THE LITERACY PROFILE OF MAXWELL POGONOWSKI
Item 3. A copy of talk about Edward the Emu
Max: Well the story gives it away that he wants to be the best because the man said he’d rather look at the lions. So Edward rushes off to be a lion.
Sasha: He goes to the lions then he’s going to whatever other animals they say.
Hayley: He wants to get the crowd’s attention.
Daniel: It’d get him down, don’t you think, if somebody said that?
Max: He wants to show off and be the best.
Kirsten: But how come nobody notices that he’s an emu, he’s different.
People don’t say, ‘Oh look at that emu in the lion’s cage or look at that emu in the seal’s.
Max: He’s a populist.
Elizabeth: What does that mean?
Max: He wants to be what ever anyone wants him to be. But that’s not a good idea. You can’t please everyone. It’s better to be yourself.
* We talk about books in groups and have the recorder going.
We listen to ourselves if we want to find out how we are going.
This part shows I can make some good points as we work out what a book means. We all have different ideas and get them from each other.
Max’s own views are important because of the complex relationship that has been demonstrated between the student’s knowledge and thinking to teaching. The student’s conception about reading, its nature, purposes and functions, are a result of interaction between prior knowledge and feelings about reading and the reading events experienced in the classroom.
The teacher reports on Max’s progress
An enormous amount of information had been collected about Max as his knowledge of the reading process expanded. Indicators of development accumulated in an observable fashion as the students’
reading abilities progressively emerged and their knowledge of the reading process expanded. The teacher used a highlighter pen to add to the list of attributes grouped in bands in the reading profile scales (Griffin, Smith and Burrill 1995). (Teachers usually use a different colour to indicate new areas of growth.) Figure 7.2 illustrates Max’s progress on a ‘reading profile rocket’.
Max provided rich criteria for the assessment and reporting of his learning.
The gist statements for each band of indicators provide a pen picture of his growth and the rocket shows this diagrammatically.
Max’s and the other students’ development was far from a stepwise sequence of development. What was to count as reading had been established with the whole group through the use of the Tell Me strategy. The large-group discussions were used to scaffold ways to think and talk about texts and ideas. The small-group discussions allowed the students to take control and Figure 7.2 Reading profile rocket—Max
regulate their own behaviour. The students were learning how to be participants in discussion about books in this classroom as they developed their knowledge of literacy and control of their mental processes. These students realized that they were not passive receptacles of information, but that their minds were active construction agents of meaning. When Max insisted that reading was also talk, he was demonstrating understanding that meaning was socially constructed.
It had been important to use activities which were not substitutes for literary response and pleasure and which did not draw away from literature and the experience of reading. This premise prevented developmental assumptions influencing text choice. Max had been presented with a library from which to develop literary enjoyment and critical skills and allowed to talk. Like all avid readers, the main pleasure of literature for Max became the dialogue it engendered.
Reading development for Max was idiosyncratic and tied to the taking on of ideas from others and transforming them into his own. All of the students were observed following zig-zag paths and the final reading bore little resemblance to what the talk had been about early in the year. Images, patterns, subjective responses and puzzles were ways of describing how understandings from life, and from other texts, influence reading.
Although Max seems to have completed Band F some indicators will probably be able to be inferred. For example, he uses the plots and characters in a novel to make wider meanings, rather than map them out. Undoubtedly he could list the elements of narrative but this would be unproductive. Max has learnt that there are many text worlds to be built during a reading which may in no way resemble the one at the end. Just as in life!
Moderation
Max’s teacher wondered if her judgement of Max’s progress was too subjective and took her doubts to a moderation meeting with the other grade six teachers. In this school moderation is used as a means of addressing the variations within and between teachers’ assessments of students’ work. It is the process of bringing individual judgements into line with general standards.
The moderation process gives teachers the opportunity to share their interpretation of a student’s work. This can be thought of as reflecting out loud (Griffin and Nix, 1991).
The teachers in the moderating session used the Nutshell statements from Bands E and F to support their agreement with Max’s teacher. These statements may be seen in the rocket figure.
• Band E. Will tackle difficult texts. Writing and general knowledge reflect reading. Literary response reflects confidence in settings and characters.
• Band F. Is familiar with a range of genres. Can interpret, analyse and explain responses to text passages.
The teachers also talked about how the body of knowledge about what it is to be a reader of literature was being developed. These new indicators could be filled in at the space provided on the profile form to provide rich data about a reader. These teachers had reached consensus very easily in this case. It was also interesting to hear over several days the moderating process carried on informally in staffroom talk.
The literacy profiles
A sample of Max’s work and thinking has helped give a sense of Max’s lively development as a reader. The literacy profiles allowed for the collection of data about Max’s reading when the teaching and learning were taking place. The indicators of development accumulated in an observable fashion as his reading abilities progressively emerged and his knowledge of the reading process expanded. The literacy scale was used by the teacher as a manageable way of rating progress. The indicators are evidently present in his work and they provide a common vocabulary for describing progress.
Figure 7.3 Reading band F. The American literacy profile scales
F Reading Strategies
Describes links between personal experience and arguments and ideas about text. Selects relevant passages or phrases to answer questions without necessarily reading the whole text. Formulates research topics and questions and finds relevant information from reading materials. Maps out plots and character development in novels and other literary texts. Varies reading strategies according to purposes for reading and nature of text. Makes connections between texts, recognizing similarities of themes and values.
Responses
Discusses author’s intent for the reader. Discusses styles used by different authors. Describes settings in literature. Forms generalizations about a range of genres, including myth, short stories. Offers reasons for the feelings provoked by a text. Writing and discussions acknowledge a range of interpretations of text.
Offers critical opinion or analysis of reading passages in discussion.
Justifies own appraisal of a text. Synthesizes and expands on information from a range of texts in written work.
Literacy profiles enable teachers to embody all the best principles of assessment and reporting practices by encouraging them to use multiple methods of observation and by providing criterion-referenced descriptions.
References
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. M.Holquist and trans. C.Emerson, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Bruner, J. (1986) Actual Minds Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chambers, A. (1993) Tell Me, Stroud, England: Thimble Press.
Clay, M. (1979) Reading: the Patterning of Complex Behaviour, London: Heinemann.
Clay, M. (1991) ‘Developmental learning puzzles me’, Australian Journal of Reading 14(4): 263–76.
Goodman, K. (1970) ‘Reading: a psycholinguistic guessing game’, in H.Singer and R.
Ruddell (eds) Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Goodman, K. (1973) Miscue Analysis: Applications to Reading Instruction, Urbana, IL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills.
Goodman, K. (1985) ‘Unity in reading’, in H.Singer and R.Ruddell, Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Goodman, K. (1993) Paper presented at First International Conference of the Australian Reading Association, Melbourne, Australia, July.
Griffin, P.E. (1989) ‘Monitoring children’s growth towards literacy’, John Smith Memorial Lecture, University of Melbourne, 5 September, Bulletin of VIER (Victoria Institute of Education Research), 61: 45–72.
Griffin, P.E. and Nix, P. (1991) Educational Assessment and Reporting: A New Approach, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Griffin, P.E., Smith, P.G. and Burrill, L. (1995) The American Literacy Profile Scales, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Harste, J., Short, C.G., and Burke, C.L. (1988) Creating Classrooms for Authors: The Reading-Writing Connection, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Harste, J., Woodward, V.A. and Burke, C.L. (1984) Language Stories and Literacy Lessons, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Rosenblatt, L.M. (1978) The Reader, the Text, the Poem: the Transactional Theory of Literary Work, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Victoria, Ministry of Education (1988) The Literacy Profile Scales Handbook.
Wells, G. (1986) The Meaning Makers, London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Children’s books
Crew, G. and illus. Rogers, G. (1992) Lucy’s Bay, Australia: Jam Roll Press.
Knowles, S. and illus. Clement, R. (1988) Edward the Emu, Australia: Angus &
Robertson.
Macdonald, C. (1993) The Lake at the End of the World, Australia: Puffin.
Marsden, J. (1990) Out of Time, Australia: Pan Macmillan.
Sutcliff, R. (1956) The Shield Ring, London: Oxford University Press.