Project #24
The Pedagogical and Practical Implications of Using More Children's Literature in the Language Arts Program

Acknowledgements

This action research project was made possible by a grant from the Dr. Stirling McDowell Foundation for Research into Teaching, by support from the Saskatoon (West) School Division No. 42 and by participation of the Elementary staff and students at Perdue School, Perdue, Saskatchewan. Without the combined support of these participants, this project could not have been done.

Section I

Introduction

In 1996, Jessica Latshaw, a language arts specialist, noted that most teachers were not using more children's literature in teaching language arts, even though they had been encouraged to do so in the recently revised language arts curriculum. She speculated:

On the basis of this speculation, Latshaw began working with the five elementary teachers in Perdue, a rural community located 70 kilometers west of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Together they designed and implemented a two-year action research project intended to explore the practical and pedagogical implications of using more children's literature in the elementary curriculum at Perdue School. More specifically, they hoped to accomplish any or all of the following:

This report contains a description of the study, actions taken in the project, the major findings, and discussion of the findings.

Description of the Project

The research team attempted to achieve the goals of the project by participating in a series of half-day workshops that centered on learning and practicing newer teaching strategies that are designed to support students' broad response to literature. These strategies included:

Examples of agenda for these workshops are located in Appendix A.

Along with organizing the series of workshops, Latshaw worked one day per week with the teachers and students at Perdue School where she adopted the role of participant-observer (Spradley, 1980). As a participant, she modeled newer teaching strategies, responded to students' writing, conferenced with individual readers, read-aloud different kinds of literature, joined groups on field trips, did supervision duty on the playground, bought gear to support athletic projects, and managed the canteen during a district-wide soccer meet. As an observer, she made field notes about teaching and learning in five classrooms, collected examples of students' responses to literature, and identified opportunities for assisting individual teachers.

The Research Approach

The theoretical support for the action research project is the work of Kemmis and McTaggart(1988). They identify three major components of action research as follows: a) planning, b) acting and observing, and c) reflecting. These components form, in turn, the action research spiral or research approach as shown in Chart 1. For this study the thematic concern was identified by the principal and agreed upon by the teachers before Latshaw was invited to work with the teachers. Ideally, in a school-based project, all participants assist in the identification of a thematic concern. In the Perdue project this process was interrupted because the personal changed both in the administration and in the staff between the time the project was funded and the time the project began. The compromise action was to make participation in the project entirely voluntary. This decision made it possible for original members of the research team to continue as planned and for new staff members to participate partly, wholly or not at all. The teachers opted to participate either partly or wholly.

Before starting the research cycle, the research team examined Latshaw's initial observations of teaching and learning at Perdue. In this examination process, Latshaw noted individual teacher's interests and concerns which she tried to address in the half-day workshops.

As the project progressed beyond the first workshop the nature of the research spiral diverted from the Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) model. Each teacher engaged in the three steps but seldom did they engage in the steps at the same time or at the same rate. Moreover, in at least two cases, the process of reflecting about personal practice preceded action taken and constituted the major involvement in the project. In other cases, the process was coupled with entering graduate studies that are related directly to the project and graduate studies not related to the project.

Chart 1: The Research Spiral (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988)

Reconnaissance of Classroom Practice

During the first year of the project, Latshaw observed the teachers teaching several subject areas and participated both in classroom-based activities and school-wide events, like the soccer tournament, the track-and-field days, and pumpkin carving. Along with keeping field notes, Latshaw collected examples of students' oral and written communication in classroom learning and examples of their communication outside the school especially recess time and on field trips.

The observation-based findings that proved significant for helping the teachers explore the value of using more children's literature in the curriculum are as follows:

These findings formed the basis for planning specific actions. The actions taken during the project included part of the school community, working one-to-one with teachers, and supporting their professional development. The actions taken in the series of half-day workshops are identified in Appendix A. Examples of actions taken in each classroom are described in Section II and reflections on the finding are presented in Section III. Finally, the recommendations for future action research at Perdue School are presented in Section IV.

Section II

Actions Taken In Five Classrooms

Kindergarten

In the kindergarten classroom, the teacher regularly reads-aloud stories and encourages the children to share their responses orally and through art activities (Tompkins et al., 1999). As well the children have times when they can choose what they would like to do. The options include a sand table, a dress-up box, a variety of puzzles, containers of lego blocks, and an assortment of vehicles and other toys. After the first month of school, the group has favourite stories and characters that they talk about as they go about doing other activities in the classroom.

During the first year, the kindergarten teacher and Latshaw encouraged the children to share their growing delight in story with their families by making a book bag that children could take home. The bag contains a paperback edition of Stellaluna (Cannon, 1993), a hand-made puppet of Stellaluna, a tape recorded version of the story, and a reading journal. The children shared the story with their family members who then recorded their responses in the reading journal. At the next class meeting, the family responses were shared.

Latshaw also read aloud stories like "The Kite" from Lobel's (1976) Frog and Toad All Year coupled with using a frog hand puppet. The book and puppet were then left for the students to enjoy for a week or more. Another popular story was Waddell's (1992) Farmer Duck. The students enjoyed this participation book by making the animal sounds with increasing vigour!

During the second year, the take home material were extended to include hand painted T-shirts. The teacher and Latshaw asked the students to identify their favourite characters which would be painted on T-shirts they could share. Their first suggestions were Disney characters. After several prompts to identify book characters, one student said, AI like the pigs (Three Little Pigs).@ The students' first response was based on prior experience; the response, AI like the pigs@ was based on new learning. The teacher had read-aloud The Three Little Pigs earlier in the week.

Besides development of take-home materials, Latshaw made other kinds of classroom listening tapes for the kindergarten class, for example a tape was made of Grade 2 students reading aloud their creative writing. This activity proved to be an ideal opportunity to observe young students communication skills. No matter how little they wrote, all students read-aloud their writing with a sense of pride. Ideally such tapes can be part of a listening corner where students can enjoy the stories many times as well as talk informally about them.

This experience illustrates the importance of sharing story in the classroom. At Perdue, the students differ greatly in language abilities and sense of story. For some students their prior experience with books is minimal; For these students the school is the primary source of literacy learning. Making the book bag and T-shirts for the kindergarten students were done to raise community awareness of the need to support literacy learning. Additional projects are needed, like inviting parents to participate in story time and to share more directly in students' new learning experiences at school.

Grade 1-2

Like the kindergarten teacher, the Grade 1-2 teacher reads aloud several times every day. She shares story by having the children gather on a rug in front of her. Besides frequent story time, the children do phonetic exercises, copy language examples from the blackboard and make their own books. Before children can write, the teacher and a teaching assistant record the children's stories for them in individual writing books. Using primarily basal reading materials, the teacher encourages her students to make the stories their own by reading them aloud several times, by asking questions about the content, and by letting the children take turns reading aloud.

In this classroom, Latshaw read-aloud outstanding examples of children's literature, shared a variety of teaching materials that can be used to extend responses, took half the class for language arts instruction, and interacted one-to-one with readers about their reading and writing interests. Besides observing the delight, which emergent readers exude, Latshaw observed how much students rely on familiar routines to navigate their way through the day. Here are two examples:

Latshaw assisted the Grade 1-2 students in making a sound-enhanced tape of

Raskin's(1966) Nothing Ever Happens on My Block, in making Big Books that contain their writing, and in making a listening tape of Brown's Four Witches. The prepared tapes were shared with the kindergarten class. Finally, Latshaw loaned a set of hand puppets for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. These proved to be a popular story-telling aid, especially for the Grade 1 students.

During the first year of the project, Latshaw shared examples of folk tale variations. These included several variations of Cinderella and examples of lavishly illustrated fairy tales, such as Lunn's (1979)Twelve Dancing Princesses. Throughout the year, the teacher found and shared several other folk tale variations with the class. Along with reading aloud the variations, the teacher wrote a simplified version of Little Red Riding Hood which the children used for a puppet play. The teacher also initiated a modified version of book talk that encourages students to prepare and share response to selected stories. The guidelines used for this activity are shown in CHART 2. As expected, the Grade 2 students were better able to use the guidelines than Grade 1 students but the Grade 1 students benefited from peer modelling.

During the second year, the teacher compiled and used a representative sampling of variations of familiar folk tales as well as examples of fractured folk tales, familiar stories told from a new perspective, like Tolhurst's (1991) Somebody and the Three Blairs and Triviza's (1993) The Three Little Wolves. This teacher's recommended list of fairy tales old and new is presented in Chart 2.

Chart 2: Fairytales Used with Grade 1-2 Students

Old Fairy Tales

Snow White & 7 Dwarfs

The Three Little Pigs

Cinderella

 Goldilocks and 3 Bears

 Little Red Riding Hood

 Combination of several fairy tales

(Frog Prince etc.)

 Hanzel & Grettel

Sleeping Beauty

The Princess and The Pea

Modern Fairy Tales

Bibliography of Modern Fairy Tales

Schmoe White and the Seven Darfs

The Three Little Pigs and The Fox

The Irish Cinderlad

Dinorella

Goldilocks and the Three Hares

Little Red Riding Hood - A New fangled Prairie Tale

The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig

The True Story of The Three Little Pigs!

Princess Stinkytoes and the Brave Frog Robert

The Princess and the Pea-ano

Cinderella Bigfoot

Honzel and Pretzel

Sleeping Ugly

Jane Yolen - Scholastic

Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Japan - retold by Birginia Harvilond

- Little, Brown and Company

(This author and many of the other countries)

Mystery history of a Medieval Castle

Latshaw encouraged this teacher to facilitate more opportunities for children to talk informally, especially in smaller social contexts than half-class groups. Although the teacher recognizes the value of such activities for older students, she does not think early primary students can work effectively in a less teacher-directed environment. Latshaw agrees about the needs of beginning Grade 1 students but not about the needs of other students (Martin, 1999). After the Grade 1 immersion experience in literacy learning students need regular opportunities to practice these new skills especially in social contexts that are similar to the ones in which they first learned language.

Students also need early experiences with classroom routines that permit different kinds of talk, like participating in a readers theatre activity. The talk that occurs while the group selects appropriate text is informal conversation. The talk that occurs while they practice their presentation is a combination of informal conversation and other functions of language. Talk contains a wider use of language functions (Halliday, 1978) then occurs in teacher-directed talk. Finally, when the group presents their Readers' Theatre to another group, more formal use of language is adopted, albeit briefly, before the day learning and practicing reading comprehension skills and beginning writing skills. For reading, instructions is based mainly on paperback collections of basal readers; however, the teacher also reads examples of children's literature. For writing, instruction is a combination of the language experience approach and writing associated with phonic-based activities.

Latshaw expected the students to grow bored with practicing their new literacy skills using the basal reading materials. They didn't mind at all. They were as eager to read aloud the basal reading texts as they were to read-aloud far more engaging folk tales. If this is children's response in other primary grades, teachers will need incentive other than student response to traditional reading materials to begin using more children's literature in the classroom.

GRADE 3-4

The Grade 3-4 teacher is a beginning teacher who states unabashedly, "I don't have enough training to teach language arts and I don't like teaching it" (Field Notes, 1999). In spite of this felt frustration, the teacher has begun to use a greater variety of post-reading activities. The most successful one was facilitating candy making after reading aloud Dahl's (1967) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Parent volunteers worked with small groups of students in the staff room.

During the first year, Latshaw introduced Readers' Theatre to this class using Steig's (1971) Amos and Boris. The results were less than satisfactory for several reasons. First, the length of the story was too long for this group. Secondly, the half class that wasn't doing the activity was unable to work independently. Thirdly, several students had difficulty reading the scripts. Clearly, Latshaw chose the wrong book for this group as well as not providing sufficient instructional scaffolding for the group that needed to work independently.

Later in the year, the classroom teacher also tried readers' theatre. Unlike Latshaw's experience, the teacher's experience was positive; the teacher reported the activity will be done again. The guidelines Latshaw provided the teachers for Readers' Theatre are given in Appendix B including the guidelines for making masks.

During the second year, Latshaw observed successful communication activities in this classroom. In one activity, students were directed to carry on conversations by using only questions. The first speaker who answered a question had to withdraw and new sets of partners were formed. This activity was highly successful because both the teacher and the teaching assistant took active roles in the activity.

This teacher's response to the project indicates pre-service training must include more opportunities for micro-teaching experiences in all subject areas. His response also suggests the need for administrators to support beginning teachers by scheduling debriefing conferences and to arrange mentorship opportunities with experienced teachers. Unless such support is formalized, the beginning teacher is overly self-critical and reluctant to explore new teaching strategies. As well, if the new teacher does not observe experienced teachers using newer teaching strategies, the new teacher has little incentive to use what was emphasized in pre-service training.

Grade 5-6

Latshaw began working with this group by helping them make a sound enhanced tape for Randall's (1967) The Bat Poet in which choral reading was combined with sound effects. This activity was done after the class listened to the poetry tape done by the teachers in the first workshop. The teacher then asked Latshaw for assistance in doing readers' theatre with masks. Latshaw videotaped the students presentations so they could self-evaluate their use of the prosodic features of language.

The class then explored circle drama. They dramatized selected events in the lives of the foolish and clever characters in their reading anthology. The drama was successful as a first effort because the characters were exaggerated stereotypes which made it easy for students to select uses of self (facial expression, posture, gesture, and movement). Our evaluation of the dramas indicate the students need direct instruction in ways to employ facial expression but they had no difficulty identifying suitable postures, gestures, and movements. We concluded a possible way to assist students in adopting different facial expressions would be to use small hand mirrors during practice time. Guidelines for doing this form of educational drama are presented in Appendix D.

Along with exploring different forms of drama, this teacher also explored ways of integrating reading and writing activities, and use of social contexts other than the whole group. These actions included, for example, identifying literature-based options for writing and encouraging the students to work collaboratively in a Science unit. For the science unit, the class examined and discussed observable features of selected prairie birds using a small collection of informational books. Each student selected a bird to study and informed one another when they came across helpful information.

The class then took a field trip assisted by two outdoor specialists to a slough near the school. At the slough, the students observed, identified and described several ducks and prairie song birds.

When a student spotted a bird, other students assisted by thumbing through a field guide and by using binoculars to observe the bird's features more closely. This field trip gave the students talking-to-learn opportunities which were enhanced by the specialists' presentations. Equally important, in this unit of study the students worked cooperatively while acquiring new learning. Their final reports were then done individually.

At first the teacher was concerned about the additional time it took to facilitate more literature-centred instruction and the length of time it took for students to work more independently. The following exchange occurred while the students were reading Farley's(1952) The Black Stallion.

The teacher's concern about participation remained until she introduced literature circles (Daniels, 1994). Adopting this teaching strategy provided enough scaffolding to permit more students to take an active role in discussions and for the teacher to observe important changes in the students' interpersonal communication skills. Over the course of several months, the students moved from relying heavily on the teacher's questions to asking questions themselves, which included comparing and discussing their responses. In the following exchange three students share their first impressions of three books, Ribsey (Cleary, 1964), Big Red (1945), and Old Yeller (Gibson, 1956).

In this exchange Sarah, Tom and Mark are comparing authors' feelings about dogs. One could argue, their literary interests are not as mature as what they would have from teacher questioning. This is true. All three students took an active role in reconstructing their stories, and they used their own representations of these stories in subsequent discussions. The meaning-making process may well be slower and far less linear than what occurs in teacher-directed discussions but the net result is more engaged readers.

Eeds and Wells (1989) caution teachers not to overuse questions as invitations to dialogue and turning real discussions into Agentle inquisitions@ where questions have one correct answer, the one in the teacher's head. They assert that in a true classroom dialogue the teacher functions simply as a co-member of the group, not as the authority on the meaning of the text.

Gradually, the Grade 5-6 teacher made the transition from teacher-directed discussion to Areal discussion@(Eeds & Wells, 1989). This does not mean the teacher conducted the discussions without any preparation. She read the literature which the students were reading, first to live through it as Rosenblatt (1978) would say, and again to read like a writer, noting ways in which the author is developing the text (Eeds & Peterson, 1991). For the latter instructional goal, the teacher examined key literary elements as follows:

By facilitating real discussions, the teacher created a helpful learning context for practicing the co-learner role, one of the teacher's major roles in literature circle meetings. By combining real discussions and literature circles, the teacher encouraged students to reconstruct text and share initial responses in small social contexts before engaging in whole class discussions.

During the second year, the Grade 5-6 teacher also evaluated the students' writing and looked for a suitable teaching strategy for the group. Her evaluation indicated many students lacked sufficient writing fluency to warrant Grade 5-6 level instruction in writing. For these students, whom Graves (1984) calls "reactive writers" (p.36) (or emerging writers), the increased informal talk during the prewriting stage proves helpful to identify potential writing topics. For other students, whom Graves calls "reflective writers" (p. 36) (or developing writers), the same talk is also helpful. Such talk helps students identify content that needs to be elaborated or clarified (Graves, 1983).

Grade 7-8

In the Grade 7-8 classroom, students begin to move between classrooms and to have a greater number of teachers. During the project Latshaw worked only with the Grade 7-8 teacher who taught language arts. This teacher, a science specialist, works part time and found it difficult to participate in the project, "teaching language arts is an overwhelming task for someone who is a specialists in another subject area" (Field Notes, 1998). For this reason, Latshaw's interaction with this teacher was limited to demonstration teaching and periodic interaction with the students. The actions taken include introducing the writing workshop approach to writing (Zemelman & Daniels, 1988), offering written response to students' writing (which centres on organization of ideas, not on grammar mistakes), and teaching half the class using open-ended discussion questions to generate possible topics for related writing.

During the first year the students wrote Remembrance Day poems. Latshaw used this writing activity to introduce post-writing activities, designed to help individual writers revise their writing as needed. Neither teacher-modelling of reader response skills or posted guidelines on the blackboard were enough scaffolding for this group to do the post-writing activities successfully. Latshaw believes the group needs more direct instruction in small group communication skills and an opportunity to practice these skills doing familiar work, before using the skills in new learning contexts.

As the project progressed, the teacher became more aware that her traditional teaching methods were not helpful methods for supporting students' developmental learning of language. Latshaw observed that the teacher overly relied on discussion questions that center mainly on literal comprehension of story and end-of-chapter questions in readers to encourage students' language development. Ideally, these traditional instructional methods would be modified to include informal, talking-to-learn activities and a variety of ways to respond to narrative.

The teacher believes many of the observed difference of the Grade 7 students' language interests between the first year of the project and the second year is associated mostly with age-related characteristics of preadolescents. Latshaw agrees that both the physical and social development of this age group does influence interpersonal communication but such developmental characteristics do not preclude teachers' use of process-oriented instructional methods and collaborative learning activities. Use of newer instructional methods encourages students to take a more active role in classroom learning; use of collaborative learning activities encourages students to use several registers of language in the classroom.

Section III

Findings

In this section, five findings of the action research project at Perdue School are identified. Reflections on these findings discussed in the next section.

During the planning stage of the project, Latshaw observed that the primary teachers relied mostly on basal reading materials for teaching reading and sharing story with students. This material was supplemented frequently by reading-aloud recommended children's literature (Glazer, 1981; Huck, Hepler and Hickman, 1993; Norton, 1991; Jacobs & Tunnell, 1996; Jobe, 1991; Gallo, 1993; Brown & Tomlinson, 1993). In contrast, the middle grade teachers used very few examples of recommended literature for instructional purposes or for reading-aloud to their students. At the same time, the middle grade teachers showed the most interest in learning more about children's literature and the most concern about adding anything to the curriculum.

Several teachers offered the following candid answers to the question, "Do you read children's literature?"

During the project, Latshaw tried several ways to assist the teachers in developing a foundation reading background of children's literature. These ways included loaning personal books to individual teachers, reading outstanding literature to students in all classrooms, followed by leaving the books for a week, and placing examples of current professional materials in the staff room. These ways were not equally helpful. The most helpful approach was loaning her own books and talking informally about them. The next most helpful action was reading aloud to students and leaving the book for them to enjoy independently. Least helpful was placing professional materials, like book selection criteria and ways to use children's literature, in the staff room. During the project, the teachers did not indicate having read or thought more about this professional material. In contrast, the professional materials that Latshaw gave to individual teachers were examined and she did receive feedback. The difference in feedback might be that Latshaw included a brief overview of the content when she gave materials to individual teachers. And the availability of materials in the staffroom was announced only at the workshops.

At the start of the project Latshaw requested that the teachers read literature between her visits and then Atalk book@ with her during lunch. The purpose of this proposed action was to support the teachers-as-readers, to encourage them to talk informally about their reading, and for Latshaw to model broad response to literature. Latshaw quickly learned that the teachers can not share independent reading during lunch because they seldom eat together. During the noon hour they supervise the school canteen, take playground duty, and monitor the classrooms where students eat lunch.

In retrospect, the research team made a mistake at this point in the project because they did not seek administrative support to share books during the school day. Instead Latshaw attempted to engage individual teachers in book talk. Three teachers maintained this dialogue in varying degrees throughout the project but the net result was not the same as it would be if the teachers developed their own reading community.

While the project did not succeed in getting all teachers to read and share children's literature regularly with their students, all teachers did use more children's literature in their language arts program than they did before the project. In all but one instance the teachers reported back that they and their students enjoyed the literature. The negative response centred on the appropriateness of one book, not on the process of responding to literature.

Currently, the administrative support for learning more about available books is done by the vice-principal who organizes an annual Book Fair where teachers can examine and order books for classroom use. The Book Fair is a popular event; most teachers peruse the display and order materials. Still, most teachers do not yet have a modest classroom library of literature (or any other print materials) as recommended by Atwell (1984) and others (Goodman, Y., 1986, Goodman, K., 1986; Huck, Hepler & Hickman, 1993).

Latshaw concluded that the tasks of building and running a school library and facilitating classroom collections of literature cannot be a tertiary-level responsibility of one staff member.

The small school library contains a very modest collection of picture books, junior novels, and a few informational books for Grades K-12. The teachers and students borrow materials regularly from this library to supplement the available textbook collections for teaching language arts and other subject areas. Typically, less than six references are available to support teaching and learning the required topics in the core curriculum. The available print materials for teaching science, math and social studies are minimal and mostly outdated. The picture-book collection is the most developed section of the school library; however, like other sections, many books are outdated and need to be replaced with newer works. The availability of children's literature for middle grade readers is mostly older works by well-known authors. Missing from the collection is a representative sampling of outstanding historical fiction novels and modern fantasies for middle grade readers.

In all classrooms, students are encouraged to read independently if they complete assigned work before others do and they are able to visit the library at times other than when the whole class goes each week. Still, Latshaw observed only a few students in each classroom who read independently without being directed to do so.

Two primary classrooms contain small collections of books but only a very small percentage of these books are ones recommended by specialists (Huck, 1998; Norton, 1998; Jobe, 1998; Egoff & Salt, 1998). In the other classrooms, the bookshelves contain student projects, paper supplies and textbook collections not even small collections of contemporary literature for younger readers.

In all classrooms, Latshaw observed students talking about assigned reading, guided by teacher questioning. The talk helped students to reconstruct events. Then what was discussed and how it was discussed was selected by the teachers.

Latshaw did not observe students talking informally about their independent reading until several weeks after the Grade 5-6 teacher facilitated literature circle meetings. A few students began using newly learned talking-to-learn skills to talk about their independent reading. In the following exchange, two girls compare the denouement of two dog stories they have read:

This talk about the world of experience in the novels is what Barnes (1976) calls learning by talking (p. 25) and Britton (1970) calls Agossiping about story,@ letting oneself be an inquisitive spectator in a constructed reality. In this talk, Tara and Karen chose what interested them, shared it informally and lingered over Tara's personal concern about dogs who die in dog stories. This talk is much more intimate and egocentric than what occurs in teacher-directed, whole group discussions (Cooper, 1993).

Similarly, Latshaw observed teacher-directed postreading activities in all classrooms but she observed only a few instances where students did writing-to-learn activities. The best example of students writing-to-learn occurred when the Grade 5-6 students began keeping reading journals. At first the students' entries were brief statements that indicated the assigned readings had been done. Over time the entries grew to include a brief synopsis of the assigned reading and personal responses to characters and events.

Bruner's (1980) studies of how infants construe reality indicate they use three modes, the enactive (kinaesthetic), the iconic (visual), and the symbolic (language). Historically, the symbolic mode is the only one that has been taught systematically in the schools. Yet, Bruner observes that adults retain the ability to use all three modes throughout life. At Perdue, the teachers vary greatly in awareness of ways that students can use to report new learning. Most teachers overly rely on the symbolic mode.

In the kindergarten class, the teacher facilitates a wide variety of post-reading activities that include, for example, making puppets, singing, coloring, and book making. The students learn several basic technical skills for doing art work; however, students at this age can not be expected to work completely independently so the teacher assumes responsibility for choosing the activity, setting out the materials, supervising the students efforts to clean-up, and doing the clean-up tasks which the students can't do. Teachers at the other levels reinforce the K-level learning but they do not introduce new visual art skills in a systematic way. Equally important students do not work increasingly more independently, select media, or style of art.

During the project, students in several classrooms did use both drama and art activities to report their responses to literature but all opportunities were teacher directed. Ideally, students would select a preferred mode for responding to a given book and the teacher would facilitate the process by designating work space and providing direct instruction, as needed, regarding technical and procedural skills. The needed scaffolding would include peer coaching, posted guidelines, and establishing expectations for personal responsibility.

Educational Drama at Perdue. The teachers experience in using drama is limited to spontaneous improvisation in the primary grades during free time and holiday presentations in the auditorium for parents and guests. A variety of Educational drama activities, which are designed as an informal way of communicating reader response to story, are not done in the Grade 1-8 classrooms.

During the project, one teacher explored readers' theatre including mask-making and shared the production with other grades. The teacher noted that Aeven [the] poor readers enjoyed participating and the masks are amazing . . . look at the amount of detail!@ (Field Notes, 1998) The pride the students took in their work was evident in the way they handled their masks and the delight they showed when their audiences applauded. This exploration permitted Latshaw to point out the value of such experience for language learning. The students practiced several functions of language (Halliday, 1988) and used several prosodic features of language in a meaningful context.

Visual Arts at Perdue. John-Steiner (1987) considers the great diversity of visual languages to include two-dimensional processes as well as three-dimensional forms constructed from clay and other materials. At Perdue instruction in using art techniques and materials is minimal in most classrooms. This does not mean students are not given opportunities to engage in art projects; it means the options students have for how they express themselves using the visual arts is quite limited, especially in the middle grades. Students do primarily two-dimensional art work as class projects using crayons, water paint and markers. Equally important, they do not see teachers-as-artists except at Halloween time when some teachers join students at all levels in carving pumpkins. This delightful event brings older students and younger students together to carve pumpkins co-operatively in the elementary classrooms. School-wide explorations of available media and styles of art would greatly enhance students' response ability to new learning.

Symbolic Mode at Perdue. In the Grade 1-2 classroom, the students receive direct instruction in how to give a book talk. The teacher records the needed content on chart paper and places the chart on the front wall. The guidelines include:

(Grade 1-2 Classroom)

This same teacher wrote a simplified version of Little Red Riding Hood for the students to use in a drama activity. For emerging readers this kind of assistance forms the needed scaffolding for them to work as independently as possible.

The Grade 5-6 teacher explored the potential value of using Daniels' (1994) literature circles. The scaffolding used by the teacher included a detailed discussion of the expectations for assuming the different roles and guided practice followed by debriefing sessions. In order to observe the students' responses, Latshaw was a periodic small group member.

Dan's response indicates he understands his role and the fact that Latshaw is a member of the group not the discussion leader for the day. Dan is beginning to take a more active role in his learning; Alice stills views the teacher as in charge of learning.

After hearing Cannon's Stellaluna (1993) read aloud, Latshaw asked Dave to share his thoughts and feelings about the story as follows:

It is important to note that the teacher did not observe change in the students interpersonal communication abilities or sense of literary awareness for several weeks. Then, the change the teacher did notice occurred with some students and not in others. The teacher concluded the primary benefit of literature circles might be that the circles encourage Atalking to learn@ (Booth, 1994; Brown, G. et al., 1984; Cooper, 1993) and the opportunity to observe students' thinking processes.

The teachers' instruction in literature-based writing is limited to developing students' increased sense of literary awareness. Equal attention is not given to modelling and fostering writing that helps students explore personal associations with the thematic emphases of narratives. As a result, students written responses are mostly associated with literal comprehension of story and the perceptual bonds of the narrative structures.

Latshaw also observed that students' strong interest in writing during the early primary grades lessens greatly in subsequent grades. Identifying possible causes of this change in interest needs to be further examined. At the last workshop Latshaw and the teachers talked about the possibility of creating school-based goals for writing. This is a future staff project that can be guided by the Grade 7-8 teacher who has had prior experience in constructing rubrics for written communication.

The bookbags, puppet, journals, T-shirts and listening tapes, which were prepared during the project, are all examples of ways to increase community awareness of the school's literacy learning goals. Students took the materials home and talked with their family members about their favorite stories and poems. More of this kind of communication is needed to establish a teacher-parent dialogue about the importance of literacy learning and the value of reading and writing in personal growth and development for students at all levels.

Latshaw observed parents taking an active role in fund-raising projects for sporting events, in attending interschool sporting events, and in assisting teachers with special events, like the candy-making that was done after grade 3-4 read Dahl's (1967) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The teacher-parent support for sporting events seems to influence what the students view as significant learning. At the 1998 high school graduation, all graduating seniors identified a sport experience as their most memorable experience at Perdue. This finding should not be construed to mean the teachers value physical education more than other kinds of learning; the finding does mean the teachers need more communication with the community about other kinds of learning, especially literacy learning.

Combined Findings

The combined findings indicate using more literature in the curriculum involves not only adopting new teaching strategies but also supporting teacher-as-reader projects and developing consistent instructional orientation between grades. Further, teachers must personally value such learning to invest the time and energy for self-directed exploration of a more student-centred and literature-centred language arts curriculum because using children's literature in the classroom is still an option in the Core Curriculum.

The findings of this project also indicate the task of supporting the teachers in using more literature in the curriculum will require revising the traditional inservice model. The teachers can learn new teaching strategies, like literature circle meetings in the traditional inservice workshop but the process of implementing the strategy is multifaceted and complex. Basically, teachers must adopt new roles in the learning process and identify new ways to monitor and evaluate learning. The new roles include 1) serving as a co-learner with students, and 2) modelling different kinds of reader responses to literature, higher-level thinking processes and stages of writing cycle. Likewise, the teachers need to identify formative evaluation methods that are appropriate for their students and to monitor the suitability of selected activities.

The combined findings indicate the teachers will need to take five specific actions if they want to use more children literature in the curriculum (K-8). These actions are as follows:

Section IV

Reflections on Findings

In literature-centred language arts programs, both teachers and students adopt new roles in classroom learning, both take risks in sharing tentative thinking, both explore challenging ways of reporting and exploring their reader responses (Eeds and Wells, 1989; Eeds and Peterson, 1991). These needed actions are also characteristic of an interactive learning environment, where learning takes place in a variety of social and situational contexts and where talking-to-learn and writing-to-learn are valued as much as learning to talk and learning to write (Harste, Short and Burke, 1988; Cooper, 1993; Booth, 1994; Hennings, 1997; Dixon-Krauss, 1998; Murray, 1999).

In this section of the report, the instructional practices that some teachers began to explore during the project are discussed briefly. Latshaw believes these practices can be developed further in teacher-directed projects if the teachers are given strong administrative support.

The skills discussed here form the foundation for reader response activities such as literary conversations (Hennings, 1997), literature circles (Daniels, 1994), and dramatic engagements.

Discussion Skills

Students can not be expected to work effectively in reader response activities unless they are familiar with small group communication skills and they develop increased confidence in using them. The findings of this project indicate neither form of learning happens without direct teaching, teacher modelling, scaffolding and monitoring. Several times Latshaw observed students placed in small groups and asked to do a task assigned by the teacher; the students did the task individually. Within the small groups, the interpersonal communication centred on the need to clarify what was to be done not on doing the task cooperatively. In discussions, students sometimes responded voluntarily but mostly the students responded to the teachers' questions. In both instances the students had not spent time reaching a mutually agreed-upon response or noting differences in their responses. In essence, the students moved into a different physical setting to do individual work. In reader response activities based on response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978) students work collaboratively to construct mental representations of story and then use these representations cooperatively to examine and explore their responses.

In reader response activities, students prepare for class discussions by constructing a tentative representation of the narrative, a mental map. If prediscussion activities are bypassed, students must rely on using the teacher's representation, which is revealed haphazardly via the teacher's questions during the discussion. If students must rely on the teacher's representation to participate in the discussions, only one person's sense of story is reinforced (the teacher's) the person who least needs the reinforcement.

The teachers' concerns about the additional time it takes to let students talk-to-learn (to construct their own representations) is likely to remain a concern until the practice is done across grade levels and over a period of time. Latshaw believes it is reasonable to speculate that once students view talking-to-learn activities as a regular component of classroom learning, the same amount of content could be covered (or maybe even more), and teachers would be better able to monitor the learning environment.

Cooperative Learning Skills.

Latshaw observed cooperative learning skills being taught, monitored, and evaluated regularly in the Grade 5-6 classroom. When this teacher used literature circles, Latshaw observed students preparing for group discussion of new learning and the teacher using more open-ended questions to invite broad participation. The students in other classrooms do short-term cooperative learning activities but in these classrooms the cooperative learning activities are not combined with ongoing instruction; therefore, students lack the benefit of systematic instruction and practice (Abrami, 1998).

Cooperative learning skills play an important role in reader response activities because individual explorations stem from extended dialogues with peers. There is no need to compete, to discover a right answer, or to guess (Abrami, 1998). There is a need to engage peer assistance to formulate a working representation of the narrative, one that can be used to extend and explore reader responses.

Small Group Skills. Most teachers do not provide ongoing instruction in small group communication skills. This means that what students gain in working more independently with teacher A during one year may not be reinforced by teacher B in the following year. The effect of this lack of school-based practice is illustrated by Ted's experience.

Latshaw observed the same small group communication behaviour at Perdue that she observes in post-secondary students' small group work. The talk moves between events in the text and events in the participants lives. As an observer, it is hard to understand how anything gets done in the midst of such flip-flop discussions. Latshaw believes verbal reminders to stay on task might not be the most helpful form of scaffolding. More helpful scaffolding is setting time limits for completing tasks, permitting some flip-flop discussions but not enough time for students to forget the instructional goal.

Most teachers and students still need to learn new roles in reader response activities. First, sharing more reader-centred responses involves readers using a wider variety of language registers than is commonly used in classrooms as well as learning social norms and cultural differences. Secondly teachers and students also need to respond more broadly to what is read. This means they make both text-centred responses, ones that centre on the world of experience in the narrative and reader-centred responses, ones that centre on the reader's prior experience that relates to the narrative (Harste, Short and Burke, 1988). Thirdly, teachers and students must also learn practical classroom procedures for using aesthetic means of communicating experience. For all three kinds of learning, then need safety-netting that allows them to examine and explore their responses comfortably while they also learn basic small group communication skills and new classroom procedures.

Three forms of safety-netting that are needed include:

1. Use of Simplified Text

Use of Simplified Text. While the students learn new communication skills, the literature they discuss in literature circles should be less demanding than what they can read. This means students can be expected to talk more easily about narrative content and debriefing sessions can centre mostly on small group communication skills. For upper primary level, appropriate text would be average-length picture story books; for middle grade students picture story books and short stories.

Protected Practice. While learning and practicing classroom procedures, the teachers and students should be free from traditional grading methods and from the annual review of teacher performance. Both forms of evaluation limit teachers' opportunities to explore possible procedures and to make the necessary micro adjustments. In place of grading, teachers would need to give parents and administrators a written description of the group's learning experiences and growth in interpersonal communication skills in different social/situational contexts

Teacher-Teacher Debriefing. Regular opportunities for teacher-teacher debriefing is essential because the classroom teachers have great difficulty standing back from the day's events in order to see the events from several perspectives. As a result, initial theory-to-practice efforts can be needlessly overwhelming. During the study, Latshaw conducted many debriefing sessions with the teachers and found what they perceived as big speed bumps were really very minor glitches. In all cases, what Latshaw said in the debriefing was very much like what a fellow staff member would say. The difference was most teachers trusted Latshaw to assume the role. For teacher-teacher debriefing to work at Perdue, the process needs to be formalized to include scheduled time and place (not the staff room) as well as opportunities to discuss the process at staff meetings.

Section V

Recommendations For Future Action Research at Perdue

At Perdue, future explorations of ways to use literature are dependent on the teachers developing broader reading backgrounds of children's literature (Lynch-Brown and Tomlinson, 1993), acquiring more knowledge of ways to encourage broad response to literature (Hylerle, 1996; Glazer and Brown, 1993), and adopting teaching strategies that support students in doing more talking-to-learn activities, writing-to-learn activities, and working cooperatively. In this section, several action research projects are identified, which can assist the teachers in building the needed reading background and can be done in teacher-directed projects. In all instances the projects would need strong, hands-on, administrative support.

Ways to Increase Reading Background of Children's Literature

The teachers recognize the need to read more children's literature but knowing this and doing it are two different things. Most teachers view the task as a very time consuming process, which it is because the average length of a junior novel is approximately 150 pages.

The first project combines developing teachers' reading backgrounds and developing a school-based literature strand for the elementary language arts program. Dividing the reading task amongst staff members might be a possible way to jump start the process. The teachers would read and share literature from a few selected genres. The teachers would also evaluate their books, using available book-selection criteria (Huck, Helpler and Hickman, 1993). Finally, the teachers would mutually agree on which books to integrate with required teaching content and which books to put on a recommended reading list for each grade level.

The second project combines reading and writing (Graves, 1994). Again, as in the first project, the teachers would read outstanding examples of literature; however, this time they also would record their responses in personal reading journals and then share selected journal entries in their monthly staff meetings. In this project the teachers themselves practice informal talk about books and writing-to-learn skills, the same skills they need to model for their students.

The third project combines one of the projects identified already and the teachers adopting the role of co-learner with their students. In this project, the teachers would include response to literature activities in their regular preparations for teaching reading and writing This project would have little chance of success unless it included giving the teachers some preparation time during the school day. They need to examine and discuss the suitability of more recently published literature for Perdue students. Eventually, this prep time could also be used to develop units of study collaboratively. If the teachers work collaboratively, the task of dealing with the theory to practice process would be less ominous and the teachers could identify forms of assistance that they individually (or collectively) feel would be helpful. Most importantly, the teachers would have a high vested interest in the actions they took.

Ways of Extending Readers' Responses to Literature

Responding broadly to literature includes the ability to make both text-centered and reader-centered responses. Text-centered responses are the reader's thoughts and feelings about the world of experience in the literary work; reader-centered responses are the personal associations the reader has with narrative content, associations with either the perceptual bonds or conceptual bonds of the narrative. Examples of these different kinds of responses, based on Grade 5-6 students' responses to Stellaluna (Cannon, 1993), are given in Chart 3.

Chart 3: Examples of Reader Response to Stellaluna (1993)

A) Text-Centered Responses

B) Reader-Centered Responses

As well as modeling these different kinds of responses, the teachers need knowledge of aesthetic ways to report and explore responses, knowledge of ways to teach, monitor and evaluate small group communication skills and cooperative learning skills. The findings of this project indicate the teachers can not learn and adopt these skills successfully by simply participating in short-term workshop experiences. The teachers also need strong administrative support that affirms classroom-based inquiry and risk-taking in professional development. More specifically, in this instance, strong administrative support means organizing peer observations, planning staff meetings that center on actions taken, and providing personal assistance in implementing new classroom procedures like literature circles and student-directed drama.

Ways to Explore Process-oriented Teaching Strategies

The recommended ways for encouraging students' broad response to literature include general teaching strategies that are characteristic of an interactive-transformational learning environment (Abrahm et.al., 1995; Gallo, 1993; Graves, 1987; Tompkins et.al., 1999). In such a learning environment, teachers facilitate learning in social and situational learning contexts smaller than whole group learning, coupled with modeling learning processes, giving direct instruction, providing opportunities for both collaborative learning and doing individual projects (Dixon-Krauss, 1996).

These general teaching strategies can be used in all subject areas (Cooper, 1993); therefore, teachers further exploration of them does not need to be limited to teaching language arts. Teachers who feel teaching language arts is still a difficult challenge can learn and practice small group discussion skills (Booth, 1994) and collaborative learning skills (Abrami, 1995) in more comfortable teaching contexts.

For example, during a predetermined exploration period, each teacher could select and practice one strategy until it became a regular instructional practice. During the exploration period, the teachers could also take turns observing one another followed by talking informally about the advantages and limitations of using the strategy in various situations. Finally, the teachers could request peers to provide particular forms of feedback, for example, information about the classroom interaction pattern or about selected students' participation in small group work.

Other action research studies have found that successful change in classroom practice is linked to the teachers' felt ownership of the actions taken and vested interest in the outcomes (Carson, Connors, Smits and Ripley, 1992). The alternative option, top-down initiative for change, is possible but such change does not empower the teachers to take a self-directed role in their professional development.

Ways to Increase Community Awareness

Ideally, teachers and students would plan and do school-wide literacy projects that include literature-based activities. Possible projects include:

If these or other literacy learning activities were done, a photographic record could be displayed on an existing bulletin board in the school entrance. Such a display would not lessen the displayed achievements in sports; such a display would indicate school pride in more than one aspect of schooling.

Latshaw is acutely aware that the teachers feel stretched to the limit now and that asking them to come back at night will not be a welcome recommendation. The problem is that without increased community awareness and support, the quality of literacy learning is not likely to improve.

Bibliography

Appendix A: Example of Workshop Agenda

Workshop at Perdue School

J.L.K. Latshaw, Ph.D.

Perdue , Saskatchewan

November 12, 1998

(Workshop: Literature-based Talking and Writing)

I. TALKING

A. FORMS

Informal Talk: AGossiping about characters and events@

More Formal Talk that is Student-Directed

Structured Reconstructions (Literature Circles (Daniels, 1994); Wheel Model (Latshaw, 1990): Literal Comprehension

Interpretation & Evaluation (Reader's Theatre & Circle Drama (Latshaw, 1990) :Higher Level Thinking

Personal Associations (Daniels, 1994)

B. SOCIAL CONTEXTS

Reading Partner

Small Group

Grade Level (1/2 class)

Whole Class (combined grades)

Intergrade Groupings

II. WRITING

A. FORMS

Informal Writing

Reading Journal

Book Fly Notes

Posted Reading Record; Reading Interests; Comments

Written Response in Listening Log (Poetry Tapes)

More Formal Writing

Modified Book Talk/Art Work

Written Description of Favorite Character/Life-size Figures of Favorite Book Characters

Preparing Script for Readers' Theatre (Narrator's Role)

Describing How Characters Change and Why They Change

Create One-Event Imitating an Author (Gary Paulsen, Katherine Patterson, Judy Blume)

Create One Scene in a Book (Diorama) Coupled with Written Summary of the Story

III. NEEDED TEACHER-MODELING

A. TALKING

Sense of Story (Applebee, 1976) [See Memo, October 22, 1998, page 2]

Functions of Language (Halliday, 1973) [See attached Appendix]

Broad Response to Literature (Huck, Hepler, &Hickman, 1995; Norton, 1996, Cullinan & Galda, 1996)

B. WRITING

Personal-Inquiry Purposes

Teacher-as-Reader

Appendix B:

Guidelines for Basic Readers' Theatre and Making Masks

Day 1: Direct Instruction

Day 2

Step 4: Label each script at the top as follows: TOM SMITH as THE GIRAFFE

Day 3

Guidelines for Making Masks

Needed Materials

Mayflower paper is substantial which means it holds paint without wrinkling. This paper holds pieces with tabs nicely without glue and it can be curled easily by pulling strips over a firm edge.

Appendix C:

Sources for Book-Selection Criteria

Appendix D:

Guidelines for Circle Drama

This educational drama activity is designed for middle grade readers who have had experience in doing Reader's Theatre where they explored the use of the prosodic features of language. This form of drama gets its name by the fact that the drama takes place in an 8ft. circle. The intended audience sits on the floor around the edge of the circle.

Step10:Invite groups to share their drama with the whole class,

Step11:Provide brief, positive feedback.