Introduction

A fourth-grade teacher sits at her desk and brainstorms ideas and concepts that she would like to include in an upcoming unit on comparing cultural groups. As a teacher in a small rural school district, she is keenly aware of ongoing struggles to secure and sustain appropriate financial and tangible resources that address the literacy needs of the students within this community.

She envisions a unit that incorporates technology with several authentic materials and resources that expose her students to various text structures, reading, and language arts skills as well as social studies concepts. Her first lesson will be a read-aloud from the book Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds by Cynthia Rylant. She feels this type of activity provides an opportunity for her students to discuss what they already know about the people, places, and events in the history of migration and immigration to the region and state. She believes this discussion could also lead to inquiry-based learning that provides opportunities for her students to research aspects related to this topic.

Other ideas and concepts that she wants to incorporate into several lessons include working with a retelling using primary sources such as diaries, working with vocabulary and word-study activities that are vital to the understanding of this topic, and sequencing text related to migrations of peoples using context clues and word clues (e.g., first, second, third, now, next, and finally). While working with the nonfiction texts, she could introduce different graphic organizers to assist her students in comprehending the material as they complete a Web-based graphic timeline and plot historical sites on a map. She wonders what she could do to integrate multimedia as a support mechanism for building her students' background knowledge and their ability to read expository text.

Like the teacher in the opening scenario, many educators may have difficulty knowing exactly how to create classroom environments that support students' attempts at accessing expository text, especially when financial resources are limited. Are there ways to provide teachers the resources, professional development, and teaching strategies that will help improve their practice and the abilities of their students? We set out to provide answers for the following questions: How can teachers use multimedia to support literacy learning? How might teachers and students maximize the use of multimedia?

Our answer was OhioTrek, a project for which we served as curriculum developers along with Allison Goedde, associate director of professional development, Northwest Ohio Educational Technology Foundation. The project is a research-based attempt at improving instructional resources, classroom practice, and student abilities. In this project we worked to develop an instructional program that infuses multimedia resources designed to enhance third- and fourth-grade students' knowledge of informational literacy in a social studies context. Although this program was designed specifically to provide authentic literacy opportunities and experiences for students in our region, the literacy activities are ones that might be incorporated in literacy classrooms anywhere.

Currently, we are in the process of gathering data related to the impact of our project. This article will describe the process we used to create the curriculum materials and recommendations for other classroom teachers interested in a similar focus on nonfiction, expository text within their classroom practices.

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What the Data Told Us

The initial activity of this project involved reviewing existing data. We examined state assessment data, which included information about income and wealth, as well as anecdotal information about expectations of our state's assessment program. The results of this analysis clearly indicated a strong need for a program to enhance the academic achievement of students in low-income districts within our region.

In Ohio, USA, high-stakes testing has generated performance results that demonstrate specific areas of concern. Reading and writing proficiency results (Urban Schools Initiative,1999) indicated that our regional low-income district population is falling far short of meeting proficiency standards for literacy at the fourth-grade level, as depicted in Table 1. A total of 91% of the districts were below the state reading standard, while 69% of the districts were below the state standard in writing. Results from the citizenship (social studies) proficiency tests were not quite as low (44% of districts were below the state average), but still indicated significant room for improvement.

One of the districts under focus for this program is classified as an urban district in our state. Average district scores were 33.7%, 55.0%, and 56.5% in reading, writing, and citizenship, respectively. This means that in this school district alone, 303 of the 457 fourth graders did not demonstrate sufficient skills in reading. Further analysis indicated that 59% of this district's fourth-grade students were in the lowest band of a key analysis strand, the "Non-fiction Extends Meaning" proficiency objective (Subscale Frequencies, Fourth Grade Proficiency Results, 2000, ODE), all of which provided evidence that students in the low-income districts need academic experiences that help them understand and reference nonfiction sources, and thereby further develop their literacy skills.

Students need to focus on strategies for reading and writing both fiction and nonfiction; however, in our state, abilities in reading and writing nonfiction have been shown to be a leading cause of lower performance on reading proficiency tests (Urban Schools Initiative, 999). This emphasis on nonfiction was the reason OhioTrek has opted to include social studies topics to bolster overall literacy and citizenship (social studies) achievement.

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Goals of the Project

As previously stated, this project focused on developing an instructional program that infuses multimedia resources designed to enhance third- and fourth-grade students' knowledge of informational literacy. Development money became available for work targeted at low-income districts within our region of the state. The target population, therefore, became third- and fourth-grade students in 32 of our state's 200 low-income districts. This includes 55 schools and over 5,200 students. The primary mission of the OhioTrek project is to provide the means and support to enable students to become lifelong learners through the development of informational literacy. Our mission complements what researchers are saying about the importance of understanding expository text. Moss, Leone, and Dipillo (1997) contend that "if today's students are to survive in the 'Information Age' it is imperative that they develop greater familiarity with and understanding of expository text" (p. 418). Moreover, this project focused on reading and writing by working to change classroom practice: "planning, developing, and implementing a coherent curriculum [that provides access] to a range of reading materials, a rich array of instructional strategies that will engage all students, ongoing assessment strategies that identify reading problems" (Ohio Literacy Initiative, 1999, p. 5).

Through this project we developed six literacy units presented within a social studies context. The unit topics used interactive Web-based curriculum materials and were further developed and reinforced in the accompanying teacher's guide and video segments that depicted "virtual" field trips. The objectives of these units correlated with the state frameworks in language arts and social studies and provided resources to meet the needs of state-wide assessment mandates. This integrated curriculum is displayed in Figure 1.

By emphasizing nonfiction (informational) reading and expository writing, OhioTrek focused on those areas identified as hard to teach and difficult to learn. This set of multimedia materials not only helps students meet the informational literacy needs of the world today, but it also provides them with a solid foundation for lifelong, active learning. Consequently, as a means of meeting our stated purpose, we believe teachers must meet the following goals:

1.	Work with students to respond to nonfiction, informational text in cooperative learning situations.
2.	Work with students to apply, synthesize, and analyze information related to content area topics.
3.	Work with students to increase proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, and nonfiction expository text by identifying and applying the five basic text structures.
4.	Work with students to construct meaning, while reading and writing with expository texts, through the use of graphic organizers.
5.	Work with students to use various technologies to provide learning experiences for students.
6.	Work with students to create more authentic learning experiences that immerse students in literacy-rich environments that promote and encourage the use of multiple texts, including trade books.

Within each of these goals are reverberations of research-based findings from the past 10 years. For example, Beck and McKeown's (1991) work reminded us that the "famous 'fourth-grade' slump can at least partially be explained by students' inability to make meaning of expository text" (p. 482). Comments from teachers serving on our advisory board echoed this finding. Thus, working with the content and structures of expository text became an essential element of our efforts.

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The Curriculum

How could our teacher in the opening vignette reinforce reading and writing skills within a social studies topic? The work in this classroom must be directed toward authentic learning, which means learning that has intrinsic contextual meaning. In OhioTrek, we developed five components:

• Interactive Web-based resources with icon-based environments, problem-solving exercises, video streaming, and engaging activities. (Click here to view the Cultural Groups in Ohio webpage.)
  
  
• Multiple videotaped "field trip" segments for classroom viewing, discussion, and activities. These engaging 7-10 minute segments help students visualize areas of interest not usually accessible to them, and thereby more directly absorb lesson concepts. Video segments are produced to encourage students to further investigate and explore topics of interest; this strongly supports literacy development through media. Video field trips are also topically related to Web-based materials and topics. (Click here to view the video trek about an Ohio bluegrass festival.)
  
  
• Printed material for students to further enhance all curriculum topics and resources. For example, in the "Comparing Cultural Groups" unit, the interview of an author from our state representing a particular cultural group personalizes learning for the students. (Click here to access the interview with Cynthia Rylant.)
  
  
• Teachers' guides with lesson plans to help instuctors in their expanding roles as guides, facilitators, and mentors. (Click here to view an example of a lesson plan and the corresponding materials that emphasize the comparison expository text structure.) Professional development helps regional educators fully use the OhioTrek resources provided, thereby ensuring comprehensive educational delivery to students. This component is designed to promote improved standards-based instructional planning, increase student involvement and motivation, and enhance attainment of learning objectives. This component also supports existing courses of study, and in particular supports the demands of learning objectives based on standards in reading, writing, and social studies.
  
  
• Six units of study that integrate social studies content with reading and writing skills. Topic areas for third graders include economics, production and consumption, and local government. Fourth graders concentrate on areas that include early Ohio history, comparing cultural groups in Ohio, and historical timelines and mapping. The units are listed in Table 1.
  

 

How might a classroom teacher duplicate this effort? Within the context of a science or social studies unit, websites, videotapes, and text materials might be identified and brought into the classroom. Lessons could be constructed using these materials and focusing on text structures and the use of graphic organizers.

Our project produced six social studies units. These units focused on issues others have talked about. Reinking, Labbo, and McKenna (2000) state that "digital communication has permanently altered the literacy landscape and that students and  teachers today need systematic experiences to cope with these changes and to prepare them for a future in which textual information will be overwhelmingly available in an extremely broad array of formats and contexts." Conceptualizations of literacy are changing every day. As the computer becomes more commonplace, it is "acknowledged as an integral part of all aspects of modern life at least since Time Magazine celebrated it in 1983 as 'man of the year' (Reinking, Labbo, & McKenna, 2000, p. 114). In this respect, technology has, by its presence, begun to alter how educators might construct activities, lessons, and spaces to maximize student movement along a continuum to a fully literate adulthood. The delivery mechanisms utilized in OhioTrek were selected as effective instructional media based on asynchronous timing (teachers and students may access the Web at any time convenient to them) and feasibility of access to student and teacher support materials.

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The Units

Our unit development was guided by the work of several researchers who have written about the importance of integrating expository text within the curriculum (i.e., Beck & McKeown, 1991; Englot-Mash, 1991; McGee & Richgels, 1985; Putnam, 1991; and Tompkins, 1998, 2001).

We found Putnam's (1991) work insightful as we selected particular nonfiction texts for each unit. Since the "goal [of] reading nonfiction with children is not to fill their heads with fragmented facts, but rather to build their reservoir of scripts and scenarios for how the world works so that they will have a rich supply of event representations which can be connected to new information as it is encountered in later years" (Putnam, 1991, p. 468), we realized that these materials needed to capture student interest as well as connect to their everyday lives. We kept this information in mind as the various text pieces that were employed in each of the six units were written. Work by Englot-Mash (1991), McGee & Richgels (1985), and Tompkins (1998, 2001) provided the framework when developing the text structure lessons.

McGee and Richgels' (1985) research reflects the goals and mission of this project. Their work revealed that "students who are knowledgeable about text structure have a good recall for well organized texts. Elementary teachers who use these strategies for teaching about structure in general and about [the] five common expository text structures in particular will be giving their students a head start in dealing successfully with content materials" (p. 747).

Work by Reinking, Labbo, and McKenna (2000) further demonstrates the need for infusing technology into educational practice. They assert that "the discussion of new technologies in education is increasingly focused not on how they can be assimilated into existing educational structures, but rather on how they demand a fundamental restructuring of the educational enterprise" (p. 115).

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Using Multimedia Materials

We decided to design the units around a standard set of activities that helped us infuse multimedia resources in our work with students. These activities included four specific design features that might be in one or more of the multimedia forms:

• a vocabulary skill lesson,
  
  
• a text structure lesson,
  
  
• one or more videotape treks, and
  
  
• a Web-based activity

The vocabulary lessons ask teachers to introduce specific content-related words pertinent to each unit. These lessons give students the opportunity to engage in collaborative activities using manipulatives that reinforced particular vocabulary strategies such as semantic mapping, group-list-label, word sorts, semantic feature analysis, and context clues. For example, in the unit on comparing cultural groups, we told teachers to first view the video trek for the purpose of listening for characteristics that pertain to each cultural group. The students watched a video with information about cultural groups in Ohio. Students then categorized a group of words by similar characteristics and provide a two- to three-sentence rationale for their organizational scheme. Students created a semantic web using the Inspiration software program (see Figure 3).

We felt it important to emphasize specific vocabulary terms using these various strategies since "vocabulary development is a part of language learning and nonfiction can offer excellent opportunities to pursue vocabulary development" (Duthie, 1994, p. 592).

The second design feature was lessons focused on text structures. We created one lesson in each unit on one of the five text structures: description, sequence, cause and effect, problem-solution, and comparison (McGee & Richgels, 1985; Tompkins, 2001). Each of the text structure lessons served as a teacher-directed mini-lesson. Working in small groups with the teacher, the students are asked to identify the specific text pattern and locate and highlight cue words that would aid them in the identification and comprehension of this particular text. Completing a graphic organizer assists them in writing their extended responses. Table 2 identifies the text structures and graphic organizers emphasized in each of the six units.

 

For example, in the unit "Cultural Groups in Ohio," we gave students two texts. One described the history of the Polish in Ohio, and the second was a newspaper article about the Amish. Students were asked to read the first article and identify information in four categories (see Figure 4).

On the second day, students read and analyze the newspaper article.  Again, the students completed the four category information chart (Figure 4). They then created a comparison chart (see Figure 5) as a way to analyze similarities and differences. The lesson ended with the students writing a compare and contrast essay based on the information gleaned from the graphic organizer.

These text structure lessons also employed a variety of genres in their examples. The use of newspaper articles, webpages, primary sources such as an ex-slave narrative, a biographical sketch of a popular children's author, and an interview transcript meant that teachers and students were dealing with a different text structure and genre of expository text simultaneously. We hoped the variety of both would model real-world uses of the expository reading skills being developed. We anticipated that students would recognize the need and usefulness of the lesson or assignment and that they would see the immediate application to tasks they engaged in outside the classroom. Searching the Web for a piece of information, reading the directions on a new video game, and reading information about important people in the past are activities that students can expect to recognize. Cognizant of the fact that students are expected to know how to complete written retellings and summaries after reading expository text by the end of their fourth-grade year, we embedded several of these types of activities within each unit.

The third design feature was video treks. The program attempts to provide video in two modes: traditional VCR tapes and Web-based excerpts. So how would a teacher use these or other video resources? We called them video treks and rather than being a stand-alone, these treks lasted 7 to 10 minutes. They were intentionally integrated as a scaffolding activity to assist students in building meaning with the piece of expository text. Other videos might be used to provide background information (Beck & McKeown, 1991) for students as a means for developing their ability to build meaning. We also incorporated cooperative learning situations in which students reviewed video mini-clips while using the Web-based activities. As a result of this project, we believe teachers should use short videos to set a context, provide background information, and engage students in a topic.

The fourth and final design feature is an interactive website. Internet activities offered us an engaging tool to draw students into tasks. These tasks reinforced and extended the reading and writing skills and social studies content knowledge. Historical inquiry is an important aspect of social studies. Teachers and other educators work with students to encourage them to challenge, through questioning, the standard beliefs about what we know and how we know it. Media links on the website afforded students the opportunity to experience this sense of inquiry and exploration. Through problem solving exercises and open-ended responses, students acquired higher-level thinking skills such as application, synthesis, and analysis. For example, one Web-based activity provided students with a range of websites on a region of origin for one of Ohio's cultural groups, Appalachia. (Click here for websites on Appalachia.)

The interactive website links to a map of Ohio. On the map are icons representing cultural groups in our state. The student clicks on an icon and an activity appears. In this activity, students investigate cultural practices and perspectives of members of the local Latino community. A 30-second streaming video clip brings an aspect of this cultural group to life. The text files feature links to local newspaper articles and terms in a word bank. The student clicks on these highlighted vocabulary words if he is unclear about a meaning. The definition then appears on the screen with further examples and illustrations of the meaning of the new word. The teacher now says "Here's the kind of material I can use to assist me in teaching as a way to enhance and strengthen my students' literacy learning." If this vision is to become true in literacy classrooms, then teachers must begin to incorporate the range of activities and experiences discussed.

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Conclusions

In the past, teachers struggled to find meaningful ways to integrate the use of technology into classroom instruction. While the struggle to find authentic uses for tools such as computers, video, and websites is far from over, this curriculum development project points to some ways we might use multimedia resources within the context of a series of key elements to improve informational literacy. These elements include: creating a literacy-rich learning environment, providing primary and secondary sources that includes nonfiction, informational texts, incorporating opportunities for students to apply, synthesize, and analyze information relating to content areas, increasing proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, and expository text through focused text structure lessons, using various technologies to extend students' learning experiences, and encouraging students to construct meaning, while reading and writing with expository texts, through the use of graphic organizers.

By providing numerous tools to help students analyze the structure of nonfiction texts and activities, students can manipulate words, inflect endings, and visualize terms. Multimedia-based curricula hold enormous promise.

Nonfiction text gives students windows into the world around them. Whether the embedded concepts are based in the universe of science or social studies, expository text helps students encounter and build understanding of important questions: Why am I here? Why did that happen? Who came before me? In this curriculum development project, social studies concepts served as the structure upon which we built this project.

Students are curious about these topics. They want to know about the community they live in and the objects and buildings they pass each day. Irvin, Lunstrum, Lynch-Brown, & Shepard (1995) said that "Enhancing the literacy abilities of students enables them to participate more fully in society by interacting more easily and willingly with others and by being able to communicate in more ways" (p. 3). This project pointed to this crucial link between literacy and social studies. We learned important things about the links between social studies concepts and nonfiction texts. This collaborative effort envisioned intersections between two distinct areas of classroom practice and forged from them a common purpose.

We hope this project can help increase the level of teacher comfort in using materials other than paper and pencil type activities, thereby supporting teachers as they move toward more authentic and constructivist classrooms. By foregrounding specific text structures in the minds of teachers and students, we hoped to provide avenues and opportunities for cross-curricular integration, simultaneously working within the evolving expectations of instructional technology, literacy, and social studies.

Whether they have access to our materials or not, classroom teachers can duplicate our efforts. By searching for nonfiction texts, video, and Web-based resources they can provide their students opportunities to construct meaning within a literacy-rich environment.  By working to infuse the strategies we identified (i.e., a vocabulary skill lesson, a text structure lesson, one or more videotreks, and a Web-based activity), classroom teachers can, in fact, begin to enhance students' skills with expository text skills.

Our work will continue. Data collection on student accomplishments and teacher observations of classroom instruction will give us points of comparison and insight into how materials such as these grow and develop in the hands of skilled teachers and educators. We hope this project will contribute to a growing understanding of how to expand literacy knowledge of students. How will we assist students in their quest to build their skills and abilities with expository text? Our success will be measured in the students' abilities to access vital sources of information in an ever changing and interconnected world.

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References

Beck, I.L., & McKeown, M.G. (1991). Research directions: Social studies texts are hard to understand: Mediating some of the difficulties. Language Arts, 68(6), 482-490.
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Duthie, C. (1994). Nonfiction: A genre study for the primary classroom. Language Arts, 71(8), 588-597.
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Englot-Mash, C. (1991). Tying together reading strategies. Journal of Reading, 35(2), 150-151.
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Irvine, J.L., Lunstrum, J.P., Lynch-Brown, C., & Shepard, M.F. (1995). Enhancing social studies through literacy strategies. Bulletin 91. National Council for the Social Studies, Washington D.C.
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Low Performing Outcome Data (1997-99). ODE Urban Schools Initiative. Ohio Department of Education.
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McGee, L.M., & Richgels, D.J. (1985). Teaching expository text structure to elementary students. The Reading Teacher, 38(8), 739-749.
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Moss, B., Leone, S., & Dipillo, M.L. (1997). Exploring the literature of fact: Linking reading and writing through information trade books. Language Arts 74(6) 418-429.
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Ohio Department of Education (1999). Ohio literacy initiative: A basic framework for literacy development. Columbus, OH.
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Ohio Department of Education. (2000). Subscale frequencies, fourth grade proficiency results.
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Putnam, L. (1991). Dramatizing nonfiction with emerging readers. Language Arts, 68(6), 463-469.
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Reinking, D., Labbo, L.D., & McKenna, M.C. (2000). From assimilation to accommodation: A developmental framework for integrating digital technologies into literacy research and instruction. Journal of Research in Reading, 23(2), 110-122.
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Tompkins, G.E. (1998). Language Arts Content and teaching strategies. (4th ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill.
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Tompkins, G.E. (2001). Literacy for the 21st century A balanced approach. (2nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall.
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Urban Schools Initiative (1999) Low performing outcome data. Ohio Department of Education. Unpublished raw data.
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About the Authors

To reflect the shared work and effort involved in this article, names are intentionally listed alphabetically.

Cynthia Bertelsen is an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate literacy courses. Her research interests involve literacy learning and young children.

John Fischer is an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University. His work involves urban education reform efforts, social studies teaching strategies in urban classrooms, and international civic education.