C h a p t e r F I v e
An invitation to inquiry FIgure 5.1
A wall in Lisa’s classroom FIgure 5.2
Bruce JoyceBruce Joyce
Chapter FIve The Picture Word Inductive Model 93
phonological awareness and word analysis skills; their reading comprehension and composing at the word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, and extended text levels; and their observation and research skills. The cycles of a PWIM inquiry usually last from two to six weeks.
Each PWIM cycle begins with a picture, usually a photograph that includes many details that students can describe using their developed listening–
speaking language (see Figure 5.3). The students study the picture and then shake out the words— putting into words the representations and actions they see in the picture. The teacher draws a line from those things to a place outside the picture, reiterates the word, and writes and spells the word or phrase aloud.
The students repeat the word and its spelling following a “See, Say, Spell, Say”
pattern: the teacher points to the item in the photograph (See); the students pronounce the word (Say); they spell the word together with the teacher (Spell); and they pronounce the word again (Say). This pattern provides a mnemonic chain that helps anchor the pronunciation and spelling of the words. What emerges as students identify items and actions is an illustrated picture- word dictionary.
The next phase begins by providing students with their individual sets of word cards. The students check whether they can recognize words immedi-ately or decode them if necessary, using the picture- word dictionary if they have difficulty. It’s easy to assess students’ knowledge and skills as the teacher
Tracy and students start a PWIM chart FIgure 5.3
Bruce Joyce
moves around among the students. As students begin to read the words, the next phase of the model comes into play: students classify the words in terms of phonetic, structural, or content properties and share their categories and why they put a particular set of words together. The categorization activity occurs regularly during the PWIM cycle.
To expand vocabulary and prior knowledge, teachers collect a set of non-fiction and informational books, including big books if they are available, that relate to the photograph and their purposes for selecting it. Some of these texts are used by the teacher for short content- area read- alouds, and others are used by the students for learning content and practicing literacy skills simultane-ously. In the primary grades, teachers often identify and flag websites that have video clips or other types of digital media for extending learning; at the upper elementary level, students are much more involved in identifying and explor-ing websites. Some of the words from teacher alouds and students’ read-ing and exploration are added to the PWIM chart if they are present in the photograph; other words may be added to the Related Words chart; and still others find their way into sentences as students expand their vocabulary and knowledge within each PWIM inquiry.
Frequently, the next phase is generating titles and sentences for the pic-ture. Students are asked to generate factual sentences about the picture, dictat-ing them to the teacher. (The sentences are descriptive. Students do not use the picture to start a fictional story.) New words from the sentences and titles may be added to students’ vocabulary banks. After the students can fluently read the sentences, they are asked to classify them into groups by content or com-mon patterns of syntax or structure and provide reasons for their classifica-tions. Beginning writers are starting the study of composing sentences.
As the PWIM cycle continues, the teacher selects one of the sentence cat-egories and models writing a well- organized paragraph, sharing her thinking about how she used the ideas in the sentences and modified the structures, if needed, to form the message about the picture that she wishes to share with her readers. Next, in whatever way is appropriate to the developmental level of the students (e.g., a combination of drawing and writing, dictated pieces), they generate their own paragraphs. The PWIM cycle ends anytime after the para-graph development.
Let’s visit a primary grade class for a closer look at PWIM in action.
S
c e n A r I o pwIM In a graDe one CLassrooMWe are in another of Lisa Mueller’s first- grade classes. We are looking at a section from Lisa’s PWIM planning guide that describes a cycle in which her 23 students were engaged for 22 sessions, each about 50 minutes long, during the second
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month of school, October 2– 30. She continues with more cycles throughout the year and then conducts a set of studies of the students’ learning. Figure 5.4 shows a marketplace in Mexico. Lisa says to her students, “You have had a couple of days to look at the picture and identify things in it. Let’s take turns putting words to some of the things you have found.” As each item is named, Lisa draws a line from the word to a place on the background paper where she prints it, then has the students spell it and say it. The students review the words frequently, spelling them, saying them, and tracing the line from the word to the picture, learning how to use the chart as a picture dictionary. During the first session, 22 words and phrases (such as umbrellas, woman, palm trees, blue and white striped umbrella) are shaken out of the picture.
These words are entered into the computer and printed out on cards, a set of which is given to each student. Three activities alternate during the next few days.
First is a review of the words as a class: looking at the PWIM chart, selecting a word, tracing it to the element in the picture to which it refers, spelling the word, and so on. (“Look at your cards, one by one. If you can say the word on a card, then look at the picture chart, find the word, trace it to the picture, and make sure you
A market scene in Mexico FIgure 5.4
Bruce Joyce
are right.”) Second, each student looks at the cards, decides whether he or she recognizes the word correctly, and, if not certain, goes to the PWIM chart to figure it out. Third, each student classifies the words, manipulating his or her cards into groups containing common attributes. (“Look carefully at the words. Then make groups of words that have something in common.”) During classification, several categories of words emerged, particularly words with common beginnings (such as beginning consonant blends in trees, truck, trunk; “all have two e’s together and e says its name,” for the category trees, wheels, three); “they have two words and both begin with the letters t a i l for taillights and tailgate.” Plural forms also emerged (such as umbrellas, trees, wheels). Lisa prints some of the categories on the interactive whiteboard, and the students discuss what the words have in com-mon and think of other words that might fit into the categories. An additional 12 words appear, some of which Lisa adds to their Word Wall (among them are standing, walking, leaning, and curved ).
At the beginning of the second week of the PWIM cycle, the children are asked to generate titles for the pictures. (“I’m going to show you some other pictures and titles I’ve made for them. Then I want you to make up a title for our picture. Try to make a title that would help a visitor find our picture from among the other pic-tures in the room.”) Lisa models some titles and asks the students to examine the titles of several books as further models. Each student creates a title.
As the students continue to discuss the picture and what they notice in it, the words shadow, people, and scale are added to the PWIM Chart; 11 words are added to the Related Words list (e.g., shopping, market, produce, consumers, farmers, orchards), and more words are added to the Word Wall (parked, scale).
Throughout the second week, the children continue to study the words, using the picture- word dictionary and classifying the words on their word cards. Lisa engages them in a number of instructional activities that develop phonemic awareness and the use of analogies. For example, she used the rimes in the words tail, light, and gate (-ail, -ight, -ate) from two of the compound words, taillight and tailgate, that students had shaken out of the picture for work on initial consonants, rhyming words, substitutions, and deletions.
Lisa also does many short content area read- alouds to build vocabulary and world knowledge and as a model to encourage her students to explore and learn from the books and texts available. While using the photograph in Figure 5.4 as part of a PWIM cycle, students inquire into books about markets around the world, communities, types and purposes of transportation, and Mexico— to name a few of the text sets available. Some students read these texts; some do picture walks;
some collect new words for their PWIM notebooks. From the very first PWIM cycle, Lisa tries to establish a culture of learning from and enjoying texts and gathering information from multiple sources for oral discussions, composing, and research.
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At the end of the second week, Lisa and her teaching assistant, Cecile, check the students’ knowledge of the words out of the context of the picture, the titles, and the sentences by presenting the words to the students on cards that show only one word. Nine students could correctly read 14 to 22 of the words, and seven could read between 8 and 13. Six students correctly identified only 1 to 7 at the end of the second week.
At the beginning of the third week, Lisa presents sentences she has written about the picture, modeling several sentence structures:
The man is walking into the market.
The scale can be used to weigh the fruits and vegetables.
Umbrellas also provide shade from the sun.
During the week the students dictate their own sentences, using the words they shook out of the picture plus other words that are needed to make sentences. Many of their sentences include high frequency words such as the, is, are, by, and from.
Lisa also has students illustrate at least one sentence in their PWIM notebooks.
The students continue to study the words and read the sentences. At the end of the week, Lisa and Cecile assess the recognition of the words again. During that week there was a considerable gain in words recognized; most students were able to read 20 or more. Only one student did not gain any words. Some students were able to read many of the titles and sentences without assistance.
During the last week of the PWIM cycle, Lisa and the students classified some of the sentences into content categories, such as sentences about the setting, about items in the market, about transportation, all about the truck. Some of the students were curious about the three- wheeled cycle; they did not think that the word tricycle would convey to readers what they saw in the picture. So, Lisa used the web to pull up several images, and together they decided the best match and most accurate description was a “cargo tricycle.”
Lisa also constructed a paragraph using one of the categories, making some modifications to the sentences the students had generated. The paragraph was printed on a card program, making a booklet the students could take home and read to their parents.
The school participates in the school division’s Just Read program (see Joyce &
Wolf, 1996; Joyce & Calhoun, 1996). Each week this first- grade class records the number of books that have been read to them, or that, as they learn to read, they read themselves. The goal is for the parents to read at least five books each week to their children. The average by the last three weeks in October was six books, but there was variance; in any given week, two or three parents did not report any books or reported only one. However, the least number during the three- week period was three books— all students were being read to at least occasionally.
There was no gender difference. As the children learn to read, the titles and num-bers of the books they read themselves will be recorded, and Lisa and Cecile will make sure that each child selects items at a comfortable level for learning and for at-home reading and sharing.