Extending Literacy

Developing Approaches to Non-Fiction

Maureen Lewis, David Wray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN:
  9780415128308
  9780415128292
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134796212
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

One of the most problematic areas in the teaching and development of literacy appears to concern children's interactions with non-fiction books. Many surveys and reports have commented on the tendency for children to do little more than copy out sections of non-fiction texts. The Exeter Extending Literacy (EXEL) project was set up with the aim of exploring ways in which non-fiction might be used more effectively and profitably than this. In this book David Wray and Maureen Lewis outline the thinking behind the project and describe in detail the many useful teaching strategies and approaches which were developed in collaboration with primary teachers across the country. Teachers of children from five to fourteen will find this book both a stimulating account of a very influential development project and a useful source of practical teaching ideas.

Chapter 1

Extending Literacy

An Introduction to the Project

Some Background

The early 1990s was characterised by a great deal of media and professional attention being given to the issue of the standards in literacy achieved by primary schools, particularly in reading. While much of this attention was misguided, and indeed often unwelcome, it did, however, almost as a by-product, draw attention once again to the teaching of literacy beyond the basic stages. What teaching were children receiving who had already made a start on the learning of reading and writing? Were these skills being extended in schools, or was it simply assumed that once children had mastered the ‘basics’ of reading and writing all they then required were merely a range of opportunities to use these?

Concern about this area is not, of course, new. In their 1978 survey of primary schools (DES, 1978) HMI found ‘little evidence that more advanced reading skills were being taught’ (para. 5.30). Their 1990 report on the teaching of reading in primary schools makes almost the identical statement and suggests that research such as that reported by Southgate, Arnold and Johnson (1981) and by Lunzer and Gardner (1979), for all its headline making when published, had had little real effect upon teaching practice.

Relating to the teaching of writing, the 1978 HMI report’s comments again seemed to predict current issues in their identification of the lack of range of writing set by junior school teachers (para. 5.36) and the extensive use of copying rather than original composition (para. 5.33). Similar issues have been identified by the National Writing Project and work on children’s activities in ‘project work’ (Kerry and Eggleston, 1988). Recent work in Australia, now becoming known in this country (Littlefair, 1991; Martin, 1989), has suggested that much more attention needed to be given to the issue of genre in children’s reading and writing, and that there was a body of linguistic knowledge with which teachers needed to familiarise themselves if they were successfully to help children cope with the reading and writing demands of schooling and of the world beyond school.

A more recent HMI report (DES, 1991) highlighted the problems which teachers of children aged seven to eleven seem to have had in preparing themselves for the demands of the United Kingdom National Curriculum for English at Key Stage 2. The inspectors reported that in English ‘too many Key Stage 2 teachers remained unaware of how far removed their current practices were from the requirements of the national curriculum and lacked sufficient in-service training to make changes’. These curriculum demands seemed therefore to have set some targets which many schools were finding very difficult to meet.

Because of concerns about issues such as these, members of the Primary Language team at the University of Exeter School of Education embarked upon a linked programme of research into aspects of the teaching of literacy in the junior school (Fox, 1993; Lewis, 1992; Poulson, 1992; Wray and Lewis, 1992) and, from this research and that of others, several problematic areas seemed to emerge. These are detailed below although it should be stressed that this way of reporting suggestions from research is inevitably open to the charge of caricature. There are many junior classrooms to whom the following statements do not apply.

Some Current Problems

Problem 1: The Limited Range and Quality of Junior School Children’s Interactions with Reading Material of all Kinds

Narrative is very definitely the dominant genre both in children’s reading and writing and, where efforts are made to enhance and deepen children’s responses to text, these seem to be confined to experiences with narratives of one kind or another. Yet it has been quite forcibly pointed out by Martin (1989), among several others, that the bulk of adult experience with texts involve interactions with genres other than narrative.

Problem 2: The Patchy Teaching which Children Receive in Using Reading as a Means of Learning Across a Wide Variety of Curriculum Contexts

For all the exhortations of the Bullock report (DES, 1975) regarding the importance of ‘language across the curriculum’, it is still rare for teachers to specifically teach children to read in history, geography, science, mathematics, etc. Practice seems rather to involve teaching children to read and then simply providing them with a range of curriculum contexts in which to practise their reading. The effects of this are clearly seen in research findings such as those of the Application of Subject Knowledge project at the University of Exeter which have detailed the very low level of junior children’s responses to the texts they are given to read in mathematics and science (Desforges, 1993).

Problem 3: Children’s Difficulties in Handling Information, that is, in Specifying, Locating and Effectively Using Sources of Written Information, for Example in Libraries

There has been a long-standing concern about children’s acquisition of information skills, variously referred to as library skills, research skills and study skills (Wray, 1985). The most common teacher complaint arising from this concern is usually expressed as ‘How can I stop my children copying from reference books?’ From the findings of our own research (Wray and Lewis, 1992), it appears that most junior children are quite aware that they should not copy from reference books, and can usually give a cogent set of reasons why not, but when they are actually engaged in the practical tasks of locating and selecting information in books will revert to copying behaviour with little demur.

Problem 4: The Difficulties Teachers Find in Assessing Children’s Development in this Extended Use of Literacy

This problem is actually not at all surprising. There has been sufficient controversy about the principles and practices of assessing initial reading for one to guess that a more elaborated notion of literacy will be difficult to assess adequately. It has been suggested (Poulson, 1992) that teachers evolve their own practices in this area which often conflict radically with more established (and, especially, Government-approved) ideas of practice.

Underlying Issues

These problem areas seem to stem from two, linked, causes. Firstly, many teachers, particularly of Key Stage 2 children, do not appear to have extensive knowledge about the development of literacy. Many complain that they received little input on these topics either in their initial teacher education or in subsequent in-service work. Whatever the truth of this (and we suspect that it is less true now than it was five years ago), it is certainly the case that it only takes a few discussions with otherwise well-informed junior school teachers to get a sense of their own feelings of inadequacy in the face of even the limited National Curriculum demands for the extension of literacy. Some evidence relating to this point, and arising from our own research, is presented in Chapter 2 of this book.

Secondly, we have not yet identified and practised a sufficient range of effective strategies for the implementation of curriculum changes. As mentioned earlier, the problems identified here are not new. They have been documented for some considerable time and, indeed, sensible research-based suggestions for ways to overcome them have also been made. During the early 1980s a good deal of attention was given to the Lunzer and Gardner (1979; 1984) idea of DARTs: Directed Activities Relating to Texts. Activities such as cloze procedure, prediction exercises and sequencing texts became popular for a time yet a close observation of actual teaching practice today suggests that such activities have often simply been added to the list of ‘reading exercises’ which are thought to be ‘good’ for children. There is little questioning of ‘good for what?’

Because of the lack of real depth in teachers’ understanding of the development of literacy and the lack of effective curriculum development strategies, it seems that, where developments are taking place, there is a tendency for teachers and schools to rely upon published materials to guide their teaching. This would not necessarily be problematic but, unfortunately, with very few exceptions, published materials produced for the purpose of extending literacy seem to be based around pupil ‘exercises’ which are decontextualised and therefore make it difficult for teachers to ensure that children apply skills in other, wider situations. If real benefits are to accrue it is particularly important that work with children should stress meaningful and purposeful applications of extended literacy (Wray, 1985).

The Objectives of the Exel Project

Responding to the challenge set by the analysis above, in September 1992 we embarked upon a curriculum development project funded by the Nuffield Foundation for an initial two year period (subsequently extended to three years) and known as the Exeter Extending Literacy (EXEL) project. The project had the ultimate aim of producing materials which would assist teachers of junior school children to develop more effectively the literacy of their pupils. It was also anticipated that teachers of children both older and younger than this would find these materials of benefit. The project was founded upon several key ideas which are outlined briefly below.

1. Learning to read and to write are only the first steps in the process of becoming fully literate. They are complemented by the activities of reading and writing to learn. In fact we would argue that it makes little sense to talk about these skills in any kind of hierarchical way and the labelling of these as ‘advanced’ or ‘higher-order’ skills has, in fact, been one of the reasons why primary teachers have not made greater strides in their development. From our experience, some of which is documented in later chapters of this book, infant children are quite capable of using literacy as a tool for learning even before they are fully competent in ‘the basics’.
2. The use of reading and writing in this way are, by definition, curriculum- wide processes. Reading and writing can never be pigeon-holed as simply ‘English’ activities and children read and write in virtually all other curriculum areas. This suggests that each curriculum area offers its own opportunities for the teaching of reading and writing as well as of specific content. Many of the examples of children’s work which we present in subsequent chapters of this book come from curriculum areas such as history, geography and science.
3. In their use of reading and writing across the curriculum children can naturally encounter and should be expected to produce a wide range of text types. The kinds of texts which are usually read and written in history, for example, will be different from those in science, or mathematics. This text range is hardly ever considered as an issue by teachers yet can be a crucial element determining children’s understanding.
4. These interactions in curriculum contexts should mirror the kinds of interactions children have with texts in the world outside school. The fact is that reading and writing are not things which children only engage in inside the walls of classrooms. Merely to walk along the average town High Street involves anybody, including young children, in considerable exercise of literacy. It seems perverse for teachers to ignore these experiences and treat the activities of reading and writing in completely different ways to their use in the world outside the classroom.
5. These real-life interactions with texts tend to be characterised by several features (Wray, Bloom and Hall, 1989).
   • They are purposeful. As adults we scarcely ever read or write without knowing very clearly why we are doing so, yet how often is this true of children’s reading and writing in school?
   • They demand the use of a range of strategies in the text user: from skimming and scanning to the intensive reading of every word on a page; from rough note-taking to painstaking final draft writing.
   • They make reference to and rely upon knowledge of other texts. Most adult texts locate their meanings in a complex web of intertextuality. Advertisements are a good example of this – to understand a particular advertisement for a brand of coffee, the reader/viewer needs to have read/watched previous episodes in the mini soap opera. Good children’s books also rely on intertextual knowledge (how could you read Janet and Alan Ahlberg’s Each Peach, Pear, Plum without already knowing the nursery rhyme characters it uses?) yet often the books children are given to read in school lack this feature (Hynds, 1993).
   • They have definite outcomes. Things happen as a result of reading and writing outside school. We read the timetable and catch the train, we complete the form and an appropriate tax code arrives. Children in school, however, are often rather puzzled about what they are reading and writing for and outcomes, if there are any, arrive much later.
6. Children learn to interact critically and purposefully with texts by engaging in critical and purposeful behaviour; that is, the process is not that of practising the ‘skills’ of being a critical and effective user of text which they then apply to real texts, but rather one of learning through activities which are authentic in their own rights.

Some materials had already been produced which aimed to support teachers’ attempts to develop children’s use of information and reference books in this authentic way (Wray, 1991). These materials work through the ubiquitous primary school ‘project’ and provide activities which require children involved in project work (for which it is assumed they have some motivation and enthusiasm) to identify, locate, consult, extract information from and evaluate reference materials. The materials thus give teachers a means of directly teaching particular aspects of information handling through authentic and motivating children’s activities. They also provide guidance on strategies by which teachers can make contextualised assessments of children’s abilities in these information skills. These materials were a model for other materials which have been produced, trialled and developed during the project.

The Project in Action

During the project we evolved a way of working with teacher groups which appeared to be mutually beneficial. This consisted of the EXEL team leading an initial day’s course for between fifteen and twenty-five teachers who expressed an interest in the project’s aims. Following this initial day, the teachers involved contracted to trial in their classrooms some of the activities and materials we worked through with them. They were given some support in this, either from our own resources (which locally involved us working alongside them in their classrooms on a fairly regular basis), or from the resources of the local authority. This typically involves the local adviser or advisory teacher working with them. In most authorities some mid-term group meetings also took place to encourage the sharing of experiences. Follow-up days enabled a more general sharing of ideas and examples. The project then was almost entirely school and classroom-based. From the remainder of this book the reader will get a clear sense of this as we provide a multitude of classroom examples and it is hoped that this feature makes the book a very practical document for teachers of reading and writing.

The classroom-based nature of the project is also important in another way, however. Through working closely alongside thoughtful, and often inspiring, teachers, we have come to realise just how important this form of collaboration is. With these teachers we have been engaged in a very elaborate joint construction of working theory to explain and develop the tentative ideas with which we began the project. Each idea presented in this book has been extensively tested in a range of classroom settings and each has been significantly developed by the teachers who have used it. This investment of teacher energy and practical wisdom in the project has been largely responsible for the immense impact it has had. As such, we feel that the project represents something of a model for curriculum development.

The Project’s Main Findings

Obviously the rest of this book will outline the project conclusions in much more detail. At this point, therefore, we shall do no more than briefly describe what we feel have been the two most significant theoretical contributions of the project. These emerged from the project’s work but have become very significant underpinnings to its operation.

Without a doubt the most important feature of our work has been its concentration on helping children read non-fiction texts more effectively. This is largely the result of the interests expressed to us by participating teachers. As well as developing a range of strategies through which teachers might develop the non-fiction reading and wri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Extending literacy: an introduction to the project
• 2. The state of literacy
• 3. Towards a model of teaching literacy
• 4. Extending interactions with non-fiction texts: an EXIT into understanding
• 5. Activating prior knowledge
• 6. Asking questions
• 7. Information finding and interactive reading
• 8. Monitoring understanding and taking notes
• 9. A look at critical reading
• 10. Writing non-fiction
• 11. Bringing it all together: Key Stage 1
• 12. Bringing it all together: Key Stage 2
• References
• Index