, " I know they are trying to help me" and "it's their job". When asked about having their peers assess their work, students made comments like, "we are friends and I know they are trying to help me"; another student wrote, "I am okay with it as long as they don't say anything mean." I have no doubt the trusting environment that had been built in our classroom over the course of the previous year made a difference. For the most part these children were comfortable when sharing their work with others. In Jeanne Gibbs's book, Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities, she states, "the power of being included and valued by peers motivates students to active participation in their own learning" (2006, p. 10). I am not saying that we did not need to continue to work on maintaining this relationship and environment in our classroom; we simply had a strong base already developed from which we continued to build.

When I read the responses from the questionnaire I gave the parents, I noticed their writing experiences as children were much like my own. Most of them do not recall being involved in the assessment process or know that they were not. Many of them reported that they did not assess their own writing. While some parents remembered listening to students share their stories, they were generally not encouraged to give the student author feedback. The comments and the experiences of the parents completing the questionnaire were not surprising. Many of them are similar in age and completed their elementary school years around the same time as I had. I feel that several parents and I missed out on a valuable part of our learning in elementary school by not being involved in our own assessment. I wanted to make ensure my students had the  opportunity to experience what we had not.

Developing Criteria

After reading the students' and parents' responses to the surveys, we began the task of collaboratively developing the criteria for writing a fiction story. I asked the students to think about this question: "What makes a story good?" I recorded all of their ideas on the chalkboard. A few days later, I sent them off in groups of three with the task of organizing the brainstormed list. In their triads they were asked to group the criteria by looking for similarities or perhaps crossing out suggestions that were redundant. As each group worked together they devised their own system for categorizing. Most groups used different colours to represent each category. The students worked diligently on this activity and took it very seriously.

As students worked on this task, I listened to their conversations and took photographs and photocopies of how they organized the criteria. As I circulated and eavesdropped on conversations, there were discussions within the groups and students were questioning each other's ideas and suggestions. While a few groups struggled to come up with the categories for the criteria, the majority were able to group the criteria in a way that made sense and were able to explain their thinking to the class.

All triads commented on how important it was to consider the audience when writing a fiction story and for the story to have feelings, details, and good description. Most groups said the story needed to have a problem, a strong lead at the beginning, and a beginning, middle and end. They were clearly becoming more involved in the assessment process. Not only were they deciding together what were the important criteria to include, they were organizing the criteria and then writing their stories with these criteria in mind. I was pleased.

After the small groups of students finalized their way of organizing the criteria, each group shared their design with the class. I recorded their reasons for organizing the criteria in the ways they had chosen and listened to the comments and questions from the audience. One of the great things about sharing the criteria this way was all the students were involved and they were able to question each others' system for organizing the criteria. Students were free to agree and/or disagree and were able to listen to another group's point of view. Towards the end of this process, students
individually voted on the collaboratively-generated sample that worked the best for them. Once the votes revealed the most effective sample, we discussed the format
for the rubric and I typed it up for the students to use (Figure 1).

Content Area	3	4
Snapshot:	My story is complete, easy to read, and uses enough description and detail to catch the reader's attention. There are not many errors	My story is original, very easy to read, and uses description and detail that holds the readers attention from the beginning to the end
Meaning: Have I included important ideas & information? Do I use descriptive details? Am I thinking about my audience? Does my story impact the reader?	My story includes my own ideas. I use descriptive words and details to develop events, characters, and images. (SDT: Show Don't Tell and MIM: Movie In my Mind) I know who I am writing for and I get their attention.	My story is original and leaves the reader with something to think about. I use a large amount of detail and specific words to fully develop the events, characters, and ideas. SDT and MIM is effective and throughout story. I "hook and hold" the readers' attention and I make them think.
Style: Is my language clear? Does the language I use make my story interesting for my readers?	I use descriptive language that is clear. I use different types and lengths of sentences. I use different words at the beginning of sentences.	I use language that is clear, expressive and figurative. My sentences flow smoothly. My sentences are written with different lengths and patterns.
Form: Does it have a beginning, middle, and end? Are my characters described? Do I use dialogue?	My lead is written with dialogue or action. My story has a beginning that hints at the problem and makes the reader wonder or worry about the character right away. The events in my story are in order and are easy to follow. My ending attempts to solve the problem. My characters are described beyond what they look like. My dialogue sounds realistic.	My lead is written with reaction. The beginning of my story presents the problem, introduces the main character(s) and catches the readers' attention. My story is in order and is believable. My characters have a S.O.C. (Stream of Consciousness); their feelings, emotions and personality are shown in my story. My ending effectively solves the problem and there may be a surprise. My dialogue is clear and helps the reader see the characters in my story.
Conventions: Spelling, punctuation, complete sentences, grammar, connecting words	I have a few mistakes, but they do not confuse the reader.	I have hardly any mistakes. The errors I made are because of the risks I am taking when using new words or types of sentences.

While I realize how long this process took for us to move from the initial criteria brainstorm session to the rubric stage, the learning that went on during this process was invaluable. It was so important for me to take a few steps back and let the students "play around" with the criteria. Not only did it help students really think about what was important when writing a story, but the process and final rubric became theirs, and they understood it.

Using Criteria

As we drafted our stories, we used the rubric and made changes to it as necessary. I asked the students to take note of any parts of the rubric that seemed confusing or needed further clarification. Sometimes we needed to change the language we had chosen to use within the rubric to make it more clear, and other times we simplified sections of the rubric that were confusing. It was evident that my students were able to complete this task and because they were involved in the process of developing the criteria from the beginning, they had a clear vision and a deepened understanding of what they were working towards. We had succeeded!

At the same time we were working on developing an assessment rubric for story writing, I was also reading research about giving students feedback. Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe agree feedback is necessary in any learning situation as they explain in their book, "all types of learning, whether on the practice field or in the classroom, require feedback" (p. 77). I discovered I was not providing feedback that was rescriptive enough to help my students set their subsequent goals for writing. Gregory, Cameron and Davies write, "teacher-approval phrases, such as ‘I like it; this is great,' do not provide the information or the direction that students need to achieve success" (1997, p. 43). By listening to my students and watching them try to set their next writing goals, I learned that these comments do little beyond letting the student know you liked their writing. Similarly, circling phrases on the assessment rubric, especially one which students were not involved in creating, is not enough to help them set goals. If we want our students to progress, we need to involve them in the criteria development, show them what they are doing well, and help steer them in the direction of what to work on next (Chappuis et al., 2004).

With this in mind, I spoke with Melanie Anastasiou, our teacher librarian, who co-teaches with me three times a week, looking for suggestions to help our students give each other feedback on the stories they had been working on. She
explained a technique the adults in her writing group use to give each other feedback. We decided to try this with my students. Each student was given a blank strip of paper and was asked to read another student's story independently. As peer editors, their task was to write down two things the author did well and one suggestion for improvement.

Melanie advised the students to write down their compliments and suggestions as they were reading, not to wait until the end. She also informed the students that editors read a story several times over and they should do this as well. As students finished reading each other's stories and writing down their feedback, they were asked to give their strips of paper and the story they had read back to the original author. The author of the piece then read the feedback and was asked to reread his/her story thinking about the editor's compliments and suggestion for improvement. Here are some of their written comments:

Todd: "This is good"
Adam: "Some of the words are spelled wrong"
Andrea: "I like how you used talking in the first sentence"
Debbie: "I like how you show and express your character's emotions"
Debbie: "On p.7 you made me say, ‘what' because of Zac ripping the tickets"

While there were some comments that reminded me of my elementary school days, there was definite evidence that my students could give each other fairly specific feedback when they knew what to look for. Creating the rubric together was an important step for students to be able to give each other feedback. Students then made changes based on the feedback they received. The paper containing the feedback was glued into the author's writing book so they could refer to the suggestions as needed. This activity revealed what type of feedback my students were able to give each other.

Tomlinson and McTighe describe four qualities of an effective feedback system in their book. They state, "the feedback must (1) be timely, (2) be specific, (3) be understandable to the receiver, and (4) allow for adjustment" (2006, p. 77). It is important that feedback be detailed, specific and given regularly during the process by the teacher and his or her peers. Students must also be given time, practice and support to retry and make changes. My students were generally given 3-4 blocks a week to work on their stories in class, and several opportunities to self-assess and peer-assess.

Over the course of the term we experimented with the formats we used to self-assess and peer-assess our stories. Students regularly self-assessed using the rubric we created. During these self-assessment sessions, students focused their assessment on only one aspect of the whole assessment rubric at a time.

(see PDF for Fig 2 Meaning Aspect of Writing Rubric)

For example, students read their story looking specifically at the aspect of meaning within their story and then wrote down what they felt they were doing well and what part needed work (Figure 2). Then, they spent time reworking their piece based on what they noticed needed revision. This is a crucial step to the assessment process. Gregory, Cameron and Davies state:

When students assess themselves they develop
insights into their own learning. Rather than relying on
feedback from one person - their teacher- and asking
"Is this right?" "Is this long enough?" "Am I doing it
right?" "Is this what you want?" students begin to monitor
their own learning and consider what part of the
assignment meets the criteria and what needs more
attention. (2000, p. 10)

My students were learning to compare the rubric to their own writing, looking for what they did well and aspects that needed work. This was very exciting!

Students also peer assessed in this same manner and then took the feedback they received and reworked the piece again, focusing specifically on their suggestions. Student editors were forced to focus their editing skills and their thinking by paying attention to one aspect of the rubric at a time. Focus edediting resulted in clearer and more specific feedback.

As the year progressed and the writing rubric we created was fine tuned as needed, students adjusted the ways in which they gave feedback to each other. For example, during our "Writing Share" individual students read their writing to the whole class while classmates and teachers sat with their assessment rubrics in front of them. As we listened, students placed sticky notes onto the aspects of the rubric the author had exemplified in his or her writing piece. Because of the community of trust and level of comfort that was evident in our classroom being the second year most of the students were together, many of the students were comfortable sharing in this type of setting.

At the same time, Melanie and I were using the same rubric to write specific feedback for every student in the class. At the end of the story share, students were invited to give specific feedback to the author of the piece using the rubric as their guide and either Melanie or I gave feedback as well. The students were instructed to give a comment about something the author did well and a suggestion for improvement.
The positive feedback given by the students was relevant and fairly specific, indicating what they liked about the story style or meaning. The suggestions for improvement, while accurate, did not always comment on what I wanted them to. Sometimes comments were based on how the author read the piece aloud, not on the story itself. Once I reminded the students to focus on the rubric, they were able to give more specific suggestions for improvement. At the end of "Writing Share" each student received verbal feedback from peers and as well as two copies of the assessment rubric that Melanie and I used to provide additional feedback.

Students became more confident with the rubric over time. Not only were they self-assessing their writing and peer assessing each others written work, they were setting goals for improvement based on the feedback they had been given from their teachers, peers and from what they had noticed in their own writing. Students had a sheet in the back of their writing books where they began to record their strengths and needs as writers as they worked on their drafts. Each student was responsible for keeping a running record of their next steps they used to improve their writing skills based on the feedback they had received. Students were asked to refer to this goal setting page often, to remind them what they were working on.

Reflecting on the Criteria

At the end of the second term I asked students to reconsider the rubric we made, the feedback they were getting about their writing and to answer some questions based on
these two things. Now that they had worked diligently with the rubric for several months and had experience giving and receiving feedback, I wanted to know what they thought. So in an individual survey I asked this question: "Do you think it is helpful to use the rubric as you write your story? Explain your thinking." The data revealed 22 out of the 28 students surveyed reported that the rubric was helpful. Here are some direct quotes from the students:

Kim: "I think it is helpful because you get to know what you need to work on and what you already did."

Sandy: "Yes because the rubric is like a helper."

Richard: "Yes I definitely think the rubric helps. It helps you pinpoint the things you need to work on."

Charles: "Yes, because it helps that we can go over our story over and over again."

Michael: "Yes, I think my stories have improved a lot thanks to the rubric."

And Travis, who "hit the nail on the head", so to speak, said, "Yes, so you can see the criteria and get motivated to do better than last time."

The comments from the students were very telling. I was extremely pleased that they felt the rubric was helpful and that they were able to use it to help improve their writing next time.

The next questions on the survey focused on receiving feedback from peers and teachers. I wanted to know if the students felt the feedback they received from their peers and teachers was helpful. Twenty-five out of 28 students felt that getting peer feedback was helpful. All twenty-eight of the students reported that the teacher feedback was helpful. One student very honestly shared that he preferred the feedback from students. Here are some written comments from the students:

Andrew: "Yes, feedback from students is very helpful. Most of the time I agree with suggestions they give me, some I disagree."

Paula: "I really like my feedback because it helps me understand what I missed in my self-assessment. Also, I like hearing what could make my story better."

Kim: "I thought that getting feedback from our classmates was helpful because we get to find out what everyone else thinks about your story, not just teachers."

Chris: "Sometimes it (teacher feedback) is helpful, but sometimes I do not agree with some suggestions I've been given. I prefer the feedback coming from my peers."

In addition to the comments about the rubric and the feedback, it is clear that my students were able to identify what they did well and what needed work when they used a rubric they helped create. By being invested in the process and ultimately more involved in assessment, my students were able to set realistic goals and work to improve these goals. Through these exciting realizations, I am reminded of a powerful quote by Tomlinson and McTighe in their book, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design. They believe that "the most effective learners are metacognitive; that is they are mindful of how they learn, set personal goals, regularly self-assess and adjust their performance, and use productive strategies to assist their learning" (2006, p. 79). At the end of the day, aren't these the habits of mind we all hope to instill in our students?

Conclusion

Through this investigation I have come to realize the importance of immersing my students in the entire assessment process. From developing the criteria to peer and selfassessment, students need to be involved. An equally important piece to the assessment process is providing descriptive feedback to students that helps to further their learning. For the most part, the feedback the students gave each other during writing class was accurate. It highlighted things the author did well and what he/she needed to improve. The students were polite in their comments, but honest and to the point. I discovered too, not only does the feedback benefit the author of the piece, but the editor as well. Because the editor must read the piece with a careful eye looking for successes and areas needing improvement, this in turn helps their own writing. I learned to be more purposeful in the wording of the feedback I gave the students as well, and focused my suggestions only on one or two areas at a time.

In Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind, Lorna Earl and Steven Katz write, "When learning is the goal, teachers and students collaborate and use ongoing assessment and pertinent feedback to move learning forward" (2005, p. 5). I understand this to be the key to continued student success. Not only did my students show me that they were fully capable of coming up with the criteria for a good story themselves, but they were able to use the criteria they created to help give each other specific and honest feedback, with the goal of improving their stories.

While I realize I have more to learn, I now look at assessment differently. No longer is assessment solely my responsibility. My students play an integral role in creating the tools we use together to assess ourselves, each other, and to move forward with our learning. I include myself in this process, but I am not there alone. I have learned how important and valid my students' input is to each component of assessment. And, my students no longer have to guess what I want: we've created what we want, and we work together to pave the path to get there.

References

Atwell, N. (2002). Lessons That Change Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Atwell, N. (1998). In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Chappuis, S., Stiggins, R., Arter, J., and Chappuis, J. (2004). Classroom Assessment For Student Learning: Doing it Right-Using it Well. Portland, OR: Assessment Training
Institute.

Earl, L., and Katz, S. (2005). "Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind." Winnipeg, MB: Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education.

Gregory, K., Cameron, C., and Davies, A. (1997). Knowing What Counts: Setting and Using Criteria. Courtenay, BC: Connections Publishing.

Gregory, K., Cameron, C., and Davies, A. (2000). Knowing What Counts: Self- Assessment and Goal Setting. Courtenay, BC: Connections Publishing.

Gibbs, J. (2006). Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, LLC.

Tomlinson, C., and McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design. Virginia, USA: ASCD.

GRADE 6 - POETRY

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Red	Mandy Wong	John Norquay Elementary, Vancouver	Kim Perry
Break Your Bindings	Russell Owen Copley	John Norquay Elementary, Vancouver	Kim Perry

 

GRADE 6 - PROSE

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Tomoe Gozen & the Great Battle	Alice Huang	John Norquay Elementary, Vancouver	Mr. Wrinch

 

 

GRADE 8 - POETRY

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Odd One Out	Grayeme Ritchie	Ecole Au coeur de l'ile, Comox	Monica Ashwell
Alternate Worlds	Roderick Gravoueille	Ecole Au coeur de l'ile, Comox	Monica Ashwell
The Potter	Damian Spence	Alpha Secondary, Burnaby	Mara Brkich
Sunrise	David Ivanov	Ecole Au coeur de l'ile, Comox	Monica Ashwell
Christmas Morning	David Ivanov	Ecole Au coeur de l'ile, Comox	Monica Ashwell
I AM FROM...	Alison Legge	St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary, North Vancouver	Ms. Dawn Goh Bugarin

 

GRADE 8 - PROSE

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Bloody Mess	Danel Teagai	Ecole Au coeur de l'ile, Comox	Monica Ashwell

GRADE 9 - POETRY

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Math  Homework	Elise Sarty Peterson	Ecole Au coeur de l'ile, Comox	Monica Ashwell

 

 

GRADE 9 - PROSE

Title	Student	School	Teacher
A day in the life of Peyton Stanley	Hilary Jahelka	Ladysmith Secondary, Ladysmith	Ms. Walker
Around the World in Two Months	Alexandra Dibnah	Maple Ridge Secondary, Maple Ridge	Cindy Thompson
Must Break Free	Tessa Leyland	Maple Ridge Secondary, Maple Ridge	Cindy Thompson
Stones	Mallory Wyant	Maple Ridge Secondary, Maple Ridge	Cindy Thompson

GRADE 10 - POETRY

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Mining Sorrows	Maciej Siwocha	Saint Thomas Aquinas Secondary, North Vancouver	Mr. Mendoza
Middle Ground	Claire Mackay	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
The Wooden Goat	Eric Xu	Burnaby North Secondary, Burnaby	Dan Roberts

 

GRADE 10 - PROSE

Title	Student	School	Teacher
What the Night Hides	Claire O'Brien	Shawnigan Lake Secondary, Shawnigan Lake	Stephanie Owen
Bent	Erin Murray	Shawnigan Lake Secondary, Shawnigan Lake	Stephanie Owen
Bittersweet	Maddie Burlin	Shawnigan Lake Secondary, Shawnigan Lake	Stephanie Owen

 

 

GRADE 11 - POETRY

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Addiction	Amanda Cribdon	Parkland Secondary, Sidney	Joan Saunders
Scarecrow	Stephen Glossop	Parkland Secondary, Saanich	Joan Saunders
Letter to a Dead Grandfather	Ian Kopp	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Mommy	Sammy Leung	Langley Fine Arts School, Langley	Silvia Knittel
Fetish	Emma Kirkpatrick	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
The Veil of Kabul	Nicki Grewal	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
244 GPJ	Kendra Stone	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Uninhibited	Becky Treieaven	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Window	Emily Lankhorst	Sardis Secondary, Chilliwack	Mrs. Wieler

 

GRADE 11 - PROSE

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Unitard	Kristina Knappett	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Field
Dancing Lessons	Ian Kopp	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Hands	Gloria Loi	Sir Winston Churchill Secondary, Vancouver	Mr. Buium

 

GRADE 12 - POETRY

Title	Student	School	Teacher
Happily Ever After	Sara Shayan	Point Grey Secondary, Vancouver	B. Lloyd
Thanksgiving Trenches	Matthew Hering	Parkland Secondary, Sidney	Mrs. Saunders
Someone Else's Grandmother	Cat Christison	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Merry Christmas from ICU Six	R.L. Saunders	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Iranian Football	Rachel Orfani	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Elephant Tree	Chelsea Leadbetter	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Word Choice	Kyle Lalonde	Sardis Secondary, Chilliwack	Mrs. Wieler
For Allen Whitman	Evelyn Gendron	Langley Fine Arts School, Langley	Silvia Knittel
Tall, decaf, extra hot	Ashleigh Toby	Claremont Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson
Susan Stenson	Ashleigh Toby	Claremont, Secondary, Victoria	Susan Stenson

 

 

 

 

Lynn Fels is Assistant Professor at SFU. Her research interests are performance and technology, performative inquiry, and teacher education. She and co-author George Belliveau recently published Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama, and Learning.

The story that follows was told to me by a colleague of a grade twelve English teacher who had taken his students outside into the playground of the elementary school next door. “Take time to explore the playground,” he tells them, “the swings, the climbing bars, the slide.” It was, as he tells my friend later, a curious sight, witnessing his grade twelve students, on the cusp of adulthood, playing, shouting, laughing, calling to each other, as they scrambled up ladders, swung into the blue sky, and slid down the slide. “Back to the classroom,” he yells, as the elementary school recess bell rings, and the playground is swarmed by wide-eyed children, who stutter to a stop at the sight of high school students occupying their playground.

Later, as the students bend to the task of writing poetry, the teacher spots one young woman, staring out the window, tears on her cheeks. “What is it?” he asks, coming to her side. She is one of his top students, an insightful debater, a conscientious learner who consistently writes A+ essays. As well as being the captain of the soccer team, she is president of the student council and an accomplished pianist. “I can’t remember,” she whispers, her eyes welling with tears, “the last time I played.”

Driven towards excellence, have we forgotten the value of play within teaching and learning environments? Has play been abandoned on the playground, our students and ourselves locked inside classrooms, staring wistfully out the window? As philosopher David Appelbaum calls such a moment, the action of a student’s tears is a “stop”—a moment of risk, a moment of opportunity. What are the moments that call us to attention, the stops that give us pause in the busyness of our lives, to tell us that something is wrong, that we must respond? This young woman’s tears in her secondary English classroom call us to action. How are we to respond to our children in new ways, if we are to realize the wellbeing of the present and future generations? As Hannah Arendt (1961) requires of educators, we must love children enough “to engage them in the world’s renewal.” The question is, how are we engaging our children, and are their voices, the tears they shed, the stories they yearn to tell, those to which we listen? What is lost when a child no longer has time for play?

And, now months later, I find myself asking, “When was the last time I played?” As an exhausted academic scrambling up the pre-tenure path, teaching in a pre-service teacher education program, working with graduate students, editing a journal, responding to endless emails, I ask myself, “When do I schedule time for play within my work day?” And more miserably, “Who has time for play?”

In an earlier article (Update, Vol. 49, 2, Fall 2007), I introduced performative inquiry as a way to engage students in collaborative explorations across the curriculum, with a focus on language arts. Performative inquiry invites a stance of inquiry, an embodied exploration of curricular concerns, issues, assigned texts, communal narratives, and lived experience. Performative inquiry involves students in performative activities (e.g. tableaux, visualizations, scene creation, writing-in-role, playbuilding, role drama, multi-media creations) as a means of learning about themselves in relationship to the world and each other. The ambition of performative inquiry, as I wrote, is not to simply “put on a play” or expose students to the arts, but to engage students within curricular spaces of learning through collaborative, critical and creative inquiry and reflection.

But when I invite teachers to consider bringing performative inquiry into their own classrooms with questions like, “Why don’t you do role drama with your students? Or create a play about an issue you are exploring in social studies?” I often meet with reluctance. The constant refrain is, “There’s not enough time.” And yet, I know the powerful curricular, communal, and personal learning that comes to educators who engage in performative inquiry with their students. How might we learn to give ourselves permission to set aside the curricular “shoulds” and trust in the learning that comes through the play that performative inquiry invites?

And so I give my M.Ed. students, teachers all, an assignment: Design and do a role drama with your students. Report back to me in three weeks.

 

 Sunnyvale: A Town Revisited

“I wonder if you could give me the name and address of the lawyer that you work with as I anticipate some legal technicalities that are beyond the limited capabilities of our town council. HealthCo promises to be a challenging but fruitful endeavor—but we need to have an iron-clad contract before I sign any final agreement.” — memo from Mayor of Sunnyvale to town councilor

I designed the role drama, Sunnyvale, with a group of student teachers several years ago. It was our vehicle into multiple teacher education classes to introduce the value of role drama as a way of engaging secondary and elementary students in a variety of language arts activities. As we developed the role drama and played it out multiple times that winter and spring, the benefits of role drama became obvious: promotion of critical and creative thinking, collaborative problem-solving, opportunities for oral speech, exploration of multiple perspectives and embodied decision-making through play.

Participants were largely enthusiastic, often remaining in role through the fifteen-minute break we built into the role drama, arguing with each other, trying to find solutions. My experience is that many of those who initially resist find their way into role drama at various levels of engagement, whether through observing others, or reflecting on the decisions taken or getting caught up in an interview when approached by a reporter. Those reluctant to speak in a large group often enjoy the one-on-one or small group conversations that the role drama invites; others find their voice during the writing-inrole activity. As one participant during a recent Sunnyvale role drama described, first, she felt uncomfortable taking on a role, feeling as if she was only acting as the role of an environmentalist, but by the end of the role drama, she was an environmentalist arguing passionately for her vision of Sunnyvale.

The Sunnyvale role drama involves a variety of community interest groups: arts committee, entrepreneurs, residential developers, playground architects, town council members, environmentalists, seniors and neighbours who live in the area, and reporters. All are invited to a town hall meeting by the mayor to discuss Site #39, an undeveloped plot of land in the middle of town. The mayor, having won a recent election on a platform of “communication, collaboration, consensus,” encourages everyone to create a community plan for Site #39 that will address everyone’s needs. The groups of students-in-role are encouraged to consult with each other, discuss various solutions, and try to persuade others to their point of view, or as often happens, find a compromise that suits everyone. Sunnyvale is financially suffering due to the shutdown of the local Kraft Dinner factory and so the mayor tells them to come up with a plan that will “put Sunnyvale on the map” and (as an aside) money in the town coffers.1

This meeting is followed by a news broadcast during which Sunnyvale citizens are interviewed, with reporters highlighting key areas of agreement and conflict, (this activity often leads to prolonged discussion about the role of the media and its representation of issues). Then three participants are invited to take on new roles, this time as the CEO, accountant, and scientist of a pharmaceutical company. Inevitably, their reception at the press announcement is unfavourable; there is a flurry of questions fielded by the three along with the mayor who is accused of not consulting with the people of Sunnyvale (this activity is known as the “hot seat”). Participants are then invited to write-in-role in response to the turn of events in the format of their choice: a job application to the pharmaceutical company (there are few), a letter to the editor or editorial, (often someone begins a petition), a note in a diary, a memo to a town council member, or a scathing letter to the mayor himself. I have watched in amazement as participants write for ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty minutes, the majority focused and willing to share their writing, as we read aloud to find out “what the citizens of Sunnyvale are thinking.”

My understanding of the value of this particular role drama as a site of inquiry has multiplied over time, as I have played the role of the mayor of Sunnyvale many times through the years. Inevitably I find myself in a variety of discussions, faced with new issues and concerns, as individual participants bring their own experience and interests and knowledge to the role drama. Each time, the Sunnyvale we create together is unique; sometimes, for example, the environmentalists find their way to a compromise, such as the building of a park and a community centre, other times they call on legislative action because a rare species has been discovered in the stream running through the property. Most recently, I remember the odd feeling of shame and embarrassment, as the CEO of the pharmaceutical company presents himself as self-interested, taking phone calls on his cell. I remember thinking, “I’ve made a mistake with this guy, and yet, here I am publicly supporting his proposal. How do I deal with this?” It is then that I determine that there will be no deal without a contract that secures our town’s interests and safety, a decision supported by the citizens of Sunnyvale when we move to a vote. And so, during the writing-in-role segment of the role drama, I write a memo to one of my town councilors requesting the name of her lawyer.

Each time I am the mayor of Sunnyvale, I gain a new insight into what matters, how my engagement with others influences the outcome (or not), insights that spill into our post role drama discussions as we reflect about the choices we made in role, and in turn, talk about how we engage within our communities outside the classroom (the role drama was based on a land development project in my neighbourhood). While we can only draw upon our prior knowledge, our experiences, and what we imagine, these role dramas inevitably, uncannily touch the truth of our being in action, if only for a moment, a stop that calls our attention to what matters, what is absent, what is present.2 As Appelbaum writes,

Between closing and beginning lives a gap, a caesura, a discontinuity. The betweenness is a hinge that belongs to neither one nor the other. It is neither poised nor unpoised, yet moves both ways...It is the stop.3

So it is. Our Sunnyvale role drama reminds us that seniors have stories to tell, that they have contributed and continue to contribute to the narrative and work of the town; yet in our role drama, they are often unheard, not consulted, ignored. We have at times voiced condemnation of the mayor’s proposal of the pharmaceutical company and then felt shame, when we realize that we have judged him too quickly as he announces his resignation, “I have tried to do what is best for this town; I’ve stayed awake hours at night trying to think of a solution; it hurts me to think that the townspeople believe I deliberately tried to cheat them.” As one participant commented in reflection after all the townspeople in Sunnyvale ganged up against the mayor, “We immediately judged him as acting in his own interests. Instead of trying to work things out together, we just blamed the mayor. It was only when he announced his resignation that I understood how much he cared for Sunnyvale.” During our debriefing, we have talked about the important role of conflict resolution, and how we often judge others without knowing how they truly feel, or what motivations lay behind actions we so quickly reject.

We have learned to listen for hidden agendas, interpret motivations behind words, understand issues from multiple perspectives, and ask questions of what we had taken for granted. Curiously, the pharmaceutical company has only twice been accepted into the community, the most recent time, upon assurance that any contract between the town and the pharmaceutical company would be “iron-clad.” Interestingly, the participant in role-as-scientist had actually worked for a pharmaceutical company prior to becoming a teacher and so could bring strong arguments to the benefits of such a company as HealthCo in Sunnyvale. We have learned to question the dichotomies and judgments we make; and to see what may become possible through compromise.

 

Performative Inquiry Revisited:The Teachers Report

I have to confess to the occasional bout of nail-biting while I waited the three weeks for my M.Ed. students to return and report on their experiences of doing role drama with their students. What was happening in their classrooms? The morning of our class, my students arrived with excitement, with individual reports of renewed vigour for teaching, with tales of the unexpected enthusiasm and engagement of their students, of the collaborative learning that had taken place, of the willingness of students to write-in-role, of the thoughtfulness of their students’ decision-making, of the absorption of their students in their work while in role.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Patrick Verriour and Carol Tarlington were proponents of role drama long before I arrived on the scene; in fact, I first learned of role drama, through Dr. Verriour, who was my thesis supervisor, and who, with Ms. Tarlington had traveled the province in the 80’s promoting role drama among teachers.4 What interested me, however, was less the learning of the students (although important), but the spirit of the teachers who, as one told me, had found themselves engaged and learning along side their students. The joy of role drama is that no matter what you choose to explore, the learning happens not in the telling what is expected and known, but in the doing, engaging in that which has not yet been imagined, a playful engagement of inquiry. Not knowing what would happen each day as the teachers and their students re-entered the worlds they were co-creating through role play added to the excitement and curiosity and pleasure that becomes possible in teaching beyond the curricular scripts that so often are our habits of engagement. I had, through my assignment, given my M.Ed. students, teachers all, permission to play.

And in writing this article, I am reminded again, that I do play, joyfully, with curiosity, when I engage in performative activities with my students. What will happen? What stops will we encounter? And I celebrate the learning that surfaces as I ask questions of inquiry and engage the students in reflection. Why did we decide to do what we did? Why did you say what you said? What surprised us? What, I ask my students and myself, does our experience within our performative inquiry tell us about how we engage in the world, what issues emerged that matter, what questions yet remain? If we understand play as an action of inquiry, as an action of exploration, embodied engagement, curiosity and reflection that leads to learning, then it is critical that we look again to ways of incorporating play into our classrooms.

To engage in play within our classrooms is to trouble the expected, to sidestep the status quo, to perform a reciprocal dance of learning and teaching, to rewrite our curricular scripts. To play is to encourage laughter, to explore the underbelly of the unsaid, to inspire new understandings, to engage in “wide-awakeness” (Greene, 1971) with our own learning as educators, to create anew our educational relationships, and to invite the unexpected into our presence, thus “enlarging the space of the possible” (Sumara & Davis, 1997, p. 299). To play, in today’s classroom, is a radical act.

Joyce Carol Oates writes, “Time is but the changing of light.” I think of the many different role dramas that I have engaged in with my students, and of the learning that came through moments of recognition—unexpected encounters that opened up new horizons, that no amount of lesson planning could have anticipated. A lesson plan survives (barely) a 75 minute class; it is often in the unraveling of our lesson plans, in the releasing of expectations, in the escape of the tyranny of time, that open us to unanticipated learning and possibilities of renewed engagement. The learning that comes to us through performative inquiry, a reciprocal exploration embarked upon by students and teacher, if we come to our play with “mindful awareness” (Varela Thompson & Rosch, 1993) may last a lifetime.

Jan Milloy (2007) writes of a moment as being a “child of duration,”—a moment of learning, that, as I have experienced, may continue to haunt, educate, guide and remind us, of what is possible. Through the lens and interplay of performative inquiry, an unexpected moment of encounter between two students in role, or within a sentence written-in-role that pulls us into the realm of metaphor, or an image within a tableau that startles, new perspectives may emerge to become portals into compassion and meaningful comprehension.

Performative inquiry in the classroom brings to curriculum a spirit and practice of inquiry, critical and creative engagement, and collaborative reflection. The benefits of engaging in persuasive oral speech, writing in role, exploring multiple perspectives, collaborative problem-solving, experiencing leadership in role, developing a reflective practice with students, cover a variety PLOs within and across curricular engagements. Within the practice of performative inquiry in the classroom, however, is a commitment between students and teacher to play, a willingness to engage each other in new ways. Whether you are in role as the mayor of a financially troubled town or as CEO of a pharmaceutical company or as a citizen who wants a community centre in Sunnyvale, performative inquiry, through active engagement and reflection reminds us, again, of the value and possibility of play within our classrooms.

Consider this text, then, an invitation for you and your students to play.

 

 Notes

1 The Sunnyvale role drama is described in Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama and Learning, along with other role dramas. See Fels & Belliveau, 2008 in Resources.

2 See Fels, L. (2002) for a discussion on the learning that happens within a “moment of recognition” in which the author understands, for a performative moment, what the words, “a prison without walls” truly means.

3 Applebaum, 1995: pp. 15, 16.

4 See Verriour & Tarlington, 1991. Their co-authored book, Role Play, provides a wonderful entry point into the design and delivery of role drama. See also Fels & Belliveau, 2008.

 

References

Appelbaum, D. (1995). The stop. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Arendt, H. (1961). The Crisis in Education. In Between past and future: Six exercises of political thought. New York: Viking.

Fels, L. & Belliveau, G. (2008). Exploring curriculum: Performative inquiry, role drama and learning. Vancouver, B.C.: Pacific Educational Press.

Fels, L. (2002). Spinning Straw into Gold: Curriculum, Performative Literacy and Student Empowerment. English Quarterly, 34 (1, 2), 3-9.

Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York, N.Y.: Teachers College Press.

Milloy, Jana. (2007). Persuasions of the wild: Writing the moment, a phenomenology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Burnaby, B.C.: Simon Fraser University.

Sumara, D.J. & Davis, B. (1997). Enlarging The Space Of The Possible: Complexity, Complicity, And Action Research Practices. In T. Carson and D.J. Sumara (Eds.), Action research as a living practice (pp. 299-312). New York, Peter Lang.

Tarlington, C., & Verriour, P., (1991). Role drama. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1993). The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jane MacMillan is a lover of all things literacy and enjoys sharing her passion for literature both with her students at school and at home with her three children.

Christy Rollo knew she wanted to be a teacher from the moment she taught her brother how to tie his shoe laces. She is now having the ultimate teaching experience with her two young daughters.

 

In September of 2006, Christy, a Grade 6/7 teacher, approached Jane, a teacher-librarian with a question: How could Christy engage all the diverse learners in her class, including reluctant learners and English language learners? Jane was new to the school, and Christy had been teaching Gr. 6/7 for a number of years at the school. We were looking to collaborate with the library as a venue. Further, Christy wanted to help all of her learners connect with Social Studies in a meaningful way, even though it included reading a variety of texts, note-making, critical thinking and discussion, all areas in which reluctant and ESL learners may struggle due to gaps in skills and background knowledge. Looking to develop authentic conversation and create a greater depth in student engagement as part of a unit on Ancient Rome, we decided to try something new; that is, bring information books to the traditional “book club.” Thus, “info-circles” was born, proving to be not only a popular choice among our students, but an incredibly rewarding teaching experience for us, as well.

 

Rationale

Literature circles, an offshoot of the adult “book club” (Daniels, 2002), have seen a sharp rise in the past two decades. However, there is a growing trend towards including non-fiction materials in literature circles, as reading for information has become a significant area of concern in schools in recent years. Students need exposure to a wide variety of expository texts (Daniels, 2002), as non-fiction permeates students’ reading both in and out of school (Stien & Beed, 2004). The move to information, or content- area, literature circles draws the focus away from primarily exclusive attention to specific elements of text, to a broader program which encompasses understanding of the text as engaging literature. Content-area literature circles offer a new dimension to the traditional literature circle program, one which addresses “both the social and academic needs of the students while maintaining the curriculum” (Johnson & Freedman, 2005, p. xiv).

Johnson and Freedman (2005), in advocating content area literature circles as a premium opportunity for improving information text comprehension, emphasize its adaptability for all learners. For ESL students, it is a chance to clarify misconceptions and hear academic language through discussion. For social learners, particularly in adolescence, it is a chance to share and build on their understanding in a group setting. For more reluctant readers and students reading below grade level, it is a chance to read texts of interest at their instructional level, with opportunity for greater choice, thereby providing opportunity to share equally in a group with others discussing the same topic, as opposed to struggling through a textbook often incompatible with their reading or interest levels.

For all students, it is a chance to clarify and extend meaning beyond the written, and respond to critical challenges of text and topic in a group setting. We think it is a rich opportunity to not only enhance content area instruction, but to encourage students in the ever mindful goal of becoming effective, engaged and competent lifelong learners.

 

Info-circles: Ancient Rome

Introduction

We introduced our students to the unit on Ancient Rome using the KWL (What I Know, What I Wonder, What I Want to Learn) strategy to foster questioning (Gear, 2007) and build student interest. Students shared questions as a class, recording those most important to them. In a follow up lesson, we gave students, working in table groups, unusual facts about Ancient Rome and asked them to decide as a group which were true and which were false. These were posted at the front under “True” and “False” labels, and groups then had to explain the reasoning behind their choices to the larger group. Finally, using Gear’s (2007) OWI strategy (Observe, Wonder, Infer), we gave students photographic reproductions of Ancient Roman sites, which they were encouraged to study as follows: Observations (without judgment), Wonderings (questions about the picture), Inferences (judgments made based on the information gathered). We designed all of these introductory activities not only to heighten interest in the upcoming unit, but to further develop strategies and group processes the students would need as members of the upcoming discussion group format.

One of the significant elements of the unit was the concept of developing and pursuing “powerful” or “thick” (Gear, 2007) questions. Students looked through various information books and kept a running list of the questions they had. At various points, small groups shared their questions with each other, and, as a group, picked the top 3-4 “thick” (deep thinking) questions to share out with the class. Christy recorded these questions on chart paper for further use in the discussion group format. Students then sorted their questions into “thick” and “thin” categories, and justified their reasons for the choices made. Throughout the unit, we asked them to evaluate their own questions and group discussion in light of the “thick” questions posted, to decide if they had been answered or if they required further research. Examples included questions such as, “What gifts have the Ancient Romans given us?”, “What was Rome’s greatest achievement?” and “Why was Rome able to build such a powerful empire?” The questions were revisited throughout the unit.

Concept-driven vs. text-driven approach

We decided upon a combination of concept-driven (multiple books in one group) and text-driven (single book discussion) approaches, not only to accommodate our diverse learners, but also to provide greater opportunity for the sharing of multiple viewpoints. Because students were reading books appropriate to their reading levels, grouping them solely by text would have limited the discussion to homogeneous groups. In contrast, the inclusion of guiding groups by concept allowed for heterogeneous groups, with multiple voices and reflections based on the differing texts read. This approach also minimized student perception, and indeed, reality, of grouping students solely by ability. In this way, the topic, rather than the text and its implied reading level, was the focus for discussion.

The literature

We chose texts at a variety of reading levels, with particular attention to reluctant readers, ESL learners, and students not reading at grade level, as these composed the bulk of the classroom. Included were high interest, low vocabulary books, to address the needs of low-level ESL students, as well as non- ESL students with lower reading levels. For reluctant readers, we chose two titles with visually motivating texts sure to draw in those students, as well as the high proportion of boys in the class. For higher level readers, one title offered further detail at a more challenging reading level, with an embedded graphic novel sure to draw others, as well. Finally, we included two texts with material at a mid to lower reading level. The aim in choosing these books was to address curriculum while meeting the needs of all learners. However, we chose the books not only for their reading level or eye catching titles, but because they are clearly written with a number of information features, as well as factual information that directly links to the learning outcomes of the unit.

Info circles

To introduce the discussion group portion of the unit, we presented the “Info Circles Discussion Prompts” sheet (see Figure 1). Prompts included Question (Clarify), Wonder, Connections, Knew-New, and “This was interesting….” Rather than a role approach, the discussion prompts sheets were used to encourage student response while reading that could later be shared with peers in the discussion group. Students used sticky notes to record their thoughts as they read, later transferring them to the discussion prompt sheet just prior to each group meeting.

Figure 1: Info Circles Symbols Key
Symbol	Meaning
?	Question:Clarify something you don't understand
K-N	Knkew-New: Somethingyou already knew OR Something that is new to you
W	Wonder: "I wonder why/ how/ if..."
!	This is interesting!
T-S	Text-to-self connection
T-T	Text-to-text connection
T-W	Text-to-world connection

Initially, we modeled the strategy with a larger group text share, as students read along and shared thoughts. As a follow up, students worked in small groups with a photocopied sheet of text, following the process above, and working together as a group to complete the prompt sheet. Students transferred their sticky notes to a note-making book for discussions. We employed a gradual release of responsibility to students (Maloch, 2002) in the move from modeled response, to small group practice, to individual response activities. The modeling and practice given prior to the onset of the discussion group format was a key means of not only familiarizing students with a strategy and process for stimulating potential discussion, but to build comfort and encourage the group interaction that would be essential to the next stage of the unit.

Group meetings

At the introduction to the discussion group process, Jane gave a book talk on the books chosen for the literature circle groups. Students then selected a book to read. Books were rotated on a weekly basis. Students had one week to read and make note of their responses to the book, both through one in-class period, and during silent reading and after school homework time. As each book was relatively short, we considered this sufficient time to complete the task, which was borne out by the subsequent response and success in completion by the students.

Weekly meetings occurred after one period given to working on their book for the week, initially with Jane and Christy coteaching to ensure all groups had regular contact with an adult to monitor and guide discussions, if necessary. Students met in assigned groups that were chosen at times by common title, at others by suggested topic. Where possible, we placed beginning ESL students in groups with at least one other student who spoke the same language, in order to allow for translation and first language participation. If students were meeting to discuss the common text (text-driven approach), our prompts were limited, with only a general suggestion as to potential issue questions with which they may use the book to guide their thinking. In multiple text groups, we often asked students to consider what they learned from the book in light of one of the “thick questions” the class as a whole had deemed pertinent to their interests and the unit of study. Such questions included: “What was the role of women in Ancient Roman society?”; “How did rank and power play out across varying roles and societal structures?”; “What was life like for the average/wealthy/poor citizen?” Students referred to their prompt sheets to initiate discussion; however, with our encouragement, students moved beyond sharing their written responses if discussion led them in another direction.

The goal was to focus on rich discussion, not the sharing of each post-it on student sheets. We encouraged students to add to their own notes during the discussion, allowing struggling ESL learners to add information to their sheets. In all cases, we closed discussions by gathering the class together again in a large group format, and reviewed information in light of one of the “thick” questions posted in class. Each group had a few minutes to discuss their thinking in light of the question and their discussion, then in small groups share their group’s thinking with the whole class. Finally, students transferred their sticky notes to an exercise book under a heading that named the title of the book and the author, in preparation for the upcoming project that would comprise the unit’s finale.

Closure

After 5 weeks, students met to review the thick questions posted. In small groups, they discussed what they felt was Rome’s greatest achievement, attempted to come to a consensus, then shared their group’s decision(s) on what was the greatest achievement. In a follow up lesson, students met in groups composed of those in agreement with them as to what was Rome’s greatest achievement. After a brief discussion in their new group, each group was responsible for convincing the other groups that their choice was the “best” one. In a fluid debate format, students moved from group to group as their opinion changed, until all felt they had made their final choice as to Rome’s greatest achievement. The lesson closed as students reflected individually in writing on their final choice. The debate was a highly engaging activity that owed its success to the comfort and familiarity of the children in participating in discussion formats. Students who had, prior to the unit, been reluctant oral participants, now freely offered suggestions and moved to other groups without hesitation as their opinions changed.

As a finale to the unit, students worked in groups to create a class book. Each student chose a favorite “thick” question and developed, in groups with others, a page that defended their question, as well as including relevant text features. As part of the process, students worked with others with the same question, fact gathering using a web to categorize response options, before beginning their final product.

Evaluation

The discussion groups, and the unit as a whole, proved extremely popular with the students. We evaluated responses in a number of ways. During discussion, we circulated with notes and a quick scale response sheet in order to record both the rate and quality of participation. Anecdotal notes were also collected, as particular comments by students were recorded and shared after each session. These served to not only ensure we were aware of participation issues, but also to help us guide and facilitate particular sessions and support groups in need of further encouragement. Occasionally, we asked students to complete a “quickwrite” after discussion, in order to assess their perception of both the quality of their own participation, but also the success of the group as a whole. Students also completed reflection responses, with prompts such as, “I used to think…but now I think….” We also asked for feedback on the learning process, through prompts such as, “So far I like learning through info circles because…”, “Sometimes I find info circles challenging because…” and “Learning through info circles is different because….” As groups fluctuated in membership, the support and facilitation we provided were ongoing; however, as students became more comfortable with the process itself, discussions became richer and flowed more freely despite the fact that membership within each group differed from session to session. Finally, at the end of the unit, students asked, “Can we do the rest of Social Studies this way, too?”—a sure sign that the project had been a success!

 

Conclusion

As teachers, we want to develop in our students not only comprehension skills, but also critical thinking and a genuine appreciation for literature. We think content area literature circles have great potential to do this. Content area literature circles provide an opportunity for students to be exposed to multiple materials on a topic, rather than one resource, such as the curriculum text. If students, as Daniels (2002) argues, require greater experience with expository text, content area literature circles are an ideal way to provide that exposure in an authentic and relevant way, while providing students with a variety of reading materials at their level. Meaning is constructed with not only a strong emphasis on text engagement, but also with opportunity to link content with background knowledge, personal connection, and opportunity to entertain multiple viewpoints. Further, where fiction “[l]iterature circles prepare and strengthen critical literacy skills through the use of higher order thinking skills” (Dawson and FitzGerald, 1999, p. 4), so too may content area circles, as students have the opportunity to discuss issues, challenge viewpoints, and clarify thinking through discussion with their peers.

The social aspect cannot be undervalued in its contribution to such critical thinking skills, as “a group working together can construct knowledge to a higher level than can the individuals in that group each working separately” (Wray & Lewis, 1997, p. 19). Students are powerful peer models, and info circles offer a unique opportunity for this at an age when peer power is at times of more impact than any teacher-driven lesson. Finally, from an assessment standpoint “listening to student- led discussions also provides valuable information on how students are applying strategies such as making connections, summarizing and synthesizing, or finding the main points” (Robb, 2002, p. 30), which further drives instruction and provides authentic opportunities for evaluation and curricular goal setting. These elements further provide opportunities for students to develop skills and attitudes toward content area materials in a small group environment, using materials at appropriate reading levels, with ample opportunities for discussion and clarification and opportunities for meaningful engagement with text. Further, discussion around information text engages the “info kids” (Jobe and Dayton-Sakari, 2002) who rarely have a chance to share their enthusiasm and passion for information texts in a discussion format.

We strongly believe that this approach lends itself very well to a number of curricular areas, and has the potential to support a diverse range of learners, ensuring success, meaningful engagement, and maximum learning for all. Contentarea literature circles offer a rich opportunity to not only enhance content area instruction, but to encourage students in the ever mindful goal of creating effective, engaged and competent lifelong learners.

 

References

Daniels, H. (2002). Expository text in literature circles. Voices from the middle, 9(4), 7-14.

Dawson, D. & FitzGerald, L. (1999). Literature circles: Reading in action. Wagga Wagga, New South Wales: Centre for Information Studies.

Gear, A. (2007). Workshop handout: “Reading Power for Non-fiction”.

Jobe, Ron & Dayton-Sakari, Mary (2002). Info-kids: How to use nonfiction to turn reluctant readers into enthusiastic learners. Markham, ON: Pembroke.

Johnson, H. & Freedman, L. (2005). Content area literature circles: Using discussion for learning across the curriculum. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.

Maloch, B. (2002). Scaffolding student talk: One teacher’s role in literature discussion groups. Reading Research Quarterly, 37(1), 94-112.

Robb, L. (2002). Multiple texts: Multiple opportunities for teaching and learning. Voices from the middle, 9 (4), 28- 32.Stien, D. & Beed, P.L. (2004). Bridging the gap between fiction and nonfiction in the literature circle setting. The Reading Teacher, 57(6), 510-518.

Wray, D. & Lewis, M. (1997). Extending literacy: Children reading and writing non-fiction. NY: Routledge.