'Anticipatory reading guides' and literacy development

Twenty-first century technology is making communication ever easier as it connects us around the globe. The fact that we are capable of communicating more easily does not however mean that communication itself becomes easier. Good communication has always (and most probably always will) demanded the skills to decode for meaning, and to express meaning and deep thinking.

The NZ national curriculum identifies five key competencies:

·       thinking

·       using language, symbols, and texts

·       managing self

·       relating to others

·       participating and contributing

“Using language symbols and text “is a nice ‘eduspeke’ way of talking about communication, and we probably most commonly associate the first two with our academic work, although all are important as the bases for those behaviours that generate success.

The KCs are intended to underpin our work in all areas of the curriculum, and this in itself makes us all teachers of literacy in some way shape or form, albeit that individual subject literacies might vary across learning areas.

In those subjects that are text rich the traditional skills of reading and writing are brought into relief and coupled with the emphasis on critical thinking conversation easily transitions to the term critical literacy (although the exponents of ‘critical literacy’ would no doubt take me to task for too lose a use of the term).

My basic ‘thesis’ when it comes to literacy concepts is that secondary teachers in New Zealand have not traditionally been trained as teachers of their subject literacies. It is in my opinion one of many fundamental flaws in our pre-service teacher education. I am no exception to this claim, and so have had to work hard to up skill myself. I’ve had to become the learner; that’s refreshing.

My first attempts at improving student literacy came from the development of more effective writing scaffolds and tools.

More recently I have shifted my focus to promoting reading for meaning. While completing a ‘Secondary literacy’ course run by UC Ed+ several years ago I became acquainted with a nice tool called the ‘Before and after’ grid that promotes reading for meaning.

The grid looks like this:

Before reading Place an X under either Agree or Disagree, reflecting your pre-reading opinion on each statement.

After reading Place an X under either Agree or Disagree, reflecting your reading opinion on each statement. Find the evidence from the reading to support your view after reading. Copy and paste the evidence into the right hand column

Agree	Disagree	Statement	Agree	Disagree	Supporting evidence
		1.
		2.
		3.
		4.
		5.
		6.

(Blogger formatting limitations have confounded me here, but you can find the grid on the TKI page).

The process is as follows:
1. Select the reading that you intend to use. 2. Identify a series of statements that relate to the reading. These are pasted into the ‘Statement’ column. Where appropriate (and it may not always be so) use the SOLO framework to ensure that you cover both the surface and deeper thinking that comes form the article. Don’t just seek regurgitation of fact. 3. Before allowing the students to read the material that you have selected, ask the students to read the statements, and then decide whether they agree or disagree with the statements. Check the appropriate column on the left hand side of the table. When I do this in class time (usually it is done at home) I ask them to complete this part in silence so tat their response represents what THEY currently think as individuals. 4. Now have the students read the resource material. They must then decide whether they still agree or disagree with the statements that you made. They mark their new thinking in one of the two columns on the right hand side. They must also identify the evidence in the article that supports their view. This evidence is written in to the ‘Supporting evidence’ column on the right. 5. Ask students to highlight those rows where they have changed their minds as a result of reading the resource material These rows essentially represent ‘new learning’ for the students.

Now this is NOT an original resource. I have blatantly copied it from the one supplied at the Secondary Literacy course. I have found the grid presented as an ‘Anticipatory reading guide', on TKI.

I have now added an additional element. In a box below the reading I pose a question based on the reading, and ask the students to answer that question. They are encouraged to use evidence from the article to support their answer. This tests their learning/understanding from the reading.

My early work with this tool was undertaken on paper. However it was a very simple exercise to adapt this to a Google Docs format. The tables were easily drawn into Google Docs, and it has been a simple matter to paste suitably attributed reading material into the same doc. It became a matter of doing a ‘copy and paste’ when finding the supporting evidence, but that is of little import as they must have read the evidence in order to understand whether or not it supports their decision. The Google tool gave me the opportunity to give more detailed feedback to students on the Google Doc.

I developed a document that contained a series of these tasks, with a ‘Table of Contents’ at the beginning, so students can easily go to the task I want them to complete. Topics are now introduced using the 'Before and after reading' grid, and I use the approach to help students to dig more deeply into readings on more complex topics, especially what I would call 'real world' readings written by experts in the chosen topic.

The use of the Google Docs tool means that I get better written responses where I pose the final question to test understanding. I also seem to get better reading responses as students read the material more carefully and thoughtfully. Obviously I can't claim that the use of eLearning tools has done this, but it's interesting speculation isn't it.