Literacy Faculty Publications and Presentations Copyright (c) 2013 Boise State University All rights reserved. http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs Recent documents in Literacy Faculty Publications and Presentations en-us Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:52:07 PDT 3600 Thinking About Literacy in a Time of Transition http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/71 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/71 Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:24:19 PST Literacy has been defined as reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing. Each area is complex in their own way, but surely reading is central to all subject disciplines. As we have come to understand learning to read and write, we know that both are complex and involve a developmental process for learners. While reading and writing share a symbiotic relationship so does listening and speaking. Viewing too has expanded beyond television media into the ever present state of advancing technology. In order for students to do well in their literacy development, adults have to understand the tremendous influence they have on the lives of children through role modeling, providing access to print, exploring the environment, and creating hands on experiences. Adults are also key to providing opportunities for children to interact, learn from each other, and share their understanding with adults. Encouraging questions through inquiry learning, and expression through multiple mediums, are necessary for literacy development among youth. In this manuscript, readers will find thoughts and ideas of how this all makes sense in a time of change.

]]> Stan Steiner Finding Contemporary Voices of Native Americans Through Critical Reading in the Classroom http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/70 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/70 Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:30:32 PDT In this article, we share literature for children and young adults that represent contemporary lives of Native Americans as well as activities that foster critical reading of the books. The activities seek to help students 1) develop critical awareness of their own socially constructed knowledge about Native Americans; 2) deconstruct stereotypes and misconceptions about Native Americans and connect to them by understanding varied and complex voices and perspectives of Native Americans; and 3) relearn Native People as whole human beings, examining multiple perspectives and questioning social and political contexts where students (and Native Americans) are situated.

]]> Eun Hye Son et al. Using Genre Charts to Guide Planning and Writing http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/69 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/69 Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:37:09 PDT Gabriel C. Horn et al. Authentic Pedagogy and the Novice Teacher: Acculturating Teachers into a Reflective Practice http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/68 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/68 Mon, 07 May 2012 14:52:09 PDT Jonathan L. Brendefur et al. Understanding Early Writing and Instructional Opportunities in the Inclusive Classroom http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/67 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/67 Mon, 07 May 2012 14:18:52 PDT Most children enter schools believing they are writers. They have the expectation that print, especially the print that they make and use, will be meaningful (Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984). This understanding is commonly observed when they question the adults around them about their writing, saying things like, "What did I write?" or "What does this say?"

Children in these instances are creating and constructing meaning, and they are communicating these meanings through their explorations with print. Writing for these early literates is not about conforming to adult models of correctness, but is rather a process of experimentation. As they engage with print, initially using scribbles and soon marks that look something like letters, then writing strings of letters; they are hypothesizing and checking their hypotheses on what print is and how it can and does function in their lives.

It is the role of the teacher to confirm when their hypotheses about print are correct and to support these young writers in this process. But how does a teacher of young children do this? This chapter offers some explanation of this early process and provides some instructional strategies that you might use to scaffold the writing of young children.

]]> Anne E. Gregory et al. Changing the Culture of Teaching http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/66 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/66 Mon, 07 May 2012 13:48:39 PDT Anne E. Gregory et al. Honorable Intentions: An Explanation of No Child Left Behind http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/65 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/65 Mon, 07 May 2012 13:29:04 PDT Mary Ann Rawley et al. The Impact of an Early Literacy Intervention: Where Are the Children Now? http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/64 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/64 Mon, 07 May 2012 13:20:34 PDT The purpose of this study was to contribute to and strengthen previous work that examined the long-lasting effects of Reading Recovery in statewide efforts aimed at bolstering early literacy achievement and reducing early learning difficulties. Specifically, the study explored the literacy achievement of Reading Recovery participants whose series of lessons had been successfully discontinued during their first-grade year at points 1, 2, and 3 years beyond receiving the intervention in Indiana—providing a picture in time for where the children are now.

The participants included randomly selected children who had either successfully completed Reading Recovery or who had not participated in the intervention (i.e., cohort sample) from the three grade levels in 253 schools in Indiana. The two assessment instruments used to gauge literacy performance included the running record of oral text reading (Clay, 1993) and the comprehension and vocabulary subtests of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests and the score for total test. The fourth-grade former Reading Recovery children’s results on the state achievement test taken in third grade were collected from their school records to establish their achievement distribution 2 years beyond the intervention.

Results indicate a considerable majority of the former successful Reading Recovery children were reading text at or above their grade level and that 1, 2, and 3 years beyond the intervention, Reading Recovery children were performing roughly as well as or better than their cohort sample peers on the task of oral text reading.

Analysis of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test data indicated the vast majority of the previously successful Reading Recovery children performed within the calculated average bands of the cohort sample groups at each grade level, indicating the formerly struggling learners were continuing to progress with their peers in literacy. In addition, the former Reading Recovery fourth graders achieved a normal curve distribution with a mean of the 45th percentile on the Indiana State Test of Education Progress (ISTEP), a considerably different pattern from their first-grade 15–20% achievement range.

]]> Maribeth Cassidy Schmitt et al. Textual Importations Following a Modified Dialogic Reading Approach http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/63 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/63 Mon, 07 May 2012 13:10:16 PDT Anne E. Gregory et al. Constructing Critical Literacy: Self-Reflexive Ways for Curriculum and Pedagogy http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/62 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/62 Mon, 07 May 2012 11:48:29 PDT Schools have the potential to be places where students can come to understand how and why knowledge and power are constructed (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993). This paper provides an overview of critical literacy from a critical theory/Freirian perspective. Within it, critical literacy is posited as a necessary component of all classroom practices, one that is elemental to Dewey’s (1916) view of democracy, social justice, and what it means to be literate. Features of a critical literacy approach to instruction are provided along with rationales for the necessity of its inclusion in a democratic society.

]]> Anne Gregory et al. VideoPoetry: Collaboration as Imaginative Method http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/61 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/61 Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:22:51 PDT Three Idaho professors (a poet, videographer, and historian) have been collaborating for eight years on a cross-disciplinary project called VideoPoetry, which integrates historical narration, narrative poetry, historical photographs, and videography into the video medium. To this point we've worked primarily on a specific program, Culture of Reclamation, which explores the culture of the early irrigated landscape communities in southern Idaho. In reflecting on our work-process, we’ve discovered that we’ve fundamentally changed as scholars as a result of our collaboration. This paper identifies the nature of our changes and documents instances of the ways in which we have been challenged to expand our ideas about other academic disciplines and our own. To work within the constraints of VideoPoetry, a new mode of expression, each of us has had to modify our traditional methods. For example, the poet altered a poem’s imagery to suit the sequence and duration of video images. Through the poet’s exploration of the inner lives of historical figures, the historian learned how the imagination can take us beyond what historical sources are willing to tell. Culture of Reclamation is grounded in the transformation of the arid American West, which occurred about one hundred years ago. By focusing our work on the irrigation of southern Idaho, we have come to a greater understanding of the region where we work and live. The video medium allows us to share these insights as public history—the dissemination of scholarship and research to audiences outside of the academy. VideoPoetry compels us to envision collaboratively a narrative about our regional foundations. Through video, we are able to present to a broad audience the often overlooked but transformational power of irrigation projects to turn the arid West into a land of bounty.

]]> Peter Lutze et al. “That’s how you know.” Exploring Young Children’s Roles in Meaning Construction http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/60 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/60 Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:39:04 PST Within the classroom, literacy learning plays a central role in what children are asked to adopt to be full functioning members of the culture. Children are asked to negotiate the signs of texts, as well as those of the classroom and larger society. The process of learning to read and write, needless to say, is a complex one. Research in reading has shown that to teach children how to participate in this culture successfully, teachers must build upon what children do well in a meaningful context (Calkins, 1980; Wray, 1997) as opposed to the teaching of skills and items in isolation (Adams, 1990; Chall, 1967; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). An examination of the roles of intersubjectivity and intertextuality by studies such as this one, provides an opportunity to better define the process young children undertake as they learn to construct meanings for novel texts.

]]> Anne E. Gregory et al. Revision Process and Practice: A Kindergarten Experience http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/59 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/59 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:27:31 PST Readers may look at Bridget’s drawing (see Fig. 1) and have no trouble whatsoever ascribing it to a kindergartner. It has qualities and features we would expect to see from a first effort at drawing a bird: it is basic in its form, has few details, and appears to be hastily drawn. However, as Denny explains, children make deliberate decisions about their visual drafting; they understand that when they draft an image several times, it gets easier and they get better at drawing the image they wanted.

In this kindergarten class, children engaged in a yearlong study of birds. As a culminating project, they produced a minimum of four drafts of scientific drawings of birds, specifically owls. Bridget’s drafts are representative of how their drawings became more detailed and sophisticated (see Fig. 2).

]]> Maggie Chase Minding the Gate: Challenges of High-Stakes Assessment and Literacy Teacher Education http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/58 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/58 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:32:45 PST As four teacher educators teaching a course associated with state-mandated assessment of literacy subject matter knowledge and instructional practices, we conducted a self-study of our experiences. In this article, we describe how high-stakes assessment further compounds the problematic nature of teaching and learning literacy in coursework. We discuss challenges associated with curriculum, instruction, assessment, and the social milieu of the course, as well as the ways that we have dealt with these challenges. Implications for teacher educators are discussed, as we all must deal with important issues in this era of accountability.

]]> Susan D. Martin et al. Locating Information in Text: A Focus on Children in the Elementary Grades http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/57 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/57 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:56:13 PST This paper reviews research related to the ability of elementary school children to carry out search tasks with informational text. The review is organized within a framework of components of the search process: Goal Formation, Text Selection, Information Extraction and Integration, and Evaluation. Research suggests that older and more proficient readers are better able than younger and less proficient readers to execute search tasks successfully and spontaneously. Other factors, such as the considerateness of text and the reader′s prior knowledge of text structure and topic, also have been shown to affect children′s ability to search informational text. Finally, the article closes with a discussion of problems in existing instructional practice and with recommendations that (a) elementary teachers should provide systematic instruction in how to locate information in text, (b) children should read more informational text, and (c) children should be taught explicitly about informational text.

]]> Bonnie B. Armbruster et al. Developing a Culture of Reclamation: Integrating History, Poetry and Video http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/56 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/56 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:51:15 PST Culture of Reclamation (Armstrong, Lutze, & Woodworth-Ney, in progress) is a sequence of "videopoems" about Idaho, integrating poetry, historical photographs, music and videography in a video presentation, which also includes historical narrative. Three Idaho scholars in the fields of history, literacy education, and communication—the historian (Laura), poet (Jamie), and videographer (Peter)—collaborated on this cross-disciplinary project to reclaim a portion of the history of this state in a creative and engaging medium. Culture of Reclamation expresses a response to the culture of the early irrigated settlement communities along the Snake and Boise rivers. Between 1894 and 1920, a land rush to the arid western United States occurred as private investors and the federal government built irrigation projects to reclaim the sagebrush desert for farmland. Both men and women settlers contributed to the culture of the early communities, the men with a vision of an irrigated Utopia (Smythe, 1895) and the women with literary endeavors and civic participation (Woodworth-Ney, in progress-b).

In responding to the landscape and to the creative work of the early settlers, such as Clarence E. Bisbee, Annie Pike Greenwood, Mary Hallock Foote, and numerous clubwomen, we have deepened our sense of belonging to this place. Our work is both professional and personal. Through this project, each of us has developed new ideas about working within our disciplines and discovered creative ways to engage the history and geography of southwestern Idaho.

Our project represents just one example of the potential for university faculty from different field to collaborate on arts-based scholarly projects. According to Diamond and Mullen, "Arts-based inquiry is art pursued for inquiry’s sake, not for art’s own sake" (1999, p. 25). We also intend our project to serve as a prototype for cross-disciplinary projects in secondary schools. We hope to inform and inspire students in the future to explore the past with imagination as well as historical records.

]]> James Armstrong et al. VideoPoetry: Integrating Video, Poetry and History in the Classroom http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/55 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/55 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:47:56 PST VideoPoetry integrates video and poetry to explore historical or geographic subjects. VideoPoetry is both a process and a product. This paper will use a short VideoPoem, "Mary Hallock Foote at Stone House," to demonstrate how students of all educational levels can become engaged in creating VideoPoetry. Each VideoPoem offers students a cross-disciplinary experience that involves research, analysis of information, imaginative writing and video composition leading to a classroom presentation of the final product.

As a process VideoPoetry requires the investigation of a subject, in this case, Mary Hallock Foote, artist and illustrator of the Western United States. Based on the historical research including her published reminiscences, one of the authors wrote a narrative poem imagining Foote's reflections on her life at Stone House. The poem evoked mental images which we brought into the video through historical photographs, Foote's woodblock drawings and present-day video footage of the landscape. Spoken by a woman narrator, the poem along with appropriate sound effects became the soundtrack and structuring element for the VideoPoem. Preceding the VideoPoem is an introduction which uses an objective voice to establish the historical context. As a product, this VideoPoem expresses an interpretation of the life and thoughts of an historical person and the place where she lived. The pictures both illustrate the poem and extend its evocative quality.

As such "Mary Hallock Foote at Stone House" is an example of Imaginative Writing, an instructional strategy that encourages students to use their imaginations to create valid contexts in which historical figures lived and acted. For viewers, VideoPoetry conveys both historical information and a sense of what it was like to live in another era. VideoPoetry expands the possibilities of studying history by providing a multi-media and multi-sensory experience.

]]> James Armstrong et al. Putting the Fun Back Into Fluency Instruction http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/54 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/54 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:21:31 PST Based on recent research in fluency instruction, the authors present a scenario in which a teacher focuses her fluency instruction on authentic fluency tasks based in performance. Beginning with establishing a student-friendly definition of fluency and culminating with student engagement in fun fluency activities, this article explores the possibilities for bringing joy back into repeated reading practice. Directions for creating a fun fluency kit for classroom use are included.

]]> Mary Ann Cahill et al. Upstream in the Mainstream: Pedagogy Against the Current http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/53 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/53 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:19:35 PST Roberto E. Bahruth et al. Preparing Prospective Elementary Teachers to Teach Geographical Features with an Integrated Approach http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/52 http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/literacy_facpubs/52 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:16:52 PST Effective use of time has become even more critical in today's classrooms. Creating geographically literate students by the year 2000 presents some dilemmas for teachers who are faced with expanding curricula. Developing an efficient, meaningful means of teaching geographical features to help curb geographical illiteracy is a possibility. A group of college instructors and more than 75 preservice elementary teachers experimented with an idea that effectively integrated geography, vocabulary development, writing across the curriculum, and the visual arts. Their successful and time-saving idea can be incorporated into any upper elementary to high school classroom committed to teaching children about geographical features.

]]> Stanley F. Steiner