Literature Review

"*Lorna….. Lorna read the next sentence for us." Lorna reads, "Jacie sat next to her friend at lunch to hear the conversation about the Saturday carnival at school. She wanted to volunteer at the popcorn booth because she liked popcorn. But her best friend Lizzie was volunteering at the necklace -making booth and Lizzie would much rather spend the carnival with her friend than scooping popcorn for rambunctious first graders all day." "So, Jacie, what is the title character’s name?" Lorna responds, "Jacie." "Great job Lorna, and what is it that she would rather do than scoop popcorn for rambunctious first graders all day?" Lorna looks back in the text for quite sometime and says "I don’t know." Great student, helpful student, patient student, and a student who not only wants to succeed, but didn’t know how but felt lost in the sea of twenty one other students. Ah, the beauty of whole class reading instruction. Lorna was a wonderful student I had several years ago. She could read but could comprehend little to no text. There was some improvement for her towards the end of the year, but what would have been ideal for her was small-group intervention during regular reading class incorporating everything from rich literature to strategies that could assist her in her development. Lorna was a year or two older than the other kids. She had already been retained a grade level at a previous school and "shuffled" through the grades. Lorna like many of my students was impoverished, living in a broken home, living with a broken heart. We were able to make gains with her throughout the year and much of it came through individualized time with her including tutoring. The pressures of high-stakes did not improve her situation but we accepted the challenge the best we could and marched forward willing to help her in any way we could. She is doing great today. She is about to enter high school and is excited about the transition. Lorna’s problem with reading in general did not spring forth overnight—the building blocks of literacy were somehow not placed one upon the other starting from her preschool years. The research for literacy and its components has been building for years. Literacy is not only just reading, but it encompasses writing, speaking and listening. Today literacy is extending an invitation to technology from cell phones to podcasts and beyond. Let us explore this world of research and let’s keep this in mind—there are millions of Lornas and as teachers we can succeed in helping them get to where they need to go, not only in the literature of the classroom but the literature of life.

I once said as often as the motion of the sway of the tide changes, so has the research of reading comprehension. U.S. education has gone through a gamut of ideas from Round-Robin reading, to suggestions of reading more narratives versus more expository texts , readers theater, fluency and comprehension, scripted reading programs versus non-scripted reading programs and the controversy goes on. One current holistic approach to writing and reading is Balanced Literacy. Balanced Literacy is a philosophical orientation that assumes that reading and writing achievement are developed through instruction and support in multiple environments by using various approaches that differ by level of teacher support and child control (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). Balanced Literacy programs include community, home, and library involvement as well as structured classroom plans and use of activities such read alouds, guided reading, shared reading, and independent reading and writing (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). The Austin Independent School District (2001) initiated a support plan for students who needed extra intervention. The Austin district’s literacy support model, built n a balanced literacy framework, has served over 3,000 students; 96% of these students made gains. The average gain in Grades 1 through 4 was 8.7 on reading-text levels and was accomplished within a year. Another study was done in an urban school district in the by researchers from Kentucky. The study’s findings showed that teacher-directed instruction, a fundamental aspect of balanced literacy, was implemented less often than either independent reading or writing activities (Frey, Lee, Tollefson, Pass & Massengill, 2005). These findings were a result of the teachers doing what was supposed to be implemented in terms of the balanced literacy components but as the researchers stated, the amount of time devoted to instruction and modeling effective reading and writing strategies seemed too limited for a group of students with poorly developed reading and writing skills. In other words, a school can have the some of the most adequate systems of learning in place, but when there is not sufficient modeling and time used for the teacher and student, the system will not fully satisfy the needs of the school. As we have seen, Balanced Literacy is a whole composed of microscopic parts. Balanced literacy is primarily composed of reading and writing. It is a dual relationship and they are not considered separate. It is important to peruse and prod at research to see areas within balanced literacy such as reading and writing, that is making it a resource in the school system frequently brought up in professional discussions across the country.

Much of reading acquisition begins in the primary years. In fact it is during these primary years that the building blocks of reading are built upon. The development of fluent and automatic reading skills is considered a primary educational goal for elementary school-age children (Schwaneflugel, Meisinger, Wisenbaker, Kuhn, Strauss & Morris, 2006). It is okay for a child to read word by word as a kindergartener, but not okay as a third grader. Today, many teachers face problems in guiding students to fluent and automatic reading. Students come from poor backgrounds, one parent households, or raised by other relatives—even raising themselves. This means no one reads to them (they are raised by cable) and their first modeling of fluent reading comes from their kindergarten teacher. Lorna came from a poor household, and her father had to go to prison which she had to deal with during the school year. Sadly, this is the story of many students today. I wish this could be an isolated case but it is not. This for many educators in classrooms is the norm and something they have to press through everyday. In addition to teaching teachers strategies for better helping students, researchers in the mid-western United States researched the concept of dialogic narratives, a term coined by M.M. Bakhtin. The researchers wanted insight into how the students negotiated authoritative and internally persuasive discourses as they authored their own narratives, revealing the complexity of preparing teachers to become flexible cultural practitioners in diverse settings (Rogers, Marshall & Tyson 2006). Within these diverse settings comes diverse learning. One study that has shown some promise is a study on Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and how they can be used as a literature- based way to positively affect instruction and learning for students. Gardner’s multiple intelligences include visual-spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, linguistic, naturalistic, logical-mathematical, and bodily-kinesthetic. The students they selected were selected in part due to it having a high enrollment of children from multicultural backgrounds and their predominately low socioeconomic status (Brand, 2006). Brand states that because of the variety of ways in which children may participate in storytelling and extension activities, a literature-based approach has the potential to utilize many combinations of students’ multiple intelligences. Brand also stated she found that students who were in a multiple intelligence-based emergent literacy program during kindergarten exhibited significant gains in skills that are critical for their later success as readers. Notice the early primary emphasis. The building blocks start here. Another study on the use of small group dialogue in primary highlighted the need for interaction, modeling and the need for support throughout reading to assist with better reading on part of the students. This study confirmed other studies which suggested that classroom culture, characterized by a problem-solving environment , student decision making, student choice, collaborative work, and product-driven work, affects students’ participation and subsequent construction of meaning during small-group dialogue (McIntyre, Kyle & Moore, 2006). Reading not only in indicative of environment, but can also be an indicator as to how well a student writes.
At Doncrest Public school, a literacy program was adapted to include opportunities to strengthen knowledge of high frequency words in reading and writing. Kindergarten teachers added regular independent writing opportunities to the literacy program and scaffolded the children through the process of writing (Waiser & Whiteley, 2001). They included in their research a quote from M.M Clay :

"…what the child writes is a rough indicator of what he is attending to in print, and demonstrates the programmes
of action he is using for word production.
…writing provides extra opportunities for the child to gain control of literacy concepts. While the child is
creating a story in print, the eye and the brain are directed to important features…
Information gained…from writing becomes a part of the network of knowledge
The child attaches to familiar words." (Clay 1991)

The grand result? The classroom teachers observed significant improvement in the children’s writing skills compared to previous years, likely the result of increased opportunities for writing in the Kindergarten program (Waiser, Whiteley, 2001). As Clay mentions "that what a child writes is a rough indicator of what he is attending to in print." This rings true for a group of researchers in the United Kingdom. The goal of their study was to explore written language production in a group of children identified as having poor reading comprehension, relative to a group of control children matched for age and decoding skill (Craig and Nation, 2006). They found that poorer reading comprehenders left out many components in their written narratives, including, fewer main ideas. Their oral narratives were much better than their written.
What is presented here are various methods and studies of assisting a student like Lorna. Research never ends. When one study finishes, new questions arise. As teachers I believe we are action researchers. We put what we know into practice daily and seek the results we are looking for. A program that intensely integrated strong teacher support for integrated reading and writing in the earlier grades might have helped Lorna a little more on her road of learning. This is not to say her primary teachers did not do what they could. Like any teacher, they too were baffled by her inability to comprehend and they too wanted answers. Educators are starting to reach for a more holistic approach to teaching because today it is about teaching the "whole" child. It is not a cliché term, but a dire necessity. Lorna was an excellent communicator and was and is still loved and remembered by her teachers. Thankfully, she has not given up yet and loved her time with us. There is hope on the horizon.







References

Austin Independent School District. (2001). Literacy support plan evaluation. Austin, TX: Office of Program Evaluation. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED461094)

Brand, Susan., ( 2006). Facilitating Emergent Literacy Skills: A Literature-Based, Multiple Intelligence Approach. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. 21, 133-147.

Clay, M.M., ‘Becoming Literate, The Construction of Inner Control’, Heinemann, Auckland, 1991.

Cragg, Lucy & Nation, Kate, (February 2006). Exploring Written Narrative in Children with Poor Reading Comprehension. [Electronic version] Journal of Educational Psychology, 26, 56-67.

Fountas, Irene C., & Pinnell Gay Sue, (1996). Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children. Portmouth, NH: Heineman

Frey, Bruce, B., Lee, Steve, W., Massengill, Donita, Pass, Lisa, Tollefson, Nona. (May 2005). Balanced Literacy in an Urban School District [electronic version]. Journal of Educational Research, p. 273

Kyle, Diane W., McIntyre, Ellen, & Moore, Gayle, H., (March 2006). A primary-grade teacher’s guidance toward small-group dialogue. Reading Research Quarterly, 41, 36-59

Kuhn, Melanie R., Meisinger, Elizabeth B., Morris, Robin D., Schwanenflugel, Paula J., Strauss, Gregory P., Wisenbaker, Joseph, M., (2006). Becoming a fluent and automatic reader in the early elementary years. Reading Research Quarterly. 41, 496-519.

Marshall, Elizabeth, Rogers, Theresa, & Tyson, Cynthia, A., (2006). Dialogic narratives of reading research and schooling. Reading Research Quarterly. 41, 203-219.

Waiser, Marlene & Whiteley, Jan, (2001). Supporting Beginning Reading in kindergarten with Independent Writing. [Electronic Version] 3-9.