School-University Partnerships Through Online Pattern Books
Gerald H. Maring
Paula Boxie
Beau J. Wiseman
|
Abstract This article describes how partnerships can be formed when preservice teachers construct and use electronic pattern books for and with inservice teachers and their pupils. Discussion of how this activity has worked in one teacher-education course includes step-by-step recommendations to help undergraduate students review pattern books, form coauthoring teams, write their own pattern books and upload them to the World Wide Web, add teaching ideas for teachers, parents, and community members, and gain feedback from classroom teachers, parents, and other audiences. The article concludes by outlining characteristics of successful partnerships. Although this discussion focuses on partnerships among preservice and inservice teachers, the suggestions it offers could easily be adapted for cross-age tutoring between middle (or upper elementary) school students and children in the early grades. |
Related Postings from the Archives
|
Introduction
Pattern books (also called predictable books) are texts for children that make use of repeated phrases and language patterns. Children learn these patterns and then use prediction-confirmation strategies to “read” the words in the story. According to Bridge (1979), McCormick and Mason (1986), Yopp (1995), and Fields and Spangler (2000), using pattern books in beginning reading instruction helps pupils become successful. Pike, Compain, and Mumper (1997) note that predictable books foster fluency and facilitate the development of sight vocabulary; they also seem to aid young readers in their search for meaning in print and contribute to their motivation to read.
Bill Martin Jr's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is one of the most familiar pattern books. Countless beginning readers have been able to “read” this story after only brief introductory experiences provided by a teacher, parent, siblings, or even a peer. Other pattern books, with somewhat more complex language, highly engaging illustrations, and the power of humor (e.g., King Bidgood's in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood) have moved many beginning readers from overuse of contextual cues to a more balanced approach as they learn phonological skills. Pattern books can help beginning readers as they travel the road to becoming skilled readers who decode automatically.
In this article, we describe an assignment in a basic literacy methods course for undergraduates in elementary education in which the preservice teachers write pattern books (often in partnership with inservice teachers and their students), make them available on the World Wide Web, share them with inservice teachers and students, and gain feedback about their work. Our general purpose is to give guidance for constructing online pattern books, while demonstrating how technology as a tool for learning can be seamlessly woven into preservice teacher education. Our experience has shown that this activity offers effective ways to connect preservice teachers with inservice teachers and their pupils.
The ideas and practices offered in this article derive, theoretically, from a social-constructivist view of learning (Straw, 1991). Our efforts and recommendations do not completely endorse this learning theory, and we are not without concerns about its universal validity. However, it is clear to us that our uses of online pattern books are congruent with theories that explain how learners use their own knowledge and the socialized context they find themselves in to construct new knowledge and learning as they work together with others in and beyond the classroom. In terms of literacy theories, we saw that the projects we describe were carried out in ways that reading and writing become “marriage partners” -- to use a concept developed by Tierney and Pearson (1993) and Tierney and Shanahan (1991). Indeed, our preservice students became active learners, while the professor and teaching assistants facilitated opportunities for engagement in authentic and purposeful learning activities. In the overall context of these pattern books and partnerships, reading, writing, and technology became both tools for learning and subject matter for the preservice teachers to learn about.
First we describe how we introduce undergraduates to pattern books, which they locate and review in libraries or on the World Wide Web. Next, we explain how students can be grouped for instruction either in a college computer laboratory or in a regular classroom with a limited number of terminals. Then, we show how small groups of students construct their pattern books and link them to a course Web site. Examples of how to include tips for those who use the books with children -- whether teachers, parents, or tutors -- are offered. We conclude by discussing opportunities related to online sharing and feedback and by tying the entire process to ideas about successful partnerships in literacy education.
Although the processes, guidelines, and products in this article stem from our own teacher research at the college level (Olson, 1990), upper elementary and middle school language arts teachers could easily adapt and apply the general procedures we describe to their own classroom contexts. Children aged 10 to 12 would find it a fun and engaging assignment to create pattern books related to subject matter they were studying and to post their creations on the Internet. These student-authored pattern books would reinforce some of the content they had learned and could be shared with children in the primary grades.
Exploring Pattern Books
The Library of Congress cataloging system does not list pattern or predictable books as subject headings, and most libraries shelve these books within the general children's literature collection. Hence, we advise our students to start building their knowledge base by spending time with three or four pattern books recommended in their elementary reading methods texts (see, e.g., May, 1998, pp. 528-532). Other sources that can provide information about or lists of pattern books include the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and the Children's Picture Book Database housed at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA. Our students and the teachers with whom we have partnered have found our own Web site of pattern books created by past Washington State University elementary education majors to be interesting and helpful.
As students peruse various pattern books, they should read purposefully to acquaint themselves with the variety of ways pattern books use repetitive language and graphic cues.
Forming Coauthoring Teams
Ideally, this component of the literacy methods course is taught in a computer lab with numerous terminals networked to a common server. Students work as coauthors in pairs or small groups, and all have easy access to the technical tools they require. The college system administrator or technology coordinator can be asked to create password-protected areas on the network for each team of students to save and store their work, including drafts, Web pages, photos, and illustrations (see Maring, Wiseman, & Myers, 1997).
Of course, it is often difficult to schedule time in the computer lab. To address this problem in our case, we developed a classroom grouping and time-management design that accommodates a class of 36 to 45 students and a minimum of three computers connected to a department or college server. Students are allocated online workshop time for 25 minutes of the 75-minute twice weekly class sessions. The design is modeled after a rather common elementary school reading groups rotation pattern.
First, the preservice teachers form three large groups, within each of which they form three subgroups. The resulting nine groups name themselves (e.g., The Eagles, The Cougars), as often happens in elementary classrooms. Although all students will have something to offer in terms of creativity and knowledge of literacy strategies and pattern books, it can be helpful to encourage them to include in each group one or more members with relatively strong technical skills. In our course, we ask students to assign themselves to one of three “techie levels”:
We then ask students to ensure that each group includes someone from each techie level. In our experience, students automatically take advantage of their varying levels of technical skill and engage in cooperative learning. In short, when students are grouped heterogeneously, they scaffold one another in light of their zones of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978).
Once the groups are formed, the students rotate among three activities related to the online pattern book assignment, following the schedule shown in Table 1. “Computer Projects” includes building Web pages, e-mailing, uploading and editing content prepared at home, and so on. During this activity, subgroups of students work together on one of the classroom computers. In “Reading and Writing Workshop,” students read and discuss professional literature related to pattern books and literacy strategies, children's literature, curricular materials, and one another's drafts of pattern books, engaging in student-led conferencing. “Course Content” is time set aside for discussion with the instructor, minilectures, and question-and-answer sessions.
| Time Allotted | Activity | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Computer Project | Reading/Writing Workshop | Course Content | |
| 9:10 to 9:35 | Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 |
| 9:35 to 10:00 | Group 3 | Group 1 | Group 2 |
| 10:00 to 10:25 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 1 |
Writing a Pattern Book
The most important consideration for the coauthors as they begin composing is that they strive to write with natural syntax and, at the same time, at a level appropriate for their intended audience in terms of vocabulary and sentence complexity. Except for May's (1998) “Suggestions for Writing a Pattern Book,” we have not found specific guidelines to help in this matter, but our experiences have taught us that inservice teachers can usually quickly critique the wording preservice teachers draft for their pattern book pages. Hence, we encourage our students to share drafts of their pages with one or more classroom teachers.
Fry's (1977) readability graph might seem like a useful tool for checking the level of a pattern book's text; however, it cannot be used since its analyses require three samples of 100 words each. A more practical option for a quick check of readability is to make use of the readability statistics available with many word-processing packages. For example, with most versions of Microsoft Word, running the grammar check tool will generate a “readability dialogue box” that includes a Flesch-Kincaid readability level expressed as a grade equivalent. We used this feature on the text of Washington from Az to Zz, one of the pattern books created in our course. (To read it and other pattern books from the course, visit http://education.wsu.edu/literacy/320/index.html and select the title you wish to view.) Its reading difficulty level was indicated as 4.7 (when we added periods at the ends of the sentences) or 7.1 (when we ran the feature on the text exactly as it was written -- that is, without periods). Since Washington from Aa to Zz was a cooperative venture on the part of a coauthoring team of preservice teachers, the professor, a classroom teacher, and her first through third graders, it was not surprising that the children had no trouble reading it and found it a motivating tool for learning.
A second important consideration when students are creating their pattern books relates to the photos or illustrations that they use. Graphic elements increase children's enjoyment of the books and help engage them in reading. Besides ensuring that the photos and illustrations they use are appealing and of high quality, the preservice teachers should model the use of proper credit lines or acknowledgments. If they are using images that are the work of others, they should ensure that they have obtained appropriate copyright permission releases from the copyright holders, and they should acknowledge the source of the original work in the form specified in the permission document.
In our course, we have used two options for creation of the pattern books. In the first, the team of preservice teachers writes and illustrates the book, uploads it to the Internet, and shares it with inservice teachers and their pupils, friends and relatives, or even children who live in the local neighborhood. Figure 1 shows a page from a pattern book completed according to this first option.
Page coauthored by Kimberly Erickson, Kyle Manning, Eric Winner, and Rick Viall, and illustrated by Adam Crowell
The second option involves team writing the pattern book in conjunction with a classroom teacher and elementary school students. This option's benefits are twofold: first, it enables the preservice teachers to experience a more lengthy partnership with a teacher and students outside of the college classroom; second, it provides children an opportunity to share their writing and ideas with a broad audience through the World Wide Web.
To follow this option, either the course instructor or a student must first make contact with a classroom teacher who would like to join in the online partnership. For example, one of the authors of the Washington from Aa to Zz pattern book mentioned above contacted her mother, who was teaching a combination first to third grade class at a school several hundred miles distant from the college campus. The children created and provided the illustrations and decided on the text, which the preservice teachers edited and HTML tagged (see Figure 2 for a sample page). In another case, a team of preservice teachers collaborated with second-grade teacher and her class in a local school. The teacher, Marlys Johnson, had engaged her pupils in a “dinosaur dig” earlier in the school year. The preservice coauthoring team met with her to determine the content of the pattern book they would construct and place online. Johnson had made a video recording of the actual dig, and a graduate student specializing in literacy and technology used it to create a 13-second video clip to include. Pupils, parents, and community members used the pattern book's “comments and questions” link to give feedback to the preservice teachers, the professor, and the classroom teacher. The preservice teachers summarized and excerpted some of the e-mails they received and placed them on a “Feedback from the Field” page.
Note: This pattern book is available online (select “Washington State from Aa to Z” from the listing).
In our experience, this second option for creation of online pattern books leads to projects with three key ingredients: commitment, collaboration, and connectedness (Osguthorpe, Harris, Harris, & Black, 1995). Each member of the partnership -- whether instructor, classroom teacher, preservice teachers, or elementary school students -- is committed to sharing ideas, questions, and suggestions while the pages of the online product are being constructed. The use of e-mail promotes fast and specific communication among the partners. Literacy learning takes place in the classroom simultaneously and collaboratively. As the days and weeks of the project progress, each of the partners feels a sense of connectedness, of team membership, as they craft text and illustrations. Once projects are complete and online, all show pride in their work and in one another and showcase their team efforts by sharing their pattern books with family, friends, other students, and colleagues, locally and at a distance through the Internet.
Putting Pattern Books Online
Our students use Claris HomePage software to create the Web pages that form their pattern books. (Many other packages are available, including Adobe's PageMill and Microsoft's FrontPage.) The title page for each book (given the file name “index.html” for recognition by a Web browser and generally referred to in our course as “index pages”) provides the title, authors, and links to the book's content. For example, the index page for Washington State from Aa to Zz contains a link to a page for each student coauthor, a link to the pattern book itself (i.e., “Read Our Story!”), and links to other Web pages within the project (see Figure 3). Once the desired links and pages are established, they can be edited and modified without breaking their link to the pattern book's index page.
Note: This pattern book is available online (select “Washington State from Aa to Z” from the listing).
Besides the pages of the pattern book's story, which are also created with Claris HomePage, we recommend that author pages be included for each member of the team. On these pages, students, preservice teachers, and classroom teachers alike can include photographs of themselves and brief biographical information. (Note that if the final product is to be uploaded to the Internet, it is necessary for parents to give their consent for any photographs or information included about their children.) This helps increase a sense of ownership and pride in the project.
During the semesters our students created online pattern books we were using May's (1998) Reading as Communication and Cunningham's (1995) Phonics They Use as our texts. We required students to glean teaching tips related to their pattern books from these resources and to create and then link Web pages containing some of these practical ideas to each index page. We also required them to make and link additional pages entitled “Tips for Parents” and “Tips for Tutors.” Figure 4 shows a Web page that combines tips for parents and tutors.
Of course, for the pattern books to be shared beyond the classroom or university computer network, the files must be uploaded to a Web site. In our case, this was possible through our university's Internet presence. Many schools and school districts also have Web sites that can accommodate such projects, technical support staff to offer assistance, and information available to parents about these works in progress.
Getting Feedback
Our students invited families, friends and neighbors, classroom teachers, and school administrators to browse the pattern books they and their classmates had constructed. Their availability through our university Web site allowed this “cybersharing” to take place. The students subsequently received encouraging and helpful feedback via telephone and face-to-face conversations.
However, adding an e-mail link to one of the book's authors or to a central e-mail address significantly increases responses from the field. We devised a list of eight simple steps for adding this feedback feature with Claris Home Page. Adding an e-mail “Comments and Questions” link to each pattern book has become a most important component of the online pattern books project, because it enables users to offer feedback easily to the coauthors and facilitates communication among the children, preservice teachers, and classroom teachers who use the books as a basis for a cyberpartnership.
Our students value the feedback they receive through these links, often placing some of it on “Feedback from the Field” pages. For example, in the dinosaur dig project, the preservice coauthors of the online pattern book noted that the teacher, students, community members, and parents had reviewed the book and had e-mailed comments. After thanking them “very much for [their] time and energy,” they quoted comments from parents, including the following:
The time and effort you have put into this project is certainly well worth it. The program is easy to use and understand. It will be wonderful addition to the dinosaur dig unit....
This looks like a wonderful resource for these 2nd graders! It seems to have been well thought out and I think will be fun and interesting in their dinosaur studies....
Expanding the Model
Using technology in these ways has enabled us as instructors to weave technology as a tool for learning into one of our basic literacy methods courses. We were able to demonstrate use of technology as an integral part of teaching and learning in our course -- not simply as an add-on or “one more new topic.” Our students gained hands-on experience with technology as a tool for facilitating school-university partnerships. Our project provided opportunities for us and our students to procure feedback from the field.
Most of these outcomes could be experienced by upper elementary or middle school teachers, who can easily adapt the stages and steps from the university-school context described here. First, they should share online and printed pattern books with their pupils. Many will be familiar with the workings and structures of pattern books they remember as part of their own learning-to-read experiences. At least some will probably also have some experience making Web pages. Since the late 1990s, more and more upper elementary and middle school students in the United States and elsewhere have learned skills in using HTML editors, scanning images, creating links, and undertaking the other technical processes we have specified.
To create the book, either the teacher can provide a text which the children can then illustrate and turn into a Web document or, guided by the teacher, the children can try their hands at writing the text themselves. If the products are to be shared with children in lower grades, the upper grade teacher can partner with the primary grade teacher to decide on topics that focus on common subject matter themes. Topics that reinforce learning in content area subjects are good candidates for treatment in a pattern book.
Of course, teachers and students will find the whole process much easier if it can be facilitated by school or district technology support staff. Such personnel are now increasingly available at the building level, while many larger school districts are hiring or reassigning former teachers with advanced skills to serve as resources for clusters or regions. These regional resource people can help interested teachers, building-level staff, and participating pupils master the processes we have delineated.
Once newly created pattern books are placed online on building or district servers, their authors can use them in cross-age tutorials with children in the primary grades. Roller (1998, ch. 8 and 9) and Morrow and Walker (1997) offer inservice teachers as well as tutors and preservice teachers many helpful guidelines and ideas that can be applied to using online pattern books in the context of cross-age tutoring.
Building a Successful Partnership for Literacy Teaching and Learning
Of course, the partnerships that emerge in our course assignment involving the writing and use of pattern books are only one small example of the larger sorts of partnerships possible in teacher-preparation programs and in school reform efforts at the elementary, middle, and secondary level. Nevertheless, we recommend that the following characteristics of successful collaborations, adapted from Robinson and Darling-Hammond (1994) and Osguthorpe, Harris, Harris, and Black (1995) be kept in mind with any partnership endeavor, large or small:
References
Bridge, C.A. (1979). Predictable materials for beginning readers. Language Arts, 56, 503-507.
Back
Cunningham, P. (1995). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Back
Fields, M.V., & Spangler, K.L. (2000). Let's begin reading right: A developmentally developmental approach to beginning literacy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Back
Fry, E. (1977). Fry's readability graph: Clarifications, validity, and extension to level 17. Journal of Reading, 21, 242-252.
Back
Maring, G.H., Wiseman, B.J., & Myers, K.S. (1997). Using the World Wide Web to build learning communities: Writing for genuine purposes. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 41, 196-208.
Back (1st citation) | (2nd citation)
May, F.B. (1994). Reading as communication. New York: Merrill/Macmillan.
Back (1st citation) | (2nd citation) | (3rd citation)
McCormick, C., & Mason, J.M. (1986). Use of little books at home: A minimal intervention strategy that fosters early reading (Tech. Rep. No. 388). Urbana, IL: Center for the Study of Reading.
Back
Morrow, L.M., & Walker, B.J. (1997). The reading team: A handbook for volunteer tutors, K-3. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Back
Olson, M.W. (1990). Opening the door to classroom research. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Back
Osguthorpe, R.T., Harris, R.C., Harris, M.F., & Black. S. (1995). Partner schools: Centers for educational renewal. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Back (1st citation) | (2nd citation)
Pike, K., Compain, R., & Mumper, J. (1997). New connections: An integrated approach to literacy. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Back
Robinson, S.P., & Darling-Hammond, L. (1994). Change for collaboration and collaboration for change: Transforming teaching through school-university partnerships. In L. Darling-Hammond (Ed.), Professional development schools: Schools for developing a profession (pp. 203-219). New York: Teachers College Press.
Back
Roller, C.M. (1998). So...what's a tutor to do? Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Back
Straw, S.B. (1991). Challenging communication. In D. Bogdan & S.B. Straw (Eds.), Beyond communication. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Back
Tierney, R., & Pearson, P.D. (1983). Towards a composing model of reading. Language Arts, 60, 568-580.
Back
Tierney, R., & Shanahan, T. (1991). Research on the reading-writing relationship: Interaction, transaction, and outcomes. In R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P.D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Volume II (pp. 246-280). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Back
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Back
Yopp, H.K. (1995). Read-aloud books for developing phonemic awareness. Reading Teacher, 48, 538-542.
Back
Children's Literature Cited
Martin, B., Jr. (1983). Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Wood, A. (1985). King Bidgood's in the bathtub. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
About the Authors
Gerald Maring teaches undergraduate courses in content literacy and graduate courses in literacy education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Washington State University (Pullman, WA 99164, USA). He is a co-principal investigator for the Collaboration for Teacher Education Accountable to Children with High Needs/CO-TEACH project, which involves education, liberal arts, and sciences faculty and K-12 educators in 41 school districts and tribal schools across Washington state. His research interests include developing and evaluating the effectiveness of literacy strategies in the contexts of cyber-partnerships and of cyber-mentoring interactions involving pre- and inservice teachers, parents and community members, and pupils. He can be reached by e-mail at maring@wsu.edu.
Paula Boxie is an assistant professor of literacy education at Miami University (Department of Teacher Education, Oxford, OH 45056, USA), where she teaches courses in early childhood reading methods and technology. She spent 12 years teaching in elementary classrooms, including 2 years as a reading resource teacher. Her research interests center on early childhood literacy, technology and reading, and literacy assessment. She can be contacted by e-mail at boxiep@muohio.edu.
Beau Wiseman received his M.Ed degree in literacy education from Washington State University, where he worked extensively with preservice teachers and graduate students, helping them place their literacy strategies, lesson plans, and projects online, and enabling them to receive “feedback from the field” via the Internet. He now works for Intel at its Jones Farm Campus (2111 NE 25th Ave., Hillsboro, OR 97124, USA), where he can be reached by e-mail at beau.wiseman@intel.com.
Note: Work described in this article was funded in part by the following grants: Helmstetter et al., “Collaboration for Teacher Education Accountable to Children with High Needs/CO-TEACH” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1999-2004); Smith, “The Washington State Preservice Teacher Education Consortium for Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL)” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1999-2001); Maring, “Tech-enhanced On-line Literacy Strategies for Cyber-partnerships and Cyber-learning Buddy Projects” (Pullman, WA: Washington State University College of Education, Ken and Marlene Alhadeff Teachers of Teachers Award, 1999-2000).
To print this article, point and click your mouse anywhere on the article's text; then use your browser's print command.
Citation: Maring, G.H., Boxie, P., & Wiseman, B.J. (2000, November). School-university partnerships through online pattern books. Reading Online, 4(5). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/maring/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted November 2000
© 2000 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232