Reading-Writing Connections: the Importance of Interactive Discourse

Margaret Meek (1988) has described how children borrow ideas from literature through ‘unteachable’ lessons. In this article, I examine how children's written work is enhanced through ‘teachable’ lessons, where the teacher draws attention explicitly to aspects of literary texts and where children explore and evaluate literature through group reading and discussion. The ways in which children transfer the knowledge of literary devices, gained through group discussion, to their own writing are examined. The relationship between group evaluations of texts and children's writing development is explored with reference to the work of Year 6 children. This illustrates how critical reading and group discussion can raise primary children's metalinguistic awareness and develop their understanding of the stylistic features of narrative texts.     

Disintegrate the unit!

Margaret Meek (1988) has described how children borrow ideas from literature through ‘unteachable’ lessons. In this article I explore how children's written work might be enhanced through ‘teachable’ lessons, where the teacher draws attention explicitly to aspects of literature and the literary devices used by authors, and where children explore and evaluate literature through group reading and discussion. The interrelationship between children's knowledge and understanding of literature and their writing development is examined. The way that critical reading and group discussion can develop children's metalanguage and metacognitive understanding is illustrated.     

Primary special school teachers' knowledge and beliefs about supporting learning in numeracy

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of a group of 12 teachers in primary special schools in Scotland for children with moderate learning difficulties. It sets out an analysis of classroom observations and interviews that explored teachers' knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning in mathematics with children with moderate learning difficulties. The teachers were interviewed pre‐ and post‐intervention; this was a research‐based professional development programme in children's mathematical thinking (Cognitively Guided Instruction) which teachers then developed in their classrooms. The findings showed that prior to the professional development, the teachers had a limited knowledge of children's mathematical development with teaching frequently informed by intuitive beliefs and dated and sometimes discredited practices. Most teachers had low expectations of children with learning difficulties. Post‐intervention, the teachers reviewed this stance and affirmed that a deeper understanding of children's mathematical thinking provided a more secure knowledge base for instruction. They also recognised the extent to which learners were constrained by existing classroom practices. The paper argues for the commonality of this knowledge base and considers the problematic nature of viewing such knowledge as sector specific.     

Towards an environmental education without scientific knowledge: an attempt to create an action model based on children's experiences,emotions and perceptions about their environment

The paper presents an alternative approach to environmental education which focuses on children's ideas and action rather than scientific knowledge. The approach is based on children's willingness and ability to act and participate in their community and environment. The paper contributes to the development of an alternative pedagogical proposition for environmental education that is inspired by critical education. The proposed action model has emerged from a one‐year qualitative, participatory research in a pilot primary school in Athens, with the active engagement of 60 children, aged 9–12. The action model describes a path from denial of action to willingness for action. It can be used to encourage children to become involved in their environment and community and to feel strong and confident to act.     

Playing Games and Learning Mathematics: The results of two intervention studies

This article presents the findings of two studies that were designed to improve young children's number knowledge through the use of mathematical games. The first study, with 5‐year‐old children (N = 55), involved parents coming into the classroom to play games with small groups of children. The second study, with 7‐year‐old children (N = 128), explored several ways of incorporating games into school mathematics programmes, including parents playing games with the children. Individual task‐based interviews were used to gather data on the children's number knowledge, and detailed observations were made of selected children's experiences during their normal mathematics lessons and while they were playing the mathematical games. The results showed that games appeared to be most effective as a way of enhancing children's learning when a sensitive adult was available to support and extend the children's learning as they played. The factors that appear to be important when involving parents in games sessions at school are discussed.     

Mindful hands,gestures as language: listening to children

This paper explores ideas of language as a cognitive tool and the role of gesture in expressing children's interests and levels of knowledge. The context is a group of three‐year‐old children who participate in a weekly music session with a trained musician. The authors present drawings from photographs of children's hands and interpret them, using contextual information, to explain how the positioning of the children's hands reflects their internalized understandings and can be viewed as a rich symbolic language. A discussion of the early childhood curriculum and the use of finger plays has been included to suggest that gesture was initially viewed as part of ‘the whole child’ but, today, activities like finger plays have become ritualized exercises. It is suggested that if adults do not listen to the language of hands they are depriving themselves of a valuable window into children's thinking and learning.     

Examining the environmental awareness of children and adolescents in the Ranomafana region,madagascar

This paper examines children's and adolescents' environmental awareness in rural Madagascar. Two types of school survey among 8‐ to 21‐year‐old students and pupils in 18 schools were used for data collection. The objective of this comparative study was to examine the environmental awareness and knowledge of children and adolescents living under different ecological conditions. The role of education in forming environmental awareness is also considered. This research was carried out in villages nearby Ranomafana National Park located in forested areas as well as in more environmentally degraded villages further from the park. The results of the study show that children in rural areas of Madagascar are measurably aware of environmental issues and can relate them to human activities. The effect of education on environmental concern is significant, but when the effects of degradation can be felt and seen in daily life there is an increase in this awareness. Children's environmental concern and demand for action was stronger in deforested areas.     

Towards a literacy of fusion: new times,new teaching and learning?

This paper seeks to widen discussion about which forms of literacy are most appropriate for the education of children in the twenty‐first century. It outlines the current debate about the changes to children's literacy practices, which are described as being prompted on the one hand by the pervasive influence in society of new technologies, and on the other by the extent of pupils' engagement with popular culture. Using a single example, representative of a number of classroom action research studies devised by the author in which children's own interests were used to motivate writing, she argues that what is required from teachers is a transformative pedagogy. This would allow children's cultural interest to be merged with the school requirements into what is described as a literacy of fusion . The paper ends with an outline of the aspects of learning to which a teacher working to create such forms of literacy would need to attend.     

Differential recognition of children's cultural practices in middle primary literacy classrooms

This paper argues that teachers' recognition of children's cultural practices is an important positive step in helping socio‐economically disadvantaged children engage with school literacies. Based on 21 longitudinal case studies of children's literacy development over a 3‐year period, the authors demonstrate that when children's knowledges and practices assembled in home and community spheres are treated as valuable material for school learning, children are more likely to invest in the work of acquiring school literacies. However, they also show that while some children benefit greatly from being allowed to draw on their knowledge of popular culture, sports and the outdoors, other children's interests may be ignored or excluded. Some differences in teachers' valuing of home and community cultures appeared to relate to gender dimensions.     

Impressions,improvisations and compositions: reframing children's text production in social network sites

Social networking can currently be described as a mainstream youth activity, with almost half of 8–17‐year‐old children, who have access to the Internet, claiming to participate. As an activity it is of particular interest to literacy educators because it is enacted through the production and consumption of text. However, a growing body of research is finding that while young people transfer knowledge and practices across the sites that they occupy, children's text production using informal digital literacy practices and children's school‐based text production can be regarded as increasingly disparate activities. This paper draws from a current research project that is exploring three pre‐teenage children's text production in social networking sites. Here one child's Bebo profile page is presented and discussed in order that the forces that play upon her text production can be identified. Through consideration of these forces, a framework for considering children's text production in informal digital environments is suggested. This framework steps away from the existing frameworks currently found within the Primary National Strategy for Literacy and Mathematics and instead requires that children's texts are viewed in relation to structure and agency.     

Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children's literacy attainment?

This paper reports on two studies which investigated the relationship between children's texting behaviour, their knowledge of text abbreviations and their school attainment in written language skills. In Study One, 11–12‐year‐old children provided information on their texting behaviour. They were also asked to translate a standard English sentence into a text message and vice versa. The children's standardised verbal and non‐verbal reasoning scores were also obtained. Children who used their mobiles to send three or more text messages a day had significantly lower scores than children who sent none. However, the children who, when asked to write a text message, showed greater use of text abbreviations (‘textisms’) tended to have better performance on a measure of verbal reasoning ability, which is highly associated with Key Stage 2 (KS2) and 3 English scores. In Study Two, children's performance on writing measures was examined more specifically. Ten to eleven‐year‐old children were asked to complete another English to text message translation exercise. Spelling proficiency was also assessed, and KS2 Writing scores were obtained. Positive correlations between spelling ability and performance on the translation exercise were found, and group‐based comparisons based on the children's writing scores also showed that good writing attainment was associated with greater use of textisms, although the direction of this association is nor clear. Overall, these findings suggest that children's knowledge of textisms is not associated with poor written language outcomes for children in this age range.     

Masking,mediators and agency: bilingual children and learning to read

This paper begins with a discussion of some of the key insights of recent sociocultural research that consider bilingual children and learning to read and culminates in a discussion of Syncretic Literacy Studies (SLS). It then presents data from an ethnographic study that focused on the learning experiences of a small group of Year Three Bangladeshi‐heritage pupils during 1 year of their schooling in order to problematise some of the claims made in recent sociocultural work and in SLS, particularly the focus on children's agency. The findings from the study suggest that (a) there are limits to children's agency that are not recognised in recent work and in SLS; (b) that identity has an important role to play: children can successfully mask what they cannot do as readers in order to present a particular identity in the mainstream classroom; and (c) that the access some children have to mediators may be limited and can change over time.     

Child‐directed Dramatic Play as Identity Text in Northern Canadian Indigenous Kindergarten Classrooms

In this paper, an Anishnaabe educator and university researcher/former primary teacher make a case for viewing children's dramatic play as multimodal identity texts. Indigenous children in our research study take up an agentic role and construct positive identities in dramatic play, creating narratives that reflect Indigenous cultural practices, as well as some practices of mainstream Canadian society that may be imbued with colonising perspectives. We argue that the Indigenous Cultural classes and follow‐up dramatic play counter the marginalisation of Indigenous knowledge, culture and languages that has occurred with devastating effects on generations of Indigenous families. Our paper is based on video recordings of 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's dramatic play that were analysed collectively by 12 Indigenous educators in terms of the Indigenous cultural meanings that children created in their play. We conclude with implications for non‐Indigenous teachers, arguing that a case can be made for including child‐led dramatic play in the literacy curriculum when dramatic play narratives are viewed as multimodal identity texts. These texts, which can involve multiple modes including print, draw from children's own cultural and linguistic knowledge and experience.     

Shyness and Social Conflict Reduce Young Children's Social Helpfulness

This study examined social influences on 3‐year‐old children's decisions to help an experimenter gain another person's attention (N = 32). Children were slower to help the experimenter when the target had previously expressed disinterest in attending to her. Shy children were less likely to support the experimenter's attempts to communicate with the target; however, this association was not influenced by children's knowledge of the target's disinterest, and there was no relation between shyness and children's support for a separate physical goal. Therefore, young children's decisions to act helpfully incorporate consideration for others beyond a focal person with an unmet need, and they are further constrained by children's own comfort with the actions required to help.     

Visions for literacy: parents’ aspirations for reading in children with Down syndrome

Although children with Down syndrome (DS) can learn to read, few studies have explored parental perspectives on the reading development of this group of children. This article, written by Leila Ricci and Anna Osipova, from California State University, explores visions and expectations regarding reading held by parents of children with Down syndrome in the US. Parents of 50 children with DS (aged three to 13 years) completed a survey about their children's interest in reading and responded to open‐ended questions inquiring about their views on their children's reading development. A majority of parents in this study described their children's positive attitude toward reading, stated their reading‐related goals for their children, defined their children's relative strengths in reading, and shared strategies used in the home to promote literacy in this population. Parents pay close attention to and have high expectations for their children's reading achievement, and thereby would benefit from partnerships with informed educators willing and capable of teaching reading to children with DS.     

‘Baddies’ in the classroom: media education and narrative writing

When teachers allow students to write stories that include elements of popular media, we must ask what to do with these media elements once they have entered the classroom. This article relates findings from a classroom study focusing on children's media‐based story writing. The study looks at children as producers of new media texts and describes their activities as a form of ‘media education’. The data show that through their production of media‐based stories, the children are reflecting on their consumption of media. Furthermore, the children's media‐based stories make explicit some of their implicit knowledge of new media forms. Lastly, the children's stories provide ample opportunities for teachers to engage in important discussions about media within the framework of existing writing programmes.     

Situational influences upon children's beliefs about global warming and energy

This paper explores children's beliefs about global warming and energy sources from a psychological perspective, focusing upon situational influences upon subjective beliefs, including perceived self‐efficacy. The context of the research is one of growing concern at the potential impacts of global warming, yet demonstrably low levels of self‐efficacy amongst both adults and children to effectively respond to this large‐scale environmental problem. Empirical research was conducted on a sample of 198 UK children and adults to explore the influence of a cooperative learning environment upon children's beliefs about global warming and energy. A comparative design was adopted, contrasting 9–12 year old members of the Woodcraft Folk educational organisation with non‐members of similar age and with adult members of the same organisation. Results indicate that cooperative learning environments can have a significant and positive effect upon children's beliefs about large‐scale environmental problems. In particular, Woodcraft folk children reported significantly higher levels of personal awareness and perceived self‐efficacy in relation to global warming in comparison to their peers. Secondly, unexpected differences were identified between levels of perceived self‐efficacy in children and adult Woodcraft folk. The implications of these differences for the design of educational programmes seeking to empower children to respond to global warming are discussed.     

Language play in the classroom: encouraging children's intuitive creativity with words through poetry

This article begins by identifying that children have a spontaneous predilection for playing with language, engaging in poetic discourse even before their first poetry lesson. Although children's language play is relatively unresearched in the classroom, in a case study of two groups of pupils aged between 10 and 11, it was observed that children engaged in creative word play, and that this was generated in response to interaction with poetry and each other. This article suggests that children's poetical experiences may best be nurtured by building bridges between children's existing knowledge of language play and the specialised knowledge of poetry taught in the classroom through a teaching methodology based on socio‐constructivist principles.     

Parent and child attitudinal factors in a model of children's print‐concept knowledge

The present study investigates the role of attitudinal variables, such as children's literacy interest and parents’ reading beliefs, in conjunction with home literacy activities (HLA), in predicting children's print‐concept knowledge. The objective of the study is to test a theoretical model describing the relationship among these variables. This study involved 551 low‐income preschool children. Structural equation modelling was used to test the model. The model was a good fit for the data when parental teaching of reading/writing was used as the measure of HLA. In the model, negative parent reading beliefs and parent teaching predicted print‐concept knowledge. Results suggest that practitioners should consider not only the literacy activities children and parents participate in, but also their attitudes towards those activities.     

Validity of the children's orientation to book reading rating scale

The present study investigates the validity of a 4‐point rating scale used to measure the level of preschool children's orientation to literacy during shared book reading. Validity was explored by (a) comparing the children's level of literacy orientation as measured with the Children's Orientation to Book Reading Rating Scale (COB) with a teacher's rating of a child's level of attention and effortful control on the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ), and (b) computing the predictive validity of a child's COB rating with overall levels of emergent literacy at the end of the preschool school year. This study involved 46 preschool children from low‐income backgrounds; children's literacy orientation was rated during a group teacher‐led book reading. Children's ratings of literacy orientation during shared book reading using the global 4‐point COB scale were significantly correlated with teacher ratings of a child's attention and effortful control as measured on the CBQ. Hierarchical regression results indicated children's literacy orientation significantly predicted children's end‐of‐year alphabet knowledge and overall emergent reading skills above and beyond the variance contributed by children's language skills and family income. The validity of a global rating for indexing children's level of literacy orientation was supported. Educational implications and recommendations for the COB as a component of early literacy assessment are discussed.