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New Literacies in Action This month, New Literacies in Action is by Maureen Baron, who details an innovative multimedia project using literature circles. Her account demonstrates how teaching with computer and print technologies furthers students' intellectual, personal, social, and communications growth, and fulfills multiple curricular goals in art, reading, writing, and visual and media literacy. Teachers in other parts of the world may see useful parallels to their own students in the diverse, innercity, second-grade learners in the Canadian classrooms Maureen describes. Ann Watts Pailliotet |
Literature Circles/Club de Lecture
Project Context
The English Montreal School Board is an urban school board in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. While the primary language of instruction is English, the school board also supports a strong French immersion program in which French is the primary language of instruction. The majority of the students in both the English and the French immersion programs speak English as their first language.
Because they are located in an urban center, many of our schools welcome students from socially and economically disadvantaged sections of the inner city. Many students begin school with low prereading and preliteracy skills, which affects their reading success for several years. Because of economic constraints, many do not have access to computers at home, and their experiences with technology are limited to in-school activities.
The province of Quebec has begun a process of curriculum reform that will have an impact on all aspects of teaching and learning for all members of the education community. Emphasis will shift from the acquisition of knowledge to learning how to learn and to integrate and apply knowledge. Teachers will be empowered to create learning contexts, develop integrated learning projects, and collaborate with their peers. Classroom instructional strategies will include cooperative learning and emphasis on multiple intelligences.
Literature Circles/Club de Lecture is a project designed to provide learning contexts that will address the computer technology and literacy needs of innercity students within the framework of Quebec's curriculum reform. Literature circles are an instructional strategy whereby students can share the reading experience and its associated applications: learning of content, acquisition of language and literacy skills, and development of social relationships and interactions. For this project, second-grade students (aged approximately 7 years) wrote book reviews, created book covers, and prepared audio texts for publication on the Literature Circles/Club de Lecture Web pages.
Participants
The school board's English language arts, French immersion, and educational technology consultants, along with the multimedia administrator, formed the project's support team of subject matter experts and trainers for the participating teachers. This support team contacted principals and provided information about the project. Each principal was asked to recruit a grade 2 teacher who had some technology skills, access to a networked computer in her or his classroom, and interest in participating in the project.
The project was implemented with two groups of three second-grade classes, and in both cases it was identical in terms of its objectives, procedures, methodologies, and expected results. One group of classes came from schools where English is the language of instruction; the second group came from French immersion schools, where students generally speak English as a first language but where French is the language of instruction. There were 32 students in each of the English classes and 25 students in each of the French.
Technology Resources
Availability of and access to computer technology in the schools of the English Montreal School Board varies: some have a computer lab that students may use once a week, while others have one or two computers in each classroom. The classes that participated in this project had at least one Internet-connected computer in the classroom, as well as access to a scanner, a digital camera, and a printer in the school.
Goals and Objectives
The project's primary objectives were
The new Quebec curriculum is divided into two areas: the “Program of Programs” is composed of cross-curricular competencies and eight areas of lifelong learning; the “Programs of Study” has streamlined the traditional school subjects into five domains of learning. (For a more detailed explanation of these areas of the curriculum and their interdependence, visit www2.qesn.meq.gouv.qc.ca/reform.) The Literature Circles project was embedded in the following curriculum areas:
| Program of Programs | Programs of Study | |
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Curricular competencies
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Lifelong learning
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Language arts
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Method
Preparing for the project. The teachers participated in a half-day training session during which they discussed the modalities of the project, created a time line, reviewed their knowledge of literature circles, and exchanged e-mail addresses. The English teachers and the French immersion teachers met separately, but the content of the meetings was identical. Both groups also spent one half-day at a bookstore choosing books (one per student in the class) at a range of readability levels normally found in a second-grade classroom. Books related to themes each teacher had preselected, including multiculturalism, animals, and the environment.
The teachers in the English and French classes created literature circles of three to four students each. The groups were heterogeneous in terms of students' literacy levels and skills and psychosocial developmental levels and skills. The project began in March, well into the second half of the school year, and all of the students had by this time had experience and training in working within cooperative learning groups.
Literature circles in action. Each classroom teacher introduced the project and modeled how a literature circle functioned. Students then selected the books they wanted to read from the box of new books and began to read independently. The classroom teacher prepared a question sheet to help students focus on elements of the book. Questions were drawn from the following list, with each teacher selecting those that best met the abilities and needs of the students in the class:
During the first week each child read his or her own book, and the literature circle meeting served as a beginning step in rolling out the project. In the second week's meeting, the circle began working on the task of selecting which book to review for the Web site. Using cooperative learning strategies, each circle member presented and read aloud from her or his individually chosen book. During each presentation, each group member assumed a role:
By the end of the second week, each child was familiar with each of the books being read in their literature circle, and the group voted on the one book they would review for the project Web site. Once a book had been selected for review, the members of the literature circle again took on roles. One student wrote and word-processed a review, based on the literature circle discussions of the book. Another student read this written text aloud to create an audio file for the Web site. One or two students drew an alternative cover for the book or a picture of a scene or character. These drawings were either scanned or photographed to create an image file for placement at the Web site. Finally, one student served as a director or aide, helping others in their tasks and reporting progress or problems to the teacher.
The audio, word-processed, and image files together formed the review of the book on the Web site. The students sent the files, as e-mail attachments, to the site Webmaster, who uploaded them to the site. Each class contributed between three and seven book reviews.
At each stage of the process, teachers conferred with each literature circle in their class, guiding the members and helping them focus on specific skills, tasks, and concepts. For example, one conference topic focused on media literacy, exploring the relationship between elements of the book cover (such as color, type style, icons, style of artwork) and its contents. Key questions included
The finished Club de Lecture/Literature Circles book reviews are hosted at the Web site of the English Montreal School Board, at www.emsb.qc.ca/literature, where the Web pages are divided into French and English subgroupings.
Outcomes and Summary
Our students developed and demonstrated many new and traditional literacy competencies. These included
Preparation of material for the Web site challenged the students' technology, communication, personal, and social competencies. The Web site itself accommodates this age group's different reading levels, language capacities, abilities, and learning styles. The project's content led the students toward an understanding of the role of the packaging of a product versus the content of a product -- in this case, the cover of a book versus its contents.
Throughout the project, students were reading, writing, and creating a variety of texts, and were listening, speaking, and communicating in different ways. Their discussions were catalysts to the application and development of their reading, writing, listening, and speaking abilities and skills. While the literature circle was local -- that is, in their classroom -- they understood the global audience of the Web site. The students experienced the link between their audience and what they read, wrote, drew, and said; the also understood the reason for the development of these skills.
About the Author
Maureen Baron is currently the multimedia administrator at the English Montreal School Board in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and teaches on-site and distance education courses on media and technology in the Faculty of Education of McGill University. She received her masters degree in educational technology from Concordia University. She was formerly an elementary teacher, and has served as a pedagogical and educational marketing consultant for the National Film Board of Canada. She is president of the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada, past-president of the Quebec Association for Applied Educational Technology, treasurer of the Association for Media Education in Quebec, and sits on the board of the Canadian Association for Media Education Organizations.
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Citation: Baron, M. (2000, August). New Literacies in Action: Circle de lecture“literature circles. Reading Online, 4(2). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/action/baron/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted August 2000
© 2000 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232