Students Learn to Read Like Writers: A Framework for Teachers of Writing.
2010; Western Michigan University; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2642-8857
Autores Tópico(s)Discourse Analysis in Language Studies
ResumoThis study provides insight into the role of the elementary school writing teacher in helping students learn to “read like writers” (Smith, 1983). This case study documents how one fourthgrade teacher employed a gradual release of responsibility model as she deliberately planned activities that drew students’ attention to well-crafted writing. Findings indicate that this teacher played an important role in helping her students learn to read like writers and that through carefully crafted lessons she significantly influenced students’ knowledge of and implementation of crafting techniques. Students Learn to Read Like Writers: A Framework for Teachers of Writing • 49 Students Learn to Read Like Writers: A Framework for Teachers of Writing Robin R. Griffith, Ph.D. East Carolina University, Greenville, NC Abstract This study provides insight into the role of the elementary school writing teacher in helping students learn to “read like writers” (Smith, 1983). This case study documents how one fourth-grade teacher employed a gradual release of responsibility model as she deliberately planned activities that drew students’ attention to wellcrafted writing. Findings indicate that this teacher played an important role in helping her students learn to read like writers and that through carefully crafted lessons she significantly influenced students’ knowledge of and implementation of crafting techniques.This study provides insight into the role of the elementary school writing teacher in helping students learn to “read like writers” (Smith, 1983). This case study documents how one fourth-grade teacher employed a gradual release of responsibility model as she deliberately planned activities that drew students’ attention to wellcrafted writing. Findings indicate that this teacher played an important role in helping her students learn to read like writers and that through carefully crafted lessons she significantly influenced students’ knowledge of and implementation of crafting techniques. “Good writing,” as defined by one fourth grader in this study, “feels good to your ears.” This definition, while brief, encapsulates many of the qualities of good writing yet leaves teachers wondering how to help young writers produce the kind of writing that is pleasing to the ear. Writing is a complex process that requires the divided attention of the writer, who must focus on the intended message, the conventions of print and spelling, and the crafting of the message with word choice and sentence variation. Many teachers of writing lament that they are much more comfortable teaching writing conventions than the writer’s craft, leaving the more subtle aspects of writing to chance (Fletcher & Portalupi, 1998). Unfortunately, writers cannot fully develop with instruction that focuses only on the conventions of writing; rather, instruction must also target the writer’s craft (National Commission on Writing, 2003). The craft of writing includes the incorporation of literary elements such as strong leads and powerful endings (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001), as 50 • Reading Horizons • V50.1 • 2010 well as the more subtle aspects of word choice, phrasing, and voice (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 1996). Quality children’s literature holds potential for serving as models for wellcrafted writing and can play an important role in teaching the craft of writing (Avery, 2002; Calkins, 1994; Graves, 1983; Ray, 1999). Frank Smith (1983) explains that a great number of children learn to write with only a small amount of instructional time devoted to writing. Therefore, he believes “it could only be through reading that writers learn all the intangibles that they know” (p. 558). This notion of reading like a writer is the premise upon which this study is based. While Smith (1983) does not address the role of the teacher in enabling students to read like writers, drawing upon the social constructivist theory of learning, the researcher argues that the teacher plays a critical role in the process. Acknowledging that learning is a social process and is influenced by the social context in which it occurs (Jaramillo, 1996; Palincsar, 1998), the individuals who surround the learner play a vital role in the learning process. Therefore, the primary research question that guided this study was, “What role does the teacher play in helping students learn to read like writers?” Reading Like a Writer The term “well-crafted writing” is synonymous with “good writing;” therefore, the writer must carefully craft the writing so that the reader views it as worthy of reading (Graves, 2004). Numerous individuals have attempted to define or at least identify qualities of good writing, yet the definition is still vague and subjective. Though difficult to define, most individuals agree that they know good writing when they hear it. Worsham (2001) believed that good writers appeal to the senses; evoking vivid images and scenes in the mind of the reader. Noted children’s author Mem Fox (1999) stated that good writing comes from writers who care about how their writing sounds to the reader. Writers who care, take the time to read every word, phrase, and sentence aloud over and over, “listening for the slightest hiccup in the rhythm” (Fox, 1999, p. 195). If writers are to produce good writing themselves, they must develop an ear for recognizing it (Heard, 2002). Burrows, Jackson, and Saunders (1984) found that even young writers could develop an ear for quality writing and could learn “to select patterns that give vigor and verve to their writing” (p. 7). The goal of reading like a writer then is to encourage the reader to identify Students Learn to Read Like Writers: A Framework for Teachers of Writing • 51 qualities of good writing and to further expand their current repertoire of crafting techniques (Portalupi, 1999). The ideas of reading like a writer and writing mentors are relatively new concepts in the school setting but not in the community of professional writers. Many published writers learned to write by studying the work of other authors (Fearn, 1989; Ray, 1999; Rylant, 1990) and by reading the works of the men and women who were doing the kind of writing they wanted to do (Anderson, 2000; Zinsser, 1994). Just as professional writers study examples of other writing pieces in the genre they are trying to produce (Hillocks, 1986), children can learn about the craft of writing by listening to and reading quality literature (Ray, 2004). The awareness of the rhythm and cadence that is characteristic of quality writing can be learned by reading (Barrs, 2000; Titus, 1998) and “can determine how we come to think words should sound on the page” (Romano, 2004, p. 6). That awareness of how words should flow together is so strongly influenced by the texts we read that it is difficult to separate ourselves from what we have read. The texts become a part of who we are as writers. Ray (1999) reminds us that, “When we write we are not doing something that hasn’t been done before. Everything we do as writers, we have known in some fashion as readers first” (p. 18). Building on the proclamation made by Frank Smith (1983) that individuals must read like writers in order to learn all they need to communicate effectively, numerous studies have addressed the effects of reading on children’s writing (Barrs, 2000; Calkins, 1985; Dressel, 1990; Eckhoff, 1984; Langer & Flihan, 2000; Lancia, 1997; Surmay, 2000). The first group of studies focused on how students’ writing was influenced by the books they read or by the books read to them. Eckhoff (1984) found that children’s writing mimicked the styles of the books they read. In this study, students in one classroom read from Basal A that closely matched the literary style of commercially produced children’s literature. The students in the other classroom read from Basal B, which consisted of a simplified, controlled-vocabulary style typically found in basal series. The results indicated that the Basal A children produced writing with more elaborate sentence structures than the students who read from Basal B, whose writing was consistent with the simple sentences of the Basal B series. In other words, the students wrote the kind of stories they read. They were reading like writers. During an eight week study of 48 fifth graders, Dressel (1990) found that students who listened to high quality literature daily incorporated more literary traits than those who listened to literature of lesser quality. In this case, 52 • Reading Horizons • V50.1 • 2010 children’s writing was not just influenced by what they read but by what was read to them. Finally, Barrs (2000) analyzed the effects two mentor texts had on the writing of 108 Year 5 students in two London classrooms. By measuring syntactic complexity, Barrs determined that the sentence structures in students’ writing mirrored those of the mentor texts. Again, students were reading like writers. Other studies focused more specifically on the elements of craft that students borrowed from texts. Calkins (1985) found that young writers included “About the Author” blurbs and prefaces in their own writing because they noticed those features in many books they read. Lancia (1997) coined the term “literary borrowing” when students in his second-grade classroom borrowed plot, characters, and plot devices from the classroom literature collection. He found that the structure provided by published authors served as a “jumping off point” for the student’s own writing. Finally, Langer and Flihan (2000) reported that students who read and studied poetry incorporated imagery and repetition in their own writing. While these studies reveal that many students do, in fact, learn to read like writers, they do little to explain how this happens. Informed by these studies and perspectives, the purpose of this study was to examine and describe the seemingly critical role of the teacher in helping students read like writers.
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