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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled
The Construction and Reconstruction of Two
Discourse Spaces in a Special Education

Classroom: A Sociolinguistic Examination

of Sharing Chair and Morning Message
presented by

Troy V. Mariage

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in Special Education

Major professor

Date April 25, 1996

MS U i: an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

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THE CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF TWO DISCOURSE SPACES
IN A SPECIAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC EXAMINATON
OF SHARING CHAIR AND MORNING MESSAGE

By

Troy Vaughn Mariage

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education
1996

ABSTRACT
THE CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF TWO DI SCOURSE
SPACES IN A SPECIAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC
EXAMINATION OF SHARING CHAIR AND MORNING MESSAGE
By

Troy V. Marriage

The purpose of this study was to investigate how one exemplary teacher and her
fourteen special edueation students socially constructed and reconstructed the literacy
events of Sharing Chair and Morning Message.

Methods of data collection reflected a qualitative/descriptive approach. The foeal
data sources for this study were the complete transcriptions of five Sharing Chair and five
Morning Message events that were videotaped in the spring of the 1992-1993 school year.
Other data sources included extensive fieldnotes, bi-weekly videotaping of all literacy
events, transcripts of two formal interviews with the teacher and each student, and two
informal assessments of students’ ability to create and edit a Morning Message story. The
data were triangulated and analyzed to determine (a) the participant structures that helped to
define the range and types of discourse in the two events, (b) the various types, patterns,
and functions of participants’ discourse moves, and (c) the range of literate actions that
were afforded in the two activities. The discourse spaces of the two activities were
compared to determine the potential for studying classroom events that are reflective of the
discourse modes of conversation and inquiry.

In both Sharing Chair and Morning Message, the roles of author and audience
member, with their unique rights, duties, and responsibilities, allowed for participants to be
differentially positioned in the discourse. These various discursive positionings, in turn,
required students to engage in different literate behaviors. The teacher played a vital role in
orchestrating the discourse in both literacy events. A particularly important set of discourse
moves by the teacher were those that maintained the involvement of individuals or the entire

group. These involvement moves functioned to realign the content and the social

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relationships of group members.

A comparison of the two literacy events suggested that each literacy event provided
a powerful bridge between students’ home-based ways of knowing and their inculcation
into the conventional knowledge of the larger community of writers. Sharing Chair
allowed students to tell their own stories and discuss them in conversations with peers.
Conversational strategies such as telling stories, actively listening, and building intertextual
links with others were allowed and privileged in this discourse space. Morning Message
engaged students in conversations around the entire writing process, including thinking
about one’s topic and audience, organizing ideas, drafting, and constantly giving attention
to editing and revising one’s text This study contributes to emerging research that
suggests that becoming literate in schools is related to one’s facility in developing a number
of school-based discourses (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990).

Cepyfight by
TROY VAUGHN MARIAGE
1996

 

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is difficult to communieate how grateful I am to my colleagues, friends, and
family. Without their support, humor, and encouragement, the exercise of writing a
dissertation would have been a lonely and transparent experience. .

Without my advisor and mentor, Carol Sue Englert, I recognize that the quality of
my professional life would be greatly diminished. Carol Sue’s dedication to apprenticing
doctoral eandidates in general, and myself specifieally, has reminded me that
communication is at the heart of leaming. Carol Sue has modeled that compassion can
stand comfortably beside tenacity of purpose. Beyond her apprenticeship in conducting the
highest quality educational research, it is Carol Sue’s laughter, humor, and our close
friendship that I will never be able to repay. Thank you.

I also want to acknowledge my committee members and members of the Michigan
State University community. With Carol Sue, these four faculty members represent at least
fourteen different classes at the Master’s or Doctoral level. It is largely through their
teaching that I have positioned myself as an edueational researcher in the field of special
education.

Taffy Raphael helped to remind myself that I was eapable. In many ways,
including introducing me to her colleagues across the country, Taffy subtly challenged me
to expect more of myself and the quality of my work. Her literacy courses and research
studies are exemplars of the type of research I hope to conduct in the future. Taffy’s

instructional research is always aimed at helping children and their teachers to become

better readers, writers, and professionals. Taffy continues to be the pulse and conduit for
innovative information from across the country and the world in our college. I admire her
professionalism and feel honored that she has spent so much time helping me to think more
broadly and critieally.

James Gavelek has had a profound influence on my thinking about teaching and
learning. His courses on Vygotsky, Social Cognition, and Language, Literacy, and
Learning have influenced every published piece of research that I have ever been involved
in writing. Rethinking research and teaching from a social constructivist perspective has
allowed our research team to push the entire field of special education to think about the
importance of language and other forms of semiotic mediation in leading cognitive
development More importantly, I see everyday from Jim the power in taking the extra
time to come to know others as people with rich experience and knowledge. I-Iis open door
policy of meeting him any day and at any time, in addition to his voraciousness in gathering
resources for all the students under his care, have reminded me that scholarship can be
intimately connected to the networks and communities that we create for others.

Douglas Campbell and Susan Florio-Ruane have introduced me to methodologies
and beliefs about research that have directly influenced the way I view the world. Doug’s
sociolinguistic and fieldwork classes have provided a forum for conducting an ethnography
and sociolinguistic analyses that were the foundation for my dissertation. Similarly, Susan
Florio-Ruane’s research in writing and discourse analysis classes have been instrumental in
furthering my understanding about the incredible power in the microanalysis of naturally
occurring talk. I am deeply indebted to these two individuals for other reasons. The
brilliance of their thinking stands just behind the quality of their personalities. It matters
deeply that doctoral eandidates ean feel comfort in talking to people who listen so carefully
and are committed to their learning. Again, these individuals demonstrate in their daily

lives that the “message is the massage.”

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I also am indebted to a wide-range of colleagues who have endured with me. These
names are far too numerous to mention, though I nwd to mention a few. My cohort
partners, Carol Crumbaugh, Garnet Hanger, Nancy Knapp, Lauren Pfeif f er, and Julie
Ricks have provided a network of friends that will last a lifetime. Our shared collective
experiences with each other have enriched me beyond mention. Thank you. I also need to
mention a number of colleagues that have worked with me on the Early Literacy Project
Spending four years together has developed friendships that will always be cherished.
Tanja Bisesi, Fenice Boyd, Arthur Garmon, Whitney Hosmer, Mary Rozendal, Kathi
Tarrant, and Joyce Urba have been constant companions and partners in our collective
learning. Also, a special thank you goes out to my colleague and golf partner, Ginny
Goatley.

A very special “thank you” is extended to the two teachers and their special
education students that allowed me to become part of their classrooms several times a week
for four years. You have taught me more about teaching and learning than I ever imagined
possible. You reminded me each day that enriched instruction for students with special
needs can eliminate the learned helplessness that so often plagues our challenged students.

I often find myself thinking about children and their families. I admit to wondering
what the lives of challenged children would be like in different sociocultural activity
settings. My parents, Tracy and Sandra Mariage, have and continue to be the barometers
for my effectiveness as an individual and a parent. My admiration for them is infinite. My
brother Wade, my brother Dane, and my sister Amber have made me feel important as their
big brother. I also have had the honor to become the son-in-law of two other parents,
Clarence and Helen All gaier. Their support and wisdom has made this journey much
easier.

Finally, my wife Mary and our son Tyler are deserving of a very special kind of
recognition. Mary’s gifts as a teacher have repeatedly told me that it is education in

vii

inclusive learning communities that can transform children’s lives. Mary has been the
closest friend and support person I have ever known. Her humor, flexibility, and
openness have given me the permission and courage to create. Our new son, Tyler, has

already helped remind me of more important things. He is a very special little boy.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................. xiii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................ xiv
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................ 9
Theoretical - Perspective ............................................................................... 9
Sociocultural Theory ....................................................................... 10
Assisting Development in Classroom Events ........................................... 15
Implieations of a Sociocultural Framework in the Study of Literacy Events ........ 25
Traditional Modes of Discourse in Schools ...................................................... 27
Framing Discourse Possibilities: Modes of Dialogue in Classrooms ......................... 30
Selected Review of Sociolinguistic Studies ...................................................... 4O
Aligning Academic Task and Participation Status through Discourse ................ 41
Summary and Reflections ................................................................. 48
The Santa Barbara Discourse Group ..................................................... 50
Summary .................................................................................... 55
CHAPTER3
METHODS ........................................................................................... 58
The Setting ........................................................................................... 59
Rationale for Site Selection and Studying an Exemplary Teacher .................... 60
Program Context: Principles of the Early Literacy Project ............................ 62
The Early Literacy Project Curriculum ................................................... 69
School Context ............................................................................. 70
Classroom Context ......................................................................... 73
Participants ........................................................................................... 76

Teacher ...................................................................................... 76

Students ..................................................................................... 79
Sources of Data ...................................................................................... 82
Analysis ............................................................................................. 103

Analysis of Transcript Data .............................................................. 106
CHAPTER4
THE DISCOURSE SPACE OF SHARING CHAIR ......................................... 116
Constructing a Discourse Space: Indexing Functions and Phases of Activity ............. 116
Creating Possibilities for Academic Work: Participation Structures ........................ 117

Rights and Duties of Student Author ................................................... 118

Rights and Duties of Student Audience ................................................ 124

Rights, Duties, and Responsibilities of the Teacher .................................. 127
Questioning and Commenting on Authors’ Stories ............................................ 137
The Range of Topics and Uses of Sharing Chair .............................................. 144

Using the Discourse Space of Sharing Chair .......................................... 144

Summary ................................................................................... 158
Educational Affordances in the Sharing Chair Discourse Space ............................. 159

Verbal Involvement Across the Five Rounds of Sharing Chair ..................... 159

The Storied and Intertextual Nature of Conversation ................................. 161

Role Matters: Differential Discursive Positioning .................................... 171

Author as Positioned ..................................................................... 175

Author as Positioner ...................................................................... 178

Author as Listener ........................................................................ 181
Summary ............................................................................................ 185

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CHAPTER 5

THE DISCOURSE SPACE OF MORNING MESSAGE .................................... 186

Constructing a Discourse Space: Indexing Functions and Phases of Activity ............. 186

Creating Possibilities for Academic Work: Participant Structures ........................... 187
Rights and Duties of the Student Author ............................................... 188
Rights and Duties of the Audience Members .......................................... 197

The Teacher’s Discursive Moves in Morning Message ....................................... 202
Instructional Moves ....................................................................... 204
Literacy Content Moves .................................................................. 208
Management Moves ...................................................................... 209
Conversational Involvement and Participation ........................................ 211

Literacy Affordances in Morning Message ..................................................... 229
Skills and Strategies in the Writing Process ................................ . ........... 23 0
Intemalization and Transfer of Social Dialogues to Independent Writing .......... 256
Editing/Revising Task and Independent Writing: Three Cases ..................... 262

Summary ............................................................................................ 273

CHAPTER6

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...................................................... 275

Summary and Discussion ......................................................................... 275

Theory and Practice ................................................................................ 279
Theory ...................................................................................... 279
Educational Practice ...................................................................... 285

Significance, Limitations, and Future Directions ........................................... .292

APPENDIXA

DESCRIPTION OF EARLY LITERACY PROJECT CURRICULAR

ACTIVITIES ....................................................................................... 297

APPENDIX B

TEACHER INTERVIEWS ....................................................................... 304

APPENDIX C

STUDENT INTERVIEWS ....................................................................... 306
APPENDIX D

DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES OF TRISHA’S DISCOURSE MOVES IN
MORNING MESSAGE .......................................................................... 310
LIST OF REFERENCES ......................................................................... 327

xii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Student Information ............................................................... 80
Table 2 Sample Videotape Catalogue ..................................................... 89
Table3 Angie’s Videotape Catalogue .................................................... 90
Table4 Students’ Group Rankings of Literacy Events ............................... 101
Table 5 Distribution of High and Low Rankings of Literacy Events ................ 101
Table 6 Trisha’s Rating of Literacy Events ............................................. 102
Table 7 Verbal Participation in Sharing Chair .......................................... 152
Table 8 Examples of Audience Uptake of Events in Angie’s Journal ............... 155
Table 9 Distribution of Comments, Stories, and Questions in Role of Audience
Member .................................................................. 165
Table 10 Author’s Verbal Participation Across Five Sharing Chairs ................. 174
Table 11 - Rank-Order of Editing Changes and Level of Verbal Participation in
Morning Message ....................................................... 259

xiii

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15

Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 20
Figure 21

LIST OF FIGURES

The Vygotsky Space .............................................................. 14
Modes of Dialogue in Schools ................................................... 32
Trisha’s Classroom ............................................................... 75
Trisha’s Daily Schedule .......................................................... 77
Morning Message Editing/Revising Measure ................................. 97
Student Rating Scale of Literacy Events ...................................... 100
Transcript Conventions ......................................................... 107
Sample Discourse Profile ....................................................... 108
Scoring Form for Editing Transfer Measure .................................. 113
Sample of Tracey’s Journal Entry ............................................. 141
Topics and Uses of Sharing Chair ............................................. 146
- The Intertextual Building of Story in Sharing Chair ......................... 169
Trisha’s Discourse Moves in Morning Message ............................. 203
The Anatomy of Two Revoicing Moves in Morning Message ............. 218
An Example of Trisha’s Seaffolding in the Teaching of Writing
Conventions ...................................................................... 238
April 8 Morning Message ....................................................... 244
Hannah’s Independently Edited Morning Message .......................... 264
Danny’s Independently Edited Morning Message ........................... 265
Ray’s Independently Edited Morning Message .............................. 268
Hannah’s Independent Writing of a Morning Message ..................... 270
Ray’s Independent Writing of a Morning Message .......................... 272

xiv

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Rationale for the Study

This study examines the nexus between teacher, student, and activity, especially the
role that discourse plays in simultaneously creating the social conditions in which meaning
is constructed and as a primary tool for thinking. Teachers and students socially construct
and reconstruct literacy events differently, including their generic features, the primary
modes of discourse, the participant structure, and the discourse moves required to
accomplish the cognitive and social goals of the event in that particular community. Two
classroom events, Sharing Chair and Morning Message, were examined to understand how
these social constructions influenced the ways in which members of a special edueation
classroom community came to value, feel, believe, act, and learn together.

Recent research that examines the socially constructed nature of literacy events
proposes that a central tenet of this perspective is the recognition that a foundational
research question to ask in instructional research is “what counts” as literacy learning in
situated literacy events from the different participants’ perspectives (Heap, 1989).
Specifieally, it is no longer tenable to assume that a particular instructional event has similar
outcomes, goals, and purposes across teachers and classrooms (Anderson, Raphael,
Englert, & Stevens, 1991; Myers, 1992). Teachers and students construct and reconstruct
literacy events moment-to-moment and over time, resulting in different opportunities to
learn, opportunities to participate in a range of literate behaviors, and opportunities to
develop a variety of ways of knowing, valuing, and talking (Santa Barbara Discourse
Group, 1992b). Studying these constructions and reconstructions through discourse relies
upon the methodologieal tools of ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics that are best
suited to describing these complex interrelations.

Several important lines of research have begun to focus on how exemplary teachers

1

2

create discourse spaces that allow for rich learning in a variety of subjects (O’Connor &
Michaels, 1993; Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b). Specific to each of these lines of
research is the focus on how participant structures, the various rights, duties, roles and
responsibilities constructed for speakers and hearers are developed to allow the teacher and
her students to align social and cognitive participation (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993). To
begin to understand the edueational possibilities or affordances in a particular literacy event,
researchers must examine how the participant structure creates or discourages particular
types of literate and social behavior (Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b).

Two features of this study attempt to extend the literatures on the social construction
and reconstruction of literacy events. First, the prior research on participant structures and
their relationship to literacy learning have been examined in activities that encourage
instructional discourse (e.g., whole group discussion), but not in literacy events with
alternative discourse goals such as inquiry, conversation, or debate (Burbules, 1993).
Describing exemplary teachers’ actions in a wider range of literacy events can help to build,
on a case-by-ease basis, the features of alternative discourse spaces that privilege ways of
knowing, valuing, and interacting that are often absent or limited in schools. Second, there
have been virtually no interactional sociolinguistic studies of highly effective literacy
teachers in special education classrooms. With their typically smaller class sizes, diversity
in learning abilities, and the historieal focus on individualized instruction, the study of
innovative curricula is especially important in these unique classrooms.

Theoretieal Framework

To understand and describe both the relatively stable (i.e., generic) and the
moment-to-moment features of literacy events over time it was necessary to use theoretieal
and methodologieal perspectives that emphasized the role of discourse in socially
constructing and reconstructing the literacy events of Sharing Chair and Morning

Messagel. One such theoretical perspective, the sociocultural perspective, is grounded in

3

the belief that it is semiotic (i.e., sign) mediation that is at the heart of the uniquely human
higher order cognitive processes. The sociocultural perspective is informed by the work of
Vygotsky (1978, 1988) and others (Moll & Greenberg, 1991; Wertsch; 1991). Four
assumptions that guide the sociocultural perspective of learning and development are that
(1) it is social interaction with others that leads to the uniquely human higher psychological
functions (Bruner, 1991b; M011, 1991; Wertsch, 1985, 1991); (2) language learned in these
social interactions mediates experience and transforms mental functioning (Bakhtin, 1986;
Vygotsky, 1988; Wertsch & Rogoff, 1984); (3) learning proceeds from the
interpsychological plane (between individuals) to the intrapsychological (within the
individual) plane with the assistance of more knowledgeable members of the culture
(Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1988; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976); and (4) zones of
proximal development are created and situated in sociocultural activity settings, including
the activities that represent the formal school curriculum (Rogoff, 1990; Tharp &
Gallimore, 1988; Wertsch, 1991). These assumptions will be elaborated in Chapter 2.
Particularly important in this perspective is the role of language in mediating and
transforming experience (Wertsch, 1991). In schools, it is largely in cun'icular activities
that this mediation between individuals takes place, demanding that researchers study how
the instructional event and the quality of assistance provided in these social interactions
mediate experience and result in different types of learning (e. g., teacher’s use of
discourse, sign systems available, opportunities for students to move towards self -
regulation). This study of semiotic mediation, especially discourse, is supported by the
philosophieal orientation of interactional sociolinguistics. Unlike process-product analyses

 

1The term Morning Message is the nameusod by students and teachers on the Early Literacy Project.
However,this termisnotrneenttobeconfusodwiththemorecornmonuseoftheterm,thatofputtinga
messageontheboardforstudentstorespondtowhentheyentertheclmsroominthemoming. InEarly
Literacy Project Classrooms, thetermMorning Message refers toaliter'acy event thatinvolved the group
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of classroom discourse that create predefined eategories that are believed to correlate with
student achievement, usually on a standardized measure of assessment, sociolinguists
study language in the context of its use (Florio-Ruane, 1987). Sociolinguistic analyses
take an ethnographic perspective to examine “everyday life in ordinary places where pe0ple
gather to live and work” (Florio-Ruane, 1987, pp. 186). As a speech community,
classroom communication becomes important in understanding how students learn the
often implicit rules for participating in the classroom, and how social interactions in the
speech event mediate learning. It is this study of social interaction in different speech
communities and speech events (e. g., literacy events) that makes up a classroom
curriculum that provides the bridge to a sociocultural theory of human learning.
Researchers must understand how different forms of literacy instruction develop or alter the
interpretative systems of students, or instructional researchers will continue to miss a
critical analysis of a program’s purported effectiveness.

For example, O’Connor and Michaels (1993) recognized a recurrent discourse
move used by two exemplary teachers, revoicing, that functioned to give authorship to a
student’s idea while simultaneously opening it to questioning, brought children’s ideas
back into the discussion, and gave authors the right to choose to defend or not to defend
their idea, allowing them to control their own level of social engagement. This one
discourse move seemed to allow the teacher to align social and cognitive participation by
creating a “valence” for the nature of discussions in these teachers’ classrooms. The
revoicing move functioned to discursively position students to participate in ways that were
dramatieally different than the typieal teacher—controlled discourse that dominates most
classroom talk.

Tannen (1989), in her study of naturally-occurring conversation, noted the use of
three recurring moves that functioned to heighten conversational involvement: using

dialogue, imagery, and repetition. These involvement strategies, though not discussed in

5

edueational discourse, may provide particulariy important lenses for thinking about the
construction and reconstruction of literacy events through talk, especially those activities
that have discourse modes that differ from discourse as instruction (i.e., conversation,
inquiry, debate).

Specifically, the literacy event of Sharing Chair was believed to engage students in
what Burbules (1993) called discourse as conversation, whereas the literacy event of
Morning Message was believed to be representative of discourse as inquiry. In order to
conceptualize both the moment-to-moment and historieal construction of the respective
activities, a sociocultural and sociolinguistic perspective was necessary.

Importantly, it is not only language, but entire ways of knowing and ways of
using literate actions that are socially constructed in literacy events as teachers and students
assist one another’s development (Chang-Wells & Wells, 1993). Barnes (1992)
characterizes the central role of student participation in discourse as being transformative,
rather than merely adding to some stcclqaile of words. In this sense, though initially
students actions are inherently social as they borrow from the language using practices of
more knowledgeable others, these voices come into contact with other voices, transforming
their experience. These transformations are “what is meant by saying that we can treat
learning as equivalent to changing the interpretative systems by which events are
perceived” (Barnes, 1992, pp. 23). Understanding and describing how teachers create
different social contexts with their unique interpretative systems (i.e., including ways of
knowing and speaking), both moment-to-moment and over time, is at the heart of
understanding the interface between sociocultural activities and learning.

The process of moving from social to intrapsychologieal functioning places a
premium on the importance of more knowledgeable others, both teachers and peers, in

leading cognitive development and transforming experience.

6

The Nature of the Proposed Research

Recent theory and research conceptualized from a sociocultural perspective has
focused on the centrality of classroom discourse as a primary mediational tool in education.
At the same time, there is renewed interest in how literacy events afford different
edueational possibilities in discourse spaces where the teacher and children construct and
reconstruct the activity and the classroom community (Bloome, 1986). The shift from
viewing literacy processes as a series of skills and strategies to be learned to viewing them
as inherently social processes involving composing, responding, and comprehending for
real purposes, forces researchers to understand how various classroom activities create
communieative contexts that allow diverse learners to engage in rich ways of knowing
literacy. Curriculum is a mind altering device; it is largely through participation in
classroom events that determine “what counts” as learning in various subject matters
(Eisner, 1985).

In special education, ways of knowing have often reflected an impoverished view
of literacy: reducing complex tasks into a series of subskills removed from any meaningful
context and purpose (Allington &McGill-Franzen, 1989). It has been well documented that
special education and low achieving students receive a different edueation from their more
able peers (O’Sullivan, Yssledyke, Christenson, & Thurlow, 1990), with the legacy of
“slow it down and make it concrete” limiting access to the rich ways of interacting with and
through text (Allington, 1992).

The purpose of this study was to examine two literacy events that were believed to
represent instruction that was reflective of a sociocultural perspective emphasizing four
principles: (1) that activities are meaningful and purposeful to students (e.g., real
audiences and purposes, opportunities to publish ideas), (2) that activities are responsive to
all students by focusing on socially mediated action, (3) that activities allowed students to

move from external, socially-mediated action to self -regulated use of skills, strategies, and

 

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7

ways of knowing, and (4) that activities helped to create an inclusive learning community
where students participated with and through the texts of others. This study examined how
these two events seemed to afford different forms of literate actions and behaviors on the
part of one teacher and her fourteen special education students as they constructed the
activities through talk.
Research ngtions

In order to gain insight and perspective into the foeal research question, this study
examined a main question and several sub-questions:
Foeal Question: (1) How does one exemplary teacher and her students socially-construct
and reconstruct the two literacy events of Sharing Chair and Morning Message?

(a) What are the participation structures in the two activities?

(b) How do rights, duties, roles, and responsibilities of participants create
opportunities to be discursively positioned?

(c) What are the range and types of discourse moves used by the teacher
and her students in the two literacy events?

(d) How do different individual students participate in the two literacy
events?

((1) What types of literate behavior do students employ by participating
in the two activities? (i.e., What are the edueational possibilities or
affordances in the activities?)
Methods
The nature of the research questions guiding this study required that data collection
and methods of analysis follow a descriptive/qualitative tradition that combined the use of
ethnographic and sociolinguistic analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982; Cazden, 1988; Florio-
Ruane, 1987; Green, 1983). Hymes (1974) describes this approach as interactional
sociolinguistics. Data sources for this study included: (a) transcripts of five videotapes
each of Sharing Chair and Morning Message events that occurred during the spring of the

school year (i.e., from March to May); (b) students’ journals that were the focal source of

8

reading in the Sharing Chair; (c) Morning Message stories associated with the five
videotaped lessons; (d) twice weekly observations and fieldnotes as an observer/participant
and participant/observer in the classroom for two years; (c) two formal interviews of the
teacher in the classroom; (f) one formal interview of each of the fourteen special edueation
students and one interview asking each child to explain the purpose and procedures of '
Morning Message; and (g) two transfer measures assessing each child’s ability to create
and edit a Morning Message story.

The site for this third/fourth grade special education classroom was in a mid-size
city in the Midwest. The school was ethnically diverse, with roughly 40% of the
population coming from minority homes (i.e., 20% African-American, 15% Mexican-
Ameriean, 5% Asian). The teacher, Trisha, was chosen to participate in this study for
several reasons. Frrst, the author acted as the research liaison in Trisha’s room as she
participated in an innovative literacy program known as the Early Literacy Project (Englert,
Palincsar, Raphael, and Gavelek, 1991) across two years. Second, Trisha’s effectiveness,
as indieated by both standardized and informal reading/writing assessment measures,
suggested that her students were among the highest gainers in a pool of ten Early Literacy
Project teachers. Third, Trisha was recognized among project members as being
particularly effective in carrying out the two activities, Sharing Chair and Morning
Message, that were the focus of this study. This study examined how Trisha created these
discourse spaces with her students by examining five Sharing Chair and five Morning
Message episodes over a three month period.

This dissertation is divided into the following sections. The research literature and
methods and analysis of this study are discussed in Chapters Two and Three, respectively.
The findings of the study are discussed in Chapters Four and Five. The dissertation
concludes with a discussion of the findings of the study, implications for theory and

practice, its limitations, and future directions for this type of research in Chapter Six.

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter outlines a rationale and argument for the sociolinguistic study of
instructional events (e.g., Sharing Chair and Morning Message) that are representative of
the discourse modes of conversation and inquiry (Burbules, 1993). In the first part of the
chapter, it is suggested that in the complementary relationship between sociocultural and
language-based theories of learning lies a critical foundation for the study of instructiorml
events in schools. As evidence of this complementary nature, three constructs for studying
instructional events that have their roots in sociocultural theory, language-based theory, and
sociocultural theory/sociolinguistics, respectively, are outlined. Taken together, these
constructs, activity settings (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Gallimore, Goldenberg, &
Weisner, 1992), curriculum genres (Christie, 1991), and discourse spaces (Michaels &
O’Connor, 1990), highlight some of the key factors that influence the quality of discourse
as teachers and students create meaning with one another. The third part of the chapter
briefly examines traditional discourse in classrooms and then argues that the study of
alternative instructional events would benefit from an understanding of the importance of
the dialogieal relationship and the primary modes of discourse tint are being used to
construct meaning (Burbules, 1993). The final section of the chapter focuses on several
research groups that are beginning to study specific classroom events from a sociolinguistic
perspective. Research studies by O’Connor and Michaels (1993) and the work of the Santa
Barbara Discourse Group (1992a, 1992b, 1992c) are discussed. The chapter concludes by
summarizing the current research in this area and suggesting that the this study extends this
examination in several key ways.

Theoretieal Perspective
At no other time in recent memory has there been as much interest and importance

placed upon understanding the link between language and learning in formal (i.e., school)

10

and informal (i.e., home, community) activity settings (Gallimore, Goldenberg, &
Weisner, 1992; Wells, 1993, 1994). The complementary nature of sociocultural theory
represented by the writings of Vygotsky (1978) and language-based theories of learning
such as those outlined by Halliday (1993) and others (Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Lemke,
1989a) have thrust the study of language and learning into the consciousness of researchers
across the nation:

It [language-education] is a topic that is of particular educational

importance at this time when, fired by the symbolic signifieance of a

new century, reformers plan major changes in the content of the school

curriculum and in the manner in which it is to be enacted. For curricular

reform is very much a matter of social semiotics and whether explicitly

recognized or not, any particular policy proposal is necessarily based on

assumptions about the relationship between language and leaming. In

discussing plans for change, therefore, it behooves those of us who

believe language to have a central and unique role in leaming--both in

school and out--to make our beliefs clear and explicit and to provide

warrant for them that is based not just on the evidence of good practice

but also in a coherent body of theory and research. (Wells, 1994, pp. 41)
As these fields of inquiry have come into contact with one another, they have served to
illuminate one another, creating a more robust theory for understanding the link between
language, learning, and activity. A brief overview of the f undarnental assumptions
undergirding the sociocultural theory is undertaken below. This is followed by a
discussion of the importance of studying instructional events as sites for assessing the
quality of assistance.
Sociocultural 1113941

For Vygotsky (1978) and others (Moll & Greenberg, 1991; Wertsch, 1991), the
sociocultural theory of learning and development is undergirded by four overlapping
assumptions: (1) it is through social interaction with others that higher psychological
functions are formed (Bruffee, 1984; Bruner, 1991b); (2) it is through language and other
semiotic tools learned in these social interactions that higher psychologieal functions

mediate experience and transform mental functioning (Wertsch & Rogof f , 1984); (3)

ll

learning proceeds from the interpsychologieal plane (between individuals) to the
intrapsychologieal (within individual) plane with the assistance of more knowledgeable
members of culture (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1988; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976); and
(4) zones of proximal development are created and situated in both informal (e.g., home,
community) and formal (e. g., school) sociocultural activity settings (Gallimore,
Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1992).

BMW Vygotsky?» 06mm
question was to ask "How ean individual response emerge from the forms of collective
life?" (Wertsch, 1985, pp. 59). Vygotsky ( 1988) characterized mental development as a
social process due to the belief that all higher order mental functions are a result of sign-
mediated action--language forms that have been constructed sociohistorieally across
cultures and over time. Vygotsky (1978) saw that language is suffused with meanings
from the past and is only imported through social interactions with others in one's culture.
Individual development, therefore, is an inherently social, dialogic enterprise that is
constructed as individuals participate in their unique sociocultural activity settings with
other members (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988).

Individual psychologieal functioning, then, is believed to be the product of ”the
aggregate of internalized social relations that have become functions for the individual and
forms of the individual's structure” (Vygotsky, cited in Wertsch, 1991, pp. 58). This
belief underlies Vygotsky's "General Genetic Law of Cultural Development" that suggests
that:

Any function in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on

two planes. First it appears on the social plane, and then on the

psychological plane. First it appears between people as an

interpsychological category, and then within the child as an

intrapsychologieal category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary

attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts and the development

of volition. We may consider this position as a law in the full sense of the

word, but it goes without saying that internalization transforms the
process itself and changes its structure and functions. Social relations

12

among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their
relationships. (cited in Wertsch, 1985. PP. 60-61)

Clear in this quote is the fact that internalization is not a mapping of existing reality unto a
passive neurology, but the natrue of social interaction has a powerful impact on the
resulting intrapsychologieal functioning.

Bakhtin (1986) supports and extends Vygotsky's belief that all higher
psychologieal processes are inherently social processes, and suggests that ”there is no such
thing as an isolated utterance”; speech is always ”half someone else's." But it is not only
that we "borrow" a language from those who precede us, but the very types of language
used are inextrieably tied to the communicative and historical contexts that lead to its use, in
speech genres-~"the relatively stable, typieal forms of construction of the whole" (Bakhtin,
cited in Wertsch, 1991). The production of any utterance entails the invoeation of a speech
genre: Speaking is not a random event

Other-regulation to self-regulation. If speech ”unites the cognitive and social"
(Cazden, 1988), then Vygotsky (1988) provides a theory of how social speech is
internalized to become self -regulated action. Portes (1985) refers to the Vygotskian
perspective as a theory of verbal regulation, emphasizing the privileged role of speech as
playing the mediating role between social interaction and higher psychological functioning.

For Vygotsky (1978), the movement of higher mental functions, like
comprehending and composing, from an external, social stage to psychological mental
functioning is explained semiotieally through the genetic movement from social speech to
private speech and finally as inner speech. This transference is transformative; even when
an individual imports or ventriloquates (Bakhtin, 1986) another's speech to guide their
action (e. g., a young child asked to predict what a story is about by looking at the title and
illustrations on a cover of a book before they have internalized this behavior), this speech
remains social and not self-regulatory (inner speech).

13

Two researchers, Rom Harte (1984) and James Gavelek (1990), have developed
and adapted, respectively, what they term the "Vygotsky Space" (see Figure 1) to represent
the appropriation and transformation process. The four-quadrant figure, with horizontal
and vertieal axes representing external, social dimensions (Public, Social) and internal,
private dimensions (Private, Individual), is used to represent the theorized movement
towards transformation and publieation of internalization through the appropriation of
social signs in social interactions (e.g., Public, Social). The transformation of these social
signs that come into contact and interanimate with previous experiences/voices are made
visible through their publication, a process of trying out newly formed social processes
(e. g., language, problem solving, hitting a ball); they become conventionalized ways of
being in the world. Critieal to this model is its recursion over time. The theorized
movement towards transformation and publication evolves and changes throughout one's
life. Importantly, it is not only word meanings that become internalized and transformed,
but entire social processes such as solving math problems or regulating one’s writing
behavior through the use of brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and editing one's paper.

Importantly, Vygotsky (1978) and others (Rogoff, 1990; Rogoff & Wertsch, 1984)
remind us that internalization is not a one-way process from more knowledgeable other to
less knowledgeable member. Intemalization, and thus learning, is an inherently social and
interactive process. Rogof f (1990) convincingly showed that even very young children
influence the types of interactions they receive from adults. Reciprocity, or what
sociolinguists call reflexivity, is the norm for social interaction. Wertsch (1985) supports
this view of internalization in summarin'ng Vygotsky's theory of internalization: (a)
internalization is not a process of copying external reality onto a preexisting internal plane;
rather, it is a process wherein an internal plane of consciousness is formed; (b) the external
reality at issue is a social interactional one; (c) the specific mechanism at issue is the

mastery of external sign forms; and (d) the intemal plane of consciousness takes on a

14

Public

Convenflonaflzaflon

 

1” ‘~\
>
5 3 IV 1 \. 7S
= I ’. 3
C 1
Social— 2 I f g — Individual
3 r t D
a a " z
n- . 111 ll . 3

 

Transformation

Private

Figure 1 The Vygotsky Space

15

”quasi-social" nature because of its origins (pp. 66-67).

W- Arguing that traditional
means to assess learning focused almost exclusively on inuapsychological functioning,
Vygotsky proposed that constructs such as age, grade level, and mental development ean
prevent one from seeing what a child could accomplish with a more knowledgeable other.
If assessment is to be useful for the purposes of instruction, then it follows that one must
gain insight into the "region of sensitivity" in which a child ean proceed with help but can
not accomplish on one's own. Vygotsky (1988) called this region of sensitivity the “zone
of proximal development” and defined it as the distance between a child's "actual
developmental level as determined by independent problem solving” and the higher level of
”potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in
collaborating with more eapable peers" (cited in Wertsch, 1985, pp. 67-68). Vygotsky
believed that instruction and assessment should be reexamined as the ability to assist
students' mental development by creating and activating zones of proximal development
through a form of social interaction that roused to life students' learning zones (Tharp &
Gallimore, 1988).

In schools, it is largely through instructional activities that zones of proximal
development are created (Hedegaard, 1990). For Vygotsky, the formal learning in schools
is responsible for developing the uniquely human higher psychological functions.
Assisting Development in Classroom Events

When taken as a collective, the fundamental assumptions of the sociocultural theory
of learning and development are highlighted by the role of more knowledgeable members
mediating the experience of others in sociocultural activities (Wertsch, 1991). This nexus
of social interaction, semiotic mediation, and activity creates the fundamental conditions for
socially constructing and reconstructing meaning. In schools, this view of learning and

development demands that researchers and teachers begin to study participants as they

I6

assist one another’s development in instructional activities that make up the formal school
curriculum.

Recently, researchers from various fields of inquiry, including sociocultural theory
(Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1992; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), activity theory
(Wells, 1993), language-based theory (Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Wells, 1994) and
sociolinguistics (Gee, Michaels, & O’Connor, 1992; O’Connor & Michaels, 1993; Santa
Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b) have begun to conceptualize the study of socioculturally
situated activity in school settings. As noted in a series of recent articles by Wells (1993,
1994) and Jacob (1992), these various lines of inquiry are highly complementary and can
serve to support one another in powerful ways.

Though it is well beyond the current investigation to compare and contrast these
fields of inquiry, a line of reasoning is presented that suggests that; (a) it is possible to
think of different constructs for studying sociocultural activity as focusing on different
levels of analysis (e. g., macro and micro); and (b) different constructs for studying
sociocultural activity tend to foreground different features of the activity, such as the
activity’s cultural/historical roots, the generic features of the activity, and the moment-to-
mornent discourse used by participants as they construct meaning with one another in a
particular activity.

In order to illustrate the complementary contributions of these fields of inquiry, a
brief examination of three recent constructs is presented. These constructs, activity settings
(Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1992), curriculum-genres (Christie, 1991), and
discourse spaces (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990), while all emphasizing the social
interaction of participants in sociocultural activity, also seem to foreground slightly
different aspects of instructional events. In addition to this slight differentiation of aspects
of these interactions, it is also believed that these three constructs are embedded within one

another.

17

AW At the broadest level, the notion of “activity setting” includes all
of the ways in which “everyday activities embed Opportunities to learn and develop through
modeling, joint production, apprenticeship, and other forms of mediated social learning that
are embedded in goal~directed interactions” (Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1992).
Explicit in the notion of activity setting is that it is not only in schools that this form of
mediated social learning occurs, but in the daily routines in which children are engaged:

Activity settings are a perceptible instantiation of the ecological and cultrual

system which surrounds the family and the individual. They are the

everyday conduits through which social and cultural institutions affect

children’s experiences and their development. What activities children

engage in as an ordinary part of their daily lives will have a profound impact

on the cognitive and communicative functions they will develop. To study

these activities is to identify the cognitive and communicative opportunities of

culture. (Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1992, pp. 4)

Critical to the understanding of activity settings is their socially constructed nature.
Specifically, researchers, teachers, and parents must not assume that a particular activity
setting has the same goals and outcomes for participants. As an example, Gallimore,
Goldenberg, and Weisner (1992) cite a study of Brazilian mothers interacting with their
children around putting the pieces of a punle together (Wertsch, Minick, and Ams, 1985).
The researchers assumed that they were examining a teaching opportunity and were
interested in how these mothers assisted the development of their children to complete the
puzzle task. However, rather than scaffolding performance without providing direct
support, these mothers viewed the activity as a “job to be finished” and worked as partners
with their children to efficiently complete the task. As Gallimore, Goldenberg, and
Weisner conclude, when studying activity settings, researchers must consider both
objective and subjective meanings, including: “(1) the mrsonnel present during an activity;
(2) salient cultural values and beliefs; (3) the operations and task demands of the activity
itself; (4) the sc_rip§ for conduct that govern the participants’ actions; and (5) the m

or motives in the ‘heads’ of the participants” (Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1992,

18

pp. 7).

While the geographic, demographic, and economic presses of one’s ecology exert
powerful forces on the routines in which individuals engage, families and other adults
(e.g., teachers) are vitally important in developing activity settings for children (Tharp &
Gallimore, 1988). Tharp and Gallimore (1988) have applied the concept of activity setting
to classroomsin the Kamehameha School in Hawaii. In this context, activity settings refer
to “sites for assisting performance,” and include specific classroom events in which
assisted development occurs. For example, at the Kamehameha Early Education Program
(KEEP), students and teachers participate in the activity setting of “Center One,” the central
activity setting for the teaching of literacy to students in Kindergarten through third grades.
At the heart of the success of Center One is the alteration of the traditional participant
structure in classrooms, one that “maximizes opportunities for coparticipation and
instructional conversation with the teacher” (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990). In Center One,
children’s cognitive and linguistic abilities are cultivated through a common pattern of
highly informal mutual participation, co-narration, volunteered speech, instant feedback,
and not being penalized for “wrong” answers. This participant structure significantly alters
the rights and duties of speakers, the roles and responsibilities given to “teacher” and
“student,” and the types of assistance provided in the lesson. In short, this activity setting,
with its unique participant structure, creates different Opportunities for learning to read,
write, speak, and listen than the typical teacher-dominated recitation script that has tended
to pervade American education for the past one-hundred years (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990).

It is with this link to formal edueation that the notion of activity setting comes into
contact with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. For Vygosky, it was the activity settings of
formal instruction that most clearly captured his fundamental assumptions about the
uniquely human higher psychological functions:

The trend in Vygotsky’s thinking near the end of his life is clear. He was

Li"
“‘A

de

 

l9

searching for a way to relate the psychological functioning of the individual
with particular sociocultural settings, specifieally with the setting of formal
instruction. The theoretical mechanism that he used to specify this relationship
was grounded in his theme of semiotic mediation; his line of reasoning was

to identify the forms of speech or discourse characteristic of particular
sociocultural settings and. examine the impact their mastery has on mental
functioning (on both the interpsychological and the intrapsychologieal plane).
(Wertsch, 1991, pp. 116).

 

Christie (1991) and other language-based researchers (Halliday, 1993; Lemke,
1989b) provide additional support for Vygotsky’s interest in the intersection of discourse
and activity and suggest that researchers must examine how participants invoke linguistic
resources in different situations. These researchers believe that it is through the constructs
of genre and register that the mutual constituting roles of language and social context can be
understood (Wells, 1994).

The notion of cuniculum genre. Schools are the primary sociocultural institutions
that are granted the unique responsibility for earrying out two vital functions. Wells (1993)
describes these functions as: “( 1) to ensure cultural continuity through the transmission to
each new generation of the artifacts that embody the achievements of the past; and (2) to
enable individual students to appropriate these artifacts and to transform the associated
knowledge and practices into a resource that both empowers them personally and enables
them to contribute to the solution of problems facing the larger culture in innovative ways”
(pp. 32). Wells believes that it is through problem-solving social activity that is mediated
through linguistic interaction with teachers and peers that these goals are accomplished.
Christie (1991) defines these goal-oriented, staged, and social processes in schools as
“cuniculum genres”:

Genres are ref erred to as social processes because members of a culture

interact with each other to achieve them; as goal oriented because they

have evolved to get things done; and as staged because it usually takes

more than one step for participants to achieve their goals.

(Martin, Christie, & Rothery, 1987, pp. 59; cited in Christie, 1991, pp. 205).

In schools, “...any teaching-learning episode may be thought of as an instance of a

We

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20

curriculum genre, having a distinctive overall shape and schematic structure” (Christie,
1991, pp. 204). The elements of the schematic structure, such as the phases of the activity
(e. g., beginning, middle end) or indexing functions (e.g., “Ok, let’s start Morning
Message”) make visible the ways in which goal-directed activity is accomplished in a
culture.

Curriculum genres in schools typically are realized in language through two
registers, the pedagogical register and the content register (Christie, 1991). The
pedagogical register is related to the generation and maintenance of the learning activity,
what Bernstein (1976; cited in Christie, 1991) called the “regulative discourse” function of
the activity. The content register, on the other hand, includes the discourse related to the
content of the lesson, or “instructional discourse.” Register is defined as “...a
configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular situational
configuration of field, mode, and tenor” (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, pp. 38-39), with the
field of discourse referring to what is happening in the social event (e. g., reading a book
aloud), the teng of gimme referring to the nature of the participants, including their
statuses and roles, and the mode of discourse referring to what the participants are
expecting the language to do for them in that particular situation.

Curriculum genres, then, represent both the obligatory and optional elements of a
teaching-learning episode, and their sequence or stages. In Christie’s (1991) own research
on what she termed the “writing planning genre,” she discovered there were three
obligatory elements and one optional element in the completion of the writing planning
lesson she observed. The three obligatory elements included the Task Orientation element
where the teacher opened the activity, the Task Specification element in which the specific
tasks (i.e., writing about wombats) were given, and the Task element where the students
were sent back to their seats to complete individual writing. The optional element was the
teacher’s ability to Control student’s behavior. Unlike the three obligatory elements, which

21

seemed to function in a beginning, middle, and end wquence, the Control element could be
inserted at any point in the lesson.

Whereas the idea of genre is related to the sequential organization of a particular
culturally recognizable type of activity (Wells, 1994), the notion of register accounts “for
the probabilistic relationship between particular situation-types and the meaning choices
most likely to. be realized in the texts that are constructed in relation to them” (Wells, 1994,
pp. 49). The features of the situation that help determine participant’s choice of meaning
potential are characterized by three dimensions, the field of discourse, the tenor of
discourse, and the modes of discourse. Wells (1994) defines these as:

Field concerns the social action that is involved-what is going on; in the

case of certain types of event, this semiotic content may be referred to as

the “subject matter.” Terror is concerned with the who of the event--the

participants and their relationship to each other, considered from the point

of view of status and their roles in the event Mode refers to the choice of

channel on the spoken-written continuum and to the role assigned to language

in the event Together, these features of the situation predict the semantic

configurations that are likely to occur in the text that is constructed; or, to put

it differently, the participants’ interpretation of the situation in terms of these

dimensions predisposes them to make certain types of choice from their

meaning potential in co-constructing their text. (pp. 48)

While there is considerable debate as to the relationship between genre and register,
these concepts make visible several important points in the sociolinguistic study of
curriculum genres. First, the notion of curriculum genre suggests that when researchers
study teaching-learning episodes, they must examine the various sequences or phases of
these episodes to understand how participants use language to coordinate their
interpretation of the situation. Second, researchers need to examine the various roles that
develop in different genres and examine how these roles (e. g., student, teacher, author,
audience member) and their related statuses influence meaning construction for all
participants. Third, the careful examination of how linguistic choices realize meaning in the
various elements of the genre is essential to improving the learning opportunities for

students. Wells (1994) points to this essential next step in the study of curriculum genres:

22

Although the way in which we interpret the context of situation largely

determines what we say, it is true that what we say plays a part in

determining the situation. This is particularly significant, from an

educational point of view, when we consider attempts to bring about

educational change. As I have pointed out elsewhere

(Wells, 1993b, in press), teachers are not entirely constrained by

traditional definitions of the situation-types that constitute a typical

“lesson.” By making different choices from their meaning potential,

particularly with respect to tenor and mode, they can significantly change

the register and genre that preva and thereby create different learning

opportunities for their students. (Wells, 1994, pp. 49)

To conclude, the notion of curriculum genre is an important conceptual tool for
understanding the construction of meaning in different classroom events. However, as is
well documented in the literature on classroom discourse, the current range of curriculum
genres appears to be quite narrow and includes very typical conversational structures
(Mehan, 1979; Cazden, 1988). As a result of the narrow range of curriculrun genres,
especially for special education students, the linguistic resources available to students in
different genres is often limited to responding to known-answer questions asked by the
teacher (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Moreover, the linguistic choices available to those
students who come to school with different home-based ways of using language than their
more middle-class teachers and peers are further disadvantaged (Heath, 1983; Michaels,
1985). A number of recent instructional research studies, however, have provided critical
insights into how teachers alter curriculum genres and create quite different educational
possibilities for their students. Michaels and O’Connor (1990) refer to these unique
curriculum genres as “discourse spaces.”

Discourse SM as unique instances of curriculum genres. In explicating a
definition of literacy as “reasoning within multiple discomses,” Michaels and O’Connor
(1990) suggest that becoming literate must be understood as coming to learn specific
socioculturally and sociohistorically situated ways of thinking, acting, and valuing. Rather
than viewing literacy as something that individuals “have,” such as being able to read and

write, these researchers view literacy as an inherently plural notion that involves the control

23

of discourses beyond those first acquired within a family.

When extended to schooling, this view of literacy “...calls into question our
standard explanations for why schools are failing so many students, and why a
disproportionate number of students who are not served well are poor children and children
of color” (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990, pp. 12). Though existing research suggests that
low-achieving students (with their higher proportion of poor children and children of color)
receive a differential edueation that has bred dependency rather than empowered these
children (Johnston & Allington, 1991), an equally compelling explanation for the failure of
so many students in school is that there is a mismatch, not a deficiency, in the home-based
and school-based discourses these students engage in:

Rather, these students are not gaining access to what we have called

school-based discourses. They are not gaining mastery of the particular

ways of using language, and integrating and extending knowledge that

are valued and privileged in school--ways that are required to enter higher

education and many other professional spheres of life. In this sense, they

are not developing control over the literacies that are cornerstones of

success in academic disciplines. (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990, pp. 12)

In addition to their own research in a multi-ethnic third and fourth grade classroom
in the Cambridge, Massachusetts schools, Michaels and O’Connor (1990) reviewed three
programs that have proven to be highly successful with a range of students, including
minority students and those students from low-SES backgrounds. In keeping with the
notion of literacy as reasoning within multiple discourses, these programs included
examination of discourse practices in out-of-school settings (Heath, 1983), in reading
comprehension instruction (Palinesar & Brown, 1984), in mathematics (Moses, Kamii,
Swop, & Howard, 1989), and in science instruction (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990). The
three programs included the ethnography of cornmunieation studies of Shirley Brice Heath
(1983), the reciproeal teaching studies of Palincsar and Brown ( 1989), and the Algebra
Project (Moses, Kamii, Swop, & Howard, 1989).

In summarizing across these diverse studies, Michaels and O’Connor (1990)

24

suggest that the success of these programs is not a function of any one particular method,
curriculum, or teaching style. Rather, what is generalizable is a principled view of learning
that is rooted in the construction of a “discourse space” that has the following features:

1) In each case, a discourse space is created whereby divergent

vieWpoints, experiences, and ways of speaking come into contact

in a structured, teacher-orchestrated dialogue. As students discuss,

debate, question, and collaboratively earry out real tasks in a given

domain, they gain mastery over content, concepts, strategies, and

ways of speaking. The discourse becomes their own.

2) Teachers allow and in fact require the students to generate

. knowledge on their own and to play the roles of questioner, critic, and

expert. The typieal relationships between teacher and students with

respect to authority and control over knowledge is altered in these

discourse spaces. At the same time, teachers participate in the

discourse, modeling modes of inquiry and ways of speaking.

3) There is explicit talk about talk, and explicit, teacher seaffolded
practicing of the discourse. (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990, pp. 22-23)

Michaels and O’Connor’s (1990) synthesis of highly-effective instructional
programs both supports and extends Christie’s (1991) examination of the writing planning
curriculum genre. First, although instructional events are staged and goal oriented, a
premium is placed upon the choices that teachers make in developing the discourse. These
decisions, in turn, affect the opportunities that children have to learn with one another. In
contrast to the teacher in Christie’s (1991) study of the writing planning genre who
controlled the discourse and was unsure about engaging students in rich discussions about
the writing process, highly effective teachers make decisions that significantly alter the
norms for communieating with one another. For example, highly effective teachers
appeared to explicitly transfer control of the meaning-making to students, insuring that
students participated in a variety of roles with their unique demands on thinking (e. g., to
critique, question); they also actively modeled their own inner thinking to apprentice
learners as alternative modes of inquiry and ways of speaking.

Particularly important in O’Connor and Michaels (1993) work is the critieal role that

25

teachers play in using discourse to create the intermental context on a moment-tomoment
basis. A teacher’s discourse is seen as a series of discourse moves that constantly position
and reposition the content under consideration and the social relationships between
individuals and the entire classroom community. Effective teachers create teachable
moments through their deft orchestration of the classroom talk. Understanding the
discourse moves of teachers in different curriculum genres like Sharing Chair and Morning
Message, and how these moves align and realign both content and social participation is
nowhere more important than in special education classrooms.

To conclude, the three constructs of activity settings, curriculum genres, and
discourse spams illuminate several features of assisted development in instructional events
that researchers must examine in order to account more fully for how social interactions
influence learning. These features relate to how the activity itself influences the linguistic
resources made available to the participants, the importance of the social relationship among
participants, and the ways in which participants’ subjective understandings of the situation
influence their perception of the purposes and goals of various instructional events. This
theoretical foundation for the study of meaning construction in instructional events points to
important implications for the research outlined in this study.

Imflications of a Sociocultural Framework in the Study of Literacy Events

The philosophical assumptions of a sociocultural framework are central to the
current study and frame a number of research agendas for the study of literacy in classroom
settings.

At the most fundamental level, higher psychologieal processes like comprehending
and composing are learned through the various sign (e.g., language, numeracy, etc.)
systems made available through interaction with others. The quality of these social
interactions (i.e., more knowledgeable others) are key determinants of the range and types

of learning that might be afforded students. For example, it is not only literacy skills (e.g.,

26

decoding, punctuation), comprehension and composition strategies (e.g., summarizing,
predicting), and exposure to a wide-range of literature that might be constructed in social
interactions with more knowledgeable others, but also the negotiation of various
interpretative systems (e.g., reading and writing as problem-solving, beliefs about
authority and text) as teacher and students create discourse spaces over time:

The oornmunication system is a matter not only of how the teacher

sets up classroom relationships and discourse. The communication

pattern of any classroom is the outcome of a history of mutual

interpretation by teacher and pupils, in each case based upon previous

experiences which they bring to the lessons. (Barnes, 1988, pp. 33)

This awareness that researchers must understand learning as the evolution of
interpretative systems as they are constructed and reconstructed is the foundation for the
study of Sharing Chair and Morning Message as literacy events. In these two events, (a) a
premium is placed upon social interaction through oral and written language with the
teacher and peers, allowing for the study of how more knowledgeable others scaffold
understanding; (b) these social interactions serve to mediate children’s personal experience,
and make visible the cultural conventions of literate behavior made available to students; (c)
the literacy events occur every day, creating speech events that have relatively stable
features that define the discourse space, but allow for the recreation of new meaning each
day; and (d) Sharing Chair and Morning Message differ significantly from the most
common form of discourse in classrooms, the lnitiation-Response-Evaluation sequence in
which teachers have particular speaking rights that give them control of the quantity and
quality of talk, allowing for the study of how literacy events having different discourse
goals and purposes may allow for different opportunities to engage in literate behaviors not
common in schools.

To conclude, in a sociocultural framework, opportunities to learn are inextricably
tied to the creation of communicative contexts, with their unique semiotic systems (e.g.,

sign systems), and to the inculcation of students in a wide variety of speech events and

27

genres of speaking with both their relatively stable features (e.g., introductions, military
commands) and the social languages (e.g., unique vocabulary, jargon, humor) that are
unique to different speech communities (Wertsch, 1991). Unfortunately, many children
who come from backgrounds with social interactional pattems that differ significantly from
the largely middle class ways of speaking of their teachers are perceived as being deficient
in the school-based discourses of their middle class peers (Michaels, 1981, 1985; Wells,
1986). Whereas most children share the primary discourse of speaking the English
language, students bring vastly different linguistic resources and experiences to school.

Supporting this view of literate development, Gee (1989) suggests that the chief
difference between students who are more and less successful in school is their facility and
participation in school-based genres, what he calls “secondary discourses.” In the next
section, an explication of these different discourses is undertaken and it is suggested that
Sharing Chair and Morning Message represent curriculum genres for special needs students
that are seldom reflected in traditional special education classrooms.

Traditional Modes of Discourse in Schools

If there is one finding that stands out in studies of classroom communication and
discourse, it is the shocking persistence and uniformity in patterns of talk between teachers
and students (Cazden, 1988; Goodlad, 1983; Mehan, 1979). In this pattern, the teacher
controls the type, quality, and direction of the talk by being afforded the right to initiate the
questioning, usually of known answer questions, and evaluate the student’s response.
This patterned way of speaking, the Initiation-Response—Evaluation sequence, continues to
dominate classroom talk (Cazden, 1988; Mehan, 1979; Wells, 1986).

When teachers initiate the topics allowed on the conversational floor and have the
power to evaluate those responses to fit their own conception of correcuress, the discourse
often appears rather procedural, formulaic, and monologic in nature. In this form of

recitation, there are relatively few opportunities for the self selection of the next speaker by

28

peers (Florio-Ruane, 1991) or cross-discussion amongst peers (Lemke, 1989c), and
students tend to make eye contact with the teacher instead of their peers (Cazden, 1988).

So common is the I-R-E sequence that researchers have noted that it is quite rare to
find discourse in classrooms that resembles a discussion or conversation. Barnes (1992)
and Canien (1988) note that the dominance of the I-R—E sequence, especially when the
teacher is asking known—answer questions, positions the student to speak in “final draft” or
“final form” talk. This form of speaking differs significantly from “exploratory” or “draft”
talk, where “...sharing predominates over presenting, in which the teacher replies rather
than assesses, encourages pupils when they talk and write to bring out existing knowledge
to be reshaped by new points of view being presented to them” (Barnes, 1992, pp. 111).
Bloome (1986) found that when teachers developed a communication pattern in which they
exclusively assessed students’ accruacy in responding to known-answer questions,
children focused on the external acceptability of their answers and their display of
knowledge, rather than becoming deeply engaged with the content of the lesson.

In contrast, in their study of classroom discourse, Orsolini and Ponteeorvo (1992)
found that when the teacher introdumd discussions that had multiple interpretations and no
single correct answer, students gained access to different conversational cycles, including
the discourses of dispute, justification, and explanation. When students are placed in less
threatening relationships, like collaborative and cOOperative event su'uctures, they are more
likely to feel they have a degree of control over their knowledge, have more sympathetic
insight into each other’s thinking, and risk inexplicitness, confusion, and dead-ends
(Barnes, 1992).

The differences between the more common I -R-E sequence and more open-ended
discussions point to a critical feature of classroom talk, the fact that language performs two
functions simultaneously:

It carries the message that you are wanting to communicate and at the

29

same time it conveys information about who you think you are, who

you think you are talking to, what you believe the situation to be, and

so on. Whenever you talk, your speech both carries the conscious

message and-«usually unconsciously-negotiates the social relationships

which you are taking part in. (Barnes, 1992, pp. 116)

This dual function of language, especially the recognition that language is inextricably tied
to the negotiation of social relationships, allows researchers to understand how teachers
“align the cognitive and social” through talk and conceive of alternative ways of
constructing meaning in classrooms (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993).

It is at this point that the infrequence of discussion in schools is problematic, not
only for the study of classroom discourse in schools, but for the induction of students with
mild disabilities in the discourse as learners and decision makers. When the instruction in
special education settings is geared toward recitation or toward narrow, one-way questions
and correct answers, students are denied opportunities to ”listen, think, question, and
consider alternatives" (Burbules, 1993, pp. 152).

Discussion formats are more likely to provide students with mild disabilities with
control of what goes on in their lessons, allowing them to take a larger part in the shaping
of meaning, in enacting the various discursive roles, and in formulating the nature of
knowledge that constitutes the literacy curriculum. Moreover, the child with mild
disabilities who is allowed to talk her way into and through a literacy problem is enabled to
“monitor her own thought, and reshape it" in a different way than a child who responds to
a question that is designed to elicit predetermined concepts (Reid & Stone, 1991). The type
of exploratory talk that characterizes the former situation is associated with frequent
hesitations, rephrasing, false starts, and changes of direction--positive indications that the
learner is taking an active part in learning, and bringing what he or she knows into
interaction with the new content. Thus, as teachers change the form of communication

from recitation to discussion, it is likely that the form and substance of what is learnt will

also be altered and expanded in profound ways (see Rowe, 1989).

 

 

30

With the dominance of the IRE sequence as the common recitation pattern in
classrooms, students are not provided opportunities to participate in other discourse
patterns (e.g., debating a point, allowing multiple drafts and discussions around a written
text). With new views of literacy that suggest that a critical part of becoming literate is
being able to “reason within multiple discourses" (Michaels & O'Connor, 1990) and
participate in the many ”secondary discourses" beyond the primary discourse learned at
home (e.g., second language students, low income, minority), the job of school in
allowing students to take multiple roles and their accompanying ways of speaking becomes
central. As Cazden (1988) reminds us, the shift from lesson (i.e., recitation) to
discussions is to engage in a different conception of knowledge and teaching. Unless these
shifts occur to more discussion formats, special education students will continue to be
denied access to the range of school-based discourses that might make them successful
learners in this setting.

Eraming Discourse Possibilities: Modes of Dialogue in Classrooms

The inherent asymmetry in power between the roles of teacher and student creates
an interesting dilemma in classrooms: The teacher has the right to conuol and shape the
form that discourse takes, yet if students are to engage in alternate modes of discourse and
learning, teachers must balance their authorial rights by insuring that students have
opportunities to use language in contexts that encourage a variety of ways of constructing
meaning. As the preceding section suggests, the creation of alternative discourse patterns
in classrooms continues to be infrequent.

Recently, however, several sociolinguists have attempted to extend their
understanding of teaching and learning by studying genres of classroom discourse (Gee,
Michaels, & O’Connor, 1992; O’Connor & Michaels, 1993; Santa Barbara Discourse
Group, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c; Wertsch, 1991). Gee (1989) and Michaels and O’Connor
(1990) argue that becoming literate results from learning particular modes of discourse,

31

what they called “secondary discourses” or “school-based discourses,” discourses beyond
those learned at home. These discourses are not merely ways of speaking or learning new
vocabulary, but ways of participating in particular ways of thinking, acting, and valuing.
One implication of this view of becoming literate is a different conception of teaching and
learning:

It is not enough just to expose students to a print-rich environment,

meaningful data, real-world problems, or even highly engaging

hands-on experience. Teachers must be aware of and explicitly guide

students in the practices of discourse. We don’t mean merely teaching

the superficial trappings of language, such as vocabulary, algorithms, or

definitions of key concepts. We also don’t mean explicitly laying out the

rhetorical forms or “rules” of the discourse, as is sometimes recommended

in the teaching of composition and second language. In most cases, the

discursive “rules” are complex, hard to articulate, and in part unconscious.

Rather, we mean that teachers must guide, model, and scaffold students

in the particular ways of thinking, giving explanations, constructing

arguments, and asking questions, which are specific to the domain in question.

To do this, teachers need to create appropriate discourse spaces that build

on students’ home-based ways of speaking and reasoning, as a bridge to

new ones. (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990, pp. 23)

Rather than viewing literacy as the ability to read and write, this view of literacy suggests
that we must begin thinking about literacy as situated in particular social settings with their
unique patterns of interactions (i.e., literacy event, classroom, school, home, church, or
community). Within these different interactional contexts, participants learn about
particular ways of acting, talking, and valuing literacy.

Burbules (1993) attempted to clarify the possibilities for discourse in schools by
posing a framework that takes into account both the valence of the social relationship
(inclusive or critical) and the ultimate goals of the discourse (divergent, convergent). When
plawd in a two-by-two grid (Figure 2), four quadrants that outline a range of discourse
modes are created: ( l) dialogue as conversation, (2) dialogue as inquiry, (3) dialogue as
debate, and, (4) dialogue as insu'uction. Though these differing forms of dialogue are
“ideal” types and may co-occur within different instructional interactions, Burbules is very

clear about an underlying social condition that characterizes all four types of dialogue, what

 

Inclusive

Critical

Figure 2 Modes of Dialogue in Schools (Burbules, 1993)

32

 

 

 

Divergent Convergent
Dialogue Dialogue
as as

Conversation Inquiry
Dialogue Dialogue
as as

Debate Instruction

 

 

 

 

33
he calls the “dialogical relation”

Underlying Burbule’s ( 1993) framework is a basic assumption about the dialogic
relationship between speakers. For Burbules ( 1993), dialogue is a unique form of
interaction, distinguished by a deep relationship and commitment between speakers.
Fundamental to this view of dialogue is the belief that we must look beyond communicative
forms (e. g., questions and responses) to understand how different communicative contexts
engage participants in social relations, or a “spirit of dialogue”:

A successful dialogue involves a willing partnership and cooperation

in the face of likely disagreements, confusions, failures, and

misunderstandings. Persisting in this process requires a relation of

mutual resmct, trust, and concem--and part of the dialogical interchange

often must relate to the establishment and maintenance of these bonds.

The substance of this interpersonal relation is deeper, and more

consistent, than any particular communicative form it might take.

(Burbules, 1993, pp. 19-20)

The dialogical relation is socially consmrcted and reconsu‘ucted among participants
and consists of three interrelated factors, “the cognitive interest in pursuing understanding,
knowledge, or agreement; the affective qualities of concern and commitment that draw us
into the dialogue and hold us within it; and the capacity of dialogue to involve us and carry
us beyond our intentions” (Burbules, 1993, pp. 21).

In schools, this view of dialogue demands a quite different relationship between
teacher and students, one distinguished by mutuality, respect, trust, and maintaining the
conversational involvement of community members. This relationship is not stau'c, but
necessarily developmental in nature, changing as participants come to know each other, the
communicative process, and the content under consideration. Authority, equality, and
community are not assumed to exist apriori, but result from the recognition that individuals
bring unequal knowledge, experience, and intelligence into any given relationship. It is in
this sense that authority and equality become shared among members: As the nature of the

content shifts, so too do the roles, participation, and authority given to individual members.

 

34

This ebb and flow to dialogue is an especially critical stance for special needs students to
participate through, as there is a “strongly pedagogical element; in which participants seek
to teach and learn from one another, and the voluntary aspect of this participation is crucial,
since a reluctant partner in dialogue is not likely to gain, or contribute, anything at all”
(Burbules, 1993, pp. 27). Understanding how special needs students negotiate,
appropriate, and transform these complex interactional patterns in various classroom events
will require a heightened sensitivity to understanding how teachers construct and nurture
this foundational dialogical relationship.

In short, the dialogical relation subsumes the various modes of discourse in
schools, with their different emphasis on how members participate (e.g., inclusive, critical)
and the goals (e.g., divergent, convergent) of meaning construction. Even in potentially
volatile and heated exchanges between community members, dialogue that may be
appropriate in certain problem-solving situations, there remains a relationship among
members that “...binds the partners together in a mutual relation of concern and respect (a
relation that is fully cognizant of their differences); and there must be a real chance for
everyone concerned to participate in, contribute to, or withdraw from the discussion”
(Burbules, 1993, pp. 27). In schools, with the inherent asymmetry in power between
teacher and student, the teacher plays a key role in nurturing the dialogical relations of the
community:

Maintaining what Gumperz, cited earlier, called “conversational

involvement” is particularly important in teaching, where a mutual

concern and involvement are needed to counterbalance the potentially

critical or conflictual tone of questions, challenges, or

counter-arguments. Dialogue without challenges or disagreements is

impoverished, but challenges or disagreements without an underlying

relation of personal commitment will break down the communicative

process very quickly. (Burbules, 1993, pp. 46)

The dialogical relation is an essential featme of all communication we call

“dialogues” in classrooms. This relationship among speakers (or readers and writers)

 

35

illuminates the inherently social processes involved in meaning construction, and
underscores the important role of conversational involvement as speakers attempt to build
shared social realities. This heightened attention and sensitivity to the development of this
social relationship is nowhere more important than through our interactions with special
needs students, students who often come to school lacking such commtmicative
competencies, including how to actively listen and maintain effective conversations. The
dialogical relationship provides the backdrop for an examination of four modes or genres of
dialogue in schools, instruction, debate, conversation, and inquiry.

However, the model of dialogue in classrooms prOpossd by Burbules (1993)
extends beyond the dialogical relations between speakers to posit four modes of dialogue
as occurring in school, depending upon the orientation to one’s speaking partner(s) ( i.e.,
inclusive, critical) and the ultimate goal of the discourse (i.e., divergent, convergent).
These four modes of discourse are distinguished by their fairiy regular prototypical patterns
of discourse moves, but should not be construed as having a “pure” form. Rather, the
fluid nature of dialogues necessarily move through cycles in which other modes of
discourse are operating. Each of the four modes is discussed below.

Critical-convergent: Dialogue as instruction. The aim of dialogue as instruction is
to help lead students to a definite conclusion through socially-mediated interactions.
Dialogue in this form of teaching is often reflective of a direct instruction model, including
the use of critical questions, modeling, and scaffolding that are offered to help lead
students’ thinking. Burbules (1993) provides two examples of dialogue as insu'uction,
including the Socratic method and reciprocal teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1989).
Underlying both approaches is an emphasis on working in students’ “Zones of proximal
development,” a region of sensitivity in which children are on the cusp of learning, but are
not able to complete the entire cognitive process without the support and guidance of a

more knowledgeable other. Over time, the novice takes over more and more control of the

36

cognitive work. This form of dialogue might best be characterized as a form of cognitive
apprenticeship in which the teacher leads cognitive development through the deft use of
discourse, procedural facilitation, and modeling. Palinesar (1986) describes some
conditions that may best sustain the dialogical relationship in dialogues as instruction,
including:

(a) The extent to which there was teacher support of the students’ contribution

to the dialogue...; (b) the extent to which there was a deft use of student ideas

and linking those ideas to new knowledge; (c) the extent to which there was

focus and direction to the dialogue; (d) the extent to which the point of instruction
was made explicit to the student and seemed explicit to the teacher; and (e) the

way in which evaluative statements were made that changed the complexion of a

student response from negative to constructive. (Palincsar, pp. 96, cited in

Burbules, 1993, pp. 123)

As these conditions suggest, the critical-convergent nature of dialogue as instruction
maintains the dialogical relationship that is germane to all four modes of dialogue. Even
though the teacher may take an active role in guiding and leading the discourse (i.e., is
afforded opportunities to initiate, question, and evaluate the appropriateness of student
answers), apprenticing students into the various conventional practices used by the larger
community of readers and writers, the tenor of the discourse retains a sense of mutuality
and reciprocity. The teacher assesses the student(s) understanding on a moment-to-
moment basis and provides feedback at a level appropriate to lead students to more complex
levels of understanding.

Critical-divergent: Dialogue as debate. A second form of dialogue in schools is
dialogue as debate. In this mode of discourse, “dialogue has a sharply questioning,
skeptical spirit, but doesn’t have any necessary aim toward agreement or the reconciliation
of differences” (Burbules, 1993, pp. 119). In this form of dialogue, participants assume
positions or roles that they are asked to become familiar with, even if they do not
necessarily hold these positions in reality. For example, two research teams, one team

representing the logging industry and the other representing the Sierra Club, might gather

37

information and formulate dreir positions on the potential advantages and disadvantages of
clear cutting old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. The focus of this type of
dialogue is to create arguments and positions on a topic, defend these positions in light of
counter-proposals and arguments, and ultimately to learn to see the merits of other
viewpoints. The potential benefits of this type of discourse are the generation of new
information, developing more informed and complex arguments, and gaining a clearer
understanding of an issue from various perspectives.

As might be expected, this form of dialogue in schools can carry risks, as can all
four modes of discourse presented by Burbules. If debates become highly competitive or
aggressive, this form of talk can quickly squelch the dialogical relation between
participants. Burbules distinguishes how he uses the term “debate,” noting that more
traditional views of debate as having explicit goals of winning, losing, and competition are
not necessarily the goals of this form of dialogue. Rather, it is the “spirit” of debate, with
its unique potential to contrast opposing positions, that is most important. Students
engaging in dialogue as debate are provided opportunities to engage in the discussion of the
relative strengths and weaknesses of different arguments and the pros and cons of each
position. This form of critical thinking is advocated as being a key goal of public
education, yet represents a school-based discourse that few students experience in schools
(Cazden, 1988).

In special education classrooms, the absence of this form of discourse has only
tended to be magnified, as there continues to be an emphasis on individualized instruction,
individual goals, and fragmented cuniculum. Students have few opportunities to learn
these alternative modes of constructing meaning with peers, further denying them access to
thinking resources that can lead cognitive development and alter what it means to be a

“student” in schools.

38

W. The goal of dialogue as inquiry is the
convergence on an outcome that is agreeable to all members. This form of discourse is
characterized by its emphasis on a multitude of possibilities and perspectives, with the goal
of negotiating the problem-to—be-solved in hopes of finding an answer to it. Burbules
(1993) provides five potential types of inquiry in schools: (1) a kind of dialogue that
involves an investigation into an issue or question with the hope of finding an answer to it;
(2) a kind of dialogue that involves problem-solving, such as approaching a difficulty or
conflict that requires the development of a workable, and perhaps novel, solution; (3) a
kind of dialogue involving the working toward a political consensus, such as working
through conflicting social or political demands; (4) a kind of dialogue that involves
coordinating actions to achieve some common purpose; and (5) a kind of dialogue that
involves adjudicating moral differences, such as discussing and comparing areas of
disagreement in ways that are compatible with and tolerant of one another (paraphrased
from pp. 116—117). '

In the context of this study, it is argued that Morning Message is illustrative of
dialogue as inquiry. In Morning Message, students socially construct a written message
around another student’s personal experience. The resulting discourse demands
negotiation, reaching some level of agreement about the quality of the text, and the
coordination of actions to achieve the common goal of having a message that can be
published in a monthly newspaper. The analyses of Morning Message transcripts and the
elucidation of discourse as inquiry will be presented in Chapter 5.

Inclusive-divergent: Dialogue as conversation. The final discourse mode that
Burbules proposes can exist in schools is dialogues that are conversational in nature. Like
the discourse forms of debate and inquiry, it is rare to find discourse that reflects
conversation in schools, unless it is in the unofficial peer register (Cazden, 1988; Edwards
& Mercer, 1987). Discourse as conversation is characterized by “a generally cooperative,

39

tolerant spirit, and a direction toward mutual understanding” (Burbules, 1993, pp. 112).
Typical of this type of dialogue is the goal of understanding another, especially within an
atmosphere of genuine and mutual exchanges among speakers.

At the heart of dialogue as conversation is the recognition that it is through
conversations with others that we gain a sensitivity towards others, while at the same time
making visible our own understandings:

Partners in the dialogue proceed interactively, cooperatively, not toward a

specific common goal, but in a process of mutual engagement directed

toward shared understanding. I am drawn to this sort of dialogue with

this person because in this process I see an opportunity to supplement and

refigure my own understandings (and presumably my partner is motivated

similarly). (Burbules, 1993, pp. 115)

In this study, Sharing Chair represents the discourse mode of dialogue as
conversation. In Sharing Chair, students take turns reading their journals and engaging _
their peers in conversations around their writing. This opportunity to share stories with
one another, at first glance, does not involve the teacher in the carefully crafted dialogues
seen in discourse as instruction, but she may play an extremely important role in children’s
learning. In fact, in summarizing his longitudiml study of home and school discourse,
Wells (1986) noted that telling stories, or “storying,” is of central importance:

What I want to suggest is that stories have a role in education that goes far

beyond their contribution to the acquisition of literacy. Constructing stories in

the mind--or storying, as it has been called--is one of the most f undarnental
means of making meaning; as such it is an activity that pervades all aspects of
learning. When storying becomes overt and is given expression in words, the
resulting stories are one of the most effective ways of making one’s own
interpretation of events and ideas available to others. Through the exchange

of stories, therefore, teachers and students can share their understandings of

a topic and bring their mental models of the world into closer alignment.

(Wells, 1986, pp. 194)

The analyses of Sharing Chair uanscripts and the elucidation of discourse as
conversation will be presented in Chapter 4.
To conclude this section, the study of classroom discourse and its role in literacy

learning is on the cusp of several important breakthroughs. First, the study of classroom

4o

discomse suggests that language carries both the content of the message and negotiates the
social relationship. Though this dual function of language has been recognized for a long
time, it is less common that researchers have studied how teachers orchestrate
conversational involvement in different modes of discourse that alter the I-R-E sequence

' (T annen, 1989; Wells, 1986). Second, as researchers continue to study the inherently
social nature of reading and writing, it is possible to conceptualize becoming literate as
one’s facility in using a number of secondary discourses or genres, including specific ways
of interacting with text (Gee, 1989; Michaels & O’Connor, 1990). If literacy is, in fact, a
“plural notion” in which we have and fail to have, many different literacies, then the study
of how literacy is made up of specific discourses or genres is important. Third, the work
of Burbules (1993) has provided a framework for extending the teaching and study of
school-based discourses that differ significantly from more traditional patterns of talk in
schools. This framework may allow researchers to examine how different classroom
events develop or fail to develop different ways of constructing meaning with children.
Finally, as researchers have come to conceptualize literacy from a sociocultural perspective,
there is a continuing need to study how features of social context, including modes of
discourse, create zones of possibility and opportunities to learn.

Ultimately, the goal of studying classroom discourse is to improve children’s
education. With this in mind, we turn to two studies that are studying exemplary practice
in order to understand how teachers construct meanings with students that are not typically
found in schools.

Selected Review of Sociolinguistic Studies

In this final section, two research programs are outlined. These two research
programs were chosen because they represent theoretical and methodological assumptions
similar to those of the current study. In both sets of studies, the researchers studied

exemplary teachers working in specific classroom events to construct and reconstruct

41

meaning. The choice of studying exemplary teachers is important to begin to understand
how, on a case-by-case basis, teachers engage students in ways of knowing that differ
from traditional instructional patterns. The sociolinguistic analysis of teachers working in
situated classroom events can then allow researchers to begin to understand some of the
generic processes that highly effective teachers use across subject matters and discourse
modes.

In the first set of studies, the sociolinguistic work of Michaels & O’Connor
(Michaels & O'Connor, 1990; O'Connor & Michaels, 1993) is examined. This line of
research highlights the importance of how the norms of interaction, or participant
f rarnework, shape the moment-to-moment construction of meaning. The teacher is seen as
orchestrating both the content and the social participation of the class through different
discourse moves (i.e., revoicing). The second series of study was conducted by the Santa
Barbara Discourse Group (Dixon, de la Cruz, Green, Lin, Brandts, 1992; Green, Dixon,
Lin, Floriani, Bradley, Paxton, Mattern, & Bergamo, 1992; Heras, Yeager, Floriani,
Dixon, Jennings, & Green, 1993; Tuvay, Jennings, & Dixon, 1993). This work also
looked at the moment-to—mornent construction of meaning among exemplary teachers and
students, but extended the examination to include how literate actions are situated in social
interactional environments that afford different educational possibilities.

Aligm'ng Academic Task and Participation Status through Discourse

A fundamental feature of classroom life is the socialization of students into various
ways of knowing and using literacy, including what counts as literacy in different contexts.
This socialization occurs largely through the use of language both on a moment-to-moment
basis and in larger discourse communities, including school-based discourses and horne-
based ways of knowing. Important to this socialization process is the recognition that the
teacher plays a particularly important role in negotiating the participant framework within
various instructional activities. O’Connor and Michaels ( 1993) use the term ‘participant

42

framework’ to include the features of both participant su'uctures, the interactional rights and
duties that occur in different activities (e.g., tum-taking rules), and Goffman’s (1981)
notion of ‘animation,’ the ways in which speakers use talk to negotiate roles and social
identities on a moment-to—moment basis.

Participation frameworks are created through patterned ways of speaking, or
discourse moves (Burbules, 1993). These discourse moves, including such things as
questions, initiations, evaluations, and repeating what a speaker says carry the content of
the message, but also negotiate the social relationship among speakers. It is in this sense
that discourse moves serve to position others both to respond (or not respond) to the
content of the talk and also to align others in terms of their perceived role.

O’Connor and Michaels (1993) studied a recurring discourse move of two
exemplary teachers known as revoicing. In this move, the teacher discursively positions
members of the class both to align the content of the talk and to negotiate the social
relationship among members, including the right to choose or deny an uptake of an idea.
Typically, the anatomy of a teacher revoicing move includes an inference source (i.e., a
speaker or speakers), the content of an inference made by the inference source, and the
teacher as inference maker. In this uipartite relationship, the teacher uses her speaking
right as mediator to interject a discourse move with the hopes of realigning the content and
the identities of speakers. Revoicing served at least three functions in classrooms: (1) it
positions students in differing alignments with propositions and allows them to claim or
disclaim ownership of their position, (2) allows the sharing of reforrnulations in ways that
credit students with the teacher’s warranted inferences, and (3) scaffolds and recasts
problem-solution strategies of non—native language students (paraphrased from O’Connor
& Michaels, 1993, pp. 318).

43

Revoicin . Claimin or disclaimin ownershi of itions. In the following
transcript of a sixth grade class working on ratios, for example, a smdent named Paulina
has lost her lemonade concentrate ratio (O'Connor & Michaels, 1993). In this exercise,
students were asked to keep track of the number of teaspoon fulls of lemon juice and sugar,
respectively. The resulting table was then to be put into graph form. Paulina recalls that
she had used at least 2 spoonfuls of sugar, but cannot remember how many teaspoon f ulls
of lemon juice, only that it was believed to be somewhere between 10 and 22 spoonfuls.
The group is faced with the problem of either computing an average for the missing value
or deciding whether to reconstruct the study. A student named Sarita suggests that
computing an average between 10 and 22 will not be her “real” first concentrate. However,
Steven suggests that it may be acceptable to substitute the mean of the two extremes. The
teacher, Lynne, then interjects with a revoicing move to align speakers:

(43) Steven: ...um/but if she/kept her/um/sugar

and used thatl
and then/took her/thing of ten to twenty-two!
and just picked another number/like/halfway/
like Allison said/
and then just made that her concenuate/I
(4b) Lynne: So then, you don’t agree with Sarita that if she/
picks a number halfway between/
and that’s not really making her first concentrate either/l
(O’Connor & Michaels, 1993, pp. 322)

In this sequence, Lynne has created a participant framework that positions speakers
in several ways, including...“(a) she herself has taken the opportunity to draw a further
inference from Steven’s utterance; and (b) Steven has the right to validate her inference
and, thus, take on a position himself with respect to an aspect of the current academic task
(represented by the proposition expressed in the complement of “agree”); and (c) Steven
has been positioned in opposition to Sarita in an activity that involves discussion of the
relative merits of two proposals” (O’Connor and Michaels, 1993, pp. 322).

In this example of revoicing, the teacher accomplishes a number of academic and

44

social goals. First, unlike the I-R-E sequence in which the teacher positions herself to
evaluate a student’s response, the use of the discourse marker “so” serves to open a
speaking turn slot at the end of her revoicing so the originator of the inference source (i.e.,
Steven) has the opporttmity to respond to her revoicing. In this sense, the teacher is
distancing herself as the sole source of authority in the construction of meaning,
relinquishingher right to evaluate and to effectively end the conuibution of the student
speaker. Control for choice of next speaker, and thus, the opportunity to position others is
given back to the original authors. Second, the teacher effectively “animates” both the
addressee, Steven, and the previous speaker Sarita through casting Steven as opposing
Sarita. Lynne positions Steven directly by saying “So then, you don’t agree with
Sarita...”, even though the two speakers have not mentioned each other in previous
exchanges. In this sense, in creating an opposition between speakers (and ideas) Lynne
makes possible a discussion or debate in which different views are defended. Finally, in
giving ownership of ideas to speakers through creating an opposition of ideas, Lynne
allows herself the opportunity to reintroduce the original proposition in a form that is
clearer for all members of the classroom. The revoicing move allows the teacher to clarify
ideas for the benefit of all class members, and to give ownership of the content of the
proposition to the inference maker.

Revoicing: Sharing refomulajons A second instance of revoicing reported by
O’Connor and Michaels (1993) occurred when the goals of a task required students to
refine a random guess into a decision supported by some form of evidence. In this
particular mathematics lesson, each student in Lynne’s class was asked to create three
possible trips on the mass uansit system in Boston. From the resulting 87 possible trips
that were listed on a chart, Lynne guided the students in an academic task structure that
required a sequence of turns in which students were asked to give their reasons for

guessing which particular station was the most frequently selected as the starting location.

45

Lynne opens the floor for students to bid for turns, setting the expectation that multiple

opinions must be considered. Particularly important to Lynne was creating a discourse

community in which students’ rich experiential knowledge was used as the content for

introducing students to more conventional knowledge used by the wider world, including

ways of using language to describe and defend hypotheses with evidence. In the following

partial transcript, Lynne uses revoicing to refonnulate a student’s idea in more conventional

ways:

(b) Marshall:

(c) Lynne:

(d) Michael:

(e) Lynne:

(1) Michael:

(8) Lynne:
(h) Pierre:

(i) Lynne:

I / I started at Alewife / in the / the beginning ll...

because / urn / it’s just the beginning / um I I think Alewife’s
a good terminal // [students laugh] and I been to Alewife
three times and I liked the way it looked //

Okay I so you chose Alewife based on your own personal
experience with Alewife station and liking the way it looks/
and /

If it’s such a nlzce looking place why wouldn’t people want to
start there? //

...Michael //

I / I picked Alewif e too //

because/like/alotofpeoplelike/liketorideonthetrain

for a long time //

groin/e, people might just ride / to Alewife / just for the heck
It

So you made your guess based on what you know about
human beha:vior?
[students laugh a little]

Uhm hmm //

Uhhuh // ...Pierre

Well / I picked / Alewife / based on the information that
was/ontheum/tackedupontheboard/causellIlooked

at it and I saw that / almost fifty percent of the trips were
starting at Alewife I /

So you based it on the information that you got from reading
the two charts ll (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993, pp. 327)

46

In this sequence, the teacher, Lynne, reformulates Marshall, Michael, and Pierre’s
rationales for choosing Alewife as the most frequent subway station to begin a trip. In each
instance, Lynne used the content of the original inference to make a link towards a more
conventional language using practice. Equally important, though, is how Lynne’s
reformulation lends power and authority to students who may not have a strong voice in the
classroom. For example, in turn (c), Lynne takes Marshall’s seemingly impoverished
explanation, that he likes Alewife terminal because it’s a “good” terminal and because he
has been there, and authorizes the ideas by suggesting that it was based on personal
experience and its appearance: “If it’s such a nI:ce looking place why wouldn’t people
want to start there?... In this one revoicing move, Lynne reformulates Marshall’s budding
idea for the rest of the class in more standard terms, gives Marshall’s idea a bigger voice in
front of his peers, and supports Marshall’s attempt by supporting his belief that the
appearance of a station can in fact be a source of evidence. Though not nearly as
‘ sophisticated as Pierre’s calculation of the percent of trips starting with Alewife on the
board, Marshall’s source of evidence is sanctioned as being appropriate when the class is
formulating hypotheses about claims.

Revoicing: Scaffolding and recasting problem-solution strategies. The final use of
revoicing described by O’Connor and Michaels (1993) occurred when the teacher, Judy
Richards, uses the revoicing move to hold the floor for a non-native English speaking
student, Renee, who had only recently begun to offer ideas in class. In this particular
discussion arormd balance and torque in a third and fourth grade classroom, Judy
reformulates Renee’s often unintelligible answers, and provides a space for her ideas to be
hearth

(7) Excerpt from class discussion:

(a) Teacher. Renee I what about you? //

(b) Renee: [unintelligible]

 

47

(c) Teacher: We’re your audience / we can’t hear you // You’re doing
fine // You think it will balance because...”

(d) Renee: [unintelligible]

(e) Teacher. Yes/yuh/threeofthematthree/l

(f) Annie: Could you speak up? //

(g) Renee: [unintelligible]

(h) Teacher: So it’s ten and ten? //

(i) Dorian: Yeah! //

(j) Teacher. (disciplinary interruption)

(k) Marta: Renee / I have a comment for you // Um / I like what you
did / I like / cause usually we just/ like do what Sadja did on
the board / weight times distance // But you added the / the
fiveandthethree/andthen youaddedthetwo/lAndthen
you added the other ones and I think that’s a neat way //

(1) Teacher. So instead of I I’m going to give a little louder voice to what I
think I hear Renee say // She was saying she wasn’t adding
five and two / and saying it’s seven / she was saying five
and five / knowing that if you double something it’s like
adding it to itself //

(m) Child: Yeah right // five and five...//

(n) Teacher. Five and five and on this side she was saying three and three

and three is.../ nine / (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993. PP. 329-330)

In this sequence, the teacher provides extensive scaffolding in order to gather

enough information to revoice Renee’s claim in line (I). The teacher directly calls on Renee
to seek her opinion in line (a) and follows this call by providing supporting statements in
line (c) about the role of the other class members and her first attempt at formulating her
ideas in line (b). The teacher provides an explicit scaffold by using the starter sentence
“You think it will balance because...” to help position Renee to respond. Renee then
responds (though unintelligible) in line (d), again getting support through the teachers
repetition of her idea “three of them at three.” The teacher’s question in line (h), “So it’s
ten and ten?” serves as a revoicing of the partial information Renee had proviwd This

48

revoicing then opens the door for two students, Dorian and Marta, to support Renee’s
contribution. Without the teacher’s revoicing of Renee’s ideas, she would not have been in
a position to receive the alliance of other class members. This alliance then grows further
after the teacher’s extensive revoicing in turn (I), where she further clarifies and
reformulates Renee’s original contribution. In fact, O’Connor & Michaels (1993) report
that a studentwho was unfriendly and even hostile towards Renee aligned herself with
Renee during this episode of revoicing, though it was difficult to determine whether the
effort was genuine.
Summary and Reflections

The study of the revoicing move in classroom discussions makes visible many
important considerations in the sociolinguistic study of classroom events. O’Connor and
Michaels (1993) take a significant step forward in helping to understand the tightly linked
coupling between language use and socialization. These authors show how one
conversational suategy, revoicing, serves to create participant frameworks that serve
multiple sociocognitive purposes, including the alignment of opposing speakers, giving a
bigger voice to those students who typically do not participate in class discussions,
reformulating students’ incomplete ideas so their ideas are privileged and included in the
fabric of discussion, and creating opportunities for students to build alliances with others
through their revoiced ideas.
,5 Embedded within their study of the revoicing move, O’Connor and Michaels
(1993) draw upon and utilize a number of concepts that take researchers beyond more
traditional process-product studies of classroom discourse (Brophy & Good, 1986).
First, when researchers examine how discourse is used to create meaning in discourse
formats like discussions, it is important to examine the types of discourse moves that are

used by teachers and may be afforded by the nature of the particular event (Burbules,

1993). The patterned nature of discourse moves like revoicing, questioning, and repeating

49

are important in that they tend to position others discursively and to create a participant
framework in which both the speaking and non-speaking members respond (Davies &
Harre, 1990).

Second, as O’Connor and Michaels work illustrates, the resulting participant
framework that develops as a result of various positionings aligns and reformulates both
the content and the social relationships among class members. This finding has important
ramifications for understanding how speech communities are formed and their ability to
influence facility in a number of school-based discourses.

Third, as researchers begin to examine how exemplary teachers use discourse in
patterns that differ from the I-R-E sequence, especially those forms of discourse that see
the teacher and students develop a dialogical relation based on mutuality and respect, there
is a need to study how teachers create conversational involvement with students (T annen,
1989). Tannen (1989), in her study of naturally occurring conversation, noted the use of
three recurring discourse moves that functioned to heighten conversational involvement,
including the use of dialogue, imagery, and repetition. These involvement strategies,
though only recently discussed in educational discourse (Burbules, 1993), may prove to be
particularly important in furthering our understanding of how teachers align cognitive and
social participation and build a classroom community.

Finally, the work of O’Connor and Michaels (Michaels and O’Connor; 1990;
O’Connor & Michaels, 1993) helps researchers to think further about the socialization of
students from diverse backgrounds into school-based discourses. Through their study of
the revoicing move, they showed that students who were less likely to offer their ideas or
who lacked the complexity of other language users were brought into the fabric of more
conventional ways of knowing through the teacher’s reformulation of their ideas. This
careful attention to the way in which intermental contexts are created through discourse is a

critical area for future research, especially with students who have not tended to be

 

50

successful in traditional school settings (O’Connor, in press).

This study extends our understanding of the moment-to-moment creation of
intermental contexts by studying how one exemplary special education teacher attempted to
bridge the gap between students home-based ways of knowing and inculcate them into the
conventional practices used by the larger community of readers and writers. Studying how
exemplary teachers create these social contexts to support children who bring diverse
backgrounds and abilities to school is essential to understand how experiential, home-based
language practices comes into contact with the more conventionalized school-based
discourses that are necessary for school success.

The Santa Barbara Discourse Group

The Santa Barbara Discourse Group consists of a group of researchers and teachers
working together to better understand the practice of teaching (Santa Barbara Discourse
Group, 1992b). Particularly important to the development of this group is a shared interest
and participation in several writing projects, including the South Coast Writing Project, the
California Writing Project, and the Natioml Writing Project. The South Coast Writing
Project has been in existence for 12 years, bringing expert teachers together to explore what
it means to become a writer by providing opportunities for teachers to write, to share
writing, and to discuss the ideas of other teachers and experts in the fields of language,
literacy, and composition (Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b).

The research team of the Santa Barbara Discomse Group includes numerous
researchers and teachers from first grade through high school (Santa Barbara Discourse
Group, 1992b), including studies in bilingual English/Spanish classrooms (Santa Barbara
Discourse Group, 1992c; Tuvay, Jennings, & Dixon, 1993). Though it is not possible to
summarize each of the studies conducted by the Santa Barbara Discourse Group, a
discussion of the theoretical and methodological assumptions and findings from their
research will be outlined Examples from various studies will be used to illustrate

51

particular points.

MW There appear to be at least three overarching
research agendas for the Santa Barbara Discourse Group, including (a) the importance of
studying exemplary teachers as they construct their classroom communities over time and
across grade levels, (b) cross-classroom comparisons of the educational possibilities that
are developed as teachers create different types of classroom communities, and (c)
continued study of the process of constructing and reconstructing the roles of teacher,
student, community, activity and what counts as literate behavior through an interactional
sociolinguistic perspective.

A particularly important research agenda for the Santa Barbara Discourse Group is
the study of exemplary teachers in a variety of grade levels and settings. At the most
fundamental level, it is only when researchers develop images and understandings of how
exemplary teachers construct their classroom communities that researchers and teachers will
be able to challenge the status quo and have an empirical basis for suggesting altematr'ves
(Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b). Rather than thinking of students in terms of
deficits, the Santa Barbara Discourse Group’s studies of culturally and linguistically
diverse classrooms indicate that students in particular classroom communities could socially
construct new ways of “studenting” in classrooms. Importantly, the goal of this type of
research was not the development of a set of prescriptions, but rather identifying some
general processes and principles that could guide teachers and students. This line of
research is particularly important for those students in special education classrooms, where
reducing complex processes like composing and comprehending is often the norm
(Allington, 1992).

A second line of inquiry, building upon the first, is to study how different
classroom communities tend to create differential opportunities for students to learn,

including what counts as knowing and doing in this particular community and which

52

actions are valued. The Santa Barbara Discourse Group uses the term ‘educational
possibilities analysis’ to describe how researchers can make visible the often invisible ways
in which exemplary teachers construct particular possibilities with particular groups of
students The following premises undergird the cross-case comparison of teachers and
their classrooms:

(a) . all classrooms are places in which a group comes together and construct
ways of engaging in life in schools;

(b) in all classrooms a world is constructed-mot all possible worids or the
world;

(0) differential access and experiences are the norm and not the exception,
since all individuals bring unique histories;

(d) from differences a community is formed;

(e) the nature of that community defines what is possible and what is valued
within the local group;

(I) the community is formed through the roles and relationships, rights and
obligations, and norms and expectations that the group constructs;

(g) therefore, a community of difference and separation is possible as is a
mmunity of commonality (Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992a, pp.
All classrooms construct a form of community through the actions and interactions, norms
and expectations, and roles and relationships that are negotiated and established by
members as they affiliate over time (paraphrawd from Santa Barbara Discourse Group,
1992c, pp. 1). Viewed this way, classrooms can be perceived as either expanding or
limiting the opportunities for children to learn.

A third theme that runs through the work of the Santa Barbara Discourse Group is
the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of social constructivism (Vygotsky,
1978) and interpretive research traditions (Erickson, 1986), including interactional
sociolinguistics (Hymes, 1974). In order to study the social construction and

reconstruction of classroom communities, it is necessary to study classrooms across time,

 

53

in a variety of settings, and with multiple data sources (e.g., observations, interviews,
transcripts, and especially outside influences such as district policies).

W. The Santa Barbara Discourse Group illustrated how the study
of life in one classroom can inform the study of school life in other classrooms. Three
concepts were identified as being generic across classrooms.

First, the roles of teacher and student are roles that are constructed in interactions
among members of the group (Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b). The ways in
which these roles were constructed resulted in differential access to particular resources,
where and with whom interactions took place, and the content and purposes of the
interactions. Importantly, these and other studies supported the finding that even when the
content and tasks are similar, individual teachers and students may socially construct
different lessons, different classrooms, and different ways of knowing what counts as
academic content in a given classroom. Learning in schools is an intensely situated and
social phenomenon.

A second major finding of this series of studies was the referential nature of
classroom life. The referential system of classrooms is socially constructed over time as
members engage in language using practices, develop common meanings for terms,
patterned ways of interacting and the norms and expectations of how oral and written
discourse was to be used in classrooms. It is this referential system that defined what it
meant to be an inside member of the culture of a particular classroom. Though individual
students may hold personal interpretations that may or may not match the group’s
referential system, this perspective suggests that common meanings exist at the level of
group.

As an example of developing the referential system in a classroom, The Santa
Barbara Discourse Group (1992a) describes fifth-grade students entering a classroom and
seeing their desks arranged in groups of four. In the middle of each desk sat a watermelon.

 

54

The teacher directed the students to discover how much per pound the watermelon cost.
Weighing scales and an insert in the local newspaper telling how much the watermelon cost
were provided. Students had to find the price per pound of the watermelon, return to the
whole group after conducting their analysis and explain their problem solving, and take the
roles of facilitator, recorder, and mediator in their groups. What makes this example
significant is that this happened on the first day of school. The teacher was beginning to
create the norms for learning nrathematies in her classroom. Students would be asked to
collaborate and cooperate, mathematics knowledge would be viewed as a problem-solving
activity, and knowledge would be a public and social affair involving other class members.
In another classroom, the referential system might be constructed quite differently,
resulting in different opportunities to participate and learn.

A final theme that emerged from the study of four different classrooms, including
elementary, junior and senior high schools, was the intertextual nature of classroom life.
Intertexuality refers to the ways in which texts are tied across events. Intertexual
relationships are constantly being constructed by members of the classroom to accomplish
individual and group goals. Over time, these socially constructed relationships become a
cultural ideology that helps give the group a shared system for defining meaning within the
group. Particularly important to this finding were the ways in which cycles of activity were
developed, including how what occurred at one point in time was related to other points of
time in the past. Cycles of activity within the class were often related to cycles of activity
outside of the class.

In a study of an innovative, student-oriented high school English program that met
in the summer, students were originally sent a letter that was unclear about the grading
system to be used in the summer course. The instructors asked the school district if they
could give a pass/fail grade if the class was to count for graduation. The district said that

letter grades must be given, altering the teachers’ format for assessing the course (Santa

55

Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b), and the nature of the content. The result of this change
in grading system impacted which elements of the cunicultun were seen as most important.
This finding suggested that researchers must examine influences both within and outside
the class to understand the intertextual ties within classrooms.

Summgy

The importance of studying how exemplary teachers create learning communities,
and necessarily, the opportunities children have to learn, has never been greater.

This chapter began by outlining a theoretical perspective, social constructivism, that
highlights the inherently social processes of higher order learning. With other, more
knowledgeable members of the culture, students are apprenticed into a variety of
sociocultural practices, including learning various forms of language use. These language
using practices include both the primary discourse that the child learns at home, and the
more conventional forms of talk learned at school, or school-based discourses (Gee, 1989;
Michaels & O’Connor, 1990).

Until recently, there has been little insight into the possible modes of discourse that
might be played out in classrooms. Burbules (1993) provided a framework, a starting
point, to begin thinking about how teachers might engage students in different ways of
talking. These modes of discourse, including instruction, debate, conversation, and
inquiry, provide a possible structure for beginning to examine how different classroom
events create possibilities for different school-based (including literate) discourses to be
developed. Put another way, an important question to ask is “How do different literacy
events afford students opportunities to engage in conventionalized ways of becoming
literate?” This analysis would include the study of a variety of literate behaviors, including
specific language using practices, norms of interaction, literacy skills and strategies, and
opportunities to produce, critique, and publish written and oral texts.

Though there have been some important strides made in altering traditional patterns

56

of discourse in schools, especially the importance placed upon discussions and
instructional conversations (Goldenberg, 1993), discourse in school continues to be
dominated by teacher-led instructional discourse (Burbules, 1993). Burbules (1993)
argues that what continues to be underepresented in classroom discourse is the importance
of the authority, power, and status that originates in the role of teacher. If dialogues are to
be successful, teachers must begin to develop a “dialogical relation” with one’s students,
regardless of the mode of discourse being played out in classrooms. The dialogical relation
is a vivid attempt to remind ourselves that language not only carries the content of our
message, but is negotiating the social relationships we are building with other members of
the classroom.

The studies of O’Connor and Michaels (1993) and the Santa Barbara Discourse
Group (1992a, 1992b, 1992c) of exemplary teachers, demonstrated that their teachers were
acutely aware of the existing social relationships of various community members, and
actively modified those patterns of relationships through various discursive moves (e.g.,
revoicing) or through creating conditions that afford students to negotiate and renegotiate
relationships with other members (e.g., changing referential system). Moreover, these
research teams provided two complementary sets of lenses for the construction and
reconstruction of specific classroom events (i.e., discussions) and entire classroom
communities. The Santa Barbara Discourse Group’s studies show how the negotiation of
the classroom community between teacher and students, including what is meant by the
roles of “teacher” and “student,” the referential system, and the intertextual ties made
possible combine to create different educational possibilities for students. O’Connor and
Michaels (1993) provided a microanalytic view of how the single discourse move of
revoicing created participant frameworks that aligned the cognitive and social participation
of group members. In this one move, the roles, relationships, and content was being

negotiated to create a particular referential system of how actors participated in this

57

particular classroom. Combined, these two sets of studies provided an important backdrop
for this study.

This study extended previous work on the interactional sociolinguistic examination
of classroom events in several important ways. First, this study occurred in a special
education classroom, a setting that differs significantly from a regular education classroom.
Second, this study examined two literacy events, Sharing Chair and Morning Message, that
were believed to represent the modes of discourse as conversation and inquiry,
respectively. Currently, there are few interactional sociolinguistic examinations of
classroom events that alter the more traditional question-answer sequences that pervade
most classroom talk (Lemke, 1989c; for exceptions, see Michaels, 1981; O’Connor &
Michaels, 1993), including I-R-F sequences (Wells, 1993) and other instructional
conversations (Goldenberg, 1993). Third, the literacy events of Sharing Chair and
Morning Message were daily events in the classroom community, allowing unique
opportunities to study the construction and reconstruction of the event over time. Finally,
this study extended the work of the Santa Barbara Discourse Group (1992c) by examining
the educational possibilities (i.e., literate behaviors) that appeared to be afforded in each of

the literacy events.

CHAPTER 3
METHODS
Methods

In this study, the primary unit of analysis was the literacy event, Sharing Chair and
Morning Message. Each literacy event was considered as a case study, a bounded system
with its unique norms of participating, including the rights, duties, roles and
responsibilities given to different speakers (Merriman, 1988). As such, this study did not
focus on individual students, per se, though understanding what the activity afforded
students necessarily involved examinations of individual student’s participation in the two
events.

In order to understand how the literacy events of Sharing Chair and Morning
Message were socially consu'ucted and reconstructed, I used an interactional sociolinguistic
approach to understand how discourse and other mediational tools (e. g., written language)
were used to negotiate meaning among participants. In this qualitative research tradition,
the researcher examined naturally occurring talk in order to gain an understanding of both
the linguistic form and the social function that speech played in establishing rules, roles,
and relationships. However, in order to understand more fully the local meanings of this
particular community, especially what counted as literate behavior, it was necessary, to the
extent possible, to become an inside member of the working community of this classroom.
This ethnographic component to sociolinguistic interpretation was a necessary step in order
to interpret and accurately represent what counted as literacy.

While these two interpretive traditions, ethnography and sociolinguistics, guided
my examination, several qualifications are necessary to understand the focus of the study.
First, this study was embedded in two larger studies, the Early Literacy Project Study (see
next two sections on site selection and program context) and my own ethnographic study

that occurred over a two-year period in one of the two special education teachers’ '

58

59

classrooms with whom I worked. Moreover, I had followed six of the fourteen students in
this study from first through fourth grades (i.e., four years) across two different special
education teachers (Mariage, 1993). The focus of this study, however, was on five
episodes each of Sharing Chair and Morning Message that occurred within a three month
period in the last year of the project (e. g., March-June).

Second, the focal data source for this study included the five videotaped episodes of
Sharing Chair and Morning Message and their accompanying transcripts. While the
ethnographic data (i.e., interview data, fieldnotes, audio/videotapes, artifact collection)
surrounding the discourse analysis of the transcripts was important in interpreting the
transcript data, this study does not represent the full ethnographic study conducted in this
particular classroom.

Third, this study focused specifically on the naturally occurring construction and
reconstruction of two literacy events, and was not intended to be an intervention study.
However, there were at least three ways in which I influenced the existing context: (1) I
made a decision to study an exemplary teacher, and not randomly select a teacher from a
pool of candidates; (2) I developed specific questions apriori to the study, and adapted
these questions as data analysis evolved; and (3) I utilized two transfer measures that were
implemented during the Morning Message period to help better understand the
internalization of the group discourse on individual students’ abilities to produce and edit a
Morning Message story.

The remainder of this chapter outlines the setting of the study, including a rationale
for choosing an exemplary teacher and the literacy events of Sharing Chair and Morning
Message, the participants, data sources, and a description of data analysis.

The Setting
The study took place in a third/fourth grade special education classroom in a mid-

size city in the Midwest. The teacher in this classroom, Trisha Williams2, was a two-year

6O

participant of the Early Literacy Project (ELP)3, a teacher-researcher community that met on
a bi-weekly basis to discuss the creation of rich contexts for literacy instruction in special
education classrooms.

'0 cf SiteSelecti Stud ' anEx 1 Teacher

In 1989, four researchers asked the question ”How can teachers and researchers
create learning contexts to develop self-regulated literacy learners among primary grade
mildly impaired (i.e., learning disabled, emotionally impaired, educable mentally impaired)
students?" (Englert, Palincsar, Raphael, & Gavelek, 1991). There has been a marked
absence of research on how literacy programs developed around a sociocultural perspective
might alter the social contexts of literacy learning for primary-grade special education
students. As a result, a four-year, Federally-funded research study was undertaken that
would bring together several research traditions, including early literacy (Sulzby & Teale,
1991), cognitive strategy instruction (Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Fear & Gregg, 1988;
Palincsar & Brown, 1989; Pressley et a1, 1992), metacognition and self-regulation (Paris
& Oka, 1986), whole language (Edelsky, 1991; Goodman & Goodman, 1991), and a
sociocultural perspective to teaching and learning (Bakhtin, 1986; Wertsch, 1985, 1991;
Vygotsky, 1978, 1988).

As a research liaison and project participant since the inception of the project, I was
assigned to work at Longhaven school with one of the original ELP teachers, Kathryn
Barnes, the primary (grades K-3) grade special education teacher. In the first year of the
study, I spent two days per week observing, taking extensive field notes, and conducting a
series of literacy assessments in the Spring of the year. In year two, I continued to follow
Kathym’s students in her classroom, especially the six leaming disabled students she had
returning, now second grade students. In year three, Trisha Williams, the middle

 

2'l'herrarnerroftlreteaclrers,theirstudents.andtheschoolinthisstudyareallpseudonyrns.

61

elementary special education teacher (grades 3-4) at Longhaven, joined the project. This
created a condition in which all of Kathyrn’s students, who had the ELP curriculum for a
year (in Year 2), would continue into Trisha’s ELP room for two more years. At this point
of the study (beginning of Year 3), I became the ELP liaison for Trisha’s room and
embarked on a two-year ethnographic study of her classroom (Year 3 and 4 of the study).
The data for this study was taken from year four of the study in Trisha’s classroom.

The teacher, Trisha, was chosen to participate in this study for several reasons.
First, the author acted as the research liaison in Trisha’s room as she participated in the
ELP across two years. This long-term relationship provided extensive qualitative
(Mariage, 1994) and quantitative (Mariage & Englert, 1993) data to suggest that Trisha was
an exemplary teacher. Second, Trisha’s effectiveness, as indicated by both standardized
and informal reading/writing assessment measures, suggested that her students were
consistently among the highest gainers of the ten other Early Literacy Project teachers
(Englert, Raphael, & Mariage, 1994; Englert, Garmon, Mariage, Rozendal, Tarrant, &
Urba, 1993). Third, Trisha was recognized among project members as being particularly
effective in carrying out the two activities that guided this study, Sharing Chair and
Morning Message. Evidence that Trisha was considered an exemplary teacher came from
both anecdotal evidence provided by peers and district administrators, as well as from her
presentations at several state level conferences, including the Michigan Reading
Association, the Michigan Council for Exceptional Children, the Learning Disabilities
Association, and Michigan State University. In conferences, inservices, and teacher

education classes, videotapes of Trisha as she conducted Morning Message and Sharing

 

31hisreeearch was part cfalargerproject. ‘Transforming theIearningDisabledinto Self-Regulated
learners: The Development and Implementation of a Sustainable Early literacy Curriculum,” which was
fundedbyagrantfromtheOfficeofSpecial EducationPrograrns(No.H023€90076).’1‘henmeusedby
researchersmd teacherstodescribetheprojectwasWEminitaacyProject”(EIP).

62

Chair have been and continue to be shown as instructional models of the two activities.
Trisha was also chosen by her ELP colleagues to present these two activities to other
teachers at conferences and disuict wide inservices.

Prom Context: Principles of The Early Lite_ra_cy Project

The ELP curriculum grew out of weekly team meetings in which researchers from
the university. and special education teachers from five urban elementary schools discussed
the literacy nwds of their primary grade students. Discussions centered on identifying
appropriate activities that would support the four principles of the project. These principles
related to assumptions that teachers led students' strategic and cognitive development by (a)
embedding literacy in meaningful, purposive, and contextualized activities; (b) engaging
students in social and dialogic interactions with others, and demonsuating responsive
instruction that supported and scaf folded students' learning in their zones of proximal
development; (c) teaching strategies for self -regulated learning, and (d) building literate
communities where literacy was shared among all its members (see Englert & Palincsar,
1991).

Since the principles figured heavily in the design of the literacy cuniculum. these
principles are described in depth in this section.

Embedding litem within meaningful, purposive, and contextualized activities. In
order for students to gain a holistic perspective of the meaning and uses of literacy in their
culture and avoid the often fragmentary knowledge that results from reducing literacy into a
series of discrete subskills, students need to participate in the whole literacy enterprise
(e. g., reading and writing extended texts) even when they are not conventionally literate.
However, that which is meaningful and purposive derives from both the knowledge and
experience that students bring to the classroom and the meanings and purposes that can be
intersubjectively negotiated between the teacher and students (Heap, 1991). It was

recognized that there exists an inherent tension between teaching students the conventions

63

of the literate use of language and their need and right to transform that which is taught.
Accordingly, the literacy skills and strategies were embedded in activities that focused on
real audiences and purposes (e.g., writing for publication, writing to pen pals, reading in
Author's Chair) in order to make the conventions of language meaningful to students as
they saw the utility of these skills and strategies (e. g., planning, organizing, drafting,
editing, and revising) in the whole process of communication.

Furthermore, the many forms, genres, and functions of literacy were presented by
requiring that students participate in multiple activities that allowed for adopting different
roles, including those involving oral literacy (e.g., oral storytelling, story dictation,
listening to oral stories), reading/written literacy (e.g., reading stories, writing stories,
critiquing stories), as well as combinations of language modes such as choral reading,
read-along tapes, and paired readings. These various roles helped students develop the
unique ways of speaking, acting, reading, and writing in genres that were commonplace in
the wider culture, such as defending a point of view, comprehending a story from the
newspaper, or writing a letter. At the same time, students came to see literacy as a range of
tools that allowed access to multiple perspectives, including the conventional forms of
cultural literacy as they were useful in accomplishing meaningful goals.

Litem activities allow for remsive instruction. Effective instruction relies upon
and is constituted by making visible a child's background knowledge. Knowing where a
child is functioning cognitively and affectively requires that instruction and assessment are
inextricably intertwined through collaborative interactions between teacher and students.
Rather than asking the more common question, "How can assessment inform instruction?”,
teachers need to look at developing and using activities that privilege an understanding of
learning in a socially constructed process. Literacy events that feature discourse and
assessment of students’ communication can make visible and public a student’s thinking in

an effort to reach intersubjectivity. This give-and-take between teacher and student creates

64

its own context that provides critical information about a student’s state of knowledge that
influences the moment-to—moment decisions required to skillfully negotiate the next
instructional move (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). For example, Wertsch (1991) uses the
term "addressivity" to describe the process a listener goes through in "laying down
answering words“ while another speaker is speaking. The teacher, primarily through
listening to the students’ speech, must make judgments as to how to respond and build
upon students' answers in anticipation of how they might respond.

Effective activities allow the teacher to have many opportunities to make ties
between the new and known. When introducing an activity, students background
knowledge is activated (e.g., brainstorming, mapping, questioning) to gain insight into the
class' conception of the task and to provide entry points into helping to connect their ideas
to the content under consideration (Dudly-Marling & Searle, 1991). Similarly, when
students come to a point of error or confusion, the teacher can make the utility of skills and
strategies concrete for students through modeling, thinking aloud, and/or using analogy or
metaphor to provide a kind of cognitive bootstrap to help students over a hurdle (Bereiter &
Scardemalia, 1985; Englert, 1992; Ienz, 1989).

In the Eariy Literacy Project, instruction was intended to be responsive to students'
needs, capabilities, and interests. Real learning was thought to take place at the point of
error or confusion as the teachers‘ used mediational means such as prompts, manipulatives,
analogies, or other forms of procedural facilitation to construct new knowledge (Bereiter &
Bird, 1985).

Since the teacher's choice of inschtional activities determines the type and amount
of responsiveness and personal investment required, an examination of teacher
effectiveness must include the choice of activities and the nature of their discourse moves in
response to students (Englert, Tarrant, & Mariage, 1992). Activities that fail to engage
students in interactional sequences with more capable others do not allow for the

65

assessment of student understanding within the context of the activity, nor does it provide
opportunities for responsive instruction.

In short, the notion of responsive instruction underscores the active and interactive
nature of assessment-in-instruction (Carnpione & Brown, 1987; Minick, 1987). Choosing
literacy activities that engage students and teacher in face-to-face communication helps to
ensure that insu'uction is based upon a mutually evolving context that is being constructed
socially between its participants as opposed to the premeditated outcomes of static measures
of assessment. Teachers need to spend some of their instructional time roaming around
what children know, yet recognize that effective instruction must lead development beyond
what children are currently able to do independently (Englert, Rozendal, & Mariage, 1994;
Vygotsky, 1988).

Teaching to glf-ggulated learning. The goals of literacy, and schooling in general,
are to enable students to regulate their own behavior from within (i.e., inner speech).
Setting goals, monitoring their progress towards those goals, and assessing their own
success suggests that students are well on their way to internalizing the language that
mediates thought and action. However, this process of self -regulation has a genetic
component as it progresses through the zone of proximal development (Gallimore & Tharp,
1990). Initially, the student requires the assistance of more capable others such as parents,
teachers, peers, or coaches in the form of modeling, questioning, cognitive structuring,
contingency management, or feeding back (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990) before being able to
complete an entire task. Later, the child begins to use this social language to control one's
own assistance. For example, a child who is struggling to remember how to multiply by
nine uses one's fingers to help assist this skill or a young writer who is editing a paper
might rely on the mnemonic CUPS (check capitalization, use of words, punctuation,
spelling) to remind herself what aspects she should focus upon. Though these skills and

strategies are invoked by the learner without direct assistance from others, they are not yet

66

internalized to the point that they are automatic without conscious regulation (Gee, 1989).
Gee (1989) and Michaels and O'Connor (1990) argue that self -regulation of literacy
behavior can best be understood as the control of a number of secondary discourses
beyond the primary discourse learned at home. As such, it may be more accurate to
understand the failure of special education students as the failure to control discourses
required for school success, such as ways of integrating and extending knowledge
(Englert, Raphael, & Mariage, 1994). Poplin (1988a) notes that reductionism in both the
content of the curriculum and the implicit messages sent to students as to where meaning
resides has resulted in the fragmented view of knowledge that so many special education
students hold. Without engaging in the rich discourses involved in understanding the
larger purposes of literacy, such as communicating with others, making one's knowledge
visible through written and spoken mediums and as a source of information and enjoyment,
special education students are denied participation in the rich conversations familiar to
students who come to school sharing discourses similar to their teachers (Heath, 1983).
The development of school—based discourses for literacy learning in school,
specifically those of comprehension and composition, must be an emphasis in instruction if
special education students are allowed access to their self regulated use. In the Early
Literacy Project, a premium was placed upon the role of more knowledgeable others in
making visible their thinking by thinking aloud as they constructed the meaning of written
and read texts and built a vocabulary for talking about literacy (Englert & Mariage, 1991b).
As an example, in Trisha William’s classroom students brainstormed ideas at the
beginning of their thematic unit about Native Americans, organized and sequenced their
brainstormed ideas using familiar text structures, constructed a group story in which
students negotiated the content of their story in terms of their audiences' needs, and
collectively edited and revised the story as students synthesized new information. Also,

students gathered information from multiple sources by interviewing and questioning a

67

Native American who visited their class, clarified misconceptions on the original
brainstorm map through visiting a local Native American learning center, and searched for
additional information through independent and partner reading. Finally, students were
able to read and reread whole class texts (e.g., group story), texts created in pairs around
individual Native American tribes (e. g., Cherokee, Sioux, Algonquin), and individual
dialogue journals reflecting on the thematic unit in Sharing Chair or at home through the
formal publication of the weekly classroom newsletter.

In Eariy Literacy Project Classrooms, all students participated in the entire
comprehension and composition processes even when they were not able to do so
independently. For example, even non-readers were able to “read" in the Sharing Chair by
orally telling the story of a wordless picture book or by reading a predictable book that had
been memorized. In this way, all children had an opportunity to make their performance
public and receive comments and questions from an immediate audience of peers.
Similarly, students who were just learning their letters still participated in the entire writing
process by planning, organizing, drafting, editing, and revising a whole group story while
engaging in the complex dialogues of more capable writers. Thus, all students participated
in the discourse and cognitive processes underlying self —regulation, whether they could do
so independently or not.

Establishing classroom learning communities. The final instructional principle in
support of a sociocultural view of learning is the development of a social context that
assumed new knowledge is constructed as a joint venture of the class rather than isolated
communications from teachers to students (Lampert, 1990). Since learning requires
understanding of the background knowledge students bring to any learning situation, it is
imperative that students can freely exchange their personal knowledge for the benefit of the
larger group. Caimey and Langbien (1989) and Fagan (1989) have shown that in
classrooms where students begin to share in a mutual dialogue in practical, holistic, and

68

functional activities, the developing leaming community comes to privilege higher
psychological processes. Since students are provided many opportunities to participate
directly in this discourse and have access to other students’ thinking, students have a
greater agency and sense of ownership in these learning environments (Fagan, 1989).

As an example, Dauite (1986), in a study of collaborative writing amongst
elementary students, showed that students routinely borrowed and shared other students’
ideas in the formulation of their own papers when proviwd the opportunity to negotiate
their own meanings. Thus, in classrooms where teachers hold the belief that various
subject-matters (e. g., math, science, reading, and writing) are forums for teacher—student
and student-student to negotiate meanings, rather than adhere to the belief that authority
resides in the textbook or the teacher, there is a greater likelihood to achieve the deeper
conceptual understandings necessary for learning to advance beyond merely displaying
knowledge (Alverrrnan, 1990; Ball, 1990; Bloome, 1986; Lampert, 1990; Lemke, 1989b).
As importantly, it is in the environment of negotiated meanings around conjectures,
puzzlement, and misguided conceptions that students and teacher begin to interact with one
another on a more personal level. Over time, these forms of personal response create
powerful sources of insight and knowledge for both students and teacher (Ball, 1990, cited
in Englert, Tarrant, & Mariage, 1992).

Furthermore, the principle of building a more inclusive learning community can
lead to greater opportunities for students to take risks in engaging in discourse that they are
responsible for (Florio-Ruane, 1991). If teachers are genuinely to affect the reduction in
the asymmetry of power that exists in the role definitions of classrooms, they must
encourage and accept students everyday knowledge in initiating action.

In Early Literacy Project classrooms, literacy environments were created that
allowed for teacher-to-student and student-to-student discourse and the publication of ideas
through multiple literacy modes (e. g., oral, written, and read) and roles (e.g., critic,

69

author, evaluator, advocate) that established the climate for building learning communities
(Englert, Tarrant, & Mariage, 1992). At the most fundamental level, it was engagement
and participation that were requisite for learning to occur. When teachers established
classroom learning communities that focused on learning as an interactive, negotiated, and
social enterprise, opportunities were created where learning supported critical thinking,
individual and social responsibility, and the acceptance of diversity in an atmosphere of
shared support.

For special education students involved in a tradition that has reflected intense
individualism (e.g., IEP, behavioral objectives), reductionism, and a focus on innate
disability (Coles, 1989; Heshusius, 1989; Poplin, 1988a, 1988b), the development of
learning communities that emphasize the social, holistic, and interactive nature of learning
is an important addition to our understanding of social contexts that maximally support
special needs students.

The guy Qte_r_acy meet Curriculum

Unlike the previous studies of Reciprocal Teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984) and
Cognitive Strategy Instruction in Writing (Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Fear, & Gregg,
1988), the Early Literacy Project curriculum did not consist of a single reading or writing
intervention, but was constructed with the recognition that the processes of reading,
writing, and speaking are inextricably related to each other. As such, the literacy events
that were developed in the collaborative contexts of group meetings often involved multiple
literacy modes within a single activity. For example, during daily dialogue journal writing,
students first read the daily comments from the teacher about their previous jourml entry,
wrote in their dialogue joru'nals, read and reread their journals before coming to Sharing
Chair, and then orally read their journals, asked for comments or questions, and responded
to student queries about the contents of their journal. With their focus on publication for

real audiences and authentic purposes, the activities of the Early Literacy Project demanded

70

many forms and uses of text. These activities and their purposes are illustrated and defined
more thoroughly in Appendix A.

@001 Context
The site for this study was Longhaven School, one of thirty-three elementary

buildings in a mid-sized urban district in the Midwest. Longhaven reflected the population
of many urban schools, with a wide range of ethnic and economic diversity. The student
body at Longhaven consisted of approximately 60% Caucasian students, 20% African-
American, 15% Mexican-American, and 5% Asian (including Hmong, Laotian,
Vietnamese). The school was also divided by class. Roughly 50% of the student
population came from the surrounding neighborhood. Another 50% of the students were
bussed in from low-income neighborhoods (reflected in the near 50% of students on free
Federally Funded breakfast and lunch programs) in a nearby section of town.

The first thing one might notice about Longhaven is how it is neatly tucked away in
the center of a middle class neighborhood. The school is surrounded by attractive homes
with nicely kept lawns. Home owners include a mix of both older people and young
professional families. It is widely recognized among realtors and locals that the
neighborhood surrounding Longhaven is one of the more desirable city neighborhoods in
which to live. Nestled on the far east side of the city, the Longhaven neighborhood
borders a more upscale suburb of the city.

The school, too, seems to reflect the neighborhood. Built in 1971, the school is
one of the newer school buildings in the district. The school design is quite modern in
nature, reflecting the open school concept of many southern states (i.e., light colored brick,
single story, open walkways). The school forms the shape of a “u” with classrooms
looking on a common courtyard. Though the gym doubles as a cafeteria, there is a spacious
library and a sprawling playground that is well stocked with new equipment purchased by
the PTA. Overall, Longhaven School looks vastly different than many of the older three

71

story, red brick buildings that seem to typify many schools in the district.

Looking beyond the physical plant, when one approaches Longhaven School in the
morning, you are immediately struck by the number of students walking to school and the
safety patrols in their neon orange vests positioned on surrounding street comers.
However, equally apparent are the number of busses parked out front, including several
small special transportation busses for special needs children. Though at first glance it is
easy to dismiss this common feature of public school life, the students who are bussed and
those who walk seem to symbolize the clear economic class differences that existed in the
school. The area from which students were bussed to Longhaven included one of the
highest crime areas in the city. During the course of this study, two homicides were
committed on the street where two of the students in Trisha’s classroom lived.

Students in Trisha’s special education class, the majority of whom were bussed to
the school, spoke openly about some of the conditions in their neighborhood. In the
following transcript taken from an interview with Juan, a fourth-grade Hispanic student, he
speaks about a local problem with gangs, including his own brother’s participation:

Troy: Tell me about your neighborhood?

Juan: Umm, kind of good, real bad.

Troy: Wlnt’s the bad parts?

Juan: Fighting. Um, parties. That’s when they do the fights. Gangs. Last time,
some kids were messin’ with me, and that’s when my brother got home,
he’s in a gang, and my brother got home with his friend, and he started
swearing at each other. “leave my brother alone or I am going to beat you
upll” And then they left.

Troy: So your brother is in a gang. Do you know what the gang is called, is there
a name for it?

Juan: Yeah. Um, its GD They put signs like “GD.”
Troy: Iwonder what that stands for?

Juan: My brother says it stands for “Gangsters” (with the Vice Lords, this appears
to be the gang with the second highest membership, made-up of mainly

72

Hispanic youth. The actual name of the gang is “Gangster Disciples").

Troy: Yeah, I think I’ve seen that somewhere before. Vice Lords? Ever heard of
them?

Juan: Yeah.
Troy: What’s the difference between those two gangs do you think?
Juan: They’re bad. I think the Gangsters, they wear their hat to the right. Because
. I always see them wear their hats to the right. And the other gang wears it
to the left.
Troy: What kinds of hats do they have?

Juan: Its the red kind, they’re like some kind of leaf, I don’t know what it is, its
like a leaf right there (pointing to forehead).

Another fourth-grade student in Trisha’s class, Hannah, responded matter-of—factly to the
same question:
Troy: Tell me about your neighborhood?
Hannah: Well, I get sometimes scared of it, because there’s a lot of shooting and
stuff going around There’s been a lot of ambulances. Plus the
Vice lords (the largest gang in the city, with over three hundred
members according to Police reports) and stuff is around there.
Troy: Who are the Vice Lords?
Hannah: The people that go around killing people.
A number of other students in Trisha’s room were quite explicit in their fears, including
alcohol abuse and its effects on adults in their lives, loud noise from excessive parties and
traffic, drug use, and living in the city with its congestion of traffic and humanity. At the
same time, about half of the thirteen students reported that their neighborhoods were
relatively safe places.
The school staff at Longhaven was nearly all Caucasian, with the exception of the
janitor and speech teacher, who were African-American. Longhaven had a new female
principal, a former school teacher in the district. The general feeling among staff members

was that the new principal was “excellent,” getting along well with staff, supporting and

73

backing-up teachers’ decisions about students, and having a “hands-on” approach. As an
example, the principal designed a school~wide arts and crafts program during the last hour
of each day in which all children would eventually participate. This allowed her to get to
know all of the students in the school on a personal basis. The principal met all the busses
each day outside the building and monitored the playground and lunch area when she was
available. The principal was also a frequent visitor to classrooms, making sure that she
made contact with all of her staff and students each day. The principal was also well
respected by Trisha and Kathyrn, the two special education teachers with whom I worked,
who reported that the principal had high expectations for all children, including their special
needs students.
Classroom Context

In addition to the biweekly teacher/researcher meetings of all ELP participants, the
author averaged about 8 hours of participant/observer and observer/participant observation
spread over two days per week in Trisha’s classroom. During this time, the author took
extensive fieldnotes, video/audiotaped literacy events throughout the year, inf orrnally
interviewed students, and spent extensive time informally talking to and interviewing
Trisha.

Trisha comes across as a fairly reserved and shy person upon first meeting.
However, this appearance masks an intense commitment to the quality of education her
students receive. As evidence for this assertion, in two years of observation, I had yet to
witness Trisha conduct her own work (e.g., correcting papers, filling out IEPC forms,
etc.) while students were in her classroom. In fact, Trisha's desk is pushed into one corner
of the room with the drawers facing the students. Trisha has never sat at this desk in over a
hundred hours of observation—in fact, she does not even have a chair there. Trisha states
that "I can‘t stand busy work,” and backs up this statement with an unusual level of

instructional involvement with her students. In the one subject where students were given

74

daily seatwork assignments out of the book or given worksheets in mathematics, Trisha
noted in an interview that "I hate my math instruction,” showing her deep disappointment
in having kids "just sit there quiet and do their work" (interview, March 25, 1992). This
statement may have been a bit harsh, considering she had nine students in grades ranging
from second through fourth. More telling, all nine students were working on a different
assignment, ranging from addition with regrouping to advanced multiplication.

The physical arrangement in Trisha’s classroom might be described as unassuming
or ordinary (see Figure 3). There were two rows of desks that were in groups of three,
two small tables for conducting small groups (e. g., reading groups), and an obvious lack
of materials bought from the local teacher's store. Bulletin boards, prior to ELP were
thought of defensively as being “hated” for being window dressings rather than functional
parts of the classroom. One of the most prominent parts of Trisha’s room, however, was
the number of books across the chalk board ledge. The shelf always contained between 15
and 30 books that were related to the current thematic tmit. In each theme (e.g., insects,
Native Americans, monsters), there were always a representation of both expository and
narrative texts.

The classroom also had a bookshelf full of books, including the Wright Group
series and the Heath literature library that supplemented the Basal program. Trisha typically
went to the bookstore to purchase new books for her library every couple of weeks. She
noted with fondness that she would even try to hide the new books by putting them in a
stack on the shelf, but her students would always find them. Perhaps the best descriptor of
Trisha's room was "well worn,” not at all neat or antiseptic, kind of like a good science
lab.

The relative lack of flair in Trisha's room in no way discouraged the rich
opportunities students had to engage in multiple literacy events. When examining Trisha's
daily schedule, it becomes immediately clear that the children's seats were little more than

75

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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76

their home base, with students moving around to different areas of the room to engage in
different literacy events (see various areas in Figure 3). In Trisha's room there was an
intense focus on the integration of reading, writing, and speaking, but also the importance
of having students associate particular types of school-based discourse with different parts
of the room (see Figure 4). During partner reading and Undisturbed Silent Reading,
students chose books and were able to sit anywhere in the classroom, often ending up
underneath tables or tucked away in some corner of the room. Sharing Chair allowed all
students except the ”author" to sit on the floor in a designated part of the room, while
Morning Message allowed the individual who was providing the topic of the message to sit
in a chair at the front of the room. During Thematic Instruction, students often worked in
pairs, small groups, or at the kidney shaped table with the teacher. In short, Trisha built in
a range of activity settings that helped demarcate the different forms and functions that
discourse might take. Her room was used flexibly to insure that students learn, matching
the goals of the activity setting with specific environmental features (e.g., special ”Sharing
Chair” where the author sits above the other students; having student leading the Morning
Message to sit in front of the room as the discussion leader). Trisha incorporated a number
of literacy activities on the Early Literacy Project, including opportunities for intense social-
mediation between her and her students (e.g., Morning Message, Author’s Center) where
she introduced the formal conventions used by more advanced readers and writers, and
allowed children many opportunities to read (e. g. Partner Reading, USR, Choral/Poem
Reading), write (dialogue journal, thematic reports), and publish their ideas (e.g., Sharing
Chair, Morning Message).
m

Mist

Trisha Williams had taught special education for six years in the Frarningharn
School District. All six years had been at the elementary level between 2nd and Stir grades

Inns
9.10.9.2»
9.30-9.45
9.45-1aro
1th 10.1030
10:30-10:40

10:40-11:10

1 1:10-1 1:40
Il:40-12:00(?)
12:00- 12:30
12:30- 12:40
12:40- 1:30
1:30-21D
2:(X)-2:30

2:30-3:30

Figure 4 Trisha’s Daily Schedule

Trisha's Daily Schedule

QE'cular Am or Evgt
Folds Walt/Group Work

Partner Reading (T -Th) USR (M-W-F)
Math

Small Mn: Grow (fomh trade)
Journal

Sharing Chair

Small M118 Group (third grade)
Morning Message

Thematic Instruction

Teacha' Read Aloud

lunch

Spcllins

Language Enrichment

what in Regular Education Classrooms

78

in two different schools. Trisha received her learning disabilities teaching endorsement
afterfirst completing an endorsement in hearing impaired. At the age of 28, Trisha was
two courses shy of receiving her Master's degree in special education. At the time of this
study, Trisha had been associated with the author through the Early Literacy Project (ELP)
for two years.

Trisha Williams was a highly committed, concerned, and compassionate teacher.
Evidence for Trisha’s commitment to teaching were the expectations she had for each of her
students. This commitment was shown in numerous ways, some subtle and others more
explicit. Having been in Trisha’s classroom for two years, it became apparent that she
expected and even demanded that students take responsibility for participating in their own
learning. While, on the one hand, Trisha was a favorite teacher of nearly all of her
students, she refused to allow children to become helpless learners, a common problem
with many special needs students. Trisha sent a clear message that the “team,” the term she
used to describe her classroom community, demanded that everyone participate to be
successful. Moreover, Trisha believed that any child could be a potential source of help for
another child or the group, and tirelessly worked to insure that the voices of all children
were heard.

On a more explicit level, Trisha was an advocate and watchdog for her students’
best interests. She monitored her children’s success and performance very closely in their
regular education classrooms, the lunch room, and the playground. Trisha had a keen
sense of justice, equity, and fairness. For example, in one instance, Trisha would not
allow the adaptive physical education teacher to take her students swimming unless they all
could choose a regular education friend to attend with them.

It was also not uncommon for Trisha to support students whose needs were not
being provided at home. Trisha purchased winter boots, clothing, and toothpaste for two
sisters who came to school in - 12 Fahrenheit weather with only sandals and a spring jacket.

79

With another student, Jerrod, who was chronically absent because of an alcohol abusing
parent. Trisha went to the boy’s home and drove him to school on numerous occasions. In
short, Trisha showed an investrrrent in her students academic and social well-being that
distinguished her as a very special teacher.

m

Students in this study included eleven learning disabled, one emotionally impaired,
and two students with the dual label of learning disabled/emotionally impaired All
fourteen students received between 30% to m of their instruction (including all of their
literacy instruction) in a "basic" special education classroom. Basic classrooms included
students in the three mildly impaired categories, including learning disabled, emotionally
impaired, and educable mentally impaired. These classrooms differed slighdy from the
more traditional resource room and self-contained special education classrooms, as they
served both of these groups of students (i.e., students with less than 50% and more than
50% of time spent in special education classroom). Students in this study represent all of
the students in Trisha’s classroom, though only ten of the fourteen students participated in
both Sharing Chair and Morning Message in Trisha’s room.

As the table below indicates, the students in this class come from diverse
backgrounds in race, gender, and the number of years spent in special education
classrooms. There were five girls and nine boys in Trisha’s classroom, including nine
fourth grade students and five third grade students. In addition to having ten Caucasian
students, Trisha had two African-American, one Hispanic, and one Vietnamese students.

As noted earlier, students in this class include students from working middle class,
working low-income, and non-working low-income homes. Determination of SES was
based-upon whether the children received Federally Funded lunch and breakfast, teacher
reports of parent occupation, student interviews, and direct contact with parents at
conferences or programs in the school. Eight of the students lived with either a single

Table 1 Student Information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student SES Race! Grade SPED Years in an Years in
Gender Level Category ELP Class Special Ed
Nathan Middle Income CB 4 ID 2.6 4+ (Pre-K)
Jerrod Iow Income A-AB 4 ID 2. 6 4
Danny Iow Income CB 4 ID 2.6 4
Mark low Income CB 4 ID 0.0 0.0
Juan Low Income HB 4 ID 1.6 4
Angie Low Income CG 4 ID 1.6 2
Hannah Iow Income CG 4 ID 0.0 0.0
Juanita Low Income A-AG 4 E] 0.6 4+-
Tracey Low Income CG 4 ID 1.6 4
Byron Low Income CB 3 ID 1.6 2
lNigel Low Income CB 3 um 1.6 3
Gerry Low Income CB 3 LD/Eil 2.6 3+
Amber Iow Income CG 3 ID 1.6 2
Hia Low Income VB 3 ID 0.6 0.6
Key: CG=Caucasian Girl A-AG=African-American Girl
CB=Caucasian Boy A-AB=African-American Boy
=Hispanic Boy VB=Vietnamese Boy
4=Fourth Grader 3=Third Grader
LD=Learning Disabled EI=Emotionally Impaired

81

parent, a step-parent, or in an alternative arrangement with relatives (i.e., with grandparent,
aunt or uncle), while the remaining six students lived with both of their biological parents.
None of the parents had received a four-year college degree.

Students in Trisha’s classroom had spent varying amounts of time in special
education. However, it is important to note that eleven of the fourteen students had spent
over two years in special education, with eight of those students qualifying for special
education before or during their Kindergarten year. In other words, the majority of
students in Trisha’s classroom had been refened for special education evaluation at a very
early age due to their perceived academic and/or social difficulty. Three other students,
Mark, Hannah, and I-Iia, had qualified for special education during the year of this study.
Hia was a student who had recently come from Vieuram and spoke little English. Hia was
believed to be in formal schooling only two years prior to coming to the United States. He
was placed in Trisha’s room at the beginning of the year, but also spent the first one-third
of each day at the district’s bilingual education program. Mark and Hannah qualified for
special education just prior to the data collection period of this study, so were new to
special education.

Students in this study had also spent varying amounts of time in either Trisha or
Kathym’s Early Literacy Project Classroom. Several students, including Nathan, Danny,
Jerrod, and Gerry were finishing their third year in ELP classrooms (i.e., 2.6 years at the
beginning of data collection in March), while others had spent between zero and two years
in ELP classrooms. Two students, Tracey and Juan, were in ELP classrooms across three
years, but both students spent approximately one year at different schools in New Mexico
and Texas, respectively. Two other students, Juanita and Angie, were moved to different
placements during their time at Longhaven. Juanita was moved to a more restrictive “high
needs” classroom for the severely emotionally impaired after first grade, while Angie was
removed from special education for a year before re-qualifying at the end of third grade.

82

All students who participated in the study met state and local guidelines for either
ID or EI placement as determined by a multidisciplinary evaluation team. Additional
ancillary services for selected students in Trisha’s classroom included speech and language
(5), bilingual education (1), adaptive physical education (14), and school social
work/counseling (3).

Sources of Data

The data collection period for this study occurred over the three month period
between March 15 and June 9, 1993. As noted earlier, this study was embedded in a larger
two-year ethnographic study of Trisha’s classroom. The current study represented that last
three months of the two-year ethnography. This time period was chosen for several
reasons. First, it was important that there were multiple opportunities to study the two
literacy events of Sharing Chair and Morning Message over an extended period of time. In
order to address the fosal research question that sought to examine how the two literacy
events were socially constructed and reconstructed and the literate behaviors that might be
afforded in each of the activities, it was necessary to see multiple iterations of the activity,
including full transcripts of a representative number of activities (i.e., five transcripts/tapes
each of Sharing Chair and Morning Message). A second reason for choosing this time
period was related to some important logistical considerations in Trisha’s room.
Specifically, during a two-month period between January and March, Trisha’s class size
increased two—fold, from seven students to fourteen students. This altered the community
of the classroom significantly, but permitted a closer examination of how new students
(i.e., Hannah, Mark, Angie) and younger third-grade students from the lower elementary
special education room (i.e., Gerry, Byron, Amber), would function in the community and
the participation structure of the two activities.

Data sources for this study included (a) twice weekly observations and fieldnotes as

a participant/observer in the classroom, (b) transcripts of five videotapes each of Sharing

83

Chair and Morning Message events that occurred during the spring of the second school
year (i.e., from March to June); (c) students’ journals that were the focal source of reading
in the Sharing Chair and the entire corpus of Morning Message stories for the entire
observation period and other artifacts produced by students; (d) two formal interviews of
the teacher in the classroom; (e) one formal interview of each of the fourteen special
education students and one interview asking each child to explain the purpose and
procedures of Morning Message; (f) two transfer measures assessing each child’s ability to
create and edit a Morning Message story; and, (e) teacher and students’ ratings about their
enjoyment of each of the literacy activities in the Early Literacy Project Curriculum.
Information from both standardized and informal achievement measures in reading and
writing for each of the students was available through their participation on the Early
Literacy Project (e.g., Slossen Oral Reading Test, Durrell, Explanation papers, Expert
papers, Narrative papers, Writing Vocabulary, Sentence Dictation). These measures were
given on a pretest and posttest basis. Students who were new to Trisha’s room or who had
newly qualified for special education services during the year received the measures in May
and June (i.e., no pretest data was obtained). Each of these data sources are discussed
below.

Particimt observation and fieldnotes. In order to ensure that representative
Sharing Chair and Morning Message events were captured and represented from an
insider’s perspective, a minimum of two days per week was spent observing, taking
fieldnotes, and occasionally participating in Sharing Chair, Morning Message, and other
activities throughout the study. Typically, I would arrive at the school just before students
came at 905 am. and spend the entire morning observing, videotaping, or participating
with the class until 12:40 pm. (lunch). At that time, I almost always spent ten to twenty
minutes informally talking to Trisha about the moming, and on several occasions went out

to lunch with her and her colleagues.

Z/'
84

I was a common fixture in Trisha’s classroom, with many of the students knowing
me across several years. Having participated in Trisha’s class the previous year and in
Kathryn’s primary grade classroom the two years before that, all but the new students
knew me well. Students were readily accustomed to being videotaped and even took turns
ttrrning on the cassette recorder during Sharing Chair and Morning Message in my absence.
They would often ask, “Mr. Mariage, do you want this on today?” It was common for
Trisha to ask for my opinion about a particularly tough writing problem or how to spell a
word, even when I was videotaping. The camera was seen as less important than my
participation in helping the class over hurdles. Similarly, if circumstances would permit,
Trisha and the students would often ask me if I wanted to read my journal in Sharing
Chair. It was assumed by the students that I wrote in my own journal notebook while they
were writing in theirs. My joumal reading was usually received like other students, with
students asking me questions and commenting on my writing. At other times, I would read
with a student who did not have a partner for Partner Reading, help students who had
questions about their work, and even take over a group if Trisha had an emergency or
phone call.

Fieldnotes were taken in several bounded composition books. The technique I
typically used was that of a running record of events. That is, I attempted to capture as
much information as was possible, allowing me, over time, to gain a strong sense of what
it meant to be a member of this particular classroom. At the same time, I developed a fairly
stable set of decision rules for ensuring that I was examining the various features of
classroom life in Trisha’s classroom during each visit. These rules constituted a set of
categories that helped guide my note taking and led to the generation of focus questions for
Trisha: I

1. Examine and note any changes in the physical arrangement of the

classroom. (e. g., seating arrangement, furniture, bulletin boards,
display cases, etc.)

85

2. Examine and note any changes in the materials in the classroom.
(e.g., new books on the ledge for a new thematic unit, concept maps
on the wall, Morning Message stories from previous day(s) or a
published compilation of stories, etc.)

3. Examine and note any changes in students’ physical presence.
(e.g., new clothing, haircuts/hair styles, physical appearance,
gestures, non-verbal expression, emotional tone, etc.)

. 4. Examine and note any changes in teacher’s physical presence.
(e.g., new clothing, haircuts/hair styles, physical appearance,
gestures, non-verbal expression, emotional tone, etc.)

5. Note who was in attendance and their level and points total on the board.
(e.g., “Why did Gerry drop to level 1 from level 3 since my last
visit?”)

6. Keep detailed notes on individual students’ daily schedules.

(e.g., when children enter and exit special education classroom,
when they eat lunch, when they have recess, specials, ancillary
services)

7. Keep detailed notes on whom, why, and how other staff,
administration and support service personnel impact the classroom.
(e.g., how many times and who interrupts instructional time, what
is the extent of support services like spwch and language, social
work, etc.)

Beyond these standard categories of observation, my running record detailed in
varying levels of specificity the events that were taking place on a moment-to-moment basis
in the classroom. For example, if I was observing Partner Reading, I would note who was
working with whom, the titles and authors of their books (or poems, class books, Morning
Message publications), and when possible, actual transcripts of particular exchanges.
Similarly, if I was not videotaping Sharing Chair, I would sit right behind the circle of
students and try to capture as much of the conversation as possible, noted who was sitting
next to whom, who read their journals in Sharing Chair, and the nature and extent of their
participation as members of the group.

Over time, both the running record and my standard categories were searched for

patterns that led to particular hypotheses about what it meant to be a student in Trisha’s

86

classroom. These categories emerged in a number of ways. Perhaps the most rewarding
wm the development of key questions and “big ideas” (i.e., emerging assertions) that were
written directly upon leaving the field. After a field visit, I typically went home and
perused my fieldnotes for evidence that either supported or refuted (i.e., negative case
analysis) previous assertions that I had about the classroom. New ideas and future
questions for Trisha or particular students were also noted. For example, on a number of
occasions throughout the study, our conversation with one another at lunch or during the
instructional day centered around my field notebook. Typically, I would show Trisha my
fieldnotes when I had captured something of interest or raised a question. If Trisha made
an observation about the morning, I was often able to refer to my notes about the situation
and support or question her interpretation.

A second way we used the notebook was for Trisha to have her own field
notebook. This notebook allowed her to write observations or questions about the
classroom to which I would respond, either in writing or verbally. This notebook was
especially important when key events occurred in my absence. More typical of our written
communication, however, was simply to pass notes to one another during the instructional
day. For example, in one instance, Trisha wrote on a slip of paper “Look at Nathan,” a
student whose parent had refused to have him examined for Attention-Deficit Disorder.
From this note, I decided that I would do a baseline of Nathan’s off -task behavior at thirty-
second intervals for half-an-hour. The resulting analysis showed that Nathan was off-task
well over 90% of the time, completing only two subtraction algorithms in the half hour. A
short time later, Nathan’s morn agreed to have him tested and Nathan was put on Ritalin
within a month.

Trisha became an additional set of eyes for me in her classroom. Over the course of
the study, Trisha increasingly brought things to my attention, especially the successes and
challenges of her students. When I was preparing to present data at the American

87

Educational Research Association’s conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Trisha read and
commented on my data and interpretations. We also spent time outside of school preparing
for several State level conferences that we jointly presented together with other Early '
Literacy Project teachers. In short, Trisha and I became close colleagues with a joint
investment in the quality of education her children received.

Tm’pts and selection of videotapg. The videotapes and their resulting
transcripts were the focal data source for the sociolinguistic analysis. In order to examine
the primary research question and subquestions that guided this study, an over-time
perspective was necessary (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). This prolonged engagement allowed
me to videotape both Sharing Chair and Morning Message approximately two-times per
month (i.e., on a bi-weekly basis), though in certain situations I wanted to capture
consecutive days on videotape to examine potential intertextual links across days (e.g.,
April 22nd and 23rd). At the end of the study, I had ten videotapes each of the two literacy
events. I decided that I would select only five tapes of each of the activities for
transcription. Selection of the tapes was based-upon several factors.

First, the nature of the research question and subquestions required that I study
enough of the literacy events to make claims as to the types of literate behaviors that might
be afforded in the two events. Moreover, in order to see how the literacy events were
socially constructed and reconsuucted over time, it was necessary to choose representative
tapes from across the study (e.g., March, April, and May).

A second subquestion was determining how individual students participated in the
two literacy events. Thus, the choice and representativeness of the tapes selected for
uanscription from the pool of ten tapes were based upon several additional factors,
including (1) when possible, all ten students who participated in both Sharing Chair and
Morning Message were present; (2) there was representation of different authors in Sharing

Chair and Morning Message, insuring that every individual student was represented in

88 V

Sharing Chair (i.e., read their journal at least once) and that if possible, there were different
authors for each of the five Morning Message events; and (3) the tapes were taken from
several different months.

In order to make these decisions on choosing which tapes to transcribe, each of the
ten tapes were catalogued, showing the student, whether they read in Sharing Chair that
day, and whether they were the author for Morning Message (See Table 2).

As the sample catalogue form shown in Table 2 indicates, I catalogued the
participation of each individual student as they participated in both Sharing Chair and
Morning Message. The catalogue for each videotape allowed me to see which students
participated as authors and audience members, the nature of their topics, and which
students were present or absent. For example, in Table 2, Gerry did not read as an author
in Sharing Chair, but was chosen as the author for Morning Message on this particular day.
Amber, on the other hand, read her story about her sister’s head injury. She and Nigel
attended only part of the Morning Message event because they came late from recess.
Counter numbers next to each child’s participation as author indicated where that particular
turn was located on the videotape.

A second level of cataloguing was then conducted for each individual student This
allowed me to examine the individual participation by each student across the ten
videotapes. For example, in Angie’s catalogue in Table 3, I could see that she participated
five times as an author in Sharing Chair and four times as author in Morning Message. By
looking across each of the individual’s catalogues of participation, coupled with the
decision rules noted above, I was able to choose five Sharing Chair and five Morning
Message videotapes from the pool of ten tapes for transcription. The five tapes chosen for

transcription for each of the literacy activities were as follows:

Sharing Chair Morning Message
March 22nd March 22nd

April 8th April 8th

Table 2 Sample Videotape Catalogue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

g March 18th, 1993 -, 7
Third Grade Students Sharing Chair Topic Morning Message
Topic
Gerry Present, Not Author 4120 “Gerry’s 4 Wheeler”
Byron 3116 Babysat by Grandma; Present
Going to Putt-Putt Golf
Amber 2700 My Sister Hit Head Present for Part
on Ice and Damaged Head;
Uncle Hit Sister for No
Reason
Nigel Present, Not Author Present for Part
Hia Present, Not Author Present
Fourth Grade
Students
Nathan 3825 Playing Captain Present
Avenger on Super Nintendo
Danny 3875 Half-Day of School: Present 1
‘ Going to Uncle’s to Ice Fish ‘
j Mark 4000 Went to Guillerrno’s Present
‘ to Play SEGA, Punch Bag
Tracey 3415 Going to See Movie Present

 

with Dad and Brother

 

Table 3 Angie’s Videotape Catalogue

Date

Sharing Chair

Absent

Morning Message

Absent ’

 

4248 “Do You Like
To Have Me in Your
Class?”

5534 Angie’s
Introduction to Class
(categories)

 

4990 “Ms. Williams,
What are Your Cats’
Names?”

Present

 

2505 “Turn 10 Years
Old on Saturday;
Inviting All of the
Girls in the Class to a

Party

3260 Angie’s Birthday
is Coming-Up

 

4938 “Going to Park
and Play on Swings
with Friends”

Present

 

Present

2916 Angie’s Family
Caught a Turtle

 

700 “Going to
Friend’s House”

Present

 

Present

4887 Angie’s
Grandfather is in the
Hospital with a Stroke

 

 

Present

 

Present

 

91

April 22nd April 22nd
April 23rd April 23rd
May 14th May 20th

As can be seen, with the exception of the May 14 (Sharing Chair) and May 20
(Morning Message) dates, transcripts for each of the activities were taken on the same day.
The May 20 date was chosen for Morning Message due to Angie’s already having been
author in the two previous Morning Message transcripts.

W In both Sharing Chair and Morning
Message, the written texts of children served as the primary content for conversation and
discussion. In the case of Sharing Chair, author’s read their journal entries to their peers
and received feedback in the form of comments and questions. Importantly, these same
journals were then taken home each night by the teacher and were responded to in writing
below the student’s entry. In this sense, the journals served at least two audiences, the
public peer audience in Sharing Chair and the private audience of the teacher each evening.
In Morning Message, the class constructed a written text around the experiences of one
student each day. These stories were then published in a class newsletter each month that
was sent home to parents and also kept in the classroom for future reading during
independent or Partner Reading.

I collected each student’s journal for the entire year at the end of the data collection
period in June. These journals served several important purposes in this study. First, I
was able to learn about the personal lives of students, including what they were drawn to,
what was important in their lives, and what difficulties they experienced. The journals
were a unique window on the day-to—day lives of this group of students, including the
intertextual links that bound certain group members together beyond the classroom (e. g.,
writing about playing basketball with a peer against the third graders). Second, I was able
to examine the complexity and quality of children’s writing and the nature of their topic

selection over time. Third, the journals allowed me to clarify what students had written and

92

what actually was read in Sharing Chair. For example, several readers continued to “read”
their journal entry on videotape, even though only part of their entries were written down.
As importantly, when children chose not to read their entries in front of their peers, I had
access to their entries and was able to conjecture about their decision not to read (e.g.,
information was of a personal nature or the student wrote very little). Fourth, the journals
allowed me to examine how the teacher’s comments were taken-up (or not taken-up) by the
students over the course of the year. Finally, the journals allowed me access to Sharing
Chair episodes when I was not physically present in the room.

I also collected each day’s Morning Message story and their resulting monthly
publications throughout the year. The Morning Message stories were essential in a number
of ways. First, I used the original Morning Message stories to examine the nature and
breadth of editing conventions used by the group. As one set of literate behaviors (i.e.,
using editing conventions), it was necessary to examine the types of editing children
engaged in to make claims about the particular affordances of this semiotic space. Second,
as a result of the often high paced nature of the discourse, the original Morning Message
story allowed me to examine what writing/editing the teacher was doing to the story, even
though the videotape was on particular groups of students. Typically, I panned back-and-
forth between the message on the chart paper in the front of the room and the speaking
students, but during extended speaking turns, it was sometimes difficult to capture the
teacher’s writing/editing of the story. Third, the original Morning Message story helped
me to understand unclear or inaudible comments by the students. Often times, by looking
at the original message and the talk that preceded an unclear segrnentof talk, I was able to
capture what was said with the support of the written message and the surrounding context.
Fourth, the original Morning Message story allowed me to examine how writing and other
symbol systems were used to mediate the conversation. For example, Trisha used a

different color marker to indicate the “topic sentence,” which in turn served to mediate the

93

types of talk children engaged in when talking about this particular sentence (e.g., “That’s
not right, that sentence should tell what our WHOLE CLASS is doing, not just what YOU
are doing”). Fifth, the collection of Morning Message stories allowed me to examine the
complexity and quality of the messages over time. Finally, the original stories were
transcribed identically as they were constructed by the class, allowing me simultaneously to
analyze the nature of the discourse as it was at once creating the story, but also being
mediated by the written message.

' Semi-structured interviews mtg the teacher. Two semi-structured interviews with
Trisha were audiotaped and then transcribed. The first interview was conducted on March
6, 1992, nearing the end of Trisha’s first year on the Early Literacy Project. This interview
lasted two hours, and covered the following topics: (1) personal background, (2) the
nature of the Early Literacy Project meetings and curriculum, (3) beliefs about special needs
students, and (4) beliefs about inclusion, mainstreaming, and classroom management (See
Appendix B). The second interview was conducted as an exit interview after the
completion of the 1992-1993 school year (i.e., at the end of the data collection period for
this study). This interview was conducted during the month of July and lasted
approximately three hours. Topies included: (1) what participating on the Early Literacy
Project (ELP) meant to Trisha, (2) describing the Early Literacy Project to administrators,
(3) what are key features of the success of the ELP curriculum, (4) how the ELP
teacher/researcher meetings influenced instruction, and (5) the nature of progress made by
various students (See Appendix B).

The interviews were considered semi-structured due to the fact the there was a
formal protocol of questions, yet additional questions, clarifications, and extensions often
moved beyond those listed on the protocol. The interviews were given in as informal and
conversational manner as possible. The first interview took place in Trisha’s classroom

after school. The second interview took place in a restaurant over an extended lunch in the

summer.

The transcribed interviews were particularly important in trying to learn more about
Trisha and her underlying beliefs about teaching and learning No formal discourse
analysis was undertaken with the transcripts. Rather, transcripts were read and reread to
gain a general sense of Trisha as a teacher. Patterns within and across transcripts/questions
were noted and served to develop a profile of Trisha as a professional. Interview transcript
data was used to triangulate other assertions developed in my participant observation and
the focal transcript data of Sharing Chair and Morning Message.

W Two semi-structured interviews were
given and then transcribed for each of the fourteen individual students in Trisha’s
classroom. In both interviews, individual students came with me to a room that connected
Trisha’s classroom with the primary-grade special education classroom. As I had
interviewed and individually assessed many of the students over the past several years,
students were very comfortable in speaking openly with me. The first interview focused
on several broad areas, including: (1) garnering background information on each of the
students (i.e., family information, friends, neighborhood, hobbies), (2) learning about the
student’s perception of Longhaven School, (3) learning about the student’s perception of
Trisha’s special education classroom and their regular education classroom, and (4)
gathering knowledge and beliefs about reading and writing (e.g., planning, drafting,
editing, revising). This interview generally took between thirty and forty-five minutes,
though some students took slightly longer (see Appendix C). This interview was given
just prior to the data collection period or in the beginning of this period (i.e., late February,
March, and early April).

The second interview asked individual students four questions about Morning
Message and were given at the end of the data collection period in June. These interviews

took between five and ten minutes to complete. The four questions included (1) asking

95

how students would explain Morning Message to a younger student in Ms. Barnes’
primary grade classroom, (2) whether they liked participating in Morning Message, (3)

. whether Morning Message had helped them to become a better writer, and (4) whether they
used what they learned in Morning Message in their own writing (i.e., specific examples of
generalization) (see Appendix C). These questions were especially important to gain a
sense of “what counted” as literacy from the students’ perspective in this particular event
(Heap, 1991; Myers, 1992).

The two transcribed interviews provided essential first-hand accounts from the
students and were used with the other data sources to provide insight into several of the
research questions, including how individual students participated in the two activities and
the types of literate behaviors that appear to be afforded and used by students.

fljwo tr_ar§fer mgures of Moming Megge. Two transfer messages were
conducted with the entire group of students at the end of the data collection period in late
May and early June. Both measures were given during the usual Morning Message period
by Trisha to help signal to students that these activities were an important way to show their
learning throughout the year. The purpose of the two transfer measures was to gain insight
into what editing/revising skills and conventions students had internalized from their
participation in Morning Message and whether they could produce their own Morning
Message story independent of the group’s support

The first measure consisted of an unedited Morning Message story that was
believed to have come from another special education class at a nearby school (i.e., my
wife’s classroom). Students were given a copy of the unedited Morning Message story
and were asked to “give Shay some help by helping to edit her Morning Message story.”
The students were informed that the student was in Mrs. Mariage’s classroom. The
unedited passage was read aloud twice by Trisha as students followed along to help control
for differences in reading ability. Trisha’s initial reading was at normal spwd, while the

96

second reading was at a slower pace with pauses in between each sentence. Trisha read the
passage exactly as the conventions indicated. For example, in the actual passage in Figure
5 below, Trisha did not indicate that there were pauses between the names Sara, Joan, and
Iori.

Students worked independently and were asked to use pencils and make their
corrections directly on Shay’s typed story. As shown in Figure 5, there was ample room
left between sentences for students to make corrections. Students were allowed to ask
Trisha or me for help in reading, but we did not provide any additional support. Students
who finished early were asked to remain quiet and read a book while the rest of the class
finished editing/revising the story. Students took between fifteen and thirty minutes to
complete the task.

In order to make the transfer measure as representative of typical Morning Message
stories in Trisha’s classroom as possible, a number of procedures were carried out.

First, I randomly selected Morning Message stories that were collected during the
data collection period From these stories, I examined a number of features, including the
typical length of Morning Message segments (i.e., number of sentences/words), the
number and types of visible editing and revising corrections (e. g., cross-outs, carets,
capitalization, punctuation, word order, tense, word usage, etc), and the nature of the
topics. From this examination, I then decided to choose a topic that had already been
discussed earlier in the year during Morning Message and which was familiar to most of
the students (e.g., going to the Cedar Point amusement park). This choice of topic helped
to insure that the students were familiar with the content of the message.

Second, I began constructing the measure based upon the nature and types of
editing/revising conventions that were observed in Morning Message throughout the data

collection period. These conventions included capitalizing the first letter of a new sentence

 

 

If

hc
bi:

Wl

May 3, 1993
. Shay’s Morning Message

this weekend we went to cedar point with my
grandma and grandpa smith. like that. My
sister Julie and her friends Sara Jean Lori
went of the Gemini The Gemini is scary. it
is roller coaster upside down. I went on the
demon drop falls fast When we got back
home to lansing it wasnt good. Shays
bicycle was stolen from the front yard. Shay
was not happy that she lost her huffy bicycle.

She was mad

Figure 5 Morning Message Editing/Revising Measure

C0

sh

Oil

lhc

is}

aP

 

98

and important names, using some form of ending punctuation (i.e., periods, question
marks, exclamation marks), using an apostrophe to show possession and mark a
contraction, indenting each paragraph, using topic sentences to start paragraphs, using
commas to create pauses and break-up lists of words, using carets to add new words or
ideas to the story, crossing-out words, sentences, or paragraphs, using both names and
pronouns to make the story more interesting and readable, not using run-on or incomplete
sentences, paragraphing when a new idea or topic is introduced, and being sensitive to the
needs of our audience by being clear in meanings and word usage. The final step was to
discuss the measure with Trisha to see if she thought the measure might be effective in
capturing some of the editing/revising techniques that had been practiced in Morning
Message.

The measures were scored by examining both the total number of editing/revising
corrections and the nature of those changes.

The second transfer measure allowed individual students to write their own
independent Morning Message story. Each student was given a blank piece of paper and
told to write their own Morning Message story. Trisha reminded the students that they
should think about what they had learned in Morning Message when they were writing. In
order to insure that the students had an authentic audience as they did in Morning Message,
the students were informed that they could volunteer to read their stories in front of the
class at the completion of writing. Students were given approximately twenty minutes to
write their stories, but this time was extended to a half-hour to accommodate those students
who wanted to continue writing. After this period of writing, students were then allowed
to read their story in front of the class. Due to the time right before lunch, students did not
ask the author questions or comments, but each author received a generous round of
applause after reading their story.

The students’ stories were then collected and Xerox copies made of each of their

99

stories. Stories were analyzed on several features, including attention to the personal
narrative format of Morning Message and the editing/revising conventions used by the
students.

W A final
set of measures assessed the consumer satisfaction of various literacy events in Trisha’s
classroom. One measure was to have each individual student rank-order their favorite
literacy events. A list of the major literacy events in Trisha’s classroom was provided (see
Figure 6). Students were asked to place a “1” next to the literacy event that they enjoyed
participating in the most. A “2” was placed in that event they liked the second most, and so
on until they finished ranking each of the activities. Trisha modeled and thought out loud
several examples on the overhead to insure that the students understood the task

Rankings were then tabulated and averaged for each of the ten literacy events across
the fourteen students. The lowest combined average score then received a rating of “1,” or
the favorite overall activity, and continued to the highest combined average which received
a rating of “10,” and represented the literacy event that the group seemed to like the least.
To help further examine the students’ patterns of response, a table was created showing
each of the literacy events and the number of times that activity was ranked lst, 2nd, or 3rd
and 8th, 9th, and 10th. This allowed me to examine if the averages were skewed positively
or negatively due to high or low scores. The rank orders and the number of
low and high rankings are shown in Tables 4 and 5.

The second ranking seale allowed Trisha to rate the ten literacy events in her
curriculum in terms of four features: (1) the ease of implementing the activity, (2) the
teacher’s motivation for doing the activity, (3) the effectiveness of the activity on student
achievement, and (4) the students’ motivation for doing the activity. The Liken-type rating
scale and Trisha’s responses are indicated in Table 6.

100

t ntFitin fLitr Ev nt
1. Please order the activities in your classroom from the one you

like the most (1) to the one you like the least.
Partner Reading

 

Journal

 

Reading Group

 

Theme

 

Morning Message

 

Silent Reading

 

Sharing Chair

 

Poem

 

Teacher Reading Book

 

Spelling

 

NAME

 

Figure 6 Student Rating Scale of literacy Events

101

Table 4 Students’ Group Rankings of Literacy Events

GROUP AVERAGE 'Q

 

4.6

 

5.6

 

5.7

 

6.9

 

7.0

 

7.7

 

7.9

 

8.5

 

l
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

8.7

 

 

 

p—s
O

,' Silent Reading

Table 5 Distribution of High and Low Rankings of Literacy Events

8.9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACTIVITY lst 2nd 3rd * 8th * 9 9th 0h *
Journal 3 2 4 O 2 O
Spelling 4 l l 2 l 0
Teacher 2 3 2 2 l 0
Read

Aloud

1 Sharing 2 2 1 3 1 1
Chair

Partner 1 3 O 2 l 2
Reading

M-oming O l 2 1 1 1
Message

Theme 0 2 1 1 2 1
Reading 0 O 2 l 3 2
Groups

Poems l O 0 l l 2
Silent 1 o 1 2 o 4
Reading

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

102

Table 6 Trisha’s Rating of literacy Events

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACTIVITY of Teacher Effectiveness of Students’
Implementation Motivation for Activity on Motivation for
for the Activity Doing Activity Student Doing Activity

Achievement
High Low High Low High Low High Low
PartnerReading54321 3215 321 432
Silent Reading 2 1 5 1 3 2 1 3 2

Phonics 3 l 3 2 l 3 2 1 4 3 2

Instruction

Reading 5432154321543215432

Groups
Poem/Chora15432154321543215432
Reading
TeacherRead5432154321543215432
Aloud

Morning 5432154321543215432
Message

Journal 1 s 4 3 2 1 3 2 1

Sharing Chair 1 5 4 3 2 1 2 1

Thematic 2 I 5 4 3 2 1 1 5 4

j Instruction

 

 

 

 

103

Although a number of interesting patterns and conjectures can be gleaned from
analym'ng Trisha’s responses, especially when compared to her own students’ rankings, it
is important to remember that these scales were used as tools to develop additional data
sources and support the triangulation of other qualitative data. Specifieally, the student and
teacher ratings were used as one additional tool to examine the research questions regarding
“what counts’.’ as literacy from the students’ perspective and how individual students
participated in the various activities. For example, if a child had low verbal participation in
Morning Message, was this also indicated by their student ranking, their two semi-
structured interviews, and from analysis of videotapes? The results of this thick and multi-
faceted description provided a much richer, if more complex, analysis/interpretation of the
transcript data.

Analysis

Data analysis drew primarily from an interactional sociolinguistic perspective (Santa
Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b), though several complementary (i.e., language-based)
fields of inquiry were heavily drawn upon, including classroom discourse analysis
(Cazden, 1988; Barnes, 1992), conversational analysis (T annen, 1989), social semiotics
(Lemke, 1989a; Halliday & Hasan, 1989), curriculum genres (Christie, 1991), and
discourse theory (Burbules, 1993). Though each of these fields of inquiry has a shared
interest in the role of language and how it functions both to communieate and create social
contexts, they also tend to foreground slightly different features of the context, including
the nature of the social relationship, the structure of the activity, and the content of the
discourse.

An interactional sociolinguistic perspective was particularly well suited to studying
the two events, of Sharing Clair and Morning Message because of the incorporation of
additional ethnographic tools of analysis to support the understanding of the linguistic

forms and social functions of discourse in each event. In addition to the focal data source,

 

 

 

104

the transcripts of the five Sharing Chairs and five Morning Message episodes, many
additional data sources were used to triangulate data and support or refute my
interpretations. These data sources included the use of observer/participant and
participant/observer participation, fieldnotes, one formal interview of each student, two
formal interviews of the teacher, a short interview of each of the students around the
Morning Message event, the teacher’s notebook, and artifacts collected from the classroom
(e.g., student journals, Morning Messages, writing samples). In observer/participant
participation, 1 was physically present in the room, but had as my primary goal the
observation and description of the moment-to—moment happenings of the classroom. This
participation was more physically passive in the sense that, though I was available and
participated with students if they asked for assistance, I often chose to sit in a chair in the
back of the room and spent the majority of time taking fieldnotes. In contrast, my
participant/observer participation was more explicitly geared toward active and direct
involvement with the students and events of the classroom (e.g., an active author and
audience member in Sharing Chair, taking over and running the Morning Message group).
In this form of participation, I was fully engaged in whatever events were naturally
occurring in the classroom. Both forms of participation were necessary to capture and
make sense of the dynamic nature of classroom life. Observer/participant and
participant/observer participation were interwoven in any session and offered unique
perspectives as I moved in and out of the flow of classroom life.

My analysis also included several cognitive measures, including pretest and posttest
data on both formal and informal reading and writing measures (e.g., Slossen Oral Reading
Test, expert papers) taken at the beginning and end of the school year, and two transfer
measures of Morning Message. The first transfer measure included the independent editing
of a Morning Message story, while the second measure asked each student to write their

own Morning Message independently. Cognitive measures were used both to interpret

105

other data sources (i.e., formal and informal assessment measures) and to give insight into
how the activity of Morning Message influenced a student’s ability to edit a Morning
Message written by another student and to write independently a Morning Message without
the usual support of the whole group.

During the course of the study, it was recognized that a unique opportunity to
examine possible developmental and experiential differences in the independent transfer
measures was available. As a researcher in the lower elementary classroom for four years
with another Early Literacy Project teacher, I gave the identical transfer tasks to Kathryn
Barnes’ students. This allowed me to further explieate and bolster a key research question
that linked discourse to learning, “What are the educational affordanws in the literacy event
of Morning Message?” Though only a single “snapshot” of a student’s independent
performance at one point in time, this measure was extremely helpful in thinking about
differences in what students had internalized across grade levels and experience in Morning
Message. Equally important, these measures allowed for the examination and comparison
between students’ verbal participation in group dialogues and their level of independent
functioning.

My procedures for doing analysis differed depending upon the phase of the analysis
(e. g., initial, middle, end), the level of analysis (e.g., patterns or themes in fieldnotes vs.
microanalysis of transcript data), the particular literacy event (e. g., Sharing Chair or
Morning Message), the nature of the data source (e. g., interview, artifacts, transcripts,
etc.) and the particular research question being foregrounded (e. g., discourse moves as
compared to affordances). However, there was a general sequence of analysis for each of
the two literacy events, including ( l) describing the “lay of the land” across all five
transcripts, including how the activity was indexed; the typical phases of activity; the
general participant structure, including the speaking rights and duties given to the socially

constructed roles of author, audience, and teacher; the nature of topies; and the level of

106
verbal participation by each individual; (2) microanalysis of the transcript data, including
the categorization/coding of patterned ways of speaking (e.g., telling a story, asking a
question); examining the range and types of discourse moves and how they functioned to
align both the content and the social relationships among participants; the unique role of the
teacher’s talk in the two events (e.g., how teacher modeled, scaffolded, transferred
control); and (3) triangulating the three types (i.e., discourse analysis, ethnographic, and
cognitive) and levels (i.e., macro and microanalyses) of analysis, including comparing and
contrasting the two discourse spaces.
W

Videotapes of Sharing Chair and Morning Message were transcribed in full.
Particularly important to this transcription was the careful mapping of talk as it naturally
occurred in the two literacy events. A number of conventions were uwd to help replicate as
accumme as possible the group's talk. The conventions for transcription are outlined in
Figure 7.

Sharigg ghair. To begin, analysis was undertaken in each of the two literacy events
separately. In Sharing Chair, transcripts were read repeatedly to search for patterns of
response, individuals' participation, and unique features of the activity. In order to address
these questions, each individual students' total talk from each of the live Sharing Chairs
was parceled out from the rest of the talk. Having parceled each student's talk, each
speaking turn was then cut separately into its own strip. Having the total talk of each
individual student separated by individual turns, these strips of talk were then eategorized
and glued to a 30"x20" posterboard depending upon the linguistic form and/or social
function the talk played in the full transcript. The result of this effort was a ”Discourse
Profile” of each student (see Figure 8 for example). This profile was particularly helpful in
understanding the extent of individual participation (i.e., total turns), the nature of verbal

involvement (i.e., questions, comments, stories), and verbal participation in the role of

[brackets]
(parentheses)

(inaudible)

BOLD

underline

107

lndieates line number. Each individual event started with line 001
Short pause (each / equals 1 second)

Longer pause (2 seconds)

Marks emphatic stress.

Marks very emphatic stress.

Indicates overlapping speech at the point of the overlap.

Marks the asking of question or a questioning tone.

Indicates normal pause in speech.

Marks the end of a sentence.

Marks a very expressive question or comment.

Used to comment on pitch, amplitude, quality of speech

Used for comments about actions such as paralinguistic cues (e. g.,
nods, pointing, demonstrating) or special notes about speech that
might link to other transcripts or data sources (e.g., remind reader of
an earlier observation in light of current statement)

Indicates that speech was not transcribable due to difficulty in
hearing

Convention to draw reader's attention to specific features of
transcript, usually specific words.

Convention used to draw reader's attention to specific features of
transcript, usually at a level larger than the word, including phrase
or sentence(s).

Figure 7 Transcript Conventions

 

 

Hamish: we?
l-hmh: Aruba?
rm “nosey? "”01de

Hum: monomer
question?

Wm

(none)

W

Hum-t: Waitbythehddge?
Hunt: Whetflndefpinsleyeu
manna

than-Ix mmmwum
Nintendo? .
Hunt: Whydoyoumtogum
shoes?

[antiserum j

Hamli- 'Andthmrnyrnele.nyrhd
dd'mheu'eeonetflnggood And
hehlneditth-Mnmdheedd

‘Cocl.w'llstertw¢eflngdie. And
theanydednid'meluhep'de-e
mmummmmw
fevuiteehow.‘ Andaydfleddndl
dd. 'Mdur'twaryeborait.‘

 

 

 

 

 

108

 

WM]

 

 

 

 

'1'] Q

Hem: curtailing“

Hurrah: tantalum. '01 03 ,
m-ymhednebhbm rum: lddfwl'flid'...ldm'tlly
bummrmuwbnlu rammrjuriumraarnana
hot-mumwm Ham: NetMrdMIaeeemeMr.

M- mum-y ”unmannem)fm
udeTJddthetlveela’elidfrindlll
Mnyb‘mtnyhutfdendny
Mummnumm WW
human-f m.mmrm
M. An mam?’
Mart? y limit: Mahmdoyou

bung-den?
Hunt: Needhdp?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hulda: lambda-summary
Mammal-amnetoheve
II I' Menthnyrnoumdded

.l-Ie'eutFexfl. Hunt;- MyfeveriteputemJoimthe
Hm “debut-nwe’ve

hopper. “surging. and. uallNetive

neeyelleTralLendlpulten-y Arn' “mu ad.
(tenemendthegoggeteonthehednd ”m cm. "
"may“. manually“
mahbedehe‘emlyeboutm
830610113“).

 

 

 

 

 

Hana: L.yeerltlinkitm.ndrny.ny

. numbneWeyendpteoneehoeend
W heetsfer.e.andmecftheeedmlnren
Mmlngemrubrndneweheee
Whom-steam. These-e7
(None) lire lid. these. Me‘s madly. the!“ like
nopurpartwhereyotrehoeislikemgh
Mallowebigoldeortefblieta.
Hamel: munaualimlm
mulawfiehgnditwetny
maddhumndlpededinitndlmw
itbdtheeern.tn.'NewKirbontheBloek’
videohecanellikeitelotwhmlwuliule.
Malamute-id‘Cod'endnyu-rdne
dd'YeuGrh‘tgetnytflnguedrod.dd
you‘rendldd'NOwey.‘

 

 

 

Figure 8 Sample Discourse Profile

109

both author and audience member.

Several analyses were further conducted with the Discourse Profiles of individual
students. A qualitative analysis of individual student's within-category talk was
performed For example, under the category of "Response to Audience Member's
Questions,” there was analysis of how the author was positioned to respond to different
questions (e.g., justifying, explaining, stating). A second level of analysis was to examine
the extent to which different students "used" this discourse space. Also relevant to this
analysis was the nature of topics that the students brought to the speaking floor for
consideration.

The final layer of analysis examined the full transcript and searched for the range,
types, and phases of extended conversation. This analysis attempted to understand the
types of literate actions that might be afforded in the Sharing Chair in Trisha's classroom.

Morning Message. Morning Message transcripts were analyzed in a number of
ways. The first layer of analysis was to examine the phases or sub-phases within a single
round of Morning Message. Pertinent to this investigation was describing the boundaries
of this discourse space, including the indexing functions used to mark this activity off from
other activities. To analyze the sub—phases of Morning Message, the five transcripts were
searched for key features that seemed to occur across all or most of the five transcripts.

For example, the start of each Morning Message began with the placement of a blank sheet
of paper on the board and saw the teacher shake a jar full of tiles with each individual's
name on them. The person chosen was announced and the student author came to sit in the
front of the room. This series of actions served to index the activity of Morning Message.
In addition, there were a series of discursive positionings made by the teacher that also
marked the activity, including the asking of a "topic sentence” from the student author to
begin the writing process. Sub-phases in Morning Message were determined by transitions

from different rounds of editing, especially as it related to the completion of one sentence

110

and the author ealling on an audience member’s comment or question.

A second layer of analysis included an examination of the extent of verbal
participation by each individual participant. Verbal participation was defined as the number
of turns taken across the five Morning Message events. A sum of the total number of turns
across the five events were taken for each student. An average number of turns per event
was calculated for each student, and it was noted whether the individual student was in the
role of author or audience participant. This analysis allowed for the examination of
whether role seemed to influence the level of verbal participation. Participants were rank-
ordered by their total number of turns across the five lessons.

The third layer of analysis was to read the transcripts repeatedly and develop ideas
as to emerging patterns. Ideas were noted directly on the transcript for future location and
analysis. One observation was the recognition that the teacher's talk in Morning Message
played a particularly important role in the construction of meaning in this classroom. To
attempt to understand how the teacher used talk in this activity, the teacher's talk was read
repeatedly to search for patterns or eategories of talk. It beeame apparent that the teacher's
talk in the activity involved the orchestration of four broad discourse fimctions, with many
types of discourse moves within each area. The four discourse functions in which
discourse moves were situated were: instructional, literacy content, conversational
involvement, and management functions. To capture the nature and extent of the moves
within each function, a coding system was developed to analyze the teacher's talk. Four
different color dots, each color representing one discourse function, were used to code the
entire talk of the teacher across all five Morning Message events. Specifically, the various
moves under each eategory were developed, charted, and then labeled. As an example,
under the instructional function, the discourse move of "questioning” was coded with a
green dot with the letter 'q" written on it. The discourse move ”indenting" under the

literacy content function was coded with three blue dots with the letters '1,” "n,” "d,” and

111

so on (see Appendix D for definitions and examples of discourse moves). The coding
system evolved and was refined as a result of repeated readings of the uanscripts.

Having coded the entire round of teacher talk for each of the five Morning Message
transcripts, each discourse function and discourse move within each of the four functions
wascountedand turned intoapercentageofthe total amountoftalkacrossand within the
discourse functions. This sweeping analysis was undertaken as a first step in attempting to
understand how the teacher used talk differentially to position the group and individual
students within the group to construct meaning differently. As an example of the outcomes
for this analysis, Trisha used more ”supporting” and ”conversational management” moves
when the discussion moved from discourse as inquiry to more discourse as debate (e.g.,
argumentation between two sides) to protect the feelings of individual members, while
reinforcing the conviction and passion in which students were struggling with ideas (see
Burbules, 1993). In short, the color coding of teacher talk in Morning Message helped to
make visible the range, frequency, and function of the discourse moves that outlined the
literacy potentials in this activity.

A fourth layer of transcript analysis was to examine how participants were
discursively positioned in the activity by one another's talk. Discursive positioning, a
concept introduced to explain the mornent—to-moment creation of intersubjective meaning,
was particularly helpful in trying to answer the question ”What types of literate actions and
opportunities are afforded students in this literacy event?" To understand how participants
were positioned by and positioned others, a careful examination of the tum-by-tum
sequences was undertaken across the entire transcript, with additional attention paid to the
"author" of the message, the “audience“ members supporting the construction of the text,
and the role of the teacher.

Transfer measures. The two transfer measures, the editing of a Morning Message

and the independent writing of a Morning Message story, were particularly important for

112

providing additional evidence as to the extent to which students internalized the social
dialogues of Morning Message to guide their own independent editing and writing. As
importantly, I was interested in knowing whether the level and quality of students’ verbal
participation in Morning Message was related to the complexity of their independent editing
and drafting. Also, the transfer measures were essential for examining any possible
differences in internalization based on development or differences in the amount of
experience between the younger students in Kathyrn’s earty elementary (K-2) class and
Trisha’s third and fourth grade students.

In order to understand both the quantity and quality of editing/revising of individual
students, a scoring protocol was developed (Figure 9) that outlined the editing miscues
contained in the Morning Message and allowed for the quantification of revisions. Editing
miscues included errors of punctuation and capitalization, paragraphing, pronoun/noun
usage and verb tense. As shown in Figure 9, there were 18 punctuation/eapitalization
miscues, 2 paragraphing miscues, 6 pronoun/noun usage miscues, and l verb tense
miscue, for a total of 27 possible editing miscues.

Revisions included the student’s attempt to change meaning in the text, and
included the crossing out of words (i.e., deletions) and using carets to insert words (i.e.,
additions) in the text. Also, three awkward sentences were contained in the text that
required revision in order to make sense.

To score the protocol, each miscue or revision was assigned a score of “l ” point.
For example, if a student changed the lowerease “t” to an uppercase “T” in the first word of
the sentence “this weekend we went to Cedar Point with my Grandma and Grandpa
Smith,” this was assigned one point.

Revisions were more difficult to score, but were thought to be especially important
as they were believed to represent a higher level of sophistication than copy editing. A

decision rule for scoring revisions was needed, since it was possible for a student to add or

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ttoTin 'l'his' __edit “I like that”
ctoCin"cedar" __edit"ltisrollercoasterupsldedown"
ptoPin'point' __edlt‘lwentonthedemondroptells
g to G in ‘grandpa" Id
__ 9 to G in 'srandma' mm
s to S in ‘smith' “we” to “Shay” or “they”
____cornmeafterSera __‘my"to ‘her'
__ comma after Joan __ "my' to ‘Shey’s'
__ “and” before Lori _ "l' to ‘Shay'
_. period after ‘Gemini' __ “Shay” to “she”
ito l in 'It' _ ‘She" to “Shay“
d to D in “demon"
d to D in “drop” Mg;
__ period after last is to was
I to L in ‘1ansing”
_ apostrophe between ‘n' and "t"

_ apostrophe between ‘1" and ‘s' in 'Shays" WWW

hforH in ‘Huffy'
__ period after “med”

Remapping
indent ‘lhis"

 

__ paragraph at ‘When we...”

#Croee-outs: #Cerets

 

Figure 9 Scoring Form for Editing Transfer Measure

114

delete words and entire sentences. If a student recognized that one of the awkward
sentences embedded in the text needed revising, and an attempt was made to add or delete
words, even if the resulting revisions resulted in a sentence that was not wholly correct, a
score of one point was given to the student. An additional point was given for each
deletion or addition of a word or words that were not already accounted for in the editing
task. For example, if a student added the word “very” in the sentence “She was (very)
mad,” the child was given one point. However, if a child crossed-out the word

“we” and added the word “Shay,” this was not counted as an addition because it was
already scored and accounted for in the pronoun/noun usage eategory. finally, only one
point was awarded for each separate addition or deletion in a meaning unit. If a child added
the words “...as can be at the robber” after the sentence “She was mad...” this was given a
score of one point, not a point for each of the additional words (i.e., not six points for the
six words “as can be at the robber”).

Total points for each student were summed and the class was rank-ordered from
“1” to “14”, with the student ranked number “1” being the student with the highest number
of editing/revising changes, and so on to the student ranked number “14,” who had the
fewest editing/revising changes.

The second transfer message for Morning Message, the writing of an independent
Morning Message, was evaluated holistically. No formal scoring protocol was developed
for this measure, but a careful exanrination of the content and the conventions used by
various students was undertaken. Both the independent editing task and the independent
writing task were taken together to form a kind of “picture” of each student’s understanding
and use of the common conventions used in Morning Message.

I present my data in the following chapters in two ways. In Chapters Four and
five, I describe the discourse spaces of Sharing Chair and Morning Message, respectively.
In these two chapters, the phases of the activities are outlined, the participant structures that

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seem to be framing the nature of talk are discussed, and an examination of how various
discourse moves created participant frameworks is undertaken. Each of these chapters
concludes with a discussion of the educational affordances that were constructed in the
respective discourse spaces. The final chapter outlines the major conclusions, limitations,
and implications for future work in the interactional sociolinguistic study of classroom

events.

CHAPTER 4
THE DISCOURSE SPACE OF SHARING CHAIR

This section describes the discourse space called Sharing Chair. Included in this
section is a description of the indexing functions and phases of activity that mark Sharing
Chair as a discourse space and help define its forms and function; the participation structure
in the activity, including the rights, duties, and responsibilities of the student author,
audience members, and teacher; the range of topics and uses of the Sharing Chair; and the
educational affordances of the Sharing Chair discourse space.

onstructin a 'sco S : In ' u ctio and Phases of Activit

Sharing Chair occurred each day in Trisha's classroom from 10:20 am. until 11:10
am. Sharing Chair had a number of phases: (1) Teacher marks activity by stating ”okay,
its time for journal,” and students and teacher write in their journal notebooks for ten to
fifteen minutes; (2) teacher makes a call for all students to "go back to the top and reread
your journal before going to Sharing Chair”; (3) students move from their individual desks
to the Sharing Chair area, a corner of the room where the Sharing Chair was located; (4)
students hand journals to teacher before sitting down; (5) the teacher asks an individual
student to pick a number between "one" and the total number of journals she has in front of
her; (6) the student whose journal was picked has the right to accept or deny reading their
journal, and if student chooses to read, accepts journal from the teacher, sits in the Sharing
Chair, reads his/her journal, and marks the ending of reading by stating ”Are there any
comments or questions?"; (7) the student author then has the duty of calling on members of
the student audience; (8) the student author's turn typically ends with the teacher asking the
author to take a specific number of questions (e. g., one, two); and (9) the teacher selects
the next author by again asking for a student to pick a number so she can draw a joumal
from the pile. Sharing Chair ends when the teacher marks the end of the activity by calling

time and asking each student to rate themselves on a scale of "zero" to "three" points.

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l 17
WWW—rm

Journal writing was done independently at individual students' desks. This was a
very quiet time in Trisha's room and journal writing was taken very seriously in this room.
On one occasion, when Trisha was called out of the room to take an emergency phone call
in the office, I noted that the students did not lmow Trisha had left the room. There were
few instances throughout my two years of twice-weekly observations that Trisha had to
manage belmvior during journal writing.

The teacher also wrote in her journal each day and brought her journal to the
Sharing Chair. Any guests in the room were encouraged to write as well. A journal with
the words "Guest Journal" on the cover was pinned to a bulletin board in the room and
used for any visitors to the classroom. Though I did not have the opportunity to witness
the Guest Journal being used, there were several times in the school year that guests had
made entries into the journal. As the observer/participant in this room, I also wrote daily in
my field notebook. If I was not videotaping the Sharing Chair activity, I often sat among
the students as an active participant (i.e., questioning and commenting). I also read my
“journal” in the Sharing Chair on a number of occasions.

During Sharing Chair, all participants but the author sat in a circle on the floor in
their ”listening position,” with their legs crossed and hands in their lap. The author sat in a
padded lounge chair above the seated students and the teacher.

Unlike Morning Message, where the ”author" and "audience" roles became blurred
during the construction of the written text, there were quite specific rights and duties
associated with being the author, audience member, and teacher during Sharing Chair.
Importantly, these rights and duties positioned the participants differentially, resulting in
different types of verbal participation.

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MW

Trisha often called on an individual student to give her a number between “one" and
the total number of students/journals in the group. If the nominated student said ”three,”
Trisha would either count down three from the top or three up from the bottom and
announce the name of the owner to be the next author. This series of actions, though .
seemingly simple, was representative of many ways in which Trisha modeled a more
democratic way to choose the next author and served as a small way to transfer control of
the selection process to her students.

Trisha typically announced the next author by simply stating their name, often times
with a rising inflection at the end of the name to signal to the group that a new author was
about to share their journal and that they should show excitement. Importantly, the chosen
student was then given the right to decline the invitation to read by saying "no,” "I don't
want to read,” or by shaking their head "no.” This right given to a prospective author
allowed the student to read only if they wanted to do so. Though the vast majority of the
students chose to read in Trisha's classroom, there were several times when an invited
student chose not to read in the five Sharing Chairs in this study. Though only speculation
based on my direct observations of students, there appeared to be at least four reasons why
a student would choose not to read: a student felt ill (e. g., explicit somatic complaints or
visible lethargy), a student was anxious or agitated (e. g., something outside of the
classroom was bothering them; they may have gotten in trouble with a teacher and used
non-participation in a defensive manner), a student did not write in their journal, or did not
feel comfortable with sharing the content of their journals (e.g., wrote about a topic that
contained private information that the student wished to share only with the teacher).

Allowing the invited student to choose not to read was an important way in which
Trisha communicated a sense of community and safety in her classroom. On a number of

occasions, Trisha announced to the students that she did not want to read because she did

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not feel comfortable sharing that day. This direct modeling of declining to read seemed to
place Trisha in the role of an author who could flexibly choose to publish their ideas orally
or simply maintain privacy. The opportunity to decline reading in Sharing Chair in no way
compromised the opportunities for active participation, as every student participated as both
an author and an audience member during the five Sharing Chair episodes.

The author had several other rights and duties in the Sharing Chair. One duty the
author had upon completing their story was to announce to the audience, ”Are there any
comments or questions?“ This tag at the end of an author's story served to signal and
position the audience to raise their hand. The effectiveness of this discourse move is
evident in audience participation: In the entire corpus of data on Sharing Chair, there is no
instance of an author not having an audience member with a raised hand directly after a call
for comments or questions.

As audience members bid for a speaking ttrrn by raising their hand, the author also
had the duty to call on an audience member by stating their name in the form of a question.
In the following exchange, the author, Juan, had read his story about getting some new
black shoes. The black shoes are significant because they didn't get nearly as dirty as
white shoes:

009 Juan: Nigel?

010 Nigel: I am gonna get some new shoes.

011 Juan: When?

012 Nigel: Today. Cause my mom got her check.
013 Juan: What kind?

014 Nigel: Some like my brothers. Like yours.
015 Juan: Amber?

016 Amber. My mom got her a pair of shoes, um, pink or something, and she got white
017 and they got all dirty.

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018 Juan: Angie?

In this sequence, Juan continues the conversation with Nigel by asking him when he is
getting his new shoes. Nigel mentions that his mother gets her welfare check that day, so
they will then have enough money to get him some new shoes. Juan then has the duty to
call on a raised hand (Amber) after Nigel relinquishes his turn by saying ”like yours" in a
falling voice. .Juan gives the speaking rights to Amber, who then explains that her mom
got white shoes and they did, in fact, get dirty.

This sequence also points out another important right of the student author.
Though the author is obligated to call on an audience member after the completion of a turn,
the author retains the right to respond to the question or comment in any respectful way,
including not responding to an audience member. In the above transcript, we see Juan
respond differently to two speakers, Nigel and Amber. In line 011, Juan continues the
conversation with Nigel by responding "When?” to his comment about getting some new
shoes. When Amber gives a comment of her own in line 016 and 017, Juan does not
provide any uptake, but calls on the next speaker, Angie. A possible explanation is that
Nigel's comment is a topically-related statement. Amber‘s comment, on the other hand, is
in the form of a narrative about her mother's experience with light colored shoes. As a
narrative, Amber‘s comment has a more well defined ending that may have indicated to
Juan that he was not being positioned to respond to Amber's narrative. In contrast, Ni gel's
statement in line 010, 'I am gonna get some new shoes" leaves open the possibility and
even expectation that the author might uptake by saying 'When?”, 'Where?", or "What
kind?".

Similar to the right to choose to read or not to read in Sharing Chair, the author
also retains the right to deny responding to questions that they do not feel comfortable
answering. This occurred once in the five Sharing Chairs and helped to make visible
several rights and duties. In the transcript below, Jerrod, an African-American fourth

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grader, writes about one of the most talked-about events of the school year--the class'
three-day spring camping trip. Jerrod was sent home from camp on the second day for
fighting with a child from another class. The social price of being sent home from a camp
that is a two-hour drive from school sent ripples through the classroom community:

157 Jerrod: (reading as author) 'I had a good time at camp. I had to go home. Canoeing
158 was the best thing. I had much fun.” Any comments or Questions?

159 ' Hannah?

160 Hannah: Did you, um, go in the canoe while it was raining?

161 Jerrod: Yeah. It was sprinkling. Nathan?

162 Nathan: Um, why did you have to go, why did you have to go home?
163 Jerrod: Cuz.

164 Nathan: For what type ofreasons?

165 Jerrod: (silence)

166 Nathan: What? What did he do to go home?

167 Gerry: He hurt a kid.

168 {
169 Trisha: Gerry. Jerrod, if you don't want to answer it, you can just tell him
170 you don't want to answer it.

171 Jerrod: I don't (want to answer question). Amber?

203 Nigel: Why don't you tell everybody what you did?

204 Jerrod: (no response) Ms. Williams?

In the above sequence, Jerrod was positioned strongly by Nathan's comments and
persistence about finding out why he had to leave camp. Gerry then enters the speaking
floor as an unsolicited speaker, a "breaking” of the rules of participation in Sharing Chair.

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The content of Gerry's comment, making visible the information Jerrod clearly did not
want to make public, exacerbates the force of his comment and positions Trisha to enter
and manage the conversation. Though this sequence speaks more directly to the nature of
the teacher's participant status, it also makes visible the importance of reserving the right of
authors to decide whether to respond to the audience members. Although the audience
member has a right to position the author to respond by providing questions or comments
(as Nathan did in line 166), the author retains the right to not respond, as this sequence
illustrates. Later in Jerrod's turn as author (line 203), Nigel again raises the issue about
what Jerrod did to go home. Jerrod uses his right as author to not respond to Nigel's
positioning and calls on the teacher instead. This conversational right helped to preserve
the identity of student authors, curbing personal attacks.

A final duty of the author, and all participants, was the responsibility to participate.
In Sharing Chair and Morning Message, Trisha regularly asked students to self-evaluate
their participation by rating themselves between zero and three points. A score of three
meant that the student read in the Sharing Chair, asked questions or comments, and
demonstrated good behavior. A score of two would be missing one of the above criteria,
but was considered a “good” score, and so on. These points (and others) were added-up at
the end of each day and posted on the chalk board next to each individual's name. Points
were used at the end of the week in a small classroom store.

Though this management system seems to encourage the external reinforcement of
behavior, in reality this system was quite invisible. In interviews with Trisha and
observing the daily routines of the classroom, it became clear that Trisha was constantly
trying to transfer control of responsibility for behavior and performance to her students.
Instead of rating each child's performance and giving points, Trisha asked the child to rate
themselves. The students tended to be extremely accurate in their ratings. If there was a

perceived error, it almost always was a child rating oneself too low. If this happened, the

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child who rated himself lherself low would almost always receive support from other
students to change their scores.

Though this system of having students self -regulate and monitor their behavior was
very much invisible in the latter half of the school year, it does have several important
functions. Trisha noted that many special education students, entering her classroom at the
beginning of the year or as new students, often display a state of learned helplessness and
require a subtle form of intervention to promote their participation in activities. Other
students, especially her emotionally impaired students, often seem to need the external
reinforcement of the classroom store to mediate their behavior in the initial stages. By
allowing students to rate their own behavior, Trisha was able to position her students to
become metacogrritive about their own performance. If there were inconsistencies in a
student's rating, then there was an opportunity to discuss a student's rating and
performance. Often times, it appeared that Trisha agreed with the student without question,
as she waited to see if her students would support or deny the child's self -rating. In an
interview with Trisha she noted:

Its more like peer pressure. The other kids know exactly what you did

during that lesson. If I say to Angie "How many points do you think

she should have and she said "zero”, somebody will say “You asked

a question! You should get at least one!” And I'll ask Angie again,

and if she says zero, I will put zero...they go through abuse a little

while, but they'll get there (accurately self -monitoring). (Interview, 416/92)

Later, Trisha relates how her ultimate goal is the building of classroom community.

I don't want to embarrass them, but I want them to be able to tell the

group, "This is a group situation", they are to work as a team to get

this done. And I want them to know that when one of the team members

isn't doing their part, things happen. And, this room is a team. We work

together as a team in almost everything we do. And sol want them to feel

the pressure of "I nwd to participate with the group". (Interview, 4/6/92)

Thus, there were a number of rights and duties that went along with the role of

being student author. Ultimately, the goal for Trisha was participation by all members.

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Rights and Duties of the Student Audience

Students who were not reading were expected to sit on the floor and listen.
Audience members had the right to respond to the author's story by asking a question or
supplying a comment. It was an audience member's duty, however, to bid for a speaking
turn by raising their hand to be called on. An exception to this duty was when there was an
emotionally charged comment or question. Typically, this took place when there was a
humorous statement or story made by the author or other audience members. In the
following transcript, Amber has read a story about her niece's first birthday party:
26S Amber: Juan?

266 Juan: What did you make her?
267 Amber. A little necklace with feathers and beads on it. I think she is going to eat the

267 feathers and eat the beads. She does that all the time. And she also eats toilet
268 paper (laughter). Oh yeah, I got one thing to say, one time when she was
269 over to our house, we don't let her go in the bathroom now that she did it,
270 she stuck her hand in the toilet (laughter) and picked her hand back out and
271 ate it. And put her hand in her mouth.

272 Ss: Ooooooh! Ooooooh! Grossll

273 Amber: That was gross. I just stood at the door and said ”No more of that."

In this sequence, the audience members played a key role in extending Amber's story about
her niece. The audience members responded as a group by laughing at Amber's story in
line 268, which then prompts Amber to tell the story of her niece's bathroom experience.

In line 272, nearly the entire group of students enters the conversation simultaneously with
"oohs' and "aaahs.’ This type of group response, or similar laughs, smiles, or snickers
were usually allowed and not opposed by the teacher. If a student interrupted another
speaker without bidding for a turn, like Gerry did when he said, "He hurt a kid" in line 167
of the previous transcript, that student was often opposed directly by the teacher. Also, if
there was a flurry of unsolicited comments about an emotionally charged comment, the
group was occasionally confronted by Trisha. This confronting was done only when the

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speaker’s rights had been violated or when the entire group was so emotionally charged
about a topic that they failed to give the floor back to the author or to an audience member
who had been authorized to speak However, in the five Staring Chairs, this opposition
occurred only eleven times. Some examples of a group opposition by the teacher were
”Remember to raise your hands (to multiple unsolicited cornments),” "Ok, just a second.
You need to be quiet so we can hear the questions,” and "Excuse me, but Byron asked
Nathan” Examples of a confrontation directed towards an individual student were
'DannyJ/Ilts Danny's turn, you need to be quiet" and “Whoa! Gerry. You need to raise
your hand if you've got a question.”

The small amount of opposing for unbid tums suggests that Trisha allowed the
audience members a fair amount of latitude in responding naturally to the content of the
conversation. Opposition to unbid turns was done at either the group level, or less often,
the individual level.

Though the audience members clearly held the right to choose to question or
comment, potentially positioning the author to respond in particular ways, they also had the
right to respond to the author's story with their own stories and experiences. At one point,
Trisha and I had begun to wonder whether there should be a change in the way the
audience responded to author‘s stories because so many students shared their personal
stories rather than asked questions of the author about the content of his or her text.
However, after a careful analysis of transcript data, it became clear that it was through
commenting, often times by telling a story, that students became personally involved in the
Sharing Chair. This was a critical finding, as many teachers may assume that this type of
response represents a rather immature response, whereas students who are more mature are
presumed to ask a preponderance of questions compared to comments. This does not
appear to be the case. Having the opportunity to comment, sometimes by telling a story,

seems a critical involvement strategy that allowed many students to participate and served to

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maintain their interest as they became personally involved through a narration of their own

story (T annen, 1989).

In the following example, both Angie and Hannah make connections to Amber's

story about her niece's birthday:

205 Amber: (reading journal) ”Today is my cousin's birthday. We are going to her
206 house. Wait, my cousin Sandy's birthday. We are going to he house. I
207 _ don't want her to grow up. She'll be one year old on April 23rd. Any
208 comments or questions?” Nigel?

209 Nigel: (Inaudible)

210 Amber. Hannah?

211 Hannah: Are you going to give her a present?

212 Amber. Yeah, I made her one at camp. Tracey?

213 Tracey: She's going to be one year old?

214 S: That's old (some laughs)

215 Amber: Angie?

216 Angie: I just can't wait for my birthday to come, because you know how grandpa
217 and grandma's spoil their grand kids, well, we're going out, out, to eat, and
218 um, my, my mom had got me this big old 10 speed, on my birthday, and
219 she gave it to me early last night, and I got roller skates for my birthday.
220 Amber: Rollerblades or roller skates?

221 Angie: Roller skates.

222 Amber: I thought you got rollerblades.

223 Angie: I have rollerblades. too.

224 Amber: I am getting them for my birthday today, I mean you're celebrating your
225 birthday today. So is she. Today, today's her birthday. Hannah?

226 Hannah: (he time, at Christmas I was peeking and I saw this bag, and it was at my
227 grandma's old house, and I peaked in it, and I saw it had these um, um,
228 "New Kids on the Block" video because I liked it a lot when I was little.
229 And, then I said ”Cool" and my grandma said "You didn't get anything at
230 school, did you?" And I said "No way."

231 Amber: Um, um, Mark, you had your hand-up.

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Angie and Hannah become personally involved in Amber's story by bringing their own
experiences about birthdays to the rest of the group. Since Angie's birthday was the very
next day, this topic had a special urgency for her. Hannah relates to the ”giving and getting
of presents” that occur around birthdays and extends this to another holiday, Christmas.
Interestingly, there are an equal number of questions and comments by audience members
in this short transcript and across Amber's entire turn (four questions, four comments).
Clearly, comments in the form of personal stories allowed the audience members the
opportunity to have increased floor time. In fact, the total length of both Angie's hybrid
comment/story and Hannah's personal narrative were longer than the author's written text.
It appears that the opportunities to tell stories and otherwise comment on an author's story
was a primary way in which audience members became involved in the Sharing Chair

activity.
Rights, Dug'g, gig ggsgggg‘bilig'es Q the Teacher

Trisha's verbal participation in Sharing Chair had several similarities to and many
differences from her participation in Morning Message. Of the total number of speaking
turns across the five Sharing Chairs, Trisha had just 21% of the total speaking turns. Six
of the 13 students had more speaking/trims than the teacher. Within the speaking turns that
Trisha did assume, the function of these turns occurred in two broad areas, conversational
management and questioning/commenting on students' stories.

The majority of Trisha's speaking tums (71%) fell under the superordinate category
of conversational management Within this category, there were four sub-categories,
including: (1) Managing turn-taking (37%), (2) managing the conversation (20%), (3)
managing and building the classroom community (11%), (4) managing individual student's
behavior (8%), and (5) face-saving of individual student members (3%).

Managing smug turns. Trisha had the right to end a student's speaking turn as
author, to announce to the group that Sharing Chair was ending, to extend an author's turn

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by preserving time for the author, and to elaborate on a student's experience in the Sharing
Chair.

Many autlrors' turns ended naturally with the waning of students questions. In this
case, Trisha simply drew out another journal and announced the name of the next author
and thanked the author: 'Ok, thank you Amber. Mark?“ In this way, Trisha lent support
to the author and thanked them for their participation. The next author was then chosen to
read. Other times, Trisha announced to the author how many questions they could field
before relinquishing the chair. '01: Mark. two more questions.” This forecasting served to
ensure that no one author would capture too much air time and alerted the author to how
many more comments or questions he/she would receive.

Trislur felt strongly about giving each student equal opportunity to read in Sharing
Chair. It was not uncommon to extend an author's turn into the lunch hour. In the April
22nd transcript about Danny's upcoming summer trip to Missouri with his uncle, Trisha
tells Danny to take one more question, even though the class was already over two minutes
late for the lunch bell:

438 Danny: Can I say something?
439 Trisha: (nods yes)

440 Danny: One time we went to, um, my aunts. We drove on the sand, and we drove in
441 there and we slid off and went into the water.

442 Trisha: Okay Danny, why don't you pick one more (two minutes into lunch period).
443 Danny: Jerrod?

444 Jerrod: What did he just say?

445 Trisha: Stunts? What kind of stunts?

446 Danny: They're like races, I did one race (explains stunts, but hard to hear)

447 Trisha: Ok, Danny, thank you. Make sure you take lots and lots of pictures. Does
448 someone have a camcorder?

In this sequence, we see Trisha manage the turn-taking in the group in three ways. first,

129

she forecasts how many turns Danny can field, helping the group monitor when to expect
the end of the lesson. Second, Trisha effectively ends Danny's turn by directly calling his
name and saying "thank you.” finally, Trisha elaborates on Danny's turn as author and
reinforces the value of this experience by asking him to take lots of pictures and
encouraging the filming of their four-wheeler stunts.

Monitoring the speaking turns of student authors resulted in 37% of Trisha’s total
ttuns, the highest of any sub-category. From the above examples, it became clear that
Trisha's intent was to (a) insure high-quality turns for each author by giving them adequate
time; (b) signal to the participants that a turn was ending, encouraging audience members to
bid for a speaking turn; (c) insure fairness in choosing the next author by randomly
selecting a notebook or having a student choose a number; and ((1) model herself as an
active listener and provide commentary on an author's turn in Sharing Chair. More than a
gatekeeper of turns, Trisha used this prominent feature of Sharing Chair to build an
atmosphere where students could genuinely engage in conversations about issues that
mattered to them.

mm the cogversation. In addition to managing speaking turns for the student
author, Trisha also assumed responsibility for managing conversational elements for the
group. Trisha's use of conversational management statements (n=22) constituted 20% of
her speaking turns. Included in this category were four discourse moves: (a) alerting
group members of the rules of participation, (b) alerting the author that there were other
hands raised, (c) holding the floor for a speaker, and, (d) issuing permission for an
individual to speak.

In several instances, Trisha re-communicated to the group the nrles for
participation. In one instance, Nathan, the first student author chosen, had closed his
notebook while coming to Sharing Chair. As the classroom population increased two-fold
since the beginning of March, Trisha asked students to keep their journals open to the page

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of the story they were going to read in Sharing Chair to help insure a more efficient use of
time. Trisha announced to the entire class to make sure and Open their journals before
coming over to Sharing Chair. Only Nathan did not comply with this rule. Trisha then
chose the eighth journal in the pile, Nathan's journal. Nathan entered the Sharing Chair
and began fumbling through the pages, trying to find this day's entry. Trisha then said,
“You see Nathan, this is why we leave them open. It takes time to get to the page...But we
don't have time because we have such a large group. So leave it open next time, okay?”

Other times, Trisha reminded students to raise their hands or told the group, "I
don't think we are ready.” These all helped remind students of the basic rules guiding
participation: “Raise your hand to speak” “Be quiet when others are talking,” and
“Respect yourself and your group by following directions.”

Trisha occasionally helped the author see that he/she had other questions. In the
following example, Amber has read a story about going to the Michigan Historical
Museum, where she bought a bracelet for her one-year old niece. In this sequence, the
students are discussing the large white pine that grows in a center atrium area:

462 Amber. I know, but they put new things in it now. They have like this black thing.

463 And the person was like right there asked them, ”Is this the only tree that they
464 found?“ and the person said, ”I think so“.

465 Nigel: Um, when we go on our field trip, when we go to camp there's going to be
466 this tree called a Kee, Keeb (Amber. Keebler), Kcebler, and there's going to
467 be cookies in it. Its the biggest tree in the world. And its a big tree, and like
468 four classes can go in it.

467 Danny. Its fake, its fake.

468 Amber: (passes necklace around)

469 Nigel: (joking, unbid) I'll give you five bucks (for necklace).

470 Trisha: (reminds Amber) You've got many more questions.

In this sequence, it is interesting to note that the author, Amber, did not call on any of the
speakers verbally, though Nigel's turn beginning on line 465 was sanctioned by Amber

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looking in his direction. Nigel then comments on his own experience with the Keebler
tree, which is followed by Danny's unbid turn that the tree is fake. Amber then passes the
necklace that she has brought from the museum around to her classmates in the circle.
Trisha, apparently sensing that Amber has given some roor time to audience members,
reminds her that she has many questions from others. This conversational strategy seems
an important way to insure that the author's speaking right to call on bidding members is
preserved, as well as underscoring the responsibility of authors to acknowledge the
comments and questions of the audience.

A third way in which Trisha managed the conversation was to hold the speaking
floor for individual members who were getting preempted by another's unbid talk. In one
particularly volatile exchange, Byron asks Nathan, the author of a story about playing
Ninja's with their classmate Danny, to explain what he meant by numchucks:

045 Nathan: I wore sweats like these (Nigel tells Nathan to stop kicking him). I
046 wore sweats like these, only they were sky blue. Byron?

047 Byron: What are numchucks?

047 Ss: (flurry of talk) You don't know!?...you don't know what numchucks are?
048 Trisha: Excuse me, but Byron asked Nathan.

049 Nathan: They are things like this (modeling the holding of a stick-like object about

050 16 inches long) and you twirl them around like really fast. (still overflow of
852 murmuring; Nigel whispers to Byron, ”You don't know what numchucks
are ").

The students were clearly surprised that Byron, a student with extensive background
knowledge, had not ever heard of numchucks. This appears to be even more surprising
given the popularity of the Ninja Turtles shows and the many martial arts movies that are
part of popular culture for students in this classroom. The volatility of response by other
audience members was clearly a violation of the need to bid for a speaking turn, especially
given that the complete sentenees ”You don't know what numchucks are” were in no way

disguised by whispers or murmurs. Trisha used the strong response, "Excuse me,” to

132

communicate that this was a violation that clearly mattered to the success of the group. The
rule was then modeled by Trisha speaking aloud about the fact that Byron asked Nathan,
not any other group members. This broadcasting served to realign the social participation
of group members by reminding the audience members that a bid turn that is sanctioned by
the author holds a special importance in who can talk to whom and when.

The final way in which Trisha managed the conversation was to issue permission
for an individual participant to speak This discourse move functioned very similarly to
holding the floor for a speaker. In the following transcript, the only time in the five
Sharing Chairs that two students chorally read a poem together, Danny and Byron are
sharing the chair with each other. The poem, ”My Brother's Bug,” has elicited a flurry of
talk with its humorous lyrics: "...It only tried to be polite. It did not scratch. It did not
bite. The only time it soiled the rug, was when I squashed by brother's bug!” There is
some confusion as to who the "author" is, a change in the speaking register for this activity:
156 Danny: Nigel?

157 Nigel: Do you like that one? (this poem)

158 Danny: I like it because

159 {

160 Nigel: why did both of you guys read it?
161 Trisha: Danny's trying to answer your question.

162 {
163 Byron: Because we both have the same
164 poem.

165 Trisha' Danny, I want you to finish. You said you like it...

166 Danny: I likeditbecausemeandMarkmadearapoutofit.

167 Nigel: Can you guys do it! Come on.

As in the above transcript, Trisha again recognizes that there has been a violation of the

133

author's rights. Since Danny was responsible for calling on Nigel, and Nigel directed his
question to Danny, it followed that Danny was responsible for fielding the question.
Trisha uses her authority to give permission to Danny by broadcasting to Nigel that his
interruption did not allow Danny to answer his original question. After Byron takes the
floor by responding to Nigel's reformulated question (“Why did both of you guys read
it?"), Trisha again enters the conversation and announces that she wants Danny to finish his
answer that was abruptly interrupted. She supports Danny by revoicing his previous
comment by saying ”You said you like it..." This revoicing communicates to Danny and
other group members that he has permission and the right to finish his thought. This
permission then allows Danny to communicate a very interesting story about the rap song
he and Mark made from the lyrics of the poem. Without the teacher having granted
permission to Danny by holding and then revoicing his thought, Danny may have been
denied an important opportunity to position himself and his friend Mark in a positive social
light. Nigel's excitement in line 167 shows that Trisha's responsibility for granting
permission to speakers can play a powerful role in building opportunities to hear the voices
enter and become part of her classroom community.

Mgmg and building the sharing chair community. Trisha viewed each student in
her class as a member of an inclusive community. As noted earlier, one of Trisha's most
common metaphors for describing her class was that of a team. The success of that team
was determined by the contributions and active participation of each and every member.
This team spirit was especially apparent in Sharing Chair. From previous experience,
Trisha knew the difficulties many students had in developing the courage to actively
participate as readers of their own writing. As a second grade student the year before this
study, it took Nigel until January to feel comfortable reading his own writing. Until that
time, Nigel would only write the simplest of sentences, often repeating the same entry: "I
love my mom.” He always refused the opportunity to read. Thus, building a caring

134

community in which all students participated comfortably was a primary goal.

Though the vast majority of Trisha's talk was oriented toward the goal of
developing a conversational atmosphere, there were a number of discourse moves that
more explicitly oriented the class towards participating successfully. One of the most
common statements that Trisha made was in arranging the physical and social space around
the Sharing Chair. As the class grew to fourteen members, it became difficult to have all
the students sit in the designated corner of the room. If there were space problems, Trisha
moved the materials cart that separated the Sharing Chair area from the center of the room
(See figure 3). Trisha would not begin Sharing Chair unless all students were sitting in
the circle and part of the group:

001 Trisha: Amber, we want you as part of the group, so can we move these desks over.
002 It makes it better when the whole group is together.

003 Ss: The group is bi gger !
004 Trisha: Geez! I know! It keeps growing and growing. (March 22nd)

001 Trisha: Who did not read yesterday. Okay, sol have Nigel, Nathan, Jerrod, Gerry,

002 Tracey, and Hannah that didn't read yesterday. Juan, you weren't in here.

003 Okay, let's see, I'll pull one out of here (journal). Byron, you need to join

004 us. You guys, Danny, you head to join us. We have to stop, to spread out
005 a little bit to make some more room. Okay Juan. (April 23rd)

As these examples illustrate, Trisha was constantly aware of the physical and social space
surrounding the Sharing Chair activity. Trisha used the physical positioning of the group
to index, or signal, to students that they were about to begin Sharing Chair. These
indexing statements appeared to play an important role in setting the speech register that the
students were about to engage in.

Trisha used other community oriented statements throughout the Sharing Chair and

135

at the conclusion of the activity. In one instance, Trisha stopped the group and announwd
“Wait, wait, wait, just a minute. Danny, you need to move back in a circle. Amber, can
you scoot down. Janitra can you get in. find a spot. Go ahead.” In another statement
during the Sharing Chair, Trisha makes visible a central rule in her classroom: ”Just a
second Mark (the author), you guys need to show respect.” Signalling to the group that
they needed to regulate their own social participation was a powerful way in which Trisha
held students responsible for their own behavior. In an interview with Trisha, after I had
noted that in schools, teachers held most of the control for communication in the
classroom, she responded with her own views on this subject:

I think they DO have control. I think they have all of the control. I

guess I feel like I give them the opportunity or give them the motivation

to want to control themselves. Because, I don't, you know, you can come

in and try to be the power of the universe and they are not going to listen

to you. If you come in and show them that this is not my choice, and you

have the choice, you can sit there and throw a fit and scream at me and

swear at me if you want, but...its up to you...its in your lap. (Interview,

March 6, 1992)
Ultimately, taking responsibility for your own actions, respecting yourself as a participant
in this world, was at the core of Trisha's beliefs about teaching and learning.

Ending a Sharing Chair was another phase in the activity where Trisha made
visible the emotional needs of the group. Trisha often thought aloud about those group
members who were not able to read because of time constraints:

401 Trisha: Byron and Danny, we have to stop, but I really am glad that you read that to

402 us, it was interesting. Those people who didn't get a chance, don't worry,
4C8 you'll get a chance during theme time. (April 8th)

588 Trisha: We are going to have to stop because of recess. And I can see that we didn't
589 get to five people today. So I am going to put stars by your name for
590 tomorrow and you can read first thing. (April 22nd)

Trisha's discourse moves in all of the above sequences illustrate the central

136

importance of aligning the social participation needs of individual members and the
academic task of reading their journals. Trisha reassures group members that they will
have a chance to read in the next Sharing Chair, providing a speaking space for each
student in future rounds of activity. Trisha carefully shapes the classroom community
through her unending emphasis on inclusion, participation, responsibility, and teamwork

Mana ' individ stude t's behavior. One way in which Trisha managed the
conversation was to manage the behavior of individual students. In the five Sharing
Chairs, she made only ten behavior management statements. In seven of the ten moves,
Trisha simply said the student's name in a normal tone of voice, used eye gaze to make
contact with the student, and then paused: "Gerry.” In the other three instances, she
directly reminded an individual student that there had been a rules violation by explicitly
stating the rule: ”Excuse me, Hia, no one gets out of their seat during a lesson. This is a
lesson,” and ”Whoa! Gerry. You need to raise your hand if you have a comment.” As
will become important later in this study, one student, Gerry, received 50% of the behavior
management statements directed at individual students.

Trisha's non-intrusive, objective discourse style helped maintain the speaking and
listening rights of others, yet never dampened the importance Trisha placed upon allowing
children's voices to be heard in her classroom. In no case did Trisha ever not allow an
individual student to participate in the Sharing Chair.

Face gving of individual students. The final sub-category under conversational
management was saving face of individual students. This occurred only three times (3%)
during the five rounds of Sharing Chair. As already discussed above, this discourse move
by the teacher served to protect the individual rights of students. In an earlier transcript,
Jerrod was being asked by Nathan why he was sent home from the class camping trip.
Trisha gave Jerrod permission to not answer the question, helping him to save face by

avoiding a potentially incriminating response. Also in an earlier example, Trisha helped

137

Danny to regain the speaking floor by directly calling on Danny and saying, ”Danny, I
want you to finish. You said you liked it...." Trisha helped Danny avoid a potentially face
threatening act of being ignored and interrupted by speakers who did not have speaking
rights. Though this type of discourse move was used infrequently, suggesting that
students seldom had to be reminded of face threatening acts (Brown & Levinson, 1987) ,
this type of overt move seemed to be an especially important conversational right of the
teacher.

Mdonigg and Comenting og Author's Sm'es

Though Trisha had a critical responsibility in managing the conversation for
students, she also was directly involved in participating as both an audience member and
author. Trisha's participation as an author earlier in the year was an important feature of
Sharing Chair in her room. After the beginning of March, however, her participation as
author decreased due to the influx of new or returning students. Trisha felt it was
important that her students had opportunities to read, so she volunteered her own writing
less frequently (none in the five Sharing Chairs in this study). Trisha continued to write in
her journal each day.

Trisha responded to students' writing in two distinct ways. First, Trisha sat on the
floor as an audience member who had to bid for a turn to ask a comment or question of an
author's text. This bidding of a speaking turn was a key way that Trisha accomplished
what Goffman (1981) calls 'role distancing,’ or maintaining the rights and responsibilities
of the role as teacher, yet consciously distancing oneself from the authority of that role to
transfer control of the meaning making process to students. Though Trisha ultimately had
the right to intervene to manage the conversation without bidding for a turn, she never
commented on or questioned a student author without first bidding for a speaking turn by
raising her hand. In this way, she indexed the role of "author“ as one who had special

authority and importance.

138

The second way in which Trisha responded to her students' texts was to respond in
writing to the daily journals. Each night, Trisha would take the journals home with her and
write below that day's entry for each of her students In this way, even if a child did not
get an opportunity to read their entry in Sharing Chair that day, their writing would always
be responded to by someone else. Students, however, had the option to respond in writing
to Trisha's comments. Unlike a dialogue journal where there is a constant building of ideas
and give-and—take between members, Trisha left the journal writing as a free write:
Students could write about any topic of their choosing. Trisha hoped her students would
want to read what she wrote, but in no way expected them to conform to her inquiries. In
fact, in the entire two-years that I observed Trisha's classroom, I never saw Trisha use
anything but a 'free-write' format during journal time (i.e., there were no focus journals,
focus topics, story starters, etc.).

Each of these two ways of responding to student journals will be discussed at
length

Asking questions and comments In the five Sharing Chairs, Trisha asked
questions and comments of student authors 23 times (21%). In all but two instances,
Trisha asked questions that positioned the author as an expert informant by eliciting more
information about their story or the events in the story. Trisha's questions seemed to span
from those that were very literal to those that were more inferential. Examples of literal
questions were “Who are you going to church with?", "Where are you going to get your
shoes?", and "How did you celebrate your dad's birthday?"

Trisha also positioned students to think metacognitively by asking more open ended
and inferential questions. In one of Nathan's journal entries, he has invited a classmate,
Justin, to stay over night at his house:

027 Byron: Urn, what time do you think you guys are going to order it (pizza)?
028 Nathan: I don't know. Ms. Williams?

139

029 Trisha: Why did you choose Justin?
030 Nathan: Because, I am sure, cause, Justin asked, and, um, I asked him because he

(B1 never spended the night over at my house before. So I just wanted him to
032 spend the night to see how it feels on a BUNK bed. I have a bunk bed.
033 Tracey?

In this sequence, Trisha's question positions Nathan to examine his reasoning for bringing
this particularfriend over to spend the night. Nathan hesitates five times in his first
sentence, suggesting the challenge to his thinking by her question to explain his thinking.

In another example, Tracey read a story about seeing the movie ”fire in the Sky.”
Though she characterized the movie as being " gross,” Trisha pushed Tracey to explain
whether she would recommend the film to the group: "I am trying to get a feel whether you
recommend this movie for us or not. And I want to know what you think Would you
recommend it for us to see?”

Trisha's questioning of students was an important feature of Sharing Chair.
Through her questions, Trisha positioned students to employ a wider range of thinking
behaviors, including literally recalling events, providing explanations, evaluations,
retellings, and giving opinions. This was an important way in which Trisha was able to
apprentice students into new ways of knowing. Over time, this type of apprenticeship
allowed students to try-on these forrrrs of speaking. For many novices to Sharing Chair,
the most common form of response was the rather impoverished or default response, "I
like your story.” By the end of the year, students began to mirror the complexity of the
teacher's questions.

Writgn resmse to students' jgmals. In addition to her direct involvement as a
writer, reader, and responder of oral texts, Trisha also played the role of audience member
and conversational partner through her written response to each child's journal entry at
night (See Figure 10 for sample of Tracey’s journal). When students picked up their

journals the next day, there was always a written response in the form of a question, a

140

comment, or a personal experience from the teacher. Trisha saw this as a necessary and

obligatory way to provide another audience for her students and build in a chance for them

to feel like an author who had received genuine feedback Trisha took her writing very

seriously and saw the journal as a gateway to understanding, helping, and teaching her

students. To make visible the importance of journal writing for Trisha and her students, a

fourth-grade learning disabled giri named Tracey serves as a case for communicating

through the journal and in Sharing Chair. In the following journal entries, Trisha's

response to a feature of Tracey's journal seems to prompt the next day's topic.

Tracey's Journal:
(March 8, 1993)

Trisha's Response:

Tracey's Journal:
(March 9, 1993)

Trisha's Response:

Tracey's Journal:
(March 10, 1993)

Trisha's Response:

I went to my baby siterest houes. On friday affert school.
On friday nith I wacht T.V. and on T.V. was freta kreaer. it
was skar not.

(I went to my baby sisters house on Friday after school.
On Friday night, I watched T.V., and on T.V. was Freddy
Kruger. It was scary. Not.)

Does it bother you that you do not live with your baby
sister? How often do you get to see her? I have one sister
and we used to fight all of the time. Now, we get along.

Dear mom I wand hou you are doing know. I miss you alot
you are nice alot too.

(Dear mom, I wonder how you are doing now. I miss you
a lot. You are nice a lot too.)

You should write a real letter to your mom. I bet she'd

like to hear from you. Be careful about sharing things with
the group that are personal. I'm not sure if your mom would
want us to know why she's in jail. If you need to talk about
it, I will make time to talk with you alone. (smiley face)

You are nice to say that Mis W. Do you have a morther
tool!

Yes, I have a mom. I don't live with her anymore, but I talk
to her on the phone almost everyday. I try to go over to see
my mom and dad at least once a week

In this exchange, Trisha chooses to respond to Tracey's March 8th journal by

asking about her half -sister who lives with her stepmother. Trisha responds by asking two

I41

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Figure 10 Sample of Tracey’s Sharing Chair Journal

142

questions and then providing a personal experience about the relationship with her own
sister. This range of response provides many opportunities for Tracey to enter into this
conversation, and changes the trajectory of the March 9th and 10th journal entries.

An especially interesting phenomenon in Trisha's classroom is determining who the
audience is for individual children. In Tracey's case, it is clear that she moves between her
classmates and the teacher as the primary audience for her writing. In the March 8th entry,
Tracey speaks about seeing Freddy Kruger on the television and then announcing that it
was scary--NOT! This topic choice and use of a popular word usage seems to be an
attempt to humor the student audience. After Trisha's response about missing her sister,
Tracey's March 9th journal entry seems to take on a very different flavor. Trisha's
response to Tracey's March 8th journal seemed to shift the primary audience away from the
group and towards the privacy of the teacher. By giving Tracey the opportunity to talk
about the challenging issues she faced as a member of a dysfunctional family, Trisha
created a discourse space to learn more about the children in her classroom.

Tracey's journals for the remainder of the year occasionally documented the
excitement and fears that she faced in her life. In addition to missing her mother who was
in jail, Tracey was in the awkward position of having a half-sister who lived with her
stepmother, now divorced from her father. The following journal entries help to chronicle
some of Tracey's experience and make visible the importance of Trisha's written responses
to her journal.

Tracey's Journal: my dad weant to the fun of the cort he mint go to jal I don't

(March 16, 1993) no. I dont want him to go to jal my stepmother is the one

hes(can'tread) thatiswanthehastogotothefrow

(My dad went to the Friend of the Court. He might go to
jail, I don't know. I don't want him to go to jail. My
stepmother is the one who's (?). That is why he has to go to
the Friend (of the Court).)

Trisha's Response: I hope everything went okay yesterday for your dad. I know
you are extremely worried. I would be too. I don't think

Tracey's Journal:
(April 3, 1993)

Trisha's Response:

Tracey's Journal:
(Early May, 1993)

Trisha's Response:

Tracey's Response:

Tracey's Journal:
(Next Day in May)

Trisha's Response:

Tracey's Response:

Trisha's Response:

143

your dad will go to jail. I think he is just trying to get
custody of your sisters.

My babysest lives with us now. I am gland then are. I am
happy. then are living with us.

(My baby sisters lives with us now. I am glad they are. I
am happy they are living with us.)

I bet you are thrilled. I know you wanted your dad to get
custody. Does your dad get along with your stepmom?

Iamoffgrondingtodayl arnhappydoyouknow yexlarn
goi to talk abot it in my joul. I am mit go live with my
mom. I do't wont to live with my mom I worth to see her.
(See figure 10)

(I am off grounding today. I am happy. Do you know yet?
I am going to talk about it in my journal. I might go live
with my mom. I don't want to live with my mom. I want to
see her.)

When do you have to move in with your mom? Is it your
real morn? Does she want you to move in?

I have know idea. I do miss her a lot.

Dear Shoner and DJ I miss you alot. I miss the things you
do you are prct shoner. DJ I miss you tool did not
waont you to go to Kolorodo but you have to go to
Kolorodo

(Dear Shoner and DJ, I miss you a lot. I miss the things you
do. You are pretty Shoner. DJ, I miss you too. I did not
want you to go to Colorado, but you have to go to
Colorado.)

Tracey, who did you write the letters to? Why don't you
and I sit down and talk?

because I miss them alot sow they will rememlr me too!
I bet they will remember you. They probably miss you too.

I hope you started towrite thatlettertoyourmom thatwe
talked about.

As these entries indicate, Trisha discovered new worids about her students’ day-to-day

lives. Responding to her students’ journals opened the door to new topics and prompted

both public and private conversations. In Tracey's two eariy May entries, she answered

144

Trisha's inquiries about whether she had to move in with her mother and her letter to DJ

and Shoner. This dual audience, the entire class in Sharing Chair and Trisha through

writing, seemed to broaden the potential topics that might be included in the Sharing Chair.
% W

The topics that students wrote about and then read in Sharing Chair were the
intertextual fuel that bounded conversations. It was largely individual author's stories and
the resulting comments and questions that set in place and marked the range of intertextual
links that could be made. The intertextual potentials, the possibility of personally linking
with the author's story, created the conditions for conversational involvement.

In this section, the range of topics are described and the uses of Sharing Chair
illustrated. Undertaking this effort is critical for a number of reasons. First, in Sharing
Chair, the lived life of children forms the raw material for meaning construction, allowing
researchers to examine the educational possibilities that might reside in the activity.
Second, in examining the topics that children bring to Sharing Chair, the teacher creates a
discourse space that affords the group the opportunity to become intimately connected on a
daily basis. Third, the contents of individual's stories provides the teacher many
opportunities to examine what might be important in that child's life, allowing the teacher to
make links to those experiences throughout the curriculum. Finally, more than any other
discourse space in Trisha's classroom, Sharing Chair provides a glimpse into. the more
natural conversations that children might engage in with each other.

Using the Discourse Sm of Sharing Chair

Given the opportunity to share their written journals with their peers on a daily
basis throughout an entire school year, how would children use the discourse space of
Sharing Chair? The answer might be surprising given the fact that these young students
were third and fourth grade special needs students: Broadly. If there were fears that the
Sharing Chair would lack an instructional focus or lose interest and become boring for

145

students, these fears were quickly dispelled when examining the breadth of possibility that
resided in this discourse space. If anything, this genre was defined by its wide boundaries,
at times moving from a serious and committed discussion to the telling of funny stories and
jokes. In short, Sharing Chair reflected the more improvisational character of a
conversation than that of a more restricted speech genre. The many uses of Sharing Chair
are outlined below.

The nature of students' topics seemed to position the audience to respond
differently. At the heart of the topics read in Sharing Chair, there is a focus on the telling
of one's lived experience. However, these narratives take many forms. In the five days
that are the focus of this study, there appeared to be nine different types or uses of
narratives that were brought to the Sharing Chair. These types were, (1) storytelling, (2)
show and tell, (3) asking questions, (4) reporting, (5) signalling, (6) sharing, (7) reading,
(8) emotions, and, (9) personal/confidential. These t0pics are outlined in figure 11. Each
category of narrative will briefly be described

Smiling Sharing Chair was an important site for children to practice and tryout
the telling of stories, both fictional and from personal experience. The importance of telling
a story is perhaps best illustrated by Mark. In his April 22 journal, Mark had written, ”The
wind storm we had blew down 13 telephone poles over by my brothers." Yet, when Mark
read his journal in Sharing Chair, he "read” his text in the following way:

134 Mark: "Do you guys remember that big Windstorm we had? (uh hum). Well, over

135 by my brothers, it knocked down 13 telephone poles, split one in half. One
136 fell on top of a house, and the rain cut off the tops of trees.” Any comments
137 or questions? Amber?

In this sequence, Mark begins by looking at his written text, but apparently feels he can't
tell the story in a way that convincingly captures his audience. He then adds details about
the pole being split and half, a tree falling on the house, and the rain cutting off the tops of

trees. Though it is not clear why Mark did not write these details into his written text, it

Storytelling

 

 

Nathan: "Wolverines and other
Superheroes"
“Jumping into river
its: a large fish took it
ml

Mark:

 

 

Asking a Question

 

 

Angie: 'Doyoulikehavingrne
inyourclass?"

Mark: 'Doyourunemberthe
day afterttbig storm?"

 

 

Reporting

 

 

Gerry: ”Today, I made a
sardmstle with Byron"

Nigel: "My mom is getting me
some new shoes“

 

 

Sharing

 

 

Hannah: '1 am going to miss
you guys this summer”
Nathan: “Justin is coming over

to spend the night”

 

 

Reading

146

Show and Tell

 

Byron' 'I got a new wallet for
$5.00 and I'll pass it
mound"

Amber: '1 got a necklace from

the Michigan Historical
Museum"

 

 

Showing Disappointment

 

Tracey: 'Iamnotgoingonthe
fieldtrip. My M did not
sign the permission slip.”

 

 

Signalling

 

Gerry: ”We are going to
FunTyme waterslide
with our class."

Amber: "We are going to Angel
Hill to go
snowboarding”

 

 

Personal, Confiding

 

Byron: "My uncle told me what
its like being in jail"
Hannah: "Mom said that I
was kidnapped by my
grmdma'

 

 

 

 

Byron and Danny: Read the poem
“My Brother's Bug”

 

 

figure 11 Topics and Uses of Sharing Chair

 

 

 

 

147

seems that there may have been a genre clash, or what Halliday & Hasan (1989) (all a
”frame clash”: Mark's written expository text that states what happened in a matter of fact
way, seems to clash with his intent on turning the information into a narrative text. Mark's
opening statement, ”Do you guys remember that big windstonn we had?", allows him the
permission to abandon his written text and accept the positioning of the audience (uh hum)
and tell his story about what he experienced during the storm. ‘

Later, in June, Mark is more successful at actually capturing the details of his story
in writing and is able to read his story verbatim:
243 Mark: "Yesterday I went fishing and I had to jump in the water after my fishing

2A4 pole. And I was mad because I lost my pole and a fish pulled it down stream
245 and I followed it until it got stuck on a rock, and I walked out in the water
246 and was over my head. So I could not get it and I got really mad.” (June 9)

Unlike story ”reporting” talked about below, storytelling is distinguished by its attempt to
invoke humor or personal involvement with the audience members. As Mark's example
shows, he appears to have been able to internalize and capture in writing what he was only
able to do orally several months prior. In examining all of Mark's journals from March to
June, he wrote extensive stories only three times, two of the three times being back to back
journals on June 8th and June 9th, the last full week of the school year. Though this study
did not directly trace how the oral discourse in different literacy events became transformed
and used by students, it may be that Mark has successfully incorporated his ability and
interest in telling stories into his personal writing.

Show and fill. A second way in which authors used the Sharing Chair was to
show and tell about items they had received or created. This use of Sharing Chair occurred
four times during this study. Topics that were shown included getting a necklace from the
Michigan Historical Museum, new comic books, and some pictures that Jerrod had drawn
with Juan and Mark. What marked this activity from other sharing events was the actual

presence of the item. In each case, the item was passed around the entire group, allowing

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students to examine more closely the object of the message. In the following story, Byron
tells about getting a new wallet:

087 Byron: ”Yesterday I got a new wallet. It cost $5.00. It’ s got an eagle on it and I like
088 it a lot. Comments or questions?" Angie?

089 Angie: Where did you get the wallet at?

090 Byron: I don't know where, my mom got it. She got it for me. Nigel?

091 Nigel: Let me we it.

092 Byron: (pulls wallet out and passes it to Nigel).

As this example illustrates, an important source for students' writing could be personal
possessions or creations. Having the opportunity to share with the group new items they
had received seemed to have importance for nearly every student. Just as showing and
telling can be an important opportunity to practice oral discourse and build confidence in
early grades, this educational possibility that resided in Sharing Chair seemed to hold equal
importance for the third and fourth grade special needs students in this classroom.

Asking a question. A particularly interesting affordance in Sharing Chair was the
opportunity for authors to seek feedback from their peers through the posing of a question
or comment. This use of Sharing Chair was the most explicit attempt students made to
position the audience as conversational partners. Questions and comments could be
directed at a particular individual or the entire group. In the following example, Angie
includes as part of her story a question directed at the teacher, Ms. Williams:

166 Angie: "Ms. Williams. What is your cats' names?‘ I hope you have dog in your

167 house. If you do I will come over and live with you. I will live with you if
168 you have a dog and I hope you have a puppy dog.” Any comments or
169 questions? Janitra?

170 Janitra: You don't know what her cats names are?
171 Angie: I-Iuh?
172 Janitra: You don't know what her cats' names are?

173 Angie: Nope, that's why I am asking her a question.

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In another example, Tracey invites her classmates to discuss a movie she had seen

at the movie theater.
013 Tracey: "I saw a movie in the theater. It is called 'Fire in the Sky.’ It was gross. Did

014 you see it? I don‘t think you'd ever see another scary movie again. Any
015 comments or questions? Amber?

034 Jerrod: Are you talking about the movie when they put him on the table and a whole

035 bunch of stuff was all over his (body) and he kept...

036 Tracey: YEP!!! They put this thing, and they lay him on the table, gross, and they
037 put this blanket on him, and they cut him here and here (pointing to above

038 eyebrows). They put something around his eye and puss was coming out.

039 Ss: Ooooh! That's nasty!

Although the content of the conversation is around a movie that is certainly rated beyond
the nine to eleven years of the students in this classroom, Tracey's writing shows a
complex sense of her audience. Traceys text suggests that she is writing for an external
audience, a skill that several writing researchers have found to be problematic in LD
children's writing (Graham & Harris, 1989; Raphael, Englert, & Kirschner, 1989).
Tracey's asking whether anyone had seen the same film was confirmed by Jerrod's
accurate recall of a key event in the film. From Tracey's response in line 036, she was
excited to have made contact with her audience, reinforcing the fact that her other-centered
approach to directly questioning her audience can pay big social dividends. Having the
opportunity to create direct intertextual links with one's audience seems a particularly
important educational possibility in the Sharing Chair.

Remrting. A fourth use of the Sharing Chair was for authors to report on
important events that had happened in their life. Reporting is distinguished from the next
use of Sharing Chair, signalling, in that this type of writing reports on events that have
already occurred in the past Reporting was one of the most common uses of Sharing

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Chair. Some examples of reporting are: "I bought a Transformer for fifty cents” and "I got
a German Shepherd. We named her Sassy.”

Drawing on recent experience seemed to be a frequent source of topics for students.
Reporting these experiences seemed to be of special importance to students, as they knew
their experience would receive interest from peers. This was an especially important
affordance for those students who were uncomfortable sharing. One student, Gerry, the
lowest achieving student in both reading and writing, read only once in the five Sharing
Chairs. His story, one sentence in length, reported on his participation with his classmate
Byron:

276 Gerry: "Today I made a sand castle with Byron.” Any comments or questions?
277 Marky?

278 Mark: Was it big?

279 Gerry: Yeah.

280 Mark: How big?

281 Gerry: Big. . About this big, about as big as this chair. Hannah?

288 Nathan: What does it look like?

289 Gerry: Urn, um, I forgot. I think Byron knows. (to Byron) How big? What did
290 the sand castle look like?

291 Byron: Big. REAL big.
292 S: Whatdid it look like?

293 Byron: (comes to front of room and stands next to Gerry) Well, it was about like this
294 (shows about 2 ft. high). It took up a lot of sand.

295 Gerry: Any more comments or questions?

This sequence is of special importance as it is representative of a student who is the most

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academically and behaviorally challenged From fieldnotes, achievement data, and
interview data, it was found that Gerry struggled immensely with his reading. His fear of
failure often times interfered with his opportunities to learn. As an example, in several
instances it was revealed that when Gerry had to partner read with other students, he would
occasionally announce to his partner that he nwded to "go to the bathroom” and skip his
turn to read Other times, he encouraged another student to read a poem chorally, allowing
himself to follow behind and repeat the student's words. The majority of his speaking
turns in Sharing Chair were unbid turns that reacted to someone else's talk. When asked if
he enjoyed to read, Gerry responded ”I hate reading.”

Gerry's participation as author helps to make visible the potential power of Sharing
Chair in the development of oral language. Examining Gerry's total participation in
Sharing Chair, it became apparent that in addition to having the third lowest amount of
verbal participation among the thirteen students, Gerry also had the second least elaborated
speech and shortest speaking turns, seldom going beyond a single sentence in length (see
Table 7 for Gerry's total participation).

In the above example, Gerry is able to field Mark's literal question about the size
of the castle by saying "Big, about this big, about as big as this chair.” When asked to
describe what the castle looks like, however, Gerry feels uncomfortable and says that he
forgot Gerry then states that Byron knows, and then redirects Mark's previous question
about how big the sand castle was by asking Byron directly. Seeing that Byron is
interested in helping discuss their partnership, Gerry then asks Byron Nathan's question
about what the sand castle looked like as well. When looking across all of the questions
directed at Gerry about his sand castle (10 questions), Geny's only elaborated response
was in line 281, where Gerry said that his sand castle was as big as a chair.

Gerry's case is important for a number of reasons. First, the very fact that Gerry-
has developed the confidence to read in front of his mainly older and more able peers is a

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Table 7 Verbal Participation in Sharing Chair

 

 

Total Total $Turna %Turna thurna
Stud 0"“ Turns Toplea aa Author aa Audience Unbld
Amber 150 4 55 45 0
Angie 145 4 61 39 0
Hannah ' 144 4; 53 47 0
Nathan 1 14 3 75 25 0
Tracey 93 3 51 48 1
Nigel s9 1 19 54 27
Ma‘k 83 1 2 35 65 0
Danny 78 4 55 45 0
Byron 70 3 47 ‘ 53 0
Gerry ' 47 1 so 23 47
Jerrod 33 t 67 30 3
Janitra 19 1F 58 32 10
Overall 88.75 31- 50.5 % 42.17 % 7.33 %
Averages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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positive first step in developing literate behaviors. Second, although Gerry seems to be
uncomfortable or unable to use extended and elaborated speech, it is the educational
possibilities that reside in Sharing Chair that seem best suited to developing Gerry's oral
language abilities. Third, the rights and duties that surround the student authors and
audience members help to insure that students are protected from extensive interrogation.
As this example illustrates, Gerry's simple one sentence story generated many questions
and comments. In the full turn, Gerry was asked ten questions from his audience and he
made verbal contact with six different classmates and the teacher. Finally, though Gerry's
participation as an audience member is often times in reaction to other's speech and is often
unbid, the creation of this discourse space seems to create an opportunity for Gerry to enter
the classroom community.

Ming. Authors also wrote about events in their lives that were coming in the
future. This form of broadcasting, or foreshadowing, allowed students to receive feedback
about an event that was important to them. As an example, a common type of signalling by
authors was to talk about an upcoming birthday: ”It is six days until my birthday.” Other
types of signalling often surrounded special events, such as going on a field trip, going
sliding, or playing with a friend after school. This type of topic seemed to have the
function of drawing other's interest to the topic, paving the way for future conversations.
In fact, when signalling involved other class members, these turns tended to bring high
verbal involvement and participation. In the following story, Angie signals to her
classmates several important upcoming events, her birthday, the party treats she is
bringing, and the slumber party with all of the girls in her class:

321 Angie: ”My birthday is April 24th 1993 and I will turn 10 years old on Saturday, and

322 tomorrow I will bring squirrel bars to the party and I am going to invite
323 Jamtra, Amber, Laurie, Tracey and Hannah for a party at my house.” Any
324 comments or questions? Tracey?

As expected, Angie's signalling of the birthday theme evoked many requests. In all, 11 of

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the 13 participants received air time during Angie's tum alone. Extended discussions arose
over who could and could not come to the slumber party, shared experiences around
birthday parties in the past, and ”What in the heck are squirrel bars?” Each event that Angie
signalled to the group received an uptake by various audience members (see Table 8).

S_ha_rir_;g_g_n9tio_ns. A sixth type of topic in Sharing Chair was distinguished by
students sharing their feelings or emotions with the group. This type‘of story differed from
reporting and signalling in that it had a clear reflective quality, and could be both a
reflection upon events already completed or upon futlue events. A type of sharing that was
done by a number of authors was to reflect upon their camp experience. For example, both
Byron and Jerrod inclu®d topics that included '1 had a good time at camp,” inviting
students to ask them about their experience. Other students examined the complicated issue
of upcoming personal loss. Amber, for example, seemed concerned about her niece: "My
cousin's first birthday is coming up and I don't want her to grow-up." Similarly, in the
last week of school, Hannah included as part of her topic, "I am going to miss you guys
this summer.” Sharing Chair seemed to be an important venue for students to share their
feelings and seek support in reflecting upon new and known.

Reading. The opportunity to read books, poems, or other stories that were not
written by a student author was infrequent in Trisha's classroom. Across the larger Early
Literacy Project, however, a number of teachers allowed non-conventional readers and
writers to ”read” wordless picture books, chorally read with a partner a poem or predictable
book, or share their dictated writing with the support of another. In Trisha's room,
however, the Sharing Chair was used almost exclusively as an Author’s Chair where
students read their own writing.

During the observation period from March through June, there was only one
instance of students reading something other than their own writing. In this case, Byron
and Danny chose to read a poem called “My Brother's Bug.” As mentioned earlier, this

Table 8 Examples of Audience Uptake of Events in Angie’s Journal

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My birthday is April ...tomorrow I will ...I am going to
, 24th, 1993, and I bring squirrel bars invite Janitra,
Events Signalled will turn 10 years to the party... Amber, Laurie,
l in Angie’s old on Saturday... Tracey and Hannah :'
l Journal for a party at my
house.
Examples of I got something to This is a funny Are we going to
Uptakes. To tell you. On my one question, but what have your address? '
Angle’s Story birthday, I turned in the world are
By Audience let’s see, 5, no 6. squirrel bars? On my birthdayl
Members We had this party, only get to invite ten
and we had this one people.
Party, so .mx
grandma lnvrted all I can’t go because
my relatives, and I my grandma is
said, “Can I please going to take us to a
invite one of my parade. My
friends?” and she grandma told us
goes, “Well you got shes taking us to a
friends all around parade. But I'll try .9
you.” And I said, to come. i
“Only at my I

 

cream.

school.” And she
said (?). And I said,
“Okay.” So then I
was, I was just mad
at her all day. And I
went to sleep after I
ate cake and ice

 

 

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poem documents a bug who seemed to be a wonderful pet, yet in the end gets squished by
a brother. In Trisha's room, like other ELP classrooms, students had poem folders that
contained copies of poems that were used in the class, both expository and narrative. In
almost every case, poems were introduced to support a thematic unit that was being
studied. Trisha had just completed a large insect unit, using poems that were informational
and narrative. Trisha allowed students the choice of reading their own writing or reading a
poem. Audience members then asked questions or comments about the poem.
W. The final type of tOpic that was brought to Sharing Chair
was stories about the drama of real life events that happened to individual students. What
distinguished the personal/confidential stories from the sharing emotion stories was the fact
that they tended to be deeply personal events with individuals that did not include their
classmates. One possible explanation for the telling of these types of personal stories was
to draw attention to one's self by telling horrific stories. However, this did not appear to
be the case in Trisha's classroom. One student, Laurie, who was not present during the
five transcribed Sharing Chairs, seemed to take some pride in telling about the challenges in
her family. In Sharing Chair and in an interview with her, Laurie talked extensively about
head injury and ”brain damage.” In one Sharing Chair, Laurie wrote, ”My sister hit her
head on the ice and damaged her head. My uncle hit my sister for no reason.” When asked
about her mother in an interview, Laurie responded ”She has something a matter with her
brain. She got, um, like, bumps on her neck and everything. They say its a brain damage.
We don't know.” From these and other reactions, it appeared that Laurie fawd many
challenges at home, including the desire to gain the attention of others. The following
segment from an interview with Laurie is illustrative of these challenges and seem to
represent the manipulation of one's environment to gain attention:
Troy: Let's talk about writing. How do you like writing?
Laurie: Like it! !!!

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Troy: You do like to write? Why do you like to write?

Laurie: Because, one time I was on the STRIKE, my sister hit me in the face right here,
and it almost broke my tooth out, this one, it busted it in, and one time I got on
strike, the only thing I would do was write in cursive, and they couldn't read it,
and I wouldn't print, because I can't do it in any other way than cursive, and
everybody could read it, and I didn‘t talk for 3 months (convincingly). And at
school I did not talk either.

Troy: Why not?

Laurie: I don't know, cause I was on strike, because my sister kept hitting me. One time
at school, she tripped me on the ice and broke all of this right here.

Troy: You said you were on “strike“? What does that mean, ”on strike"?

Laurie: I won't do nothing, I won't say nothing, and I won't eat nothing, or I won't give
nothing.

Troy: Do you like being on strike?

Laurie: No.

This rather bizarre example of elective mutism is deeply disturbing in its own right, but
seems to speak more directly to the conscious manipulation of the environment to gain
attention. The drama created by having a secret language that no one else could read seems
to be a powerful way of gaining an identity amongst her aggressive sister and challenged
mother. This vignette provides some evidence to support the assertion that part of Laurie's
purpose in writing this emotionally charged prose is to “shock” others to bring attention to
her plight, something she clearly attempts at home. Yet, it is not clear whether or not these
stories may also function as an outlet for Laurie to talk about what it means to live in a
dysfunctional family.

Other students seem to be clearly using the Sharing Chair to grapple with issues that
deeply affect them. Both Byron and Tracey, for example, shared with the class their
conversations about what it meant to have an uncle and a mother in jail, respectively.
Hannah, on several occasions, made visible some of the pressing questions that
surrounded her home. In one Sharing Chair, Hannah read ”When mom was pregnant, she

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asked grandma to take care of me. Mom said that I was taken (i.e., kidnapped)” On other
occasions, Hannah talked about her 'so called father" and the neighbors, "who we hate
now.” In her interview, Hannah explained why they hated the neighbor, saying that the
”neighbor right here, he called the Protective Service on my mom and dad, and um, my dad
and him got in a fight, and he kept on saying that my parents turned gay and stuff.”

From these and other examples, it appeared that Sharing Chair was also used as a
kind of "safe haven" for students to share personal and confidential stories with one
another. In this sense, the discourse space also seemed to allow members to construct and
reconstruct the activity to serve the therapeutic needs of individual members.

Summgy

Sharing Chair was a discourse space that had a wide range of uses and purposes.
Common to the Sharing Chair were the rights, duties, roles, and responsibilities of the
student author, audience members, and the teacher. These were the relatively stable forms
of the whole which distinguished this discourse space from others in the classroom. At the
same time, these framing participant structures also allowed students to construct and
reconstruct meaning on a moment-to-moment basis and over time. The conversational fuel
in Sharing Chair was determined by the nature of the topics brought to the chair, but also,
topic selection itself was influenced by the participant structure in this discourse space.

A particularly important examination was the range of topics that students wrote
about and brought to Sharing Chair. This examination helped to make visible the functions
that Sharing Chair played in the students' life world. The lived life of the students in the
class provided access to the richness of each individual's experience, both within and
beyond the classroom door. As is evident in the verbal participation of each class member,
Sharing Chair was a special forum in which children could engage, influence, persuade,
and invite others into their own meaning world. We now turn to a more specific
examination of the discourse moves that created and recreated the Sharing Chair.

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flucational AIIMces in the Sharing Chair Discourse SM
Having examined the participant structure of Sharing Chair, the rights, rules, roles,

and responsibilities of different participants, we now examine the moment-to—moment
conversation in Sharing Chair more closely. To begin this section, we first examine the
overall verbal participation of individual members, the number of topics read by each
individual, the percentage of speaking turns by role, and the number of personal narratives
told across the five Sharing Chairs. Next, we look more closely at themes and patterns of
meaning making, how participants in this discourse space construct and reconstruct the
activity, the alignment of the social and academic goals of the activity, how positioning and
getting positioned result in different ways of knowing, and becoming personally invested
in the creation of conversation. In short, this section examines the educational possibilities
that seem to be afforded within this activity in this classroom.

Verbal Involvement Across the Erve Rounds of Sharing Chair

Sharing Chair in Trisha's room resulted in a lot of talk. As mentioned in Chapter 3
of this study, a discourse profile of each student and the teacher was conducted to help
determine the amount and nature of verbal involvement by individual students. The
discourse profile provided access to the total number of speaking turns by individual
students as both authors and audience members, the nature of speaking turns in terms of
comments, questions, or personal stories, and the total number of times the student
participated as the author in Sharing Chair (see Figure 8).

Several interesting patterns show up in this comprehensive look at verbal
involvement and seem worthy of discussion. First, there is an enormous amount of verbal
participation in the discourse space of Sharing Chair. During the five Sharing Chairs, there
were 31 different topics that the 12 authors brought to the Sharing Chair and over one
thousand speaking turns. Overall, students averaged 88.75 turns during the five Sharing

Chair events. At the same time, there was a wide-range of verbal involvement, from a low

160

of just 19 speaking turns per student (Janitra) up to 150 speaking turns (Amber) across the
five Sharing Chairs. Second, there seems to be a relationship between reading in Sharing
Chair and the total number of speaking turns available to students. Three of the four
students who read in the Sharing Chair four of the five times elicited the most amount of
talk of any other members. Conversely, the three students with the lowest number of
speaking turns were three of the four students who only read in Sharing Chair one time. It
appears that having the opportunity to read in Sharing Chair is an important way to increase
verbal participation. Third, it appears that different roles, being the author or being an
audience member, mean different things for different individual students. For example,
Nathan, who had the fourth highest number of turns, spoke from the role of author in 75%
of his turns, responding as an audience member in only one-quarter of his turns. Byron,
another student who read the same number of times (3) as Nathan, was a more active
audience participant than as an author, using 53% of his speaking turns as an audience
member. Fourth, although there were individual differences among students participating
as authors or audience members, there were remarkable similarities in the total number of
turns from each role, with 50.5% of speaking turns coming from authors, and 49.5% of
speaking turns conring from audience members. Importantly, the high level of verbal
involvement of audience members is reflected in the fact that 75% of the personal narratives
told in Sharing Chair came from the audience members. Finally, it appears that both girls
and boys were prominent members of the Sharing Chair talk. Four of the top five speakers
were girls, with the only other girl having the least amount of verbal participation. The five
girls averaged 110 speaking turns, while the six boys averaged 85.6 speaking turns.

Given this backdrop, we now turn to specific patterns and themes that evolved
across the five Sharing Chairs.

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The Smed and Inmxtual Nature of Conversation
Individual student authors' personal narratives were the basis for building the fabric

of conversation. One important finding from a careful analysis of theSharing Chair
transcripts was the rich opportunities students had to "try on” and use the language of
others in recreating their own personal experiences and building new stories. In this sense,
Sharing Chair was a rich place for the cultivation and building of oral discourse, including
learning to tell and retell stories, trying on the discourse of others to lead one's own
cognition, and participating with others in the construction of knowledge. The following
transcript is illustrative of the almost seamless nature of conversation that characterized
much of the Sharing Chair discourse. Words and ideas that are taken up by others later in
the transcript are bolded for ease of comparison. In this example, Tracey is reading a story
about an experience with her brother and his friends that left a bruise on her leg:

444 Tracey: ”I got pinched in the leg by my brother. I am going to get him back. I
445 am going to get him back. I am going to get him back by giving him a
446 bruise like he did me.“

452 Hannah: And what do you do, do you wrestle him?

453 Tracey: No, we were playing 'tag', and HIS (pointing to Nigel) brother slapped my

454 sister in the face, sol wanted to get his brother back, but my brother came
455 and pinched me in the leg, and I got a bruise right there (pointing to
456 just above knee).

459 Gerry: Where are you gonna do--it--at?

460 Tracey. I am going to punch him.

461 Gerry: Where at?

463 Mark: Are you going to do Kung Fu on him?

464 Nathan: Ya know what I'd do to him, does he ever take naps?

465 Tracey: No.

466 Nathan: Well if he's ever sleeping, tip-toe to his room and take a marker with you
467 and just put polka dots all over his darn face! And then when he wakes up

468 in the morning he'll go 'AAAAAHHH!” And make them red, too, like he
469 has chicken pox.

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470 Gerry: Put blood on him.
476 Tracey. We ganged up on my brother. And we tried to get Adam, but he, his kicks

4‘77 and punches were in the same spot, and It HURTS, when it hits in the
478 same spot. Byron?

479 Byron: Thursday, she never had the chicken pox, and I went into her room, put
480 red marker on her face, and kept giving her a Charlie Horse in the

481 same spot, and ran out of the room.

484 Amber: Um, my cousin, me and my cousin, we don't get along at all. So he

485 pinched me, cause he gots long fingernails, he pinched me and gave me a
486 big bruise right here, sol popped him in the mouth, and he started
487 running in the house, and I felt like throwing him out the window.

Though at first glance, one might be hard pressed to find much educational value in such a
verbal exchange, a careful examination of the intertextual nature of learning to speak
provides a quite different interpretation. When looking across Tracey's turn, it becomes
apparent that the episode with her brother and her seeking revenge sets into motion an
increasingly rich mosaic of possibility. Students borrow, repeat, and then transform
preceding speakers vocabulary and experiences. For some, like Amber, Tracey's
experience reminds her of a similar experience with her cousin. Amber repeats the words
”pinched” and “bruise" from Tracey's original story, repeats the word "running" from
Byron's previous story, and then extends the original story by introducing the words
"don't get along,” “popped,” and "mouth” as alternatives to the previous speakers' words
”get him back,” "punches,” and "face" respectively. In short, students appeared to borrow
words and meanings both directly and indirectly.

This trying on of other's ideas or vocabulary is at the heart of Vygotsky's (1986)
theory of verbal regulation: Higher psychological processes like reading, writing, and
speaking are first social processes, before becoming intemalized and able to guide
independent, self-regulated action. Seen in this way, the dialogues in Sharing Chair may
allow others to use anotlrer's language to guide their own thinking, yet also transform these
original meanings by adding their own meanings to the text. Bakhtin (1981) calls this

163
process of two voices coming into contact 'interanimation,” and represents an important
conceptual framework for helping to understand the movement from interpsychological to
intrapsychologieal functioning.
Below we can trace the intertextual links across these participants' conversation:

WWW mmwe'BaCLoom

film ormatiw pinched punch face red sleeping room
Remtitions bntised Kung Fu mouth blood in room room
Charlie kicks right Chicken felt like
Horse punches here Pox ran out
popped don't get along

When looking across speakers, we see that Tracey's and Nathan's original language
provides the key concepts that ground the following stories: the type of injury, the method
to inflict the injury, the location of the injury, the result of the revenge, the context of the
revenge, and the location of the revengeful act. These six key pieces of Tracey's original
story and Nathan's first attempt at planning her revenge, provide the framework or script
for other class members to repeat, adapt, and transform. In short, it appears that the
external audience of the group supports students' verbal participation, but as importantly,
others' participation also frames the type of talk students engage in, including speaking
through another's voice and transforming the ideas of others to create new meanings. A
key affordance of Sharing Chair is the opportunity for the intertextual weaving of voices.
The resulting fabric of meaning is a mosaic that is the creation of the group: voices are
allowed to come in contact with one another, moving beyond the work of an individual
student, and creating an opportunity to live life at once through another‘s shoes, while re-
presenting your own lived life.

S_tor_igs_. Jerome Bruner (1991a) has argued convincingly that researchers and
teachers have underestimated the role of nanative, of the storied nature of human thought.

In its place, researchers have often depended upon logico-mathematical conceptions of

164

human thinking, using metaphors such as the computer or other central processing agents
that monitor and control thinking. The concomitant modes of teaching have seemed to
match this theoretical perspective, especially in special education: tasks are broken down
into small parts that are then put back together after each preceding part has been mastered,
there is a sequence of behavioral and instructional objectives that are believed to have a
cumulative effect (e.g., decoding precedes comprehension; letter formation precedes
writing stories), and “noise" in the machine (i.e., contextual features such as feelings,
emotions, purpose, motivation) should be ignored or avoided.

As Keller-Cohen (1993) notes in her article comparing literacy in colonial and
contemporary America, people in modern America rarely sit around and read or tell stories
like their counterparts in colonial America did.

This view is changing. New theories (e.g., social constructivism) and the
recognition of the inherently social nature of literacy have helped us rethink literacy
curricula and the centrality of oral discourse. Moving beyond the limited conceptions of
literacy as being able to decode words and learning to spell, towards the larger purposes of
literacy as being able to communicate with, influence, and learn from others through
reading, writing, speaking, and listening, there is a constant pressure to create new
contexts for literacy learning. One such context is having the opportunity to write for real
audiences and receive feedback from others.

A central theme that ran throughout the Sharing Chair was the storied nature of talk
As mentioned earlier, there were two primary ways in which audience members responded
to an author's story, by asking a question of the author or commuting on the author's
story. Questions of authors were of many types, literal, inferential, interrogative,
evaluative, etc. Commentary on an author‘s story also took many forms, including
directives (e.g., I think you should not have swore), opinions, evaluations, clarifications,

and many other forms of response. One type of commentary, however, that seemed to

165

stand out during the Sharing Chair was the telling of personal stories-stories that relate to
the author‘s original text in some way. Below we can see the distribution of comments and
questions across the entire group for the five Sharing Chairs:
Table 9 Distribution of Comments, Stories, and Questions in Role of Audience Member
Audience Member's Comment : 214 (45%)
, Audience Member's Story: 68 (15%)
Audience Member's Questions: 190 (40%)

 

Total: 472
As Table 9 indicates, audience members were actively engaged in both questioning and
commenting. Audience members moved fluidly between being more "other-centered" by
questioning the author, and showing interest by becoming personally involved and
commenting on the story. One form of commenting, telling a personal story, seemed to be
an especially interesting way in which students linked-up to the authors' stories. Nine of
the twelve student members told personal stories, with the range between 0 and 18 and an
average of 5.6 personal stories per person.

Personal stories were defined and distinguished from other comments by their
uniquely storied nature. Past events were retold by members and often included dramatic
elements, including suspense, humor, dialogue, imagery, and detail. In the following
segment, Angie reads her journal about wanting to learn the names of Ms. William's cats
and hoping that she has dogs as well. A question by Tracey then triggers a series of
personal recollections about family pets:

467 Angie: ”Ms. Williams. 'What is your cats' names?‘ I hope you have a dog in your
468 house. If you do I will come over and live with you. I will live with you if

469 you have a dog and I hope you have a puppy dog.” Any comments or
470 questions? Janitra?

. (3 questions and 2 comments)

514

515
. 516
517
518
519

Angie:

Tracey:

Angie:

Angie:

Mark:

Angie:
Mark:

166

Why do you want to live with her, because she's pretty?

No,becauseshehascatsandcatsaremyfavorite. Causel had,Ihad,lhad
a cat ever since I was a little baby. My older brother, John, he had a cat
when we used to live out in St. Joseph's. We were, um, we were moving in
the process and Tiger got out of the house, and then he got hit by a car, so
my mom said that we are not going to get a cat anymore. But, when I grow
up, I told my mom that I am going to get a cat, two cats, and a puppy dog.

Gerry?

: Don't feel bad, I had a um, puppies, and my kitties got ran over.
‘ : Hannah?
: When I, I had, this, okay, I had this dog named Tully (S. Oh yeah, I

remember that dog) and this cat named Fluffy, and one time when, um, we
went to live with my grandma here my dog Tuffy died and about a month
after Fluffy died. She got hit by a car, and when they were little they
were best friends.

Tracey?

I had two cats, one was Rich and one was Molly, (and they were) eight
years old. Rich ran away and Molly got hit by a car.

Any more comments or questions? Byron?

: I had, like 10 dogs, but now I am down to three. Cause, um, one of the,

one of them is a beagle, and my dad took it out for hunting, and he starts
hunting for deer, it was to chase deer down, and the guy got tired of my
dad's dog, he kept on barking, so the guy shot my dad's dog. And our other
ones got hit by a car. And, then, another one had problems, um, it died
after it was born.

Mark?

I had a dog, a long time ago when I was 9 years old, he was a Pit(bull), it
had a lot of muscle and stuff and this dude tried running over it.

Oh, that big ole' dog that was in our house?

Ah, no man, it looks exactly like that dog, but its about that much taller (2
feet) and had a lot more muscle. And, uh, and it got, that dude tried to run
over it and it jumped over the bumper of his car and almost got hit. It
knocked his back legs out from underneath him. And the guy got out of his
car.

520 Angie: Can I say something. Um, well, grandma, the one I am with right now, on

167

521 Clark Street, she and her dog named "Blue“ and he got hit, and he had to go
522 in and get a cast on his foot, and then my dad, my stepdad, seen her, and the
523 little kids seen her, and we went “Mommy, mommy, can we get thrs dog?”

As this wquence illustrates, a common discourse feature of Sharing Chair was to break into
personal stories. In this single author's eight minute turn, seven personal stories are
communicated by six speakers. With the exception of the two speakers who did not tell
personal stories during the five Sharing Chair episodes, speakers' personal stories allowed
students the greatest uninterrupted air time and an Opportunity to become personally
involved in making intertextual links with other's stories.

But what are the benefits of telling personal narratives in school? Perhaps the most
important reason for telling stories is the fact that this form of discourse is seldom found in
most classrooms (Cazden, 1988) and represents a quite different way of knowing (Eisner,
1985). Burbules (1993), in discussing his four modes of discourse (i.e., discourse as
instruction, debate, inquiry, and conversation), notes that teaching in these different genres
of talk:

...manifest different views of how knowledge is attained; of the nature

and justification of authority; of the appropriate style and use of questions;

of the learning processes that characterize the subject matter under

consideration; under the possibility or likelihood of attaining consensus

or an answer to the problem at hand; of the moral responsibilities that one

has toward one's partner; of the status and limitations of one's own

knowledge about a subject, and the knowledge of one's partner;

of the context and circumstances in which the dialogue is taking place;

and, of course, other issues as well. (pp. 129)

However, in 'dialogue as conversation,’ the most common discourse type found in
Sharing Chair, the goal of these interactions was not on getting 'right answers,’ ”...but a
heightened sense of sensitivity and understanding of other persons, and through
understanding them, newly understanding ourselves” (Burbules, 1993, pp. 116).
Importantly, Burbules reminds us that dialogues as conversation can be an essential
ingredient in moving our own thinking forward: "I am drawn to this sort of dialogue with

this person because in this process I see an opportunity to supplement and refigure my own

168

understandings (and presumably my partner is motivated similarly)” (pp. 115). In short,
we can learn through dialogues that resemble the give-and-take of conversations precisely
because our partner‘ (s) external perspective is different from our own, allowing us to make
visible our own understandings and misunderstandings.

In the above transcript, we can illustrate this figure/ground relationship through the
sequential telling of the stories. The importance of the previous speaker's figure unto the
resulting student‘s ground (i.e., their story) can help to be explained by examining, again,
the highly intertextual nature of these stories. Previous speakers seem to leave a lasting
image that echoes through future stories, while at the same time, new speakers breathe new
life and freshness into preceding speakers’ story frames. Figure 12 represents the
relationship of previous speaker's stories to those that follow.

As Frgure 12 illustrates, students appeared to exhibit a subtle expansion of ideas
after each story was told. Specifically, students seemed to use the framing categories of
their predecessors (e.g., names of pets, method of losing pet, number of pets, relationship
of pets, antagonist/protagonist, and type/characteristics of pet) to help elicit and then
organize their own thinking and then repeat previous speakers' ideas or introduce new
ideas. Repetitions were characterized by repeating verbatim a prior speaker’s wording.
For example, in Figure 12, all six speakers who told personal stories after Angie's first
personal story repeated one of the two terms in which Angie described how she lost her
pets: 'hit by car' or 'run over.’ Interestingly, it was the category 'loss of pet' that was
distinguished as the only category which every storyteller included in their personal
nanatives. The loss of a pet was the intertextual link that connected every story.

Especially interesting to this analysis is to compare earlier to later personal stories.
Tracing the complexity of stories through Angie's first story (#1), to Hannah (#3), Byron
(#5), and then Mark (#6) can serve to highlight the transformation of story complexity. In
story #3, Hannah introduces the relationship of her dog's death and the characteristics of

169

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Author: ”‘9" house. Ilyoudolwlllcomeoverandllvewltnyou. lwttlllvewithyoultyou
haveadoglidihopoyouhaveapuppydog'Anyeornmentsor
questionshlanlta? Typemd
Nlrmber Antagonist! aeteristcsl
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PersonflNarrativelt: r..
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Byron
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Mark runover

knocked” |
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underneath It ‘ 1 mp
over
ounce:
Personal Narrative #7: men
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Key. Hepifltlonol Transformation at
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Figure 12 The Intertextual Building of Story in Sharing Chair

rnuecie

170

her pets as being “best friends.” The way in which her pets were lost, however, was a
direct repetition of Angie's first story. The names of the pets were obviously changed, but
were also a reflection of Angie's using her cat's name ”Tiger.”

Byron's #5 story, like Hannah's #3, repeats directly the method of loss from
previous speakers, 'hit' and 'run over'. Byron, however, also introduces two new
methods of loss, having a pet shot and losing a puppy at birth. Also, Byron is the first
speaker to introduce the breed of pet and the type of work the dog engages in (i.e., Beagle,
hunting), perhaps borrowing from Hannah's characterization of her pets as being best
friends. Byron also introduces the first antagonist, a disgruntled deer hunter who is angry
at a barking beagle that is scaring the animals away.

Mark's #6 story then appears to borrow from Byron and even further expands the
protagonist/antagonist and type/characteristic categories. Mark virtually repeats Byron's
introduction of a "guy' by using the term ”dude.” Mark then expands this person's role in
the story, adding rich detail about how the man got out of the car and knocked the legs out
from underneath the dog. Mark also matches Byron's story by noting that he had a Pit
Bull, but provided even more detail by describing its muscular frame and how it had to
jump over a bumper to avoid getting hit. Finally, Mark is the first author to tell a story in
which the pet did not get killed, a transformation of the genre, and one that Angie continues
in the next story.

Thus, Sharing Chair afforded students the opportunity to experiment with
storytelling at their own level, while the social interactions that resided in the activity
nudged students to try on increasingly complex ways of organizing language. In the above
transcript, one can see a wide range in both the complexity and the courage to engage in
expanded discourse. For Gerry, the student who "hates to read” and is able to recognize
that he is hard for other students to like, his story "Don't feel bad, I had a um, puppies, and
my kitties got ran over,” is his longest recorded stretch of talk and his only personal story

171

in the five Sharing Chairs. One can see from his talk that he struggles to organize his
thinking, hesitating and then saying his kitties got ran over instead of his puppies. Yet, it
seems that Sharing Chair is perhaps an ideal milieu for receiving help, practicing, and then
trying on increasingly complex ways of organizing one's thought. Its conversational
nature provides an ideal space for developing facility in oral discourse as speakers utilize
the voices of others to frame their stories and then expand and transform the frame by
introducing new categories and new ideas. The very features of discourse that render it
more sensitive to the needs of one's audience (e. g., organization, sequence, detail,
imagery, dialogue, humor) are occasions in the storytelling opportunities of Sharing Chair.
If Halliday and Hasan (1989) are correct in arguing that textual cohesion in writing is
related to oral discourse, then it appears that Sharing Chair provides educational
possibilities for enriching both orality, writing, reading, and critically listening.
Role ' ' erential ' 'v ' ' 'n

In discussing the alignment of the socio-cognitive participation of individual
students through the discourse move of revoicing, a move in which the teacher broadcasts
to other members of the class a slightly adapted version of an original author's idea,
O'Connor and Michaels (1993) make visible a key concept in analyzing classroom
discourse: How students get positioned by and can position others through their talk. In
the revoicing move, the teacher can accomplish a number of both social and cognitive
goals. first, the teacher's revoicing of a student's idea serves to hold the idea on the
speaking floor for further examination and gives authorial rights to the speaker. Second,
the revoicing move can serve to position the student to elaborate on their idea. For
example, the revoicing move "I think what Danny was saying is that this idea doesn't
belong here. Is that what you meant to say Danny?” positions Danny to either confirm or
disconfirm his ideas, ensuring that the idea is an accurate representation of the student's

intention. Third, a teacher's revoicing can help students observe conflicting points of

172

view, aligning attention towards competing theories, answers, or ideas. To continue the
example above, the teacher might then revoice another student to hold the ideas against one
another. "Danny said it doesn't belong here, but Angie thinks that this idea does belong
here because it wouldn't sound right if it didn't. What do you think?” Fourth, the
revoicing of a student's ideas can serve a number of social functions, including holding the
speaking floor for students who may not often participate verbally. Common to each of
these discourse functions is how discourse moves serve to position, and thereby align,
students to undertake different social and cognitive work.

In Sharing Chair, the notion of discursive positioning is particularly interesting
because of the participation structures that give certain rights, duties, and responsibilities to
the author, audience members, and the teacher. These participant structures define the roles
of the participants-and may afford different opportunities to position and get positioned by
others. These affordances are especially important in terms of understanding how the
different roles in Sharing Chair might result in different opportunities to learn.

Verbal m'cimg'on in different roles. Before examining the nature of discursive
positioning across the different roles students undertook in Sharing Chair, it is important to
point out that while a number of students participated fairly equally in the roles of both
author and audience member, several individual students tended to have quite different
profiles. Most importantly, it appears that both roles have varying importance for different
students. For example, in looking at Table 7, one can see that when controlling for the
same number of topics read, students differ in their level of involvement as authors and
audience members. For the four students who read only once in Sharing Chair, the two
students with the lowest level of verbal participation, Janitra and Jerrod, experienced 67
and 58% of their total turns during this one reading. For these two students, being in the
role of author seemed to be critically important in terms of their overall verbal participation.
To put this into perspective, Janitra and Jerrod took only 19 tums as audience participants

173

across 30 different readers in the five Sharing Chairs. One can only speculate as to why
these students were less active participants.

For the two other students who read only once, we see a quite different pattern.

For Nigel and Gerry, they spoke extensively as audience members, using 81% and 70% of
their turns as audience members, respectively. It is important to note, however, that Nigel
and Gerry had 27% and 47% of their turns as unbid speakers.

Nonetheless, there appear to be several important insights to be considered. first,
it seems that the roles of author and audience member afford different students
opportunities to respond verbally in this activity. Without having to read in Sharing Chair,
several students may have had quite low participation rates. Other students seem to be
more active and/or comfortable participating as audience members. Second, the three
lowest verbal participation rates occurred for three of four students who read only one time,
while the top three speakers included three of the four students who read the most often
(four times). This seems to suggests that one way to increase verbal participation is to
insure that students have opportunities to share their written work. Finally, it seems
important for teachers to informally monitor students' verbal participation as both author
and audience members. As we find out in the following sections, there appear to be
different opportunities to learn depending upon the role of the student speaker.

Author's role: fliuoning and aiuoned. As discussed earlier, Sharing Chair
occasions different roles for students that are defined by certain rights, duties, and
responsibilities. When a student moves from an audience member to the role of author, the
student enters into a different type of relationship with his/her peers. The author is
expected to ask one's peers if they would like to respond to their story by asking comments
or questions and to manage these responses by offering a response or calling on the next
speaker. This participation structure, in turn, affords individual students different
opportunities to engage in talk. It is the nature of the engagements and the types of talk that

174

the participant structure surrounding Sharing Chair affords that is of interest in this section.
I use the term “afford” advisedly, as it is not the participant structure alone that determines
that nature of talk. Rather, the content of the conversation, the individual's verbal facility,
socio—cultural influences, gender, and a myriad of other factors can affect how the
participant structure shapes individual's participation within this structure. Therefore, it is
possible onlyto talk about potentials, possibilities, and privileging. The conversational
nature of talk in Sharing Chair cannot be reduced to cause-effect relationships

Student authors in Sharing Chair verbally participated in a number of ways. As
Table 10 shows, student authors' verbal participation occurred across six broad categories.
Student authors read their stories, asked for comments or questions, responded to
questions or comments, asked questions of audience members, initiated new ideas, and
told additional personal narratives beyond their original topic.
Table 10 Authors’ Verbal Participation Across Five Sharing Chairs

 

Type of Particimtig Total Number of Turns Percent of Total Turns

Topics Read 31 6%

Call for Comments 176 32%
or Questions

Author's Response 307 54%
to Question
or Comments

Author's Questioning 11 2%
of Audience

Author's Initiation of 9 2%
New Ideas

Author's Story 23 4%

Total Participation 557 100%

As Table 10 shows, the vast majority of speaking for authors was responding to the

175

queries of audience participants. This becomes especially apparent when we recall that
calling on an audience member, though coded as one speaking turn, is usually a one word
invitation: 'Amber?". Therefore, the 32% of speaking tums given to this category, though
of central importance, constitute a small amount of the total talk. More importantly, it is
through the questions, comments, and personal narratives of audience members that
authors get discursively positioned. It is the nature of this positioning and the types of
verbal responses that the author undertakes that is particularly important to this
investigation. To understand some of the ways in which an author gets positioned (and
positions others), we will examine an entire author's turn in Sharing Chair.

Angie's April 22nd turn as author will serve as a representative case. This
particular round of activity was chosen for several reasons. first, it is representative of the
range of questions and comments that occur in Sharing Chair. Second, in Angie's turn as
author, all twelve audience members participated in the conversation, helping to insure that
there is a wide representation of possible comments and questions. Finally, this transcript
also represents a wide-range of positionings that audience members engage in, allowing us
to use this transcript for the analysis of our next section on the role of audience members.
In order to closely analyze the nature of discursive positioning, this round of activity is
broken down into three somewhat arbitrary sections. To help the reader focus on particular
aspects of the transcript, each section is given a label that seems to represent the major
positions of the author. These sections, in order, are: (1) author as positioned, (2) author
as positioner, and (3) author as listener. After each section of transcript, a brief amlysis

will be undertaken to explain the possible range of positionings. We begin with Angie's
story.
Aumor as Positioned
In this first section of transcript, specific attention is paid to how the audience

members position the author to respond in particular ways through their questions and

176

comments.

224 Angie: ”My birthday is April 24th 1993 and I will turn 10 years old on Saturday,
225 and tomorrow I will bring squirrel bars to the party and I am going to lnvrte
226 Janitra, Amber, Laurie, Tracey and Hannah for a party at my house." Any
227 comments or questions? Uh, Tracey?

228 Tracey: Um, are we going to have your address?

29 Angie: Huh?

230 Tracey: Are we going to have your address?

231 Angie: No, my mom, my mom told me, um, if, that you guys, to give me your
232 guys phone number or address and we'll go over and pick you guys up.
233 Tracey: Oh good.

234 Angie: (cont)////and stuff like that, cause at our house, its a big house, and um,
235 like, we, um, there's there's 3 bedrooms downstairs and 3 bedrooms

236 upstairs. Because its a big house. My uncle Johnny, my uncle Johnny
237 before he moved out, he made 3 bedrooms downstairs. You know how the
238 basements are big, how some of the basements are big. He took, it used to
239 be a living room, a dining room, and stuff like that. And he built it into 3
240 rooms. Danny?

241 Danny: This is a funny question, but what in the world are squirrel bars?

242 Angie: (laughs) Well, I don't know, all I know, I don't really know, I think

243 they're called, I think they look like, well you know how, um, regular

244 candy bars look like, you know how they look like, like some of the candy
245 bars look like Rice Krispies/lbut urn, but you make your own bars. Lake
246 you, um, put chocolate, chocolate in 'em, chocolate, chocolate chips in 'em.
247 Ss: Oooh, bad.

248 Angie: Stuff like that. Amber?

249 Amber: Um, I am not going to be able to come because we're going up north, and I
250 have to do some chores up there, up there because my aunt lives there and
251 my uncle but, he can't move around very much sol have to help him do
252 things. First I have to (feed horse?) Plus, I have to spend time with (?).
253 Angie: Janitra?

254 Janitra: Why aren't you going to invite her (points to teacher)?

255 Angie: (smiles). Maybe she, my mom thought about just having kids over, because,
256 well, thls rs my first year, this is my second year of having a slumber party.
257 And my mom thought- of it and my grandmas' thought of it, sol decided to
258 wnte it in my journal yesterday. Nigel?

177

259 Nigel: On my birthday I only get to invite 10 people.

260 S: Ten?

261 Angie: That's a LOT. Hannah?

In this section of talk, Angie gets positioned by three questions and two comments by her
audience. However, different questions and comments seem to elicit different types of
responses in Angie. Angie is asked three questions, "Are we going to have your
address?", 'What in the world are squirrel bars?", and "Why aren't you going to invite
her?”. In the first two questions, Angie is positioned to undertake particular forms of
cognitive work, including explaining, clanfying, and describing. In order to respond to
her birthday party guest's question about where she lives, Angie is positioned to explain to
her prospective guest why they did not need the address. Angie's explanation then goes
beyond Tracey's original question to include a description of her house and how her uncle
added an addition to the home, allowing many friends comfortably to have a party.

Similar to Tracey's question, Danny also seeks some explanation as to what
”squirrel bars” are made from. Danny's question positions Angie to describe the bars and
clarify the confusion of the term "squirrel.” Since these treats will be passed out to the
members of the class, there is an urgency for Angie to respond. Having to describe and
clarify was not an easy task for Angie. In her brief response in lines 242 to 246, Angie
hesitates seventeen times, indicating that getting positioned in such a way can challenge
students’ thinking. This hesitating occurred frequently for both authors and audience
participants, and represents the importance of engaging in these different ways of speaking.
Unlike Gerry, who often responded to audience queries with short, unelaborated answers,
Angie demonstrates a real "stick-to-it-ness" in her responses. She is actively trying to
construct coherent explanations and descriptions to communicate to others.

Janitra's questions function quite differently than the first two. Janitra begins her

question with the word "why,” signalling to Angie that she may be positioned to justrfl her

178

writing. Janitra positions Angie to justify why she invited each female member of the class
except the teacher. This question wems to have the effect of strongly positioning Angie to
respond. Like in her explanation about squirrel bars (Snicker Bars), Angie again seems to
be challenged to justify her exclusion of the teacher, trying to find the correct words to
respond (e.g., Maybe...because, well, this is..).

Unlike these questions, some comments do not directly position an author to
respond, though this choice seems to be open to the author. In the above section, Amber
gives a detailed explanation of why she could not come to Angie's party. She ends her
explanation by saying ”Plus, I have to spend time with my (aunt?).” The nature of this
explanation leaves the decision to respond with Angie alone. In this case, Angie does not
respond and calls directly on the next speaker, Janitra. Several lines later, Nigel briefly
comments that he gets to invite just 10 people to his birthday party. Unlike Amber's
explanation, this comment leaves open the possibility that someone may want to compare
their own birthday party experience to Ni gel's, since nearly everyone has led birthday
party experiences. One student repeats part of Ni gel's comment by saying "Ten,” and then
Angie responds by saying "That's a LOT,” serving to respond to Nigel's low valence
comment. So in this section, questions by audience members seemed to position the author
more ”strongly” than comments.

Author as Positioner

In this section of transcript, the author, Angie, takes an active role in positioning

audience members by asking questions and responding to audience members.

259 Hannah: If you can't give out your phone number to anybody can we just give you
260 our address. Do you need our phone number?

261 Angie: I don't know yours.
262 Hannah: (?)
263 Angie: But my mom thinks is looks like an apartment?

264 Hannah:

265 Angie:

266 Hannah:
267

268 Hannah:
269

270 Angie:

271 Hannah:
272

273 Angie:
274

275Hannah:

276 Angie:

277
278 Hannah:

279 Angie:

280
281 Hannah:

282 Angie:

283 Hannah:
284

285 Angie:

286

287 Hannah:
288 Angie:
289 Hannah:
290 Angie:
291 Hannah:

292
293

Angie:

179

It is.

But we don't know which one it is.
Bottom.

HOW would I know!!

Just go into the front door, and go in the front door and knock on the door
to your left. Not the one straight in front of you. Left.

Okay.
Then, I got something to tell. One time

{

Can't you play, can't you be
outside?

Is it like a sleep over party?

No, um, we just go over there, like, we'll just go over there, its almost like
a slumber party.

(shaking head vigorously ”no”, its not a slumber party)

Cuz, its almost like a slumber party, cus we're going to go to eight o'clock
and then my mom's going to go, and then we'll have...

Is it this Saturday?
Yeah.

I can't go because my grandma is going to take us to a parade. My grandma
told as she's taking us to a parade. But I'll try to come.

(drops notebook on lap-exasperated) Cuz, its atl/what time is your
grandma coming to get you?

I don't know.

Can you call her tonight to find out?

Uh, yeah.

Find out.

I got something to tell you. On my one birthday, I turned, let's see, five, no

six. We had this party, and we had this one party, so my grandma invited
all my relatives, and I said ”Can I please invite one of my friends?” and she

180

294 goes ”Well you got friends all around you." And I said “Only at my
295 school.” And she said (?). And I said ”Okay.” So then I was, I was just
296 madatherallday. AndeenttosleepafterIatecakeandicecream.

This section of talk is interesting in its uniquely conversational nature. Only two speakers
speak and there is no bidding for turns. Unlike the previous transcript where Angie was
positioned almost exclusively by her peers, Angie takes a much more active role as the
author in positioning her conversational partner, Hannah. Angie's talk serves to reposition
Hannah through both her comments and her questions. In the beginning of the transcript,
Angie positions Hannah to provide more information about where her house is located by
saying "My mom thinks it is an apartment" and ”But we don't know which one it is.”
Hannah then is positioned to clarify her directions, explaining more precisely the direction
to her home. Not satisfied, Angie then interrupts Hannah's attempt to begin a personal
story about birthdays in line 271 ('Then, I got something to tell...) and interrupts by saying
”Can't you play, can't you play outside?" Later, Angie again attempts to position her
closest friend to provide more information by saying, 'What time is your grandma coming
to get you?” and ”Can you call her tonight to find out?" In this section, Angie uses the role
of author to position her peers discursively to gather more information about her topic. In
Sharing Chair, the author can reposition audience members, a critical feature of the ebb and
flow of more natrual conversation (Florio-Ruane, 1991).

This section, however, also reinforces the role of audience members in positioning
the author. Hannah asks three questions, gives one comment, and then tells an extensive
personal narrative about her own birthday party experience. Though Hannah's first
question about asking Angie if she needed her phone number is a fairly literal question,
Hannah's question about whether it is a "sleep over party” positions Angie to describe the
difference between a ”normal" birthday party and a real slumber party. As soon as Angie
states that "its almost like a slumber party,” Hannah powerfully positions Angie non-
verbally by shaking her head vigorously from side to side. This non-verbal positioning

181

pushes Angie to continue her explanation in line 279, saying 'Cuz, its almost like a
slumber party, cuz we're going to go to 8 o'clock and the my mom's going to go, and then
we'll have..." Hannah then continues her positioning by asking Angie if the party is on
Saturday, the day of her birthday. Hannah seems to know the answer, and tells Angie that
her grandmother is taking her to a parade. This leaves Angie strongly positioned, as the
repetition of having two friends in a row describe publicly why they can't attend her party
seems to take the wind out of her sails (drops notebook and sighs loudly). Not to be
denied, Angie seems to attempt a comeback by asking Hannah when her grandma is
planning on picking her up and to call her tonight to find out.
Author as Q'stener

In this final section of transcript, Angie is engaged as a conversational partner of
audience members, especially through her impressive ability to listen actively and support
the stories of audience members.
297 Angie: Amber?
298 Amber. On my birthday I can invite more than 10. I can get, my mom said, I asked

299 my mom, "Can I invite 20 people” and she said "I don't know, ask your
300 dad" and I said ”Dad, can I invite 20 people” and he said "Yeah” and I said
301 ”Fine, cool dude.” And we have to put up our tent.

302 Angie: Mark?
303 Mark: Uh, for my birthday my brother does all of this stuff with streamers,

304 streamers, you know, and its got stars that goes like this and like this and
305 like this (demonstrating)

306 {

307 Angie: Yep

308 {

309 Mark: and he made me something like that and just kept on going with
310 the diagonal and stuff.

311 Angie: I know, my brother...
312 Mark: We took some balloons and stuck 'em in there, and it was like covering the

182

313 whole ceiling and, he put balloons and stuck'em in there. He did it all on
314 { his own.

315 Angie: You know..

316 Angie: He asked me to come over to his house. You know my older brother when,
317 he always used to make all those stars

318 {

319 Mark: . And he said, and he said "pull this
320 string down because he couldn't see the balloons, and all the balloons fell
321 on my head.

322 Angie: (laughs)

323 Mark: That was funny.

324 Hannah: It didn't htut did it?

325 Mark: No.

326 Angie: Um, Danny?

327 Danny: The year after, last year like, my sister, every year we have, like a barbecue
328 because her birthday is in June. One year there were like 40 people I think
329 there were, relatives and friends.

330 Angie: That's a lot of people.

331 Danny: Now she doesn't have it anymore. On my birthday.

332 Angie: Amber?

333 Amber. On my birthday, we're going to hang balloons onto the garage wall, and
334 we're going to have these little darts and throw them at 'em. And anytime
335 when anybody gets 4 or 3 or 2 they get a prize.

336 Angie: Janitra, did you have your hand up before? Nigel?

337 Nigel: On my birthday, when I invited people after we go out to eat, we have a
338 water fight with balloons.

339 Angie: That's a lot of fun.
340 Gerry: Can I come.
This section, like the two previous sections, show how the author is discursively

positioned. In this segment, students make intertextual links to their own lives from

1&3

Hannah's personal narrative at the end of the previous section as they tell five personal
narratives, but do not ask any questions. Hannah's story about her sixth birthday party in
line 291 seems to shift the talk to allow other classmates to bid for the floor to tell their own
personal stories. Importantly, however, it is ultimately the author's original story that
provides the original frame and substance for these personal narratives to occur. It is in
this sense that the author positions the audience members. Though the author cannot
control the range of talk that occurs, they are rewarded for helping to prompt other's stories
by the selection of their topic.

The above segment is also important for another, often invisible reason. This has
to do with the characteristics needed to become an effective conversationalist. While much
of the discussion has focused on speaking, it would be a disservice to not talk about the
effect Sharing Chair can have on students' abilities to listen. In this brief transcript, Angie
demonstrates a number of behaviors that show she is becoming an active and attentive
conversational partner. In line 307, Angie supports Mark's story about his brother using
streamers to make his party more festive by interjecting an enthusiastic "yep" in the middle
of Mark's story. A couple of lines later, Angie again tries twice to connect with Mark's
story by beginning to tell the story of her own brother. "I know, my brother..." and "You
know..." Both times, Mark continues to add to his story, and Angie respects his story by
abruptly stopping her interjection and returning the floor to Mark.

When Mark completes his story, Angie again demonstrates her attentiveness by
laughing about the balloons falling on Mark's head. Angie then calls on Danny, who tells
the story of his sister's party in which 40 people were in attendance. Though Danny's
story is fairly uneventful, Angie supports Danny's turn by noting that 40 people is a lot of
people. Then, after Amber's second birthday story, Angie exercises her right to call on the
next speaker by asking Janitra, the lowest participating member of the class, whether she
had her hand up. When she shakes her head "no,” Angie then calls on Nigel. Again,

184

Angie lends support to Nigel's story by agreeing that having a water balloon fight is a fun
thing to do at birthday parties.

This section of transcript illustrates another potential affordance of Sharing Chair,
in the manner that children are positioned as active listeners. Angie's facility as a listener
who actively supports another speaker, through affirrnations, humor, comments, and
attempts to insure that all participants get an equal chance to speak, is quite an impressive
array of skills for a fourth grade learning disabled student. Becoming an effective
communicator involves numerous skills, yet one of the most overlooked is the ability to
become an effective listener and a conversationalist who can encomage others to want to
speak. As Bakhtin (1986) suggests, it is the addressee who has an enormous influence on
the nature of what is spoken. Though there is much talk about talk in schools, Angie's
example of effective listening shows that speech always contains a social function. When
we move beyond talk for talk's sake, and become interested in engaging students in school-
based discourses, it is imperative that teachers build in opportunities for students to become
effective listeners. There's small need to talk if one's ideas are not listened to and
influenced by other participants.

The nature of the participant structure that frames the Sharing Chair seems
especially well suited to giving individuals multiple opportrmities to speak in a wide range
of ways (e. g., questioning, commenting, telling personal narratives). Yet, this participant
structure also requires that students respond to each other in such a way that non-speaking
members are positioned to be actively involved if they are to enter the ongoing conversation
to reach some level of intersubjective understanding. When examining the careful
intertextual links students made from Angie's original text, there is solid evidence showing

that listeners are active participants in constructing this discourse space.

185

Summary

In closing this Chapter, it seems that Sharing Chair is one literacy event that is
representative of what Burbules (1993) and others have called "dialogues as conversation.”
This type of discourse space seems to have a multitude of benefits that are often absent in
much of classroom discourse, a place where students in conversation "prowed
interactively, cooperatively, not toward a specific common goal, but in a process of mutual
engagement directed toward shared understandings" (Burbules, 1993, pp. 115). Though it
would be easy to dismiss the importance of telling and listening to stories, the above
analysis helps to make visible the rich potential of having a milieu in which students are
able to make visible their own beliefs in contrast to other's lived experience, receive
feedback in the form of comments or questions, and engage in extended verbal discourse
that allows students to subtly expand and try on increasingly more complex forms of talk
In short, this is a very special discourse space that is defined by its boundaries of

possibility.

CHAPTER 5
THE DISCOURSE SPACE OF MORNING MESSAGE

This section describes the discourse space called Morning Message. Included in
this wction is a description of the indexing functions and phases of activity that mark
Morning Message as a discourse space and help define its forms and function; the
participation structure in the activity, including the various rights, duties and
responsibilities of the student author, the audience members, and the teacher; the teacher’s
discourse moves; and the literacy affordances that were provided in this discourse space.

WW

Morning Message occurred each day in Trisha’s classroom from approximately
11:40 am. to 12: 10 pm. Morning Message was preceded by recess for the fourth-grade
students and small group reading time for the four third-grade students. Thematic
Instruction time followed Morning Message from 12:10 pm. to 12:40 pm, though Trisha
often read aloud to her students the last ten minutes of this time before the class went to
lunch. Morning Message had several phases: (1) To begin, the teacher announced to the ,
cta§s_ that it was time to start Morning Message; a large sheet of blank chart paper was
typically already held by magnets to the chalkboard, also helping to signal the beginning of
the activity; (2) the teacher then PICRE‘L'RQEIQPESEE container that held a series of tiles
that included the names of one student per tile; children who had already been chosen to be
the author for Morning Message had their tiles removed, leaving only those children who
had not been authors; (3) Trisha would often make the comment““1353_s_flgee”_311139wi_s_g~goitlg_to~ .,
lead our message today?” and then ethos: a tile and announced this child’s name to the

 

 

 

fi’uan-t-v‘ ...—..- ,

 

class; if a child was absent, another tile was chosen; (4) the chosen student then had the

option to volunteer to be the author for that day, or ask not to author the message that

particular day; (5) the author then came to the front of the room and sat in the “author’s

chair,” a padded lounge chair that faced the class, right below the chalkboard; (6) Trisha
186

187

then began the actual construction of text by asking the author, 1&1 need a topic

 

sentence”; (7) Trisha then wrote verbatim the child’s topic sentence 9.9 the tatge £931....

~___._.—.A~

 

Mogul—u. fifi‘tm mu .ww ...—-

mnalcjasanxlmgngflsms author. wanted made. orflsaudismspmuadedrthe
seq—£049.43: it was sweetest“: clasanmra can: (8) after
agreeing on the topic sentence, the author thehflcalled on individual class members who had
their hands raised; the author would ask other members, “Agfim_;any ”comments or
,qlteggghs”?; (9) an audience member asked a comment or question in which the author then
answered, prompting the teacher to ask, “DQLYou wanttcaddthatfinfonnafionfih (10) if
the author chose to add the information, the author, often with the help of the audience
members, created a sentence that followed the topic sentence; (11) the whole class, with the
teacher acting as facilitator, continued this sequence until the end of the message; (12) the
Wefifidsnfim 92319?“ their 9WD venom by .siVinstlncmseJ—vesmamp.
931°: 353912919133 ( 13) Morning Message stories were typed on the computer using a
Children’s Writing Center software program that allowed the teacher to add pictures to each
child’s stories for that month; the monthly newspaper was sent horrtewith chridrentoread _

 

 

to their mtstwhile‘another copygwas placed in the class libraryto read during
Undistuthgd Silent Reading or Partner Reading time. _

 

reatin 'bilities for Acade 'c Work: 'ci t Structures

Morning Message was a whole class, co-construction of a written text around the
experiences of a student author. The teacher served as scribe, facilitator, coach, manager,
and apprentice. Orchestrating the Morning Message dialogue was very difficult for
teachers. It required an enormous amount of attention to manage the often rapid-fire,
moment-tomoment decisions required for successfully including the voices of all the
participants. Trisha rated Morning Message very high in terms of its importance in
developing writing abilities for her students, but noted that this activity was occasionally
difficult to get excited about teaching because it was so demanding. Interestingly, Trisha

188

was the only teacher to use Morning Message on a daily basis among the ten Early Literacy
Project teachers. Other Project teachers taught Morning Message from between one and
three days per week. Several teachers noted in various interviews that Morning Message
wm one of the most demanding activities they engaged in as teachers.

Morning Message was also demanding on students. The intensity of thinking
required in this activity often would send the inquiry into serious debates among
individuals or small groups of students. In one case, the resulting disagreements and
frustrations led to a few tears being shed, as two pairs of students, Danny/Nathan and
Hannah/Angie, could not agree to the placement of a particular sentence under the topic
sentence provided. When asked to rank.order ten literacy events in their classroom, the
students’ average ranking was sixth, well behind journal writing (first) and Sharing Chair
(fourth). It appears that even though the value of the activity was rated very high, the
challenges of the activity gave it a lower consumer satisfaction rating than several of the
other activities (see Table 4).

Morning Message, unlike that of Sharing Chair. had. seemingly more him

“Ham“ 1'“,,w~.5-n Vt! ‘87"

distinctions betwneenmem..esof-ihuthoali‘audicncgm9mb§r§a meme. “$811M the [/

 

chosen author’s personal experience was the fuel for creating the written text, the audience

v. —w“l—Ha- .

 

 

 

M-I."
'N“-

members had much greater latitude for entering the speaking floor than rn Sharing Chair,

_—f--_.. m...- ..\-.p,.

 

where there was seldom overiapping talk among members. Also, the teacher played a
W Efifilitaddg the discussion rn Morning Message, accounting for
41% of the speaking turns, compared to just 21% in Sharing Chair. The specific rights and
duties of the author, audience members, and the teacher are explained in the next section.
Rights and Duties of the Student Author

Just as Trisha chose a student author in Sharing Chair by randomly selecting a
journal from the pile (or by asking a child to give her a number between one and the total

number of journals in the stack), Trisha also chose the author for Morning Message in a

189

 

random manner. Ceramic tiles with ESEQQCWS name per filegewed as the m

“In-t— ‘
...I M‘" '

 

hmm. Imflfledytnfmrasmdentmng.&¢Ez§9lfli.f§wfiwgmm'
W. Tiles were removed until there was only one tile left. In this way,
each of the thirteen students was guaranteed a position as author before all of the tiles were
returned to the container. With an average of 20 school days per month, this meant that a
child would be the author 1.5 times per month, or approximately 11 times during the
school warm
W
In Morning MessageBthe student author had four specific rights and duties: (3)-ESL.
right to choose a topic sentence}; (b) the saw to eall on individual audience memherst'gr

..—

 

mhnmvmww.v 1: v

 

comments or questigrts; (c) thgight to decide whether to include or exclude particular“
. ideas.___.._: and. «h the tight that: hath sayonthehooaotsentemtwhttht 3993......
metlmsshmmmw

The fight to choose a tog'c sentence. The student author had a number of rights and
duties that defined their role. The most obvious right was the ability to choose the topic
which the whole class would write about. In Trisha’s class, the construction of the

Mgming Message text typically began with the student author MQEHQPEWSQQEEEE, Le"

.- wfi‘." VWhJ "t_fl'n.~.n' "

 

though there may be a brief “review” period in whigh the wtggmrghgag msgugiegl

 

backgtound knowledge abotrtnhqw 1933931093, s_ pape: In the following sequence, Trisha

 

asks the class “What do I need” before starting Byron’s message about going fishing:
058 Trisha: If you don’t feel you can do it, change right now (pointing at boys). Okay,

 

059 here we go. Top... (topic sentence, but catches herself and decides to
060 review) w__l_ra_tdo I need? Jerrod, what do I need?”

 

061 Jerroch Indent

062 Trisha: Ineed to indE‘LL. W315." glowed"
063 Angie: Capitals.

064 Trisha: WM doIneed.Iraee11.
065 Tracey: Indent.

 

190

066 Trisha: Ming to indent and eapitalW

 

067 {

O68 Jerrod: Topic sentence.
069 Juan: Topic sentence. ”N”
070 Danny: Yeah (shakes band)

071 Trisha: . And topic sentence. ByronLflth‘a‘t’gy/o‘uljpb.

 

072 Byron: “Today Byron will go fishing.”

073 {

O74 Danny: Pause (comma)

075 Nathan: Pause.

O76 Jerrod: Tell them where you go first Tell them where you go first.

077 S: “Go fishing”.

This exchange illustrates the typieal beginning of a Morning Message. The teacher, Trisha,
nearly asks for the topic sentence from the author, Byron, but then decides to take the
opportunity Wby asking the students what a write; needs m.@g3bgum
beginning a paper. Jerrod and Angie quickly remind Trisha that they will nwd to indent

 

and eapitalize the first letter of the sentence. Trisha continues to repeat the statement,
“What else do I need,” after each correct inquiry. Jerrod then interrupts Trisha in line 068

and says, "Topic sentence.” Juan, to whom Trisha asked to respond in line 066, also says,

 

"I‘opic sentence.” Danny then confirms their response by saying th” and pumping his
hand in the air.

In line 071, Trisha makes visible the duty of the author to choose his topic by
F ”WM ..

 

 

 

 

 

--——v .. ’w‘-n V-‘l Mn- *1:

stating “And topic sentence. Byron, that’s your job; Without hesitating, Byron
immediately begins to state his topic sentence in line 072, "Today, Byron will go fishing.”
‘ Yet, within the right to choose the topic, the student author does not retain the right

to state one’s topic unequivocally-audience members may question, comment, correctLfiagL

.... __ tann-uu.mnmd-t-..~
...-a *‘fl—b -— -

191

challenge the quality of the aqfigigtqpigsentflenge. In line 074, Byron is interrupted by

 

Danny after just two words of his topic sentence. Nathan then repeats Danny’s suggestion
to put a comma (pause) after “Today,” and Jerrod then suggests that Byron should “Tell

them where you go first” in line 076. When the sequence continues, it is clear that the

 

 

audience members are co-participants in the construction of the topic sentence:

O78 Trisha: _

O79 Angie:
(BO

081 Nathan:
082 Trisha:
0&3 Byron:
084 Hannah:
085 Byron:
086

(B7 Danny:

O94 Jerrod:

096 Trisha:

(rereading) “Today Byron might go fishing.”
Pause after “today”.
{
‘Xvith one of his friends, with one of his friends”.
‘Today, Byron might go fishing”.
Cut off “might”.
‘rnight BE going”.
“Byron, today Byron went fishing”.
{
“IS”
“Today, Byron went fishing?”
You, or “Yesterday Byron went fishing”.

{
“Last week”
“Last week
{
“Byron went”
{
__}.‘._’.9BP§:._ Lease ,‘.§_h9._‘{1929i‘9“5°31m I
{
Do you need a pause

192

100 in there?
101 Trisha: I don’ tknow, I know I need to capitalize “I” beeauseiteihe‘begrnniml;
1022. our topie:§§m *Bofirave to icapital'ize lWee

As this wquence indieates, thefishrdent author receives extensive support rn construW

 

.topie sentence. In line 083, Byron tells the teacher to “cut off ‘might’,” recognizing that his
original topic sentence, “Today Byron might go fishing,” does not adequately represent the
fact that he had already gone fishing with his father. Byron then attempts to clarify himself

it'd We‘d-Mm .....r, 3;.” ,
mu.

 

by appropriately introducing the past tense ‘Xvent” fishing, but still fails to convey that he

afiwwn' .ma

went fishing at some distant point in tiine. wln line 085, Byron says, “Byron, today Byron

 

 

went fishing,” to which Trisha kindly questions by repeating Byron’s statement. Danny
helps to mediate Byron’s experience, and says, “You, or ‘Yesterday Byron went fishing’.”
Byron uses Danny’s clarification, saying, “Last week,” helping to convey that he went
fishing with his father at some distant point in time.

Though not at all uncommon in Morning Message, it is important to point out that

the co-construction of the topic sentence was not completed until line 236, takrng-up IQ”

”sway

 

minutes of the 35 minute lesson. Thus, even though it is the right of the student author to
introduce 5Q; gmchoice, the audience members clearly have a right rn mediating the
quality of the topic sentence.

Ihe dug to call on individual students/the right to include or exclude ideas. The

student author has the unique duty to ask the audience, “Are there any comments or

questions,” and to eall on audience members whg have bid for a speaking turn. At the

 

same time, the author also has the duty to answer the question, but has the right not to
include the information in their story. The following transcript comes from the same
message as the previous sequences. In this sequence, Byron calls on several students,
fields their questions, but decides not to add any of the resulting ideas to the existing text:

467 Danny: I have a question.

193

468 Amber: “Then they went home.”

469 Byron: Danny?

470 Danny: What kind of worms did you use, wax worms?

471 Byron: Normal worms.

472 Gerry: Ooh.

473 Mwam to add that?

474 Hannah: I’m going to sleep (to self fin— reference to intense inquiry)

475 Byron: Nah. I’ll be fair to the girls. Angie?

476 Trisha: Good job.

4T7 Angie: Uml/lwhen, no, did you, how do I pronounce this out. How can you or

478 your dad get there? Did you walk or did you take a CATA bus (the local
479 mass transit bus system) (laughs)? {
480 Byron: Uh uh. We took...

481 Byron: Withaboat.

486 Byron: We took a Bronco.

487 Nathan: C00].

488 Trisha: Do you want to add that?
489 Gerry: What’s a Bronco?

490 Mark: Its a Ford Truck.

491 Byron: Hannah?

492 Hannah: Did you go by yourself or did you go with your dad, because you said you
493 were about a mile apart?

494 Byron: My dad was in the water with the boat and I was on land. I was fishing.
494 Trisha: Do you want to add that?

194

495 Byron: (shakes head “no”)
This sequence illustrates particularly well the student author’s duty to call on ingjyidrral

audience members, the duty to answer their questions, and the right to include or exclude

i .W, H... M: Ia.- mm» WWW-I .u‘. ,,
"v—v—v—‘d ..m rm ..- .u-H M w EM MM'W '- as.
trw 1rd” .,\._ rear-P u-A- ‘P a me "

tl;e'_queries in the Wt. Byron rs asked three questions by three
different students, Danny, Angie, and Hannah. In each case, Byron answers the

 

questions, but, maintains the right to exclude the information from the story. The following
is the story that had been written up to this point: '

“Last week Byron and his dad went fishing at Mud Lake together.

Byron’s dad caught a walleye and Byron caught a carp and a bunch

of bluegills.”
Looking across the three audience member’s questions, including the type of worms used,
the mode of transportation to get to the lake, and whether Byron was really with his dad
when they were a mile apart, all were closely linked to the topic and could have been
included under the original topic sentence. Byron was then asked one more question that
had been repeated earlier, “Did you use crickets, or, like crickets are bait for fishes too.”
Bygon noted that the question__had_al ready heenesked (What type ofwbait he used_)_ 311ch
called on gtLthheLsthtlsshhlhthahgszham.hishandtmisedee
511 Nathan: What did you do with the fish after you got ‘em?

512 Byron: Well we had um, me and my dad had a cooler filled with water and we put
513 them m the water.

514 Nathan: Oh. Do you keep ‘em split apart?

515 Trisha: Do you want to add that?

516 Byron: Yeah. “Byron and his dad have a cooler to put the fish in.”

After four questions from the audience, Byron finally settles on Nathan’s question about

where they placed the eaught fish. Having the opportunity to eall on other students earries

the duty to respond as well. In this sense, the audience ean discursively position the author
respond to their queries. This seems an especially important audience right, for without

195

the opportunity to position the author to field questions of interest, there would be little
motivation for the audience to participate in this discourse game. Yet, it is the student
author who has the ultimate decision making power to include or exclude information. It is
in this sense that the narrative story retains its personal quality, and helps to differentiate the
role of author and audience member. As in Sharing Chair, the types of discursive
positioning that result from the role one is playing initiates different opportunities to speak,
and thus learn.

Having the final say in meaning film. The final right that distinguishes the
role of student author is havinguthe final sayaboutwhatsentenceoridea gets..written.down.
When the group members have two competing ideas on the floor, and there appears to be a
deadlock on which idea to use, the teacher ean turn to the student author and ask for their
vote. The teacher then chooses the author’s suggestion, sometimes noting over the moans
of disappointment, “It’s (the author) story.” In the following example, the student author,
Angie, has been given many suggestions about how to construct her topic sentence. The
confusion lies in the fact that Angie’s real name is the name of the month in which she was
born. At the top of the Morning Message chart paper, the month is stated (e.g., May 22nd,
1993). The students are disagreeing about whether they need to put the month in the text,
since the month will be listed in the eventual newspaper entry. After a number of good
suggestions, Trisha turns to Angie and asks her to choose one of the possibilities:

350 Trisha: Okay, “Angie is having a birthday party on the 24th.”

351 Trisha: It DOES sound right. All of them sound right. Hannah said, do you
352 remember?

353 Hannah: Yeah. “Angie’s birthday is on Saturday the 24th. Wait, “Angie is going to
354 have a birthday party on the 24th. She is going to invite friends over.”

355 Trisha: (books at author. “I should have written all these down.”)
356 Danny: It sounds choppy.
357 Trisha: It sounds choppy? Angie, I am going to let you decide, what do you want it

196

358 to say?

359 Trisha: All of them sounded right. I could do one, two, three, four, five,

360 six...fourteen, I could do fourteen different ways. Because all of us have
361 our opinions. But 's is n ie’s so 'e what do ou want to sa ?

 

362 Angie: “Angie’s birthday is on Saturday and she is having a birthday party on the
363 24th.”

364 Danny: It sounds choppy.

366 Trisha: oh, “Angie’s birthday is on Saturday and she is having a birthday party on
367 the 24th.” And Hanmh, Danny, one of you two said ‘too many birthdays”,
368 and Angie, you said to get rid of what?

369 Angie: Okay, get rid of this one (points to second “birthday”).

In line 361, Trisha defers responsibility to the audiome

 

number of suggestions she had been given,_ln line 362, Angie makes a selection, and then

 

 

is reminded by Danny that “it sounds choppy.” Angie agrees that it would sound better if
they removed the redundant word “birthday” at the end of the sentence.

In summary, there appears to be four specific rights/duties that define the role of
student author in Morning News. Sthdent authors retain the right to choose the topic for ,
discussion and whether to include or exclude an idea from the wnttenm text. As this last

M act—.... NW. -. 2‘ . .. -a t. - rhe-v- .~ c
example illustrates, the author also rs grven the specral right to choose between adequate,

-."n _..ra---a. #~....H,t

 

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WWW,“ new. .-.... an

 

but conflicting ideas among the group. The student author is asked by the teacher to

"-‘ MMM\M“_ own-mug... st. F‘- .'

choose which rendering they would like for their story. Finally, the author has the duty to

ask for comments and questions and respohgl IQSEWPPE ,qnerjes, allowghg_enehelfip get

"...-h.“
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...-MM

 

 

discursively positioned by the audj?"¢¢,,¥999.99§- This is an especially important duty to

“‘4." "Unfit. *' “J" ’ :WH—r—a—p MmgMHb.-lfl~.’¢a"uwh.fl

fulfill, as the author depends upon the queries of one’s peers to develop their Morning

 

Message. We now turn to role of the audience members in the construction of the text.

 

197

(amides 'es udience ebers

“ardent audience was directly involved in the co-construction of the student

”W

 

 

 

Wm..-" H“-

author’ s personal narrative. In this sense, the audience members were a_e_tive contributors
__ -- WW...

 

 

 

F'—

a_n_d shapers of meaning. Audience members held specific rights and duties that allowed

 

 

themselves to position and be positioned by the student author and the teacher. These
rights and duties were: (a) the duty to comment or question the student author by bidding
for a turn; (b) the right to comment or question the meaning of the text without bidding for
a turn; (c) the duty to allow the student author’s idea to stand if there was a deadlock
between two competing ideas; and (d) the duty to participate in the construction of the text. ‘
The dug to comment or question by bidding for a turn. At the end of a sub-phase
of activity, the relative completion of a sentence to the satisfaction of group members, the
student audience had the duty to raise their hands and respond by asking a comment or
question of the student author. Unlike the construction of a sentence or idea, when all
speakers had access to the speaking floor without bidding for a turn, when a sentence was
completed, this signalled the teacher or students to raise their hands to ask new questions or
comments that could be added to the text. In some instances, the students automatically
raised their hands when they sensed they had reached closure on an idea, and at other
times, the teacher signalled the students to ask questions to move the discussion forward.
In the continuation of the above transcript, the teacher rereads Angie’s corrected sentence.
Angie accepts the new sentence as sounding correct. After a short conversation between
Janitra and Hannah, about the type of birthday party Angie was having, Trisha orients the
group by asking if there are further questions for Angie:
369 Angie: Okay, get rid of this one (points to second “birthday”)
370 Trisha: And now it says “Angie’s birthday is on Saturday and she is having a party
371 on the 24th.”
372 Angie: Yep. Sounds right.

198

373 Janitra: What kind of party?

374 Hannah: A slumber party.

375 Angie: No, its not a slumber party, its almost like...

376 Trisha: Okay, any other questions for Angie?

377 Angie: Danny?

378 Danny. . Whatareyou goingtodo?

379 Trisha: Good question Danny.

380 Angie: We’re, okay, all we’re going to do is like, like...

In this section of talk, Trisha attempts to move the discussion forward by asking the
audience members if they have further questions for Angie, the student author. Angie
immediately calls on Danny, a student who has bid for a turn by raising his hand. Though
it is possible and even likely that Trisha did not take up Janiua’s question about the type of
party Angie was having, a potentially powerful and topically related question, it is
important to note that the group had spent the entire time constructing this topic sentence
(over 15 minutes and 13 of the 19 total pages of transcript). In fairness to the student

author, Angie, Trisha may have felt that it was important to include more information about

 

 

*—

Mhday party, and moved the story alang by seeking additional questions: Angie

 

 

 

 

 

assumed her right to call on audience participants, and immediately recognized Danny’s

hand A few lines later, Angie acknowledges Danny’s question, making visible her right to
call on audience members and their duty to.~ bid for a turn ”by raising their hand.

 

381 Trisha: (begins writing) “All we’ re going to do 18..

382 Nigel: All WE

383 Angie: All...

384 Danny: Yeah, but are ‘Vve” going to do this (the whole class)?

385 S: No.

386 Danny: Some of us would, though (some members of class were invited but not

199

387 others).

388 Angie: Okay, “All we’ re going to do”, I don’ t want that (hands motion to cross-out
389 sentence), because all we’ re going to do rs play games and stuff, but I don’t
390 want

391 {

392 Danny: Play games and stuff.

393 Trisha: , What do you want me to put under that?
394 Angie: “We are going- to play games...”

395 Nathan: ‘Tl-lEY !”

396 Hia: “They play games.”

397 Trisha: “They are going to...?”

398 Angie: “They will play, They are going to play games.” Yep.

 

This sequence reveals one facet ofthemrfidpantstmcm W the author’ s right“ to calL

.wa—AH...

on bid turns from audience membemjndtheaudrence s ...duty mgeneratenuestions In

##1.M¢u

line 399, Angie announces to the audience tlmt Danny’s question about what the party
goers were going to “do” (a common category used in expository writing in this class) was
“a good question” and resulted in adding a sentence to the story. Angie then explicitly \
/ states that it is the raising of one’s hand that will result in being mlled upon, an important
window into the underlying rules of conversation in the discourse space of Morning
sage.

The g'ght to guestim and comment umn the meaning of the text. The vast majority

of audience members’ verbal participation in Morning Message was spent in the active

questioning and commenting upon the student author s wstory. During the discussions

 

r '1'”. «Am t‘ “A ~

around the construction of the written text, audience members had the right to voice their
opinion without bidding for a speaking turn. This right allowed any member of the

classroom to become connected to the meaning making process. In fact, it was not

 

200

uncommon for particular audience members to have a higher verbal participation rate (as

measured by the total number of speaking turns) than the student author. In the following

transcript taken from Byron’s story about going fishing with his father, a spirited

discussion around who caught a walleye breaks out that involves seven of the thirteen

students:

175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184

185
186

187
188

189
190
191
192

193
194

195
196

Trisha:

. 0k.

{

Nathan: Take off the period. Then put fiogether”.

Trisha:

Trisha:

Trisha:

{
Sol take offthe period.

Then put the period. Okay.

Mark?

“Byron, no, eaught a walleye.”

I didn’t eatch the walleye, my dad eaught the walleye.

{

“THEY caught a
walleye.”

“Last, last week Byron and his dad...went fishing. His dad caught a
{ walleye.”

“His DAD eaught a walleye.”
Here? (pointing to chart paper)
No (standing-up out of desk). No, by “Byron and his dad.”

{

“Byron. Byron dad
caught a walleye.”

“Byron’s dad...”
{

201

197 Hannah: “HIS!”
198 {
199 Angie: “HIS!”
200 {
201 Ss: “HIS!”

202 Danny: If you put “his”, its going to sound like its his dad.

203 Mark: ' Yeah, his dad.

204 Trisha: “...eaught a walleye.”

205 Hannah: It is his

206 {

207 Jerrod: It is his dad.

208 Danny. “Byron’s dad.”

In this extended sequence, seven different audience participants provide information that
helps construct the written text. In the twenty-two speaking turns in this section of
transcript, Byron, the student author, is involved in only three turns. In this sense,
authorship in Morning Message does not belong to the student author alone, but is jointly“-

.-.... 1v ...-4.... .- ..."nm -A_

shared by the entire group.

_.....‘

r

In only one instance did an audience member bid for a speaking turn by raising their
hand. Audience participants engaged in a wine-range of literate behaviga, including
Punctmuiol1 (735.9%! that. period’lmgnsmfias .ssntsaofi.éf.!9£ficc.jm§£dwd.11°."31......

information (i.e., “I didn’t “ISLEPSWYEI'CYC’ my dad eaught the walleyqfl.

. M. in
w”""“‘dfl‘vw‘u~d.‘al' t ‘1 MM‘ \

 

 

pronominalization 4 “his” to “they”), and questioning_(_“lf you put ‘his,’ its going to sound

like his dad”). Mpmtunity to comment or question the meaning of the text in such a

wide ge fli be viorw ake featureof omin M 'ence
W’ responses created ew zones of proximal development, but often for other
MAW-«M,

students as new knowledge was constraged in the social interactions.
A Ava-NW "“WM—M... .

.W

 

......

"‘ 1"—

202

The Teacher’s Discursive Moves in Morning Mflge

It is hard to imagine a more difficult literacy event to orchestrate discursively than
Morning Message. As mentioned previously, the teacher accounted for 41% of the
speaking turns. In conversations with Trisha, she noted that Morning Message was
“exhausting” and took a lot of energy. When asked to rate each of the literacy events in her
classroom as to their “ease of implementation,” Trisha rated Morning Message as one of
two events that were the most challenging for her. Yet, when asked to rate the
effectiveness of the activity on students’ literacy growth, she rated the activity as maximally
effective (see Table 6).

Morning Message was a discourse space that had multiple goals and purposes, 4
though it appears that the primary mode of discourse is what Burbules (1993) called
fiscourse as inquig.” The primary goal of the discourse in Morning Message was to

 

create a satisfactory text (convergent) f ran: the collectrlewvgces of group mem_hg;s

M

 

 

flu. WMWF

gnflufl Yet, the nature of the talk varied from moment-to-moment, sometimes
resembling a heated debate, while other times clearly focusing on the teacher instructing her
students on specific skills or strategies.

When examining the total corpus of Trisha’s discourse moves in Morning Message,
four eategories emerged from this analysis. Categories were determined by both the
linguistic form and their social function in the discussion. The four categories are

instructional moves, literacy content moves, management moves, and im

 

Within each of these superordinate eategories, a range of specific moves occurred. The
range of moves within each category are listed in Figure 13 (see Appendix D for definitions
and examples of each discourse move).

In the following section, a brief examination of each of the categories will be

undertaken.

«\ \
“\
Vt
i

 

Instructional Mover

Involvement Mover

 

Questioning
Thinking-Aloud

Instmcting
Broadrmting
Initiating
Evduating
Direding Attention
Uptake

Safl‘dd
Parsing/Fund Idea
Transfer Control

 

Literacy Content Mover

Management Moves

 

Clarification Opinion
Unclear Mug Asterisk
Sequatdng/Orgmization Dictionary
Paragraphing Dates
Pronoun Usage Contractions
Conclusions Spelling
Audience Sensitivity Cross-Outs
Word Usage Topic

Verb Tense Editing Process
Capitalization

Punctuation

lie-reading

Personal Experience
Questioning/Commenting
Categorization/Mapping

Choice of Alternative Meanings

Run-On Sentences

Topic Sentences

Conversational Management
Community Management

Class Behavior Management
Individual Behavior Mamgemmt

 

 

 

Figure 13 Trisha's Discourse Moves in Morning Message

 

204
Though the discussion will focus on moves within each eategory separately, it is important
to remember that these four discourse eategories were intertwined and co-occurred in any
moment. Also, a particular discourse move may also serve multiple functions. For

example, though “questioning” would be considered an “instructional” move, it may also

 

 

 

 

 

 

serve to involve other students (big--- was coded __only as an instructional statement. To help

mph—“M...—

 

 

the reader, exarnples of moves within a eategory will be underlined m the transcript.
Instructional Moves

Instructional moves were defined by their goal of communieating instructional
content to the students. Trisha’s instructional moves in Morning Message covered a wide
range, including a number of moves that have been documented as being evident in highly
successful teachers (Roehler & Duffy, 1991). These instructional moves included
W& Anders, 1990), thinking-aloud (Lenz, 1989), scaffolding (Palincsar,

“M arm ...-5.. .w‘.

 

 

 

1986), uptakrng (Collins, 1982), modeling, and transferring control statements (Englert &

OW
WWI“. Luna-t. «Hm-m) m u

 

..an
Mfl'. H.W\ tmm" ’M

 

Mariage, 1991b, Mariage, .12. press). Other instructional moves were reflective of more
traditional communieation patterns in classrooms, including initiating, evaluating, stating,
responding, and instructing. A final set of instructional moves included pausing, directing
attention, dictating, and broadcasting. Each of these instructional moves is defined in
Appendix D.

The following example illustrates a number of instructional moves, including
moves that functioned to explicitly transfer control of the meaning making to students (e.g.,
uptaking, questioning) to those that gave students insight into the teacher’ s_tl_u_'_nlcing about a _
@119ng writing challenge as a morfigggéabfi mfiber of memmdmtyteg., .

 

 

thinking aloud). Depending upon the changing needs of the group, especially the constant
tension between allowing students maximum opportunities to construct their own
understandings, on the one hand, and the need to teach writing conventions, on the other,
Trisha utilizes moves that call upon students’ background knowledge and directly instructs

205

students in writing conventions that are shared by the larger culture of writers.

In the transcript below, the class has been struggling to develop a topic sentence
that everyone can agree on. The author, Angie, has chosen to develop a story around her
upcoming birthday. At issue, however, is whether it is necessary to include the month of
Angie’s birthday (April) in the text since the top of each Morning Message contains that
day’s date. Another issue centers around whether which of two competing topic sentences
sounds better, the sentence that the majority of the class agrees upon or Angie’s choice of
topic sentences. For ease of interpretation, the location of the various instructional moves
are underlined within the text and the specific move is plawd in parentheses.

135 Nathan: No, the 24th, the 24th.

136 Trisha: Sol take off, but we have “Saturday” up there Nathan. Sol take off the
137 period.

138 Angie: No.

139 Mark: Yeah. And then put “the 24th,” and then put a period.

140 Danny: (rereads by himself) “Saturday the...”

141 Trisha: ‘me 24th.” And then I put a peg'od (uptake of Mark’s idea).
142 Angie: Hold on.

143 Trisha: “Angie’s birthday is on Saturday the 24th.”

144 Hannah: Yeah. .-

145 S: That sounds better.

146 Mark: Sounds good, yeah.

147 Angie: (stands at board) I though what we could do is “Angie’s birthday is on
148 April 24th on Saturday.”

149 Trisha: “Angie’s birthday is on Ap_rjl 24th on Saturday.” (uptake of Angie’s idea)
150 Mark: That doesn’t sound right.
151 Trisha: That doesn’t sound right. (uptake of Mark’s idea)

152 8: We’re using too many “Angie’s”.

206

153 Trisha: butw ou’ sa 'n 's t on 1 kindofwanted“ '124 ”in
154 there somehow? (uptake of Angie’s idea)

155 Angie: (goes to Message) Yeah, I wanted it in between, like here, cause that they’ll
156 know its Saturday.

157 Trisha: listen I’ 't wa 9» Muir “W

158 Saturday the m,” That’s me first one. “Angie’s birthday is on Am'l 24th
159 on Saturday.” (modeling of two competing examples)

160 Danny: . No, it doesn’t sound right.

161 {
162 Janitra: The first way.
163 Trisha: The first way m tight? (uptake of Janitra’s suggestion)

164 Ss: Yeah.
165 Trisha: You understand that? (checking for understanding by asking a question)

166 Trisha: Md you hear how it was kind of chopmg when 1 did it the other way. _A__nd

167 this way its kind of really smoothI it flowed gnoothly? (thinking aloud)
168 But I see what you’ re saying, too. Mark?

In this section of transcript, Trisha does very little direct instruction of specific
writing conventions, but instead acknowledges students thinking by taking up their ideas,

 

 

 

usually by repeatiMWsidea This uptaking of ideas rs especially
effective rn the above example because the value neutral stance of the uptakes allows Trisha

to offer both Mark’s and Angie’s topic sentences as viable alternatives for the group to
debate. The resulting pattern is a volleying of Mark and Angie’s propositions back-and-
forth for the consideration to the group. In line 139, Mark puts forth the idea that the topic
sentence should end with “...‘the 24th,” creating the sentence, “Angie’s birthday is on
Saturday the 24th.” Trisha takes up this idea in line 141 by directly repeating Mark’s idea
back to the group. Trisha’s uptake prompts Angie to immediately question this topic
sentence in line 142 (“Hold on”) and then actually stand-up from the author’s chair and
suggest an alternative topic sentence in lines 147-148 (“I thought what we could do is

‘Angie’s birthday is on April 24th on Saturday”). Trisha then takes up Angie’s new topic

207

sentence and repeats it directly for the group’s consideration. This new offering again
evokes a response from the group, as Mark says, “That doesn’th right”, which is
immediately taken up and repeated by Trisha in line 151.

Trisha’s taking up of Mark and Angie’s competing ideas allows the group to ponder

u—m. 1...... ...—— ‘kamuh—A ..

which topic sentence is more effective. However, in order to make the comparison of the

 

two competing ideas clearer, Trisha shifts the talk by setting up a side-by-side comparison
of the ideas. In line 157-159, Trisha takes more direct control of the talk (“Listen
carefully”) and models for the students how a more knowledgeable writer might compare
two competing ideas, by first reading and listening to one topic sentence (“Angie’s birthday
is on Saturday the 24th. That’s the first one”) and then reading the second topic sentence
(“Angie’s birthday is on April 24th on Saturday.”). The result of Trisha’s direct modeling
has a powerful effect on the group, as Danny immediately responds that the wcond topic //
sentence “...doesn’t sound right” and Janitra simultaneously responds, "The first one.:/
Trisha then takes up Janitra’s suggestion that Mark’s topic sentence sounds better by
repeating directly Janitra’s words in the form of a question (“The first way sounds right?").
A number of students then agree that in the side-by-side comparison, the first topic
sentence is clearer.

Trisha then checks the understanding of the entire group by posing another open
ended question in line 165, “You understand that?” This question then leads into a think
aloud rn lines 166-167 that allows the group access to how a writer might have been

.-‘v ,,H ....» .....- mauw-i‘JF-wn.m I...“- \ r; ..
fi-WM|"‘~‘ I I

 

thinking during the wmpanspaot‘ the [twomcompetmgtoplcsemences “Did you hear how

 

it was kind of choppy when I did it the other way. And this way its kind of really smooth,
it flowed smoothly?”

Though this example illustrates only a small number of the instructional moves used
by Trisha rn Morning Message, it highlights the teacher as a discourse user whose

Wayne e“- gm.

.1-

. instructional decisions have a profound rmportance in the way meamng gets constructed

“at [W “mu I‘m-I11 Lu and

VAN“...- ' ’-

 

’W “M

208

within 913393. In this transcript, Trisha recognizes that when there are competing ideas

 

on the speaking floor, there is a risk that one speaker’s idea may come under criticism by
the majority of the group and not be considered as a viable alternative. W

the teacher dominates the group discourse with her own opinions, the discourse becomes

 

__ _m_ -__ ......
———.-_..'
MM...~----—— -

U erformulaic as students begin to display knowledge to the teacher and not take the

...- “ta-w;- ...”...- M” “m. a.-. -...

 

 

a personal risks involved rn more meaningful encounters (Bloome, 1986).
_ WTrishuawseeflmws to strike a balance by simply taking up a student’ s idea and
broadcasting it back to the group. This form of uptaking functions to communicate to the
speaker that their idea has been heard and is valued, but also prompts the group to take
responsibility for continuing the meaning construction process. As a result of these
uptakes, the literacy content, the need to choose between two competing topic sentences,
has been positioned in such a way that students can make informed decisions for which
sentence “sounds right” while maintaining the personal integrity of the two students
offering the sentences (i.e., Angie and Mark). This attention to thinking about how one
aligns or realigns both the content under consideration and the social relationships of group
members will be discussed further in the explication of the teacher’s involvement moves.
Litem Content Moves

Morning Message afme a broad range of literate actions (see Figure 13). In
contrast to the highly reductionistic instruction that has tended to characterize special -
education teaching (Allington, 1992), where literacy strategies and skills are taught
separately and in isolation, Morning Message was representative of the guiding principles
of the Early Literacy Project. In Morning Message, the co-construetion of the text led to a
complex web of literate actions that were introduced by the teacher in reaction to the needs
and abilities of the class.

Across the five Morning Message transcripts, Trisha engaged her students in a wide

range of literate actions, including 9’de skills for plannith one’ 8 paper (e. g .,

WNW

209

wri-jig about your audience and Wtopic), orgam'ging ideas (e. g., categories)..d[aflin£ (fig g.,

conventions for setting-up one’ s paper, grammar, and punctuation) editing (e. g., editing

'm *-
: Marmpfl' *

conventions and clarifying meaning), and revising (e. g., rereading). More importantly, the

... ...... umwmwfi'v

 

wm’qg-M-uawvhw p-V "no 'em

way ofknowing rn Morning Message was characterized as a series of “problems to be
solved” (Eisner, 1985), not as a linear sequence of discrete writing processes In this
sense, Morning Message was different than many writer’s workshop or other process
approaches to writing in that an entire text was created in a relatively short (30-35 minutes)
period of time. This moment-to-moment, condensed, and shared construction of text
provided a unique opportunity to examine and describe the range and types of literate
behaviors that were privileged and afforded in this literacy event. The literate content
afforded in Morning Message is outlined in detail at the end of this chapter.
Moment Moves

A third category of Trisha’s discourse moves was the management of a variety of
facets of Morning Message. The most common form of discursive management was

conversational managementDI'he fast pace and high verbal involvement of students

 

 

required that Trisha occasionally manage the conversation. For example, telling a group of

excited students who were shouting out answers to “W_
hand “19L! thi9!S.i!ll§.§§mt=nfieisin.theiightplam’lserved tomanage.thenmms.of.....
WINS right of the teacher allowed Trisha to take the role of traffic cop and

”W‘s-ti; WWWW"

occasronal .1 figurde and moxientjhenamte of“, the talk towards more productive aims.

 

6.1...vM infigwm

A second form of discursive management was CLWMn this
discursive move, Trisha reminded the students that they were a community of learners that
are responsible to each other in Morning Message and in the classroom in general. After
one particularly volatile discussion about the placement of a particular detail under a topic
sentence, Trisha takes the floor to repair some hurt feelings:

444 Trisha: Okay/IOh, boy.l/I think Danny was concerned about Nathan because, you

210

 

 

445 know what’s really hard, it that we are so close in this room. We are. We’re
446 il i Room 104 and o wants to hurt an bod else’s feelrn
447 Byron.

In this sequence of talk, Trisha reminds the community that they are teammates and friends.
She steps back and uses her authority as the teacher to ease some hurt feelings over two
pairs of students’ (Danny/Nathan and Angie/Hannah) disparate ideasLJanwm

The third and fourth forms of discursive management weréplgs w@d

“Maw-..“

hav’i’or managfifl Both forms of management had as their focus the management of

 

yd” ...m-

stu—dents’ actions and participation in the group. In class management, Trisha instructed the
whole group to consider a particular action. As an example, in one Morning Message
sequence, the students were particularly excited about a new seating arrangement at the
beginning of the activity and Trisha asked the group, “Are you sure you can do this? If you
don’t feel that you can do it, change right now.” In the vast majority of eases, these class
management statements were stated in the form of a question, not as a reprimand. As
Trisha mentioned in her interview, her goal was to raise her expectations so the students
wanted to be responsible for their own learning, not because she forced them to learn.
Behavior management moves, in contrast, were statements directed at a particular
individual. By far the most common behavioral management move was simply to state the
child’ s name to help them regulate their own actions. For example, when a particular
student was off -task, interrupting, or breaking a classroom rule (e.g., going to the
bathroom in the middle of a lesson), Trisha would simply state the child’s name while
staring directly at them: “Gerry.” In only two instances in the five Morning Message
activities did Trisha manage behavior in ways other than simply stating a child’s name. In
both cases, Gerry was the recipient of the reprimand: “Gerry, you’re going to make me
extremely angry in a matter of seconds. So quit.” It is important to remind the reader that
Gerry was the same student who received 50% of the behavioral moves in the earlier

21 1
activity of Sharing Chair.

Overall, the four types of management moves constituted just five percent of
Trisha’s total turns. The importance of these moves, however, is not to be overlooked.
The teacher’s right to step-in and manage the conversation, community, class, or individual
behavior allowed Trisha to provide an anticipatory set for participating successfully in the
activity, insured equity of opportunity for all speakers by “protecting” their right to
participate without the behavioral distractions of other class members, and aligned the
social and cognitive participation of class members in potentially more productive directions
by asserting her influence into the discussion. Though there is an important emphasis put
upon transferring control of the lesson talk to students, Michaels and O’Connor (1990)
remind us that the most successful discourse spaces are created when the teacher is an
active participant in orchestrating the ebbs and flow of the discourse. As researchers and
teachers, we should not apologize for the active participation and involvement of the teacher
in deftly managing particular areas of the lesson talk. To underestimate the teacher’s role as
a more knowledgeable member of the classroom who can orchestrate both cognitive and
social participation in the group, is to dismiss the importance of Vygotsky’s theory of
verbal regulation, the movement of higher psychological processes from other, social-
regulation to self-regulation and automaticity (i.e., internalization).

Conversational Involvement and Lam'cimtion

A final and particularly important category of discourse moves were involvement
moves (see Figure 13). The notion of conversational involvement comes from the work of
Deborah Tannen (1989). In Tannen’s observation of natural occurring conversations (i.e.,
not instruction, in Burbules’ (1993) sense), especially the conversation of members of her
family around a Thanksgiving dinner, Tannen observed the use of several persistent and
common discourse moves. These moves, the use of repetition, dialogue, and imagery,

functioned to hold the attention of one’s audience (i.e., their involvement) and gave the

212
immediate speaker more “air time” by extending their opportunity to hold the speaking
floor. Obviously, because there is so little talk that resembles conversations in schools
(Cazden, 1988), the notion of conversational involvement had not been extended into
classroom research until two researchers, Mary Catherine O’Connor and Sarah Michaels
(1993), studied whole class discussions in elementary classrooms. These researchers
noted the use of a particularly powerful discourse move, revoicing, that serves to align the
social and cognitive participation of class members. In this discourse move, the teacher
restates or rebroadeasts an individual’s or group’s idea into a form that is slightly different
than the original statement (e. g., summarizes idea). The ownership of the idea is clearly
given to the originator of the idea, often by the teacher saying the child’s name: “Maggie
believes that Charlotte is not Wilbur’s mother frgm‘e, but an oracle like we studied during
our Greek—Myths unit; What do you think?” As this example of revoicing illustrates, the
teacher has “positioned” the rest of the class to undertake the cognitive work of figuring out
whether Maggie’s claim that Charlotte is an oracle, not a mother figure, is tenable. At the
same time, the teacher aligns the social participation of the class, insuring that it is Maggie,
not her, that is responsible for this statement. Though Maggie is granted ownership of the
idea, she is not responsible for responding directly to the queries of her classmates. It is
her idea that is held up for scrutiny, not her person.

In Morning Message, Trisha used a number of involvement moves, including both

.u-‘d " “*- *M

$4-“--. ”.74.:r’wt'
..—

 

 

/" W Other involving moves included rereading the text to orient the class,
supporting statements, directly calling on an individual student, holding the speaking floor
for a student, using humor, and giving permission to students to continue talking.
Surprisingly, these involvement moves constituted 26% of the total discourse moves,
making them a prominent feature of the Morning Message event.

Involvement moves appeared to have at least three functions, to involve students as

 

213
individual speakers (e.g., repeating; directly calling), to involve the entire group of
speakers (e.g., revoicing; rereading), and to serve as a repair strategy (e.g., supporting) for
disagreements among group members.
In the following Morning Message transcript, Trisha uses a wide-range of

involvement moves to accomgish the three levels of conversational involvement (e. g.,

 

individ r, whole group, and repair). At issue in this extended stretch of talk is the

 

 

inclusioflnflorexcliusion of the detail “Nathan is going to bring a glass (jar) so he can catch
some bugs” under the topic sentence “Ms. William’s class is taking a trip to eamp.” The
author, Danny, and Nathan, the originator of the detail about bringing a glass jar, feel that
this detail is appropriate. Angie, on the other hand, recognizes that the topic sentence is
clearly oriented to the class, not to individual students, and feels Nathan’s detail should be
included at a later time (i.e., the “bottom” of the Moming- Message story). Trisha’s
involvement moves are underiined in the body of the text and the type of involvement move
is written in parentheses following the text:

222 Nathan: “Nathan is going to bring a glass

223 {

224 Danny: Not glass, it ean break

225 {

226 Nathan: So he can catch
227 some bugs.

228 Angie: Ms. Williams?

229 Trisha: Just a minuteJl/Let me read this “fl. William’s class is taking a trip to
230 camp. They are canoeing. NM is bringing a jar to eatch some bugs.”

231 (rereads)

232 Danny. Ms. Williams...Take out...
232 Nathan: That soggds okay.

234 Trisha: Sound okay? (repeats)

214

Angie: Ms. Williams, Ms. Williams, its um, its em, their trying, Nathan is trying,
like a parent, it sounds like, he is like, it sounds like, okay, hers gorng
from one thing to another. He should do all the things about camp first, and
then if we want to add anything then we can. Because, um, it don’t sound
right, cause it, (reads) “Ms William’s clasf...

Danny: Yeah, but

Trisha: Let her finish. (floor holding)

Angie: ' “Ms. William’s class is taking a trip to camp. They are going canoeing.
Nathan is going to bring a jar to catch some bugs.” I think we should cross
that out and do it when we get towards the bottom. Cuz we should do
everything we’re going to do at camp first.

{

Jerrod: We DON’T know all the things we’re going to do.

Angie: But we can cross-out those.

Trisha: What Aggio’s saying, I think, and tell me if I am wrong, okay (permission).

What An 'e is sa 'n is that eve time we usuall write
‘ {
Angie: We’re editing
{

Trisha: We

categories.
{

Angie: Yep.

. i . .

Trisha: right, and we talk about one Qng first, and when we talk
about somethin else we ' then talk about somethin else.
(revoicing) Is that right? (direct call

Angie: No. What I was trying to\say is, okay, uh, we should cross out Nathan’s

and when we get down towards the bottom, down towards the bottom, we
can put it down THERE. Uhhm, when we get done talking about the things
we think we’ll DO.

Trisha: Okay, so what you are saying is, you want to keep this, but you think it
should go somewhere near the bottom later because right now we want to
Q; aboux, wg’re tallg'gg about who; we’re going to m at camp. (revoicing)

215

269 {
270 Angie: DO.

In this short stretch of talk, Trisha uses five different involvement moves (e. g.,
rereading, repeating, floor holding, revoicing, direct call). Each involvement move is
discussed in more detail below.

Reread' . In lines 229-230, Trisha rereads the entire text to reorient the entire
group to the meanings that have been co-constructed to that point in time. During a typical
Morning Message segment, Trisha would reread all or parts of the written text between 20
and 30 times. This rereading most often served to give the entimgmm colleotive deep...

breath and ste_ back from the gammy-2.9mm
understandings that had (OLWELEFPJEEEEELWiwfl drewgrwowgg This reflection
served an orienting function that allowed all group members’to get caught up with the
message. More importantly, Trisha’s rereading of the text allowed group members to listen
carefully for incongruities or alternative conceptions of what the text might be. For
example, immediately following the rereading in lines 229-230, Danny (line 232), Nathan
(line 233) and Angie (235) appear to have used this signalling to comment on the
appropriateness of the text. Danny begins by asking Trisha to “take out” something before
being interrupted by Nathan, who states that the text “sounds okay.” Angie then explains
in great detail that “It don’t sound right”; the group should first talk about what the
collective class is going to do before listing what specific individuals are going to do.
Trisha’s rereading functions to help children monitor the clarity of meaning by prompting
them mself, “Does this sound okay?”

Re i . Whereas rereading all or part of the text is typically oriented to the
involvement of the entire group of students, repeating a child’s idea or comment is usually
directed at involving and maintaining the participation of an individual student. However,

this is not to underestimate the potential aligning functions of this particular discourse

216

move. In Tannen’s (1989) work, repeating all or part of a speaker’s words functioned to
communicate to the immediate speaker that you are intimately connected to their ideas. In
this sense, repeating what someone says serves to rebroadcast one’s idea to other
immediate addressees. This is demonstrated in line 232-239 above. After Trisha’s
rereading, Nathan says “that W,” directly followed by Trisha’s repetition “MAC!
okay?” In this particular move, there appears to be several functions: (a) to confirm that
Nathan’s idea has been heard and has merit as a possible outcome in the text, and (b) to
allow the idea to be broadcast back to the group for further consideration. By posing the
repetition as a question, Trisha simultaneously acknowledges Nathan’s offer that the
sentence is acceptable as written, while opening the floor to other speakers to question its
tenability. In fact, Angie seizes the opportunity, and in line 236 through 245, asserts her
position that the appropriate topic sentence would include what the entire class is doing at
camp as a collective, not Nathan’s individual exploits as an insect collector. Though it is
difficult to confirm, it may be the case that Trisha’s repetition of Nathan’s comment also
served to position Angie to temper her disagreement. In line 238 and in line 243, Angie
seems to preserve Nathan’s ideas by saying “...then if we want to add anything we can”
and “I think we should cross that out and do it when we get towards the bottom,”

respective] .

speaking floor for an individual speaker. The floor-holding move had five functions in

   

third involvement strategy that Trisha used was to “hold” the

Moming Message: (a) to give a “bigger” voice to a quiet student’s offering of an idea on
the speaking floor, (b) to bring an idea back to the speaking floor that was passed over by
other students, (c) to insure equity in the distribution of turns and ideas, (d) to posit one
student’s idea as a way of helping the group make advancements in meaning construction
amidst the chaos of a flood of ideas being simultaneously offered on the speaking floor,
and (e) to give a speaker uninterrupted and sufficient time to preserve the integrity of their

217

cognitive development. In the transcript above, only the fifth function, that of giving a
speaker sufficient time, is illustrated.

In Morning Message, with its typically high pace and level of verbal participation, it
was occasionally important for the teacher to hold the floor for speakers. In lines 235
through 239, Angie is working extremely hard, with many false starts and a passion for
accuracy, which included fifteen hesitations in her thinking. Importantly, Angie’s
difficulty in formulating her ideas in lines BS through 239 leads to Danny’s attempt to
question by saying “Yeah, but...” However, Trisha intervenes quickly and says, “Let her
finish,” giving continued speaking rights to Angie and honoring her effort. This floor-
holding move then allows Angie another extended opportunity to have the floor and allows
her to clarify her own thinking: “...I think we should cross that out and do it when we get
towards the bottom. Cuz we should do everything we’re going to do at camp first.” In
this one discourse move, Trisha appeared to align both the cognitive and social participation
of the group (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993) by (a) extending Angie’s speaking turn so she
could continue to work her way through her thinking and clarify her ideas for other group
members, and (b) allowing the content of Angie’s message, the need to have a
superordinate category as the topic sentence (i.e., What the class is going to DO at camp)
and not a detail (i.e., Nathan’s unique experience) to be posited to the group as one
possible solution to the problem of getting an adequate topic sentence.

The floor-holding move, like other involvement strategies, was particularly
important in adjusting what Halliday and Hasan (1989) called the “tenor” of the speech
situation. As the above example illustrates, the floor-holding move can function to realign
both the content of the message and the social status of group members by positioning the
speaker to undertake particular work. In Angie’s case, with her many false starts and
hesitations, it is clear that the floor holding move created a condition where she could work
in her own zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). The creation of these zones

voicin ov #

 

[Inference Sourcel

 

Angie

Content of the
Inference

 

 

 

"Ms. William’s class is taking a
trip to camp. They are going
canoeing. Nathan is going to
bring a jar to catch some bugs.
I think we should cross that out

and do it when we got towards
the bottom. Quz we should do
evemhing we're going to do at
camp first.”

 

[Inference Makeq

 

Teacher: ”What Angie's

saying, I think, and tell me if
I am wrong, okay. What
Angie is saying is that
evegm'me we usually write,
we have categories. Right,
and we talk about one thing
first, and when we talk about
something else, we indent,
and then talk about something

else. Is that right?"

218

evoici ove #2

[Inference Sourcel

Angie

 

 

Content of the
Inference

 

 

 

. Whathas 'n to

is, okay, uh, we should cross

out Nathan's and when we get
down towards the bottom we

can t in down THERE.

MW
talkin about the thin s we

W”

 

 

 

 

[Inference Maker
Teacher. "W

'n is on want to kee thi
but on 'nk it should 0
somewhere near the bottom later
because right now we warm to talk
bout we're talkin about what

were n atcarn ."

 

 

 

Figure 14 The Anatomy of Two Revoicing Moves in Moming Message

219

of proximal development was a particularly powerful affordance in Morning Message, as
speakers were given frequent opportunities to grapple with their own understandings as
they thought-aloud and defended their ideas.

Reyoigixtg. A particularly powerful discourse move used by Trisha was the
revoicing of a student’s idea back to the entire class. As with other involvement moves, the
revoicing move aligned the content and the identities of the speakers in multiple ways,
including those outlined by O’Connor and Michaels in Chapter 2. The anatomy of the
revoicing move, including the inference source, the content of the inference, and the
inference maker for the two revoicing moves in lines 249-260 and 266-268 are outlined in
Figure 14.

In the above transcript, Trisha employs two revoicing moves, the first revoicing
move seems to occur as a result of Jerrod’s forceful comment in line 247, where he
reminds Angie that since the class had not yet gone on their camping trip, “We DON’T
know all the things we’re going to do.” Moreover, this confrontation came immediately
following Angie’s lengthy and passionate turn, heightening its locutionary force. Angie
reiterates what she said in her previous clarification, and says, “But we can cross-out
those” (details that do not fit under what the whole class is going to do). This statement
does not help clarify the two positions, so Trisha uses the confrontational and confusing
nature of the moment to step in and attempt to realign both the content and the social
relationships among the participants. Trisha uses the content of Angie’s reference and
revoices Angie’s original idea:

“What Angie is saxg'ng, I thifl, and tell me if I am wrong, okay. What Angie is

sau'ng is that evety time we usually write, we have categories. Right, and we talk
about one thing first, and when we talk about something else, wo indent, and men
talk about something else. Is that right?”

As can be seen in this revoicing move by the teacher, Trisha is setting up and building
complex relationships for the speaker, Angie, and the participation of other class members.

220

Pemaps the most obvious feature of the revoicing move is the reorganimtion of the content
inference into a form that is more understandable to other participants. In this example, the
content inference for Trisha’s revoicing is Angie’s statement, “I think we should cross that
out and do it when we get towards the bottom. Cuz we should do everything about camp
first.” From this content inference, Trisha’s revoicing move makes connections to (a) the
individual author of the ideas, Angie; (b) the language conventions that are shared
collectively by the entire community; and (c) the socially constructed nature of the message.
The following illustration examines Trisha’s revoicing move and the multiple functions it

played in aligning both content and social relationships.

Trisha’s Revoicing Move 'tiv r ' Function
“What Angie is saying...” Gives authorship and ownership of

ideas to Angie. Protects Angie’s
integrity as a competent member in
light of disagreements with Jenod,
Danny, and Nathan.

“...and tell me if I am wrong, okay.” Reinforces Angie’s authorship.
Creates opportunity to be repositioned
by Angie (which she does, by saying
“No.”). Transfers control of meaning
making to group members.

“...every time we usually write...” Calls on shared history of community
to position Angie as having a
legitimate concern (i.e., we
usually...) Realigns content so it is
familiar to all members.

“...we have categories...” Uses specific, conventionalized
language that is well understood by
this specific community (i.e., we
have “categories”).

“Right...” Checks for understanding and
agreement that the community has a
shared history and is familiar with the
convention of having superordinate

categories to start paragraphs.

“...and we talk about one thing Again, uses conventionalized
first, and when we talk about language that is well understood

221

something else we indent, and then by this specific community

talk about something else.” (i.e., “first”, “indent”).

“Is that right?” Checks for understanding and seeks
feedback of group members. Leaves
speaking floor open for Angie or
other members to respond.

As can be seen by this illusuation, the revoicing move is extremely complex and
powerful in positioning speakers, content, and the entire community to respond in
particular ways. In this example, Trisha created a participant framework in which Angie’s
idea is considered seriously by group members, is reformulated and given back to the class
in a language that is more familiar and understandable, and, yet, maintains an atmosphere
in which it is the class members that are ultimately responsible for constructing the Morning
Message story.

The second revoicing move results when Angie tells Trisha that her first revoicing
move did not capture what she had meant to say. In Angie’s own reformulation of her
ideas, she emphasizes that she wants to maintain Nathan’s idea about collecting bugs, but
that it should come in a different location. Interestingly, Angie did, in fact, say this in her
previous explanation that was revoiced by Trisha (i.e., “I think we should cross that out
and do it when we get towards the bottom”), but apparently felt that Trisha’s revoicing
moved her in opposition to the boys by not emphasizing that Nathan’s ideas will still be
included in the text. In her reformulation, Angie uses Nathan’s name and puts emphasis on
the word “down THERE,” after the group first talks about the things we think we will
“DO”: “What I was trying to say is, okay, uh, we should cross out Nathan’s and when we
get down towards the bottom, down towards the bottom, we can put it down THERE.
Uhhm, when we get done talking about the things we think we’ll DO.”

In response to Angie’s reformulation, Trisha revoices Angie’s content with a more

tightly coupled response than the previous revoicing. In fact, unlike the first revoicing

222

move where Trisha introduced more conventional language (i.e., categories, indenting,
first, next, then) and invoked the shared history of the community (i.e., “we,” “Right”) to
give voice and significantly extend Angie’s suggestions, Trisha does very little
transformation of Angie’s language. Rather, when put side-by-side, Trisha’s revoicing is
almost a restatement of Angie’s reformulation. Direct repetitions and words having the

same function are underlined for ease of comparison:

Angie’s Reformulation of Content Trisha’s Revoicigg

“No. What i was trying to Lay is...” “Okay, so what you are saig'ng is...”
“...okay, uh, we should cross out “...you want to keep this, but you
Nathan’s and when we get down you think it should go somewhere
towards the bottom, down towards pg: the bottom...”

the bottom...”

“...we can put it down m.” “... at r...”

“Uhhm, when yyg. get done talking “...because right now fl want to
about things me think we’ll m.” talk about, we’m talking about what

m going to _DQ at camp.”

“DO.”

In this revoicing move, Trisha honors Angie’s request that she was not heard
accurately in the previous revoicing move. Trisha does this by repeating much of Angie’s
reformulation, including both specific words and intonation patterns. Angie agrees with
Trisha’s second revoicing, repeating Trisha’s emphasis put upon the word “DO” by
echoing “DO” before Trisha finishes her turn. Within this revoicing move, however,
Trisha continues to speak to other class members. She uses the word “we” repeatedly at
the end of her revoice to remind group members that this is their collective message, not the
message of any specific individual. As with each involvement strategy Trisha used in
Morning Message, the ultimate goal was to respect individual students’ voices while at the
time leaving the floor open for further meaning construction by other members of the

group.

223

M. The final involvement strategy demonstrated by Trisha in the above
transcript was directly calling on an individual student for their contribution. This
involvement move was used frequently across the Morning Message lessons. This move
differed slightly from both the floor holding move and the revoicing move, though it often
served similar functions in aligning individual speakers with particular content in the
ongoing, public discourse. However, the direct calling of an individual student’s name did
not necessarily involve the called student in a direct speaking turn. Trisha frequently used a
child’s name in her examples to involve that student in the message, yet did not require the
student to respond. Trisha used specific students’ thoughts and ideas and weaved their
experience into the fabric of the class discourse. For example, in the-April 22nd Morning
Message story, a debate ensued about whether the author’s birthday should be considered a
holiday and thus capitalized. The author, Angie, thinks that it should be considered a
holiday and the word “birthday” should be capitalized. However, after much discussion,
Trisha wants to insure that the students have an accurate conception of conventional uses of
capitalized words and steps in to instruct the group:

Trisha: Because its not actually a holiday. Maybe to Angie its a holiday, like you

were saying. But its not a holiday, it’s her, it’s her special...it feels like a
special holiday to Angie, Danny might not celebrate it, so it’s not a holiday
for everyone.
In this example, Trisha directly calls on two group members, Angie and Danny, to involve
them as participants in the ongoing discussion. Angie is positioned to feel that her opinion,
though not conventionally correct, is valued nonetheless-4t is a special holiday to Angie,
but not shared by everyone, like Danny. It is this direct or implied use of a child’s name
that defines this discourse move.

A second use of directly calling on a specific student occurred when Trisha set up a
condition in which one particular speaker was given access to the speaking floor to respond
to a comment or question posed by Trisha herself. This occurred in line 261 in the above

224
transcript when Trisha asked Angie if her understanding of Angie’s original content
reference was accurate: “Is that right?” Though Trisha asks what appears to be an open-
ended question, it is clear that the question is directed to the previous speaker, Angie. This
form of direct call ftmctioned much like the floor holding move discussed earlier.

A final use of directly calling on an individual to involve them in the discourse was
characterized by its function to involve a speaker who was not actively participating in the
construction of meaning. This is a common strategy used by teachers, and usually
involves making a connection with a particular student through the posing of a question.
For example, in the April 23rd Morning Message story about Hannah’s family, the issue of
whether one should capitalize the word “aunt” or “uncle” before their name (e.g., uncle Bill
or Uncle Bill) arises in the group. Trisha seizes this opportunity to involve Nigel, a student
who had participated verbally only marginally in the message up to this point. Knowing
that Nigel’s fifteen year old sister had recently had a child, Trisha uses a direct call to

involve Nigel in helping to clarify the ongoing discussion:

226 Trisha: Ok, I know that, Nigel, you’re an uncle, aren’t you?

227 Nigel: Yeah.

228 Trisha: So does, when Maggie grows up, is she going to call you “Uncle
229 Ni gel"? or just “Nigel”?

230 Nigel: “Uncle Nigel.”

231 Trisha: Okay, so for her, to Maggie, is that your name, “Uncle Nigel?”
232 Nigel: Yeah.

233 Trisha: So when we have a name, we have to do what?

234 Danny. Capitalize.

235 Trisha: Okay, so what do you think, should I capitalize “grandpa”?

In this example, Trisha positions Nigel to respond by directly calling his name and asking a

question, “you’re an uncle, aren’t you?” However, unlike many direct calls in the form of

225

questions that position students to answer questions that are then evaluated by the teacher,
Trisha’s direct call serves to elevate Nigel’s unique role as being central for learning a
decision rule about capitalizing the words aunt, uncle, grandpa, and grandma. Trisha is
able to accomplish two goals through her direct call of Nigel, to gain his verbal
participation in the meaning making process and use his experience to realign the content in
a form that is familiar to the entire group (i.e., So when we have a name, we have to do
what?).

WW. Three other involvement moves,
though less frequent, appeared across the Morning Message transcripts. The first of these
moves, seeking the permission of an individual student, is demonstrated in line 249 of the
above transcript. This move was used by Trisha to emphasize the importance of the
students’ voice and control of the construction process. In the above example, Trisha is
ready to embark on a revoicing move that is going to extend and reformulate Angie’s
previous turn. However, instead of assuming that Angie wants her ideas revoiced, Trisha
asks for Angie’s permission to refonnulate her ideas: “What Angie’s saying, I think, and
tell me if I am wrong, okay.” This seeking permission seemed to communicate a clear
message to the individual speaker and the rest of the group that it was the group’s story,
not the teacher’s. This appeared be an explicit attempt for Trisha to distance herself as the
sole source of authority in the classroom.

A second involvement move occurred when Trisha supported another student or the
entire group for their effort. In the Morning Message story on April 8th about the class
going to camp, the group is helping the author, Danny, think about topics he might talk
about. Nathan suggests that Danny might talk about when he gets out of school.
However, there is some confusion as to what Nathan meant by this statement, which he
later clarifies. Trisha supports Nathan’s thinking and thanks him for clearing the air:

035 Trisha: Any other suggestions (for Danny). Nathan?

226

036 Nathan: What he is going to do when he gets out of school.

037 Trisha: Today?

038 Nathan: No, when he gets out of the school.

039 Trisha: When he graduates? That’s interesting. I am going to put “When he
040 grows up.”

041 Nathan: NO, no, when he goes into fifth grade. We get out in June...

042 Trisha: Summer vacation. ‘

043 Nathan: Yeah, summer vacation.

044 Trisha: 1st for olm'fyigg Qt 1g me NM. i thought you meant

045 something different, I am glad you went back over that.

In this example, Trisha supports Nathan for pursuing his idea and thanks him for his
effort. At the same time, Trisha uses the opportunity to reinforce two prominent language
conventions of the community, “clarifying” information and “going back over” your ideas
and checking for misinformation (“just like an editor does with one’s writing"). As Trisha
so often did in Morning Message, she took what the situation gave her and then used this
content to orchestrate new possibilities for both the individual and the group. Instead of
waiting for teachable moments to arise, Trisha created these opportunities for her students
by weaving new mosaics of possibility. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to “see” what
Trisha is doing with her talk without imagining how other, less facile teachers would react
in similar situations.

A final involvement move used by Trisha was to use humor to try and capture an
individual’s or the group’s attention. During the March 22nd Morning Message story in
which Angie was being introduced to the class through Morning Message, Angie noted that
she was ten-and-a-half years old (written as “10 1/2” on the chart paper). Danny then
asked Trisha what the “1/2” meant. Trisha then used Danny’s confusion to create a
teachable moment for all members of the group, using pictures on the board to illustrate

various fractional units. Near the end of the mini-lesson on fractions, Trisha uses humor to

227

capture the attention of the group:

346 Trisha: Sol am going to divide it in half and another half. So what would
347 my bottom number be? Tracey?

348 Tracey. Four.

349 Trisha: Four, okay, don’t say anything. And how many pieces does Mike
350 get? Janitra?

351 Janitra: One.

352 Trisha: One, so he gets one-fourth of the pizza.

353 Danny. Ohh! I get that, there’s four pieces and then we get three (fourths).
354 Trisha: How many pieces does Angie get?

355 Ss: One.

356 Trisha: One, so she gets one-fourth too. fifms one’ s Danny’s. We’re doing
357 math during Morning Message. And I cut it mked on mm
358 i could have the biggeit piece.

359 Ss: Ahhhh! (laughter)

Using humor during the Morning Message event was an important way in which Trisha
used discourse to involve her students, though this move was not used very often. In fact,
in the entire March 22nd transcript, Trisha’s use of humor in turn nine was the only
evidence of this particular move in the entire lesson. However, as this example illustrates,
Trisha’s taking of the largest piece of the imaginary pizza creates a humorous situation in
which Danny gets the short-end of the stick (or the small piece of pizza). Nearly the entire
class laughs at Trisha’s comment, drawing attention to the fractional units being discussed,
and helping to focus their attention before moving back to the original content of the
message (i.e., Angie’s introduction to her classmates).

To conclude, the study of involvement moves in Morning Message makes visible
the inextricable relationship between language and learning. Trisha’s orchestration of her
discourse served to align and realign the content, the rights and duties of individual

speakers, the relative roles and statuses of various members of the group, the responsibility

228
of the group in participating in the construction of meaning, and the ways students
interacted with content and one another. Trisha’s use of the various involvement moves
created participant frameworks that positioned an individual speaker(s) or the entire group
to consider particular alternatives. These boundaries of possible response actions, in turn,
reflected the types of thinking that were afforded in the Morning Message discourse space
in this particular classroom community. It is to these affordances in literate behavior that
we turn in the next section.

This section began by suggesting that Tannen’s (1989) use of the term
“involvement strategies” might be a useful way of thinking about classroom discourse,
especially in classroom events where there are explicit attempts to move discourse in ways
that are more reflective of dialogues or conversations with more equal-status relationships.
Though some would certainly argue that the discontinuity and asymmetry in roles and
power between teacher and students would prevent true conversations from occurring (i.e.,
defined by equal opportunity to access the speaking floor), it is widely believed that there
may be great value in having teachers and students engage in forms of talk that move away
from the authoritative discourse that has tended to predominate most classroom discourse.

The examination of Trisha’s involvement moves suggests that there may be rich
opportunities to study how teachers create participant frameworks for students through
their talk Though Tannen’s notion of conversation involvement is a starting point in
describing what might constitute involvement moves by the teacher, it does not appear
extensive enough to account for the ways in which the teacher’s involvement moves
discursively position individual speakers, the entire class community, and the content being
discussed. Rather, this data suggests that O’Connor and Michael’s (1993) notions of how
discourse moves create participant frameworks that align both the content and the social
relationships of group members is more useful when studying classroom discourse. In this

perspective, discourse is viewed as constantly “positioning” individuals, the entire group,

229

and the content under consideration. Moreover, these discursive positionings create
different opportunities to learn and, ultimately, reflect different ways of studenting in
school.

W

This section attempts to describe the types of literate behaviors that were afforded
students as Trisha and her students constructed and reconstructed the discourse space of
Morning Message. Having focused on how Trisha’s talk discursively positioned students
to align both cognitive and social participation, this section examines some of the specific
literate behaviors that students had opportunities to engage in with one another.
Specifically, we look at how the social dialogue created opportunities to come into contact
with writing conventions that were introduced and practiced in Morning Message. An
examination of how the social dialogue of Morning Message becomes internalized to guide
independent action is also undertaken.

Before examining specific examples of the literate behaviors afforded in Morning
Message, it is important to remember that the notion of affordances reflects the educational
possibilities that reside in various discourse spaces (Santa Barbara Discourse Group,
1992b). Rather than assume that a particular discourse space (e. g., Morning Message) is
enacted similarly by different teachers, the study of educational possibilities, in this case
literate behaviors, requires examining how teachers and students in particular communities
construct and reconstruct the activity as they engage in social activity with one another.
Through the examination of various discourse spaces on a case-by-case basis, it is then
possible to begin to understand the generic processes that more (and less) effective teachers
engage in. As importantly, this line of inquiry can help teachers and policy makers make
informed decisions as to the range and types of discourse spaces that support a particular
range of literate behaviors.

The following discussion of the literate behaviors afforded in Morning Message is

230

divided into three sections. The first section examines how Morning Message allowed
students access to a range of writing conventions, including skills and strategies involving
planning, organizing, drafting, editing, and revising one’s paper. The second section then
highlights the inculcation of students into a particular literate discourse. Emphasis in this
motion is placed upon Morning Message as a unique milieu for trying-on and practicing the
language of more able writers. The final section attempts to shed light on the possible
internalization and transfer of the social dialogue to independent editing and writing.
Skills and Strategies in the Writing m

Morning Message was a discourse space that was unique in a number of ways.
First, unlike many writing process approaches that help children plan, organize, draft,
edit/revise and publish papers over several days or weeks (Calkins, 1991; Englert,
Raphael, & Anderson, 1992), Morning Message was a microcosm of the entire writing
process each day. The teacher and students introduced a topic, often times reminding
memselves of their parent audience, constructed the story through commenting and

 

_A-

 

questionirg, and then concluded each story _by providing an ending and chorallyreadirm o

the story to insure its sensibilij, , ' ' and revisin WW

sentence to the final reading of thestoan this sense, the writing process was not broken

11¢an *“

 

Mwfl.hhm-mmm‘rfiwwu‘aw “3“” la a

down into separate phases (e.g., planning one’s paper, then brainstorming ideas) apriori,

but was subsumed in the natural flow of the discourse. Second, unlike many writing

 

programs that have students working independently Orin small grogs, Morning Message
was a social dialogue that involved the entire £1333“ Trisha served as scribe, so students

could concentrate their attention on meaning construction. Importantly, the written

message on the chart paper was a critical source of mediation for students, as they saw the
immediate effect of their and their peers’ suggestions in writing. In other words, a l/’

student’s oral language was constantly seen as translatable into written text Finally,

 

Morning Message involved the use of a single student’s personal experience each day as

L—

231

the content for the construction of the written text, creating unique opportunities for.“

 

students to come into contact with their peers in the community.
Widyimpomt affordance" inMomingMeesage-was theoppgrtfiunity for
students to practice using the many writing skills and strategies that more able writers

 

routinely cage in. Though it is impossible to represent all of the various conventions that
students in Trisha’s class used (see Figure 13 for a depiction of Trisha’s “Literacy Content
Moves”; see Appendix D for specific examples and definitions), we examine several
transcripts below to highlight some specific examples and give a flavor of the Morning
Message discourse. In addition to commentary and analysis preceding and following each
section of transcript, I have turderlined specific portions of the text to highlight particular
conventions.

In the following two transcripts, I illustrate one common feature of Morning
Message, the importance of organization, and a number of specific conventions that define
this feature, including using a clear topic sentence, using categories of information with
supporting details, indenting new categories of information to tell the reader that there has
been a switch in topic, and excluding details that do not fall under a particular category to
another portion of the text. In the first transcript of March 22, a new student, Angie, is
being introduced to the class through Morning Message. This use of Morning Message is a
standard operating procedure in Trisha’s classroom. In fact, in the first line of this
transcript, Byron suggests that the teacher did not have to shake the jar and draw a name
because there was a new student: “No, Angie’s supposed to be the one. She’s supposed
to go first, she’s the new kid.” This transcript is used to illustrate the use and importance
of having categories of information, in this case, to introduce someone to their parents.
The md transcript, on April 8, then shows how miscommunication around the inclusion
or exclusion of a particular detail under a category makes visible the centrality of

organization as a fundamental affordance to students in Trisha’s room.

82

March 2;. On March 22, Angie, a new student to the class, is chosen as the

author. As was typical in the past for other new students, the class brainstormed a number

of categories that they might inquire about As the following transcript illustrates, many of

the categories, such as “eats,” “family,” “looks,” and “does” have become internalized by

students to the point of automaticity. However, a recent term that had been introduced in

the months preceding this message by Trisha was the term “characteristics.” A discussion

ensues about what this category might include, especially whether this category would

subsume other categorical labels in the past, such as “looks.” Clearly, this discussion

results in much confusion among members of the group, including Trisha herself, but it

makes visible a number of conventions that were prominent features of Morning Message.

002
003

004
005

006
007
008
009

010
011
012

013
014

015
016
017
018

Trisha:
Trisha:
Geno”.

Trisha:
Janitra

Trisha:

Ok, she’s the new student, thanks for reminding me. Ok, Angie,
come up and sit in the chair.

Okay, let’s think about some categories. What do you want to
know about her?

Nothing.
Gerry, you just spent a point. Janitra?
How big she is?

So what is that? Angie’s here (name within middle of categorization
map).

Tall
What would it be though, would it be tall?
Characteristics.

Characteristics. Oh, I need a bi gger circle. I didn’t think you guys
would remember that!

 

Ok, what else do you want to know about, Hia?
Her sister.

Her sister, so what is that categm?
Family.

019
020

021

022

026
027

029
030
03 l
033

035
036
037
039
041

Trisha:

Tracey:

Trisha:

Trisha

Byron:
Trisha:
Angie:
Trisha:
Janitra:

Trisha:

Gerry:

Trisha:
Tracey.
Trisha:

233

Eamily. good job (Me with word “family” in it). What else
do you want to know about? Tracey?

Things that she do, gig? (Trisha gmws oircle with word “does” in
it).

What else would you like to know about? Danny?
What she likes to ye_a_t.

What she likes to g m with word “eats” in it). Any
other MES. you want to know about? Byron?

Where does she go?

Wheredoesshego? Wegot‘m”? Wouldthatgounder “m”?
Kind of.

Kind of, okay. Janitra?

(DannY interim":n MEI—imam?)

(Holds floor for Janitra) Janitra, did you have your hand up? What
did you wantamon? Do you want me tocorne back to you?
Okay. Gerry?

We can’t see that.

I know, it doesn’t matter. Tracey?

What does she like to wear?

What she likes to m. You know, what I should do is just put this
on a big piece of paper and whenever we get a new kid, just put it
on the board, because they’re basically the same categories except
one w you weren’t supposed to remember because its way
beyond the fourth grade.

In this first phase of Morning Message, students are engaged in the creation of

categorical labels to guide the planning of their paper, especially as it relates to the nature of

questions Angie will receive. Trisha uses the word “category (ies)” six different times and

simultaneously draws a circle with the specific label students give her, modeling one

possible convention for separating categories from specific details. Though Danny is

particularly automatic in brainstorming categories, a close inspection suggests that several

234

other students are less clear about their understanding. In line 008, Janitra offers “how big
she is” as a possible category and a second student in line 010 says “tall.” Danny then
provides the label “characteristics” to encompass both students’ ideas. Similarly, in line
026, Byron offers “where does she go” as a possible category, and is questioned by Trisha
for clarity. Janitra is again given the floor in line (BO, but is interrupted by Danny who
offers a common category in the community, “what she likes to wear.” Though Trisha
holds the floor for Janitra, she declines to comment. However, Tracey borrows or
“venuiloquates” through Danny by repeating “What does she like to wear” in line (36 and
is taken up and affirrned by Trisha’s repetition of the phrase in line 036.

This seemingly simple brainstorming of categories points to a key feature in the
learning of writing conventions in Morning Message: Students’ understandings of
conventions like developing categories to organize one’s writing are made visible on a
social plane. As a result, zones of proximal development, these regions of sensitivity in
which children are not able to complete a particular task without the support of a more
knowledgeable adult or peer, are created for students on a moment-to-moment basis. For
example, four students, Hia, Tracey, Janitra, and Byron, all offer details, not categories,
allowing for Trisha and others (e. g., Danny) to nudge students to more correct conceptions
of the convention under consideration. For example, in line 016, I-Iia says he wants to
know about “her sister.” Trisha then takes Hia’s partially correct idea (i.e., a detail under
the category of family) and redirects it to the group, asking in line 017 “Her sister, so what
is that category?” Danny then correctly responds by saying “family,” making visible a more
correct conception. Over time, it is hoped that these social dialogues may go underground
and be transformed to guide independent action.

In the second phase of this Morning Message transcript, we see an additional
writing convention discussed, that of sequencing one’s paper by determining what order

categories should proceed in so that we are sensitive to the needs of our audience (i.e.,

235

 

parents).

040 Trisha: Okay, which one should we M with? What she eats what she
041 WWW? Byron.
042 what do you think?

043 Byron: What does Angie Q.

044 Trisha: What does Angie do. So you think that should be the fimt one?
045 Raise your hand if you agree that we should _start_ with “What Angie
046 , as”? Okay, what other ideas might we have; —what she wag,
047 wigt she mtg, box family, oxo chomteristics? Janitra?

048 Janitra: What she a.

049 Trisha: What she gs. Raise your hand if you think that’s the way we
050 should gtgt this. Okay, we have one for that. Okay, let’s see, do
051 you think mtg too? (nods yes). Okay, so you and Danny.

052 Jerrod: Me tool! (several others jump on bandwagon)

 

053 Trisha: (thinking-aloud) kay, now let’ s think When you .. a;
054 _ introduce anpmerson, o _ Q ately tell people what she eats? j
055 Jerrod: Yeah.

 

056 {

057 S: N o.

058 {

059 S: Emily.

32(1) Trisha W0“ ‘8“ aWLthsmLm‘L
062 Mark: Characteristics.

063 Trisha: W. You want to talk about the person {tort Okay, you
064 want to tell about their theristies first.

065 Danny. Can their characteristics go, I mean, with gully?

066 Ss: No, it goes with will

067 Trisha: It can, it can. It oeoonds how you do it. It can.

068 Trisha: Wage. Who can givgog the

Angie:

Trisha:

Gerry:
Trisha:

Trisha:
Ss:

Janitra:

Trisha:

Trisha:

Mr. M.:

Trisha:
Byron:
Trisha:

236

Tracey?
“Hi, my name is...” (confused)

Good. You’re thinking, Tracey said “Hi, my name is.” She’s
trying to figure out how we can i ng_o_duce Angie. Gerry?

Um, you have to M.

You have to i ndent. Byron.

She can say “Hi, my name is Angie.”

Okay, “Hi, my name is Angie”. So we’re reading this, our mmnts
are reading this and they pick it up and they say, “Hi, my name is
Angie”?

Uh uh (students feel something is wrong)

{

No, no.

(Holding imaginary Morning Message paper) 1 ooo’t mow,
actually. You know what, when I write a letter home to parents,
that’s what I say. “Hi, my name is Ms. Williams.”

Yeah. Mr. Mariage, do you have any ideas?

I don’t know I was thinking we can do it “We have a new kid in
class named Angie,” but I think either way can work.

 

Byron?
“We have a new kid in our class. Her name is Angie. Um...”

Okay, we have two ohg'ces then. We have “Hi, my name is Angie”
and “We have a new student in our class. Her name is Angie.”
Who wants “Hi, my name is Angie”? Raise your hand. Okay, who
wants “We have a new student in our class and her name is Angie”?
Okay, let’s M it that way.

This stretch of talk illustrates another important affordance in Morning Message,

that of sequencing one’s story to be sensitive to the needs of one’s audience. In line 040-

042, Trisha solicits suggestions as to what category might be appropriate to start Angie’s

introduction. Byron suggest that the group should start with what Angie “does” in line

043, which is then repeated by Trisha and followed by the tag question, “So you think

237

that should be the first one?” in line 044. Instead of imposing her own opinion, Trisha
gives responsibility back to the group by asking students to raise their hands if they agreed
with Byron’s suggestion that the message should start with “What Angie Does.” Trisha
then repeats the call for suggestions and Janitra says that what Angie “eats” would be an
appropriate category to start the message. Trisha again allows the group to raise their
hands to show support or disagree with Janitra’s suggestion. Several students, including
Danny and Jerrod show their support for Janitra’s idea, prompting Trisha to think-aloud in
lines 53 and 54: “Okay, now let’s think about this. When you introduce a person, do you
immediately tell people what she eats?”

This sequence illustrates the delicate balance between the voice of students and their

J

 

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power to create their own message, on the one hand, and the importance of teaching the

M

 

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conventions of writing in the larger culture Trisha artfully balances the need for students

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to take ownership of their story, but recognizes that ultimately students need to become
agate of the wnvegfigmmmedmmschmfingmdthemfl_wmmumty
of writers. Trisha emphasizes the word “start” in line 040 and “first” in line 044 to help
W
nudge students toward more appropriate categories. However, after receiving categories
from Byron and Janitra that are not conventionally used when beginning introductions,
Trisha provides additional scaffolding by thinking-aloud and saying: “When you introduce
opegon, do you immediatelytellpeeple—what—sheeats?” in lines 053 and 054. This
prompt receives an ambivalent response, with Jerrod hanging on to his belief that what

 

Angie “cats” is an appropriate category, while two other students say “no” and “family,”
respectively in lines 057 and 059. Trisha then reiterates her point, asking again, “When
you introduce a person, what should you tell about them first?” Unlike the more open-
ended question in the previous statement (i.e., “...do you immediately tell people what she

eats?”), Trisha asks a directive that asks for a specific answer to the question, “What

238

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239

should you tell about them first?” In line 062, Mark responds “Characteristics,” to which
Trisha then elaborates upon by repeating Mark’s response and then instructing, “You want
to talk about the person first. Okay, you want to tell about their characteristics first.”

This movement from minimal teacher scaffolding and maximal inventiveness by
students to more scaffolding and increasingly conventional thinking is illustrated in Figure
15. As this figure indicates, Trisha began the discussion on sequencing by asking students
“How should we start?” and “What do you think?”, leaving open the possibility that
students may apply their own, non-conventional, or invented responses. Byron then
provides the category “do,” which then positions Trisha to give back to the group the
question “So you think that should be the first one?” and that functions to keep the
discussion open (and, indirectly, to not fully accept Byron’s answer without question).
Janitra then offers “What she eats,” again leading Trisha to provide additional support In
this case, Trisha takes control of the discussion and thinks aloud by saying, “Okay, now
let’s think about this. When you introduce a person, do you immediately tell people what
she eats?” Trisha ups the ante by questioning the group’s thinking up to that point and
attempts to appeal to their own experience by wondering if talking about what someone cats
is the way they would normally introduce someone. Jerrod remains convinced that this is
acceptable, though several students now question whether it would be appropriate.
Importantly, Trisha has provided no support for what a better reasoned introduction would
be up to this point, only that the students think more carefully about how they might
introduce or want to be introduced themselves. This serves to keep the impetus for
constructing a more reasoned answer in the hands of the students. Finally, Trisha seeks a
direct answer by framing the question as a directive, “When you introduce a person, what
should you tell about them first?” This elicits Mark’s response, “Characteristics,” which
Trisha then extends by emphasizing that an introduction should talk about the person first.

The third section of transcript outlined below highlights a third, and probably the

240

most obvious affordance, the range of editing and revising conventions that are negotiated
and practiced in the construction of the Morning Message story. Students are apprenticed
into the many important mechanical conventions such as punctuation, capitalization, and
spelling, but also into a wide range of semantic (i.e., word meanings) and editing/revising
conventions such as crossing out words, using carets to insert ideas, and using asterisks to
move entire ideas around in the paper (see Hannah and Danny’s Independent Editing and
Revising of a Morning Message in Figures 17 and 18 below). Unlike traditional
instruction in which these editing and revinng conventions are taught one at a time and
practiced on deoontextualized sentences or paragraphs (Allington, 1992), Morning Message
affords students multiple opportunities to use conventions in a meaningful and purposive
way. Editing and revising conventions are underlined to help alert the reader to the range
and type of these conventions as students continue to discuss how to introduce Angie to the

students’ parents.

094 Trisha: IamgoingtodowhatGarysaid,hetold me tom
095 Ss: Cam'talize.

096 Trisha: "We have a new student in

097 {

098 Danny: Ms. William's Class

099 {

100 Jerrod Ms. William's Class

101 Trisha: ....Ms William's class.

102 Danny: A tro e "s"

103 Trisha: mm 's'
104 Janitra: Not a class
105 {

106 Danny: Not at class.

107
108
110
111

112
113

114

115
116

117
118

119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129

130
131

Janitra:
Trisha:

Danny:

Janitra:
Trisha:
Angie:
Trisha:

Ss:

Danny and S:

Trisha:

Angie:

Janitra:

Trisha:

241

mum's!

I wasn’t even thinking. You said ml; "s" and I was doing
and "s'. (m "We have a new student in Ms. William's class

and...

her
name is Angie.

her
name is Angie.

(Bereads) "We have a new student in Ms. William's class and her
name is Angie.‘

Can I say something? Cam ”A” (on Angie)
_C_aoit_al_"A" . at an "A' hero? (in the word 'have')
Noll

Name.

Because its a porson's name. (Rereads) "We have a new student in
Ms. Wright's class and her name is Angie." Okay, we're going to
ask questions about ”Characteristics.” Oooh, this is hard.

Clearly, the use of various forms of punctuation, rules for capitalization (i.e., start

of sentence, names, special things), and marking of a new category by indenting became a

form of routinization, a habit of practice. However, this seemingly routine way of starting

a paper also carried with it many opportunities for Trisha to teach and reteach the

242

conventions. For example, in line 120, Trisha forces the students to extend their thinking
by taking Angie’s comment, “Capital ‘A’,” and pointing to the letter ‘a’ in the word ‘have.’
This comment causes a stir and positions students to explain why it is the ‘a’ in ‘Angie,’
specifically. After a number of students yell ‘Nol’, Danny, Byron, and another student all
say, “At Angie.” Trisha then pushes further, asking the students “Why?”, to which Angie
correctly responds in line 126, “Because its my name.” Trisha then restates for the group
Angie’s answer in the more conventional form, “Because its a person’s name.”

Up to this point, I have highlighted three fairly specific affordances of Morning
Message, helping children think about the needs of one’s audience by organizing their
paper into categories and supporting details, the importance of sequencing ideas in a way
that makes sense to the audience, and specific writing conventions for starting a paper
(e. g., topic sentence, indenting), various mechanical conventions (e.g., punctuation,
spelling), editing conventions (e.g., crossing-out words, using carets to add ideas,
asterisks), and revision strategies. In the next transcript, we extend the notion of
affordance to examine the social processes, including the ‘ways of knowing’ (Eisner,
1985) and valuing writing that are involved in Morning Message.

Am. Two weeks later, the issue of organizing one’s ideas into categories and
their supporting details provides the fuel for a different af f ordance in Morning Message,
that of seeing writing as a problem-solving venture as opposed to merely putting words
down on the paper. This affordance, though much more subtle, is perhaps the most
important affordance in Morning Message. Rather than view writing as a single draft,
students came to view writing as a problem to be solved, with the standard being the
question “Does it sound right?” If the text did not meet this standard, then the group took it
' upon themselves to construct and reconstruct the message in ways that were agreed upon,
if not by consensus, then by a convincing majority. The following sequences have been

discussed in different contexts in this chapter, but are used again because they

243

give us a rare glimpse into some of the underlying beliefs about writing, the conventions
this group has come to share, and the very nature of this particular community. The
transcripts encompass two separate, but directly related discussions. In the first transcript,
the class is debating whether Nathan’s detail, “I am going to bring a jar to catch some
bugs,” should fit under the topic sentence, “Ms William’s class is taking a trip to camp.”
The group does not resolve the issue and agrees that maybe temporarily shelving the
discussion and adding a new sentence will help clarify matters. As the Morning Message
activity ends, Trisha retums to Nathan’s idea and the discussion continues. This
continuing discussion is the content of the second transcript.

To help facilitate understanding of this complicated discussion, the completed
Morning Message story is shown in Figure 16. Nathan’s detail about catching bugs is
circled by Trisha and an asterisk is plawd next to this idea to ensure that the group comes
back to this issue at a later time. The first transcript includes the discussion that leads to the
circling of Nathan’s detail. The second transcript represents the group coming back to this
issue near the end of the Morning Message lesson.

In the following section, there is continuing disagreement as to whether Nathan’s
detail should be placed under the topic sentence or moved to the bottom of the page for
inclusion at a later time. At least two related issues serve to muddy the water, heightening
the confusion. First, the word “class” is being used in two ways. Gerry, Angie, Tracey,
Hannah, and the teacher understand the word “class” as representing the superordinate
category that is outlined in the topic sentence and signals “groupness.” Danny, and
perhaps Jerrod, Janitra, and Nathan, on the other hand, see the term “class” as
encompassing fourteen individuals. As a result, Danny wants to include Nathan’s idea, but
sees that it would take far too long to write a sentence about what each individual member
of the class is going to do at camp. Danny faces a dilemma: How does he preserve his

friend Nathan’s idea, while at the same time not allowing all of the other individuals to

April 8th, 1993
class is

Was
/\/\

They are N going canoeing.

 

"Nathan is going to bring

ajar to catch some bugs.

‘Tl're the
/\boys are going to be in one dorm and girls are going

/\

 

 

 

to be in another dorm.
They

ys\are going hiking and *

Ernal Versioii
Ms. William's class is taking a trip to camp.
They are going canoeing. The boys are going to be in
one dorm and the girls are going to be in another dorm.
They are going hiking and Nathan is going to bring a jar
to catch some bugs.

Figure 16 April 8 Morning Message

245

contribute their own ideas? A second challenge is the fact that most Morning Message

stories revolve around a single individual’s experiences, usually the author’s, and not an

entire group of individuals. This difference seems to create what Halliday & Hasan (1989)

refer to as a frame clash; the normal speaking register has been altered slightly, resulting in

a temporary state of confusion. Finally, there is a temporal dimension, the fact that the class

has not yet attended the camp, having speculated upon some of the events they would be

doing as a class but unsure as to the amount of non-scheduled free time individuals might

have.

277
278
279

281

290
291
292
293
294

295

Danny.
Janitra:
Trisha:
Geny:
Trisha:

Janitra:

6311')"-
Trisha:
Gerry:
Trisha:

Gerry:

Trisha:

Angie:

We're going to talk about insects aren't we?
We are. ”We are going to bring...“
That's what I am asking, that's what I am wondering, too, Janitra.
But the Class.
Just a minute, just a minute, Gerry...
”We are going to bring jars to catch bugs."
{
No we're not.

What Gerry? (holding his idea for him)
Um, um
What did you just say to me?
We aren't going

{

We aren't going to. Its really just Nathan. I think it
really was what mainly you were have a problem with, because we
were talking about all of us, and then all of the sudden its Nathan.

{
Nathan. Just Nathan.

But, uh,

296
297
298
299
301
302
303
304
305
306
308

246

Trisha: But if you want to keep it...
{

Janitra: We need a star (‘asterisk)

Trisha: You think just, maybe, right, we need a star (asterisk), you just,
maybe, a star, maybe we should put it lower after we talk about
what all of us are doing first?

Angie: Yeah. What we're gonna do.

Hannah: Or we THINK we're going to do.

Trisha: Yeah, what we think we're going to do.

Hannah: I see her point.

Trisha: Do ya? How many people see Angie's point? Raise your hand. (5
hands, Byron, Mark, Tracey, Angie, and Hannah). Raise your
hand, Angie, sol can count. Okay, I see Angie's point, too.

This exchange is interesting for several reasons. First, it makes visible the potential

for heated debate among individuals and groups of individuals as they negotiate meaning

with one another. When examining this and the following section, it becomes evident that

although the written message on the chart paper is mediating the discussion, there is almost

no actual writing being undertaken. Rather, the group spends the majority of its time

discussing, questioning, and critiquing. For example, in line 277, Danny poses a question

to the rest of the group, “We’re going to talk about insects aren’t we,” which serves to

strongly position others to provide support against his claim that Nathan’s detail is

acceptable. Janitra immediately supports Danny’s point, saying “We are. We are going to

bring...,” but then is repositioned by Geny’s statement in line 280, “But the class.” This

difference in opinion is then further fueled when Janitra provides a sentence that, if true,

can potentially solve the disagreement, “We are going to bring jars to catch bugs.” Gerry

responds directly after Janitra completes her sentences and states, “No we’re not.” Trisha

seizes Gerry’s idea and holds the floor for him to repeat what he says, and then revoices

Gerry’s three word response (“We aren’t going”) by saying in line 290-292, “We aren’t

247

going. It’s really just Nathan. 1 think it really was what mainly you were having problems
with, because we were talking about all of us, and then all of the sudden its Nathan.” This
unusually strong one-sided support by the teacher is taken up by the most vocal dissenter
of Nathan's detail, Angie, who passionately agrees and says, “Nathan. Just Nathan” on
the coattails of Trisha’s response.

Perhaps recognizing her strong stance for Angie’s idea, Trisha then seems to re-
open the fioor in line 296 by saying “But if you want to keep it...,” which effectively
prompts Janitra to suggest using an asterisk (star), a convention the group uses to move a
word, sentence, or even an entire paragraph to another part of the message. In lines 299-
301, Trisha then continues to soften her stance and return the meaning-making back to the
group, saying “...maybe, a star, maybe we should put it (Nathan’s detail) lower after we
talk about what all of us are doing first?” Angie again supports this idea, as if it reflects her
original position, and Hannah strengthens the argument by saying, “I see her point” in line
305. This prompts Trisha to ask the group for their collective opinions in line 306, in
which five of the twelve students present acknowledge Angie’s idea. Though Trisha
acknowledges that she, too, sees Angie’s point, she continues to push the discussion back

to the group as the transcript continues.

309 Mark: Ms. Williams.

310 Trisha: You, Janitra you don't see Angie's point? You don't think its right
311 to put down what we're all going to do together first?

312 Janitra: (nods no)

313 Trisha: No? Jerrod? Do you think we should leave it in here? ”Nathan is
314 going to bring...” instead of putting it towards the bottom?

315 Jerrod: Yeah.

316 Trisha: What do you think?

317 Danny. It sounds confusing if you put it down at the bottom because we're
318 talking about the whole (hands in a big circle) CLASS (frustrated

319 with decision).

351
352

353

354
355

Hannah:

Trisha:
Danny:
Trisha:

Janitra:
Trisha:
Janitra:
Trisha:
Danny:

Trisha:

Janitra:

Trisha:

Hannah:

Trisha:

Hannah:

248

Yeah, but its just like Nathanll
Wait, wait, wait. Its okay, its okay.
Then everybody's going to put something up there (hand on head).

Okay, this is a different, if we're going to do what Danny's saying
right now, then Danny's right, listen to this, Danny says that
everyone is going to put something up there. Like, Nathan says
"Nathan is going to bring a jar to catch some bugs.” Then you are
going to say something Danny. And then Janitra is. Is that what
your saying?” (No response)

Ms. Williams.

(ignores Janitra's comment to hold Danny's) Is that what you're
saying.

Ms. Williams.
Or not?

Yeah. If somebody is going to say they're going to play games,
then they're going to play games. And then say something about
camp.

They're ALL really good arguments, I am not sure what way to go
on this, I am not sure what we should do, but because we are really
stuck, we should try to get another sentence in to see what happens
with the next sentence. And I am just going to circle this (CIRCLES
Nathan' sentence).

Maybe you need a star on there Ms. Williams?

Well, not yet, because I don't know where it is going to go. But if I
do use it somewhere else, Janitra, you're right, I will use a star.
Um, but I am just going to circle it for now because I want to make
sure that when we are done I want to go back and look at this. And
Nathan, it has NOTHING to do with us not wanting it in the story.
We WANT IT THERE and its a GOOD sentence, and its
interesting...

Ms. Williams...

The question is, though, is whether it belongs in the place that its at.
So we're going to keep it regardless.

{

It looks like Nathan is just talking about
his self and not camp.

365
367
368
369
370
371
372

373

Danny:

Trisha:

Trisha:

Trisha:
Trisha:
Mark:

Trisha:

249

(disagreement) He's talking about he's going to bring a jar and
catch some insects. He didn't say anything else.

This is a really tough one. Okay, how about another question, a
comment, another comment, and see where that goes? Let me read
it, I am sorry. (rereads) ”Ms. Williams's class is taking a trip to
camp. They are going canoeing. Nathan is going to bring a jar to
catch some bugs.”

I think that is right. It should tell about people bringing stuff.
Okay, so you want to add something?

We should do that now that Nathan has that up there. Instead of
crossing it out and wasting the part of the paper that you could have
wrote on something else, we should just tell what we're gong to
bring/l And then go back to what we‘re going to play the games, and
stuff like that and...

Gerry.

Do you want to add something or do you just want to say that?
I just want to say that.

Okay, so did everyone hear what Mark said? Gerry?

As this sequence illustrates, Trisha effectively turned the meaning-making back to

the students. Whereas the earlier sequence lent support to the group who felt that Nathan’s

detail should be moved to the bottom of the page, this sequence saw the rallying of the

group who felt Nathan’s ideas were acceptable where it was in the story. In lines 310-311

and 313-314, Trisha acknowledges both Janitra and Jerrod who disagree with Angie’s

point and feel that Nathan’s detail should remain in the first paragraph. Trisha then asks

Danny, the author, what he thinks, and with much frustration, he says “It sounds
confusing if you put it down at the bottom because we’re talking about the whole CLASS

(hands forming a large circle).” Hannah follows Danny’s plea by vigorously disagreeing
and says “Yeah, but its just like Nathanll,” to which Trisha steps in and appeals for calm

(“Wait, wait, wait. Its okay, its okay").

This wquence also makes visible how the problem-solving nature of Morning

250

Message affords opportunities to occasionally fall into a heated and passionate debate.
Though the debate mode of discourse is rare in schools (Burbules, 1993; Edwards &
Mercer, 1987), that it is happening among third and fourth grade special needs students in
productive ways should not be overlooked. The intensely dialogic nature of this literacy
event provided a constant means to assess one another’s thinking. Just as a teacher works
in a student’s zone of proximal development by subtly pushing him or her to more complex
levels by removing or adding support, students too had access to their peers’ thinking. The
constant exposure to one another’s ideas provided continual fuel for confronting their own
thinking, creating a form of dissonance that has long been held as one hallmark of effective
instruction.

In the second section of the transcript, Trisha does come back to Nathan’s sentence
for further discussion. This stretch of talk is unique and unusual, because we gain insight
into the implicit rules and importance of the classroom community. In none of the other
Morning Message transcripts does Trisha take such extended ttuns. Trisha noticed the
occasional volatility of the discourse, and spent significant time trying to recast the day’s
events to help the students see where they may have formed agreement with one another.
Trisha again sides with Angie’s idea as being very important and quite accommodating to
the dissenters, hoping to nudge them towards a more tolerant position. Interestingly,
although the issue of Nathan’s detail consumes neariy two-thirds of the thirty-minute
Morning Message session, the event finally ends with agreement.

423 Trisha: Okay, I think we’re going to stop Morning Message. Let’s, what I
424 want to do is go back and see what you think now, where this is
425 (Nathan’s sentence)

426 {

427 Nathan: I’ll do it real quick.

428 Trisha: No, because I want to stop. Let’s check it (rereads). “Ms.

429 William’s class is taking a trip...” Read it (chorally) please. “Ms.

430 William’s class is taking a trip to camp. They are going canoeing.

43 l
432
433

434
435
436
437
438
439

Angie:
Trisha:

Trisha:

Danny:
Trisha:

Nathan:

Trisha:

Ss:
Trisha:

251

Nathan is going to bring a jar to
{
I know, I know

catch some bugs. Boys are going to be in one dorm and girls are
going to be in another dorm.” Okay, raise your hand if you think
this sentence is in the right place. Its good, perfect, right there.
Raise your hand if you want to put it some place else later? Okay,
that looks like a majority. Uml/I I am going to come back to this
Morning Message.

When?

Maybe Monday when we get back Bguse we oeed more work on
tl_u_'§. I think that what Angie was saying at the beginning was
EXTREMELY important.

She was just taking Nathan right out of the paper (defensively)
See, I think that

{
Yeah, she cut me right off.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. That’s what I want to talk about because I
think, Nathan, 1 think that’s what hurt us in Morning Message,
because there were some bad feelings, and that’s not what Angie,
she meant when she said it. See, REALLY, you guys could have
ggfified it with her so you understood. Angie wasn’t cutting
Nathan out of the paper. We WANT this sentence. And that’s what
she said, she said, Angie, you said it right out loud didn’t you. You
said, “We can put it some place else.” Nathan, this is a wonderful,
wonderful sentence! We want to know that, and that’s what Angie
said. But the minute you guys thought she was going to move it,
you guys said “She doesn’t want my sentence” (horrified). And

you got upset, and I think that hurt us in Morning Message, because
you have to ask Angie if that’s what she’s san'ng, or ask me, that’s

not what she was saying at all, was it Angie? Was it Angie? (head
down on desk). Now ANGIE feels bad because she thinks you’re

mad at her and there’s no reason to be mad because she wanted your
sentence. Its pretty confusing. So I think you just need to figure
out when someone says something you need to ask them Nathan

you say to her, NICELY, but you say “Are you gong to take my
86an out?” And I’ll bet you Angie’s answer would have been...

No.

 

No. I wonder sometimes.

470
471

472
474
475
476
477

478
479

491

Nathan:

Trisha:

Janitra:

Trisha:

Trisha:
Tracey:
Trisha:
Trisha:

Janitra:
Trisha:
Trisha:

Janitra:

252

But if she wants my sentence, then why didn’t she keep it right
where she, where it is?

W; were m’ting as a whole gxo_t_to in what we were doiog, or wha_t
we were going to do. Because she’s seen that this isn’t how we

normally write. And then it switched right to Nathan by himself.
And so she was thinking, I think they...YEAH! What Janitra just

said. Can you say it again.
Maybe that, we are gonna go first and he can go at another time.

YEAH, like everybody does one paragraph and then the next
paragraph could’ ve been what everybody wanted to do separately.
So it could’ve been “Nathan is going to bring a jar to catch some
bugs. Geoy is going to bring a book to read at night.” Who
knows. “Mo. William’s is going to bring her Garfield sleeping
b_ag.” i mean, it would have been a new mgmoh on that ottyfi‘.

Do you understand what we were saying? Danny, do you
understand what we’re saying. Because if you felt bad about it,
that’s why you wanted to keep, because you didn’t want to have
hurt feelings. But that’s not what was happening? Do you
understand that Danny?

Yeah, but we just can’t fit everybody (ideas) on there (almost
crying).

So you think that maybe we couldn’t do a whole paragraph about it?

I know where that sentence goes!

Okay, just a minute, just a minute.

Okay/l Oh, boy.// I fink Danny was concerned about Nathan
because, you know what’s really hard, is that we are so close in this
room. We are. We’re the family in Room 104, and nobody wants

. to hurt anybody else’s feelings, Byron. And so when, and Danny

was trying to help his friend Nathan’s sentence in there, so he
wouldn’t have hurt feelings. But, but Danny, when we just talked
about having it in another paragraph, that wasn’t good enough,
because Danny thought, look at all the pe0ple in here, he’s thinking,
oh my gosh, if we had a sentence for each person in here that would
be one, two...and I am going to camp, so that’s fourteen.

You would need another paper (piece of chart paper).

TWELVE sentences. You better believe it (you would need another
Paper).

But he was thinking, we can’t do it that way because its too many.

Too many sentences.

253

509 Trisha: So he was still concerned that Nathan’s sentence was going to be
510 dropped out, and he didn’t want that.

511 Janitra: Now Danny’s feeling a little down.

512 Trisha: f Yeah, I think we have a lot of people who shouldn’t feel down.

In this rare occurrence of Morning Message, we see Trisha assume a coaching role
for her “family.” Trisha directly informs the group that this message does not meet the
quality standards in both its content and the ways in which individual members participated
in the construction of meaning. In lines 441-443, Trisha announces to the group, “...we
need more work on this,” which is then followed by her repeating an earlier statement that
Angie’s idea for moving Nathan’s idea towards the bottom is “EXTREMELY important” to
consider. This evokes a wave of emotion, and both Danny and Nathan become defensive,
with Danny saying in line 444, “She was just taking Nathan right out of the paper,” and
Nathan actually interrupting Trisha in line 447 and saying “Yeah, she cut me right off.”
This leads Trisha to. embark on an extensive stretch of talk in which she suggests that the
unwillingness to listen and seek clarification by asking questions of one another, two of the
hallmarks of Morning Message, “...really hurt us in Morning Message,” which she repeats
twice in her speech. Just as a team is dependent upon all of its members, and wins and
loses together, Trisha emphasizes that it “hurts” all of our team when there are members
who are not working for the betterment of the team. Trisha then states the usually implicit
rttle for talking in lines 464-467, “Sol think you just need to figure out when someone
says something, you nwd to ask them, Nathan you say to her, NICELY, but you say “Are
you uying to take my sentence out?”

Not satisfied with this explanation, in lines 470-471, Nation says, “But if she
wants my sentence, then why didn’t she keep it right were she, where it is?”, which then
leads Trisha to make visible another implileit convention in lines 472-474, the use of

categories: “We were writing as a whole group in what we were doing, or what we were

254

going to do. Because she’s seen that this isn’t how we normally write. And it switched
right to Nathan by himself.”

After Janitra suggests that maybe Nathan’s idea can go down at the bottom later, a
position she had not supported earlier, Trisha then attempts to model how such a change
might work, creating a possible scenario by restating Nathan’s idea, giving a detail to
Gerry about bringing a book to read, and then to herself about bringing a Garfield sleeping
bag. This modeling seems to have an effect on Danny, and in line 489-490, Danny finally
suggests that he understands, but, nearly crying, he says, “Yeah, but we just can’t fit
everybody up there.” This comment triggers Trisha to understand his point of view and the
reason for the misunderstanding, the delicate balance between preserving his friend
Nathan’s idea in the story, but being metacognitive of the time it would take to be equitable
and allow all the students to have a sentence in the new paragraph. This is a critical
juncture point for the group, and creates an important lesson for group members. The
lesson ends with the following short stretch of talk:

513 Trisha We’re going to stop Morning Message. Tracey, do you have

514 something to cheer us up. It’s Tracey’s turn.

515 Tracey: See, look, (walks up to board). See THIS (Nathan’s sentence)
516 , should go down with this (last sentence). See its, “on the way, on
517 the, Nathan is going to bring a jar to catch some bugs.” “They are
518 going”. That (Nathan’s sentence) should go with THAT ("They are
519 going hiking").

520 Trisha: Ohhh. She thinks that this one, “Nathan is going to bring a jar to
521 catch some bugs” can go with this one, "They are going hiking”?
522 Tracey: Yeah.

523 Danny: That’s...

524 Angie: That’s what I meant to say.

525 Danny: That’s what she meant.

526 Janitra: Maybe that’s what she meant to say.

527 Mark: Then put “AND Nathan is going to bring the jar to catch some

255

528 bugs.”

529 Janitra: Maybe you put it down here where it started.

530 Trisha: Okay, so take the period away and I’ll put “and” here and put the
531 star (asterisk) here instead of down here (all the way at very bottom
532 of page)

533 Nathan: (happily) I am going to bring two jars. I am going to bring two
534 jars.

535 ' END

After over a half-hour of intense debate and some passionate feelings about the
message, the team claims a temporary victory. Interestingly, it was Tracey’s suggestion, a
player who had little involvement across the day’s lesson, that leads to an agreed upon
resolution. Tracey makes the fairiy complex suggestion that the group could extend the
sentence about the group’s going canoeing and tag-on Nathan’s detail. In this way,
Nathan’s detail becomes attached to a group event, nicely tying the two disparate camps
together. This appeals to everyone, and seems to leave everyone satisfied. At least until
the next game begins tomon'ow.

This sequence illustrates the importance of the classroom community on the quality
of the problem-solving atmosphere. Without the investment of students into the task at
hand and in their relationships with one another, it is doubtful that the above sequence of
talk would ever have taken place. This critical insight has not been discussed extensively in
the social constructivist literature and illuminates how the larger social context might
influence the types of learning that are afforded in a particular curriculum genre. As
researchers continue to study the types of affordances that are made available to students as
teachers construct and reconstruct various curriculum genres, it will be critical to examine
both the moment-to-moment discourse moves and the interrelationships of group members
that determine the qualities of the classroom community. If researchers hope to affect
change in language using practices in schools, they must be able to account for generic

processes at both the microanalytic and more macro-level of the classroom community. In

256

turn, the discussion of how the creation of different social contexts creates differential

opportunities for students to internalize and transform social dialogues to guide independent

action will help researchers and teachers understand the interrelationships between language

and context. The next section examines the link between the social dialogues in Moming

Message and the internalization of these dialogues in students’ independent writing.
temalizati and Transfer f ' Di es to Ind t Wri 'n

The final affordance that will be discussed is the possible internalization of the
social dialogues of Morning Message to guide independent action. This question is
particulariy important in the study of Morning Message because the children did not engage
directly in the physical writing of the message. Equally important, does the level of verbal
involvement by individual students have an influence on the quality and number of
conventions that are transferred to independent writing? However, it should be
remembered that this examination in no way represents causal connections. As suggested
earlier, students had multiple opportunities to write across the curriculum in Trisha’s
classroom. At the same time, it was largely in Morning Message that the various
conventions of writing, especially editing and revising conventions, were introduced and
practiced on a daily basis.

In order to gain access to what children might have internalized from the Morning
Message dialogues, two conditions were created that examined the students’ ability to (a)
edit the unedited Morning Message story from a student in another teacher’s classroom,
and (b) independently write and edit their own Morning Message story. In both instances,
the conditions were made to be as meaningful as possible. In the editing task, the students
were told that a student from another school had completed a Morning Message story but
sought their help in editing it for final publication. To help insure that a child’s reading
ability did not interfere with their understanding of the text, Trisha placed the imaginary
child’s (Shay) story on the overhead projector and read through the passage twice. She

257

then directed the children to make any changes needed, just like they did in Morning
Message. Furthermore, Trisha played-up the fact that they had done Morning Message all
year long and this was their opportunity to show how much they learned. In the second
task, the writing of their independent Morning Message stories, Trisha again told the
students that since they had done Morning Message together as a group for the entire year,
this was a chance for them to show how well they could write and edit their own stories.
To insure more authenticity, Trisha told the students that they would all be able to read their
Morning Message stories in the Sharing Chair at the end of the period. Both of the tasks
took place during the usual Moming Message time and were conducted on different days
during the last two weeks of school.

Analysis of the transfer measures will be done in two ways. First, an examination
of each of the members’ verbal participation is examined in comparison to the breadth and
quality of their editing on Shay’s unedited Morning Message story. Second, a more
detailed examination of several ease students’ editing task and construction of their
independent Morning Message story will be undertaken, including an examination of
possible differences in the level of internalization of younger second grade students and the

older students in Trisha’s room.

 

 

 

Verbal mdmfigg and gun ng. Perhaps the most pressing and difficult research \
agenda in the study ofclassraoom disceurseisattempting sounderstandhow discourse on a L"

social plane becomes internalized and transformed to guide independent action (McCarthey,

.W I.
w ""“""’“‘h Wee-*w- MeW‘A-Infl’fl ”Mm.-.“ " YMM' '”

1991). Since it is not possible to examine how voices rnterammate and come into contact
with one another as they create the intrapsychologieal plane of development, researchers
must rely on other methods to assess this invisible process. In this study, I was
particularly interested in the internalization of social dialogues as they might be evidenced in
concrete writing outcomes. Since this study attempted to move beyond merely describing

the discourse forms and functions in the two literacy events, and hoped to show how these

258

curriculum genres afforded particular literate actions, it was very important to understand
whether the students in this study could demonstrate their developing competencies in
writing under conditions that differed from the whole class dialogues that typified Morning
Message. Two transfer measures emerged based upon the need to examine critical
affordances that I thought existed in Morning Message dialogues, including the many
writing conventions that were discussed in social interaction, especially editing and revising
conventions, and the eventual improvement in students’ independent writing.

One question that emerged from the study of this particular classroom was whether
the amount of verbal participation in Morning Message was related to the breadth and
quality of the editing the students undertook in the editing transfer measure. A second
question this study asked was how individual students participated in the various
curriculum genres. In order to gain some insight into these two questions, a scoring
protocol was developed for Shay’s unedited Morning Message story (Figure 9). Each
individual student independently edited Shay’s story. Passages were then scored and
students were rank-ordered. The student with the most editorial changes was given the
rank of “l” and so forth. To assess verbal participation, the total number of speaking turns
for each child was summed and divided by the number of Morning Message sessions in
which they were present. This figure represented the average number of speaking turns per
Morning Message lesson. Again, students were rank-ordered, with the student who had
the highest average speaking turns per message given the rank of “l” and so forth. The
results of this examination are shown in Table 11.

As this table suggests, there were some very interesting trends and patterns of
response. Perhaps the most striking is the correlation between verbal participation and the
number of editing changes students made. Five of the first six most active participants in
Morning Message were the same students who made the most significant editing

suggestions for Shay’s story. In other words, it appeared that verbal participation in

259

Table 11 Rank-Order of Editing Changes and Level of Verbal Participation in Morning

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Message

W— Number of Average Number of
Editing Speaking Turns in
Changes Morning Message

Angie 4 37 1 32 3 |

Janitra 4 31 2 20 5

Danny 4 30 3 2

Nathan 4 25 4 4

Mark 4 24 5 8

Hannah 4 22 6 1

Amber 3 21 7

Juan 4 l9 8

Jerrod 4 18 9

Tracey 4 12 10

Gerry 3 11 11

Byron 3 10 12

Nigel 3 6 13

Hia 3 2 14

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

260

Morning Message may be a strong indicator of the level of internalization students achieved
in using editing conventions. Though only speculative, it may be that students who were
active participants in the Morning Message dialogue were so because the various editing
conventions were more automatic and easily retrievable, whereas other students were still
learning the various conventions.

Another possible trend appears between the grade level of the student and the
amount of editing changes they made. As the table illustrates, the four lowest scores were
all third grade students. Only one student, Amber, scored higher than other fourth grade
students. However, this may be explained for several reasons. First, Hia spoke very little
English, and was trying to find ways in which to enter the dialogue. Nigel and Amber, it
will be recalled, often missed the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the Morning Message
lesson, making it difficult to enter a conversation that had already begun. In fact, both
Gerry and Byron had higher verbal participation than Nigel and Amber, most likely
because these students were there for the entire lesson. However, even given these
caveats, it appears that development and practice plays a particularly important role in
learning editing/revising conventions.

Younger students did not appear to lave internalized the social dialogues at the
same level of their slightly older and more experienced peers. With the exceptions of Mark
and Hannah, students who had qualified for special education in the fourth grade, all of the
other fourth grade students had at least a full year apprenticeship in Trisha’s middle
elementary classroom, while four of the five third grade students had recently come from
the K-3 Early Literacy Project classroom (i.e., the early elementary room of Ms. Barnes).
As noted earlier, Trisha was the only teacher in the Early Literacy Project to use Morning
Message five days per week, adding to the time students were apprenticed in the Morning
Message dialogue. Though beyond the current study, other ethnographic data collected

over two years in Trisha’s room seems to support a fairly strong trend based upon

261

development and practice. Students who tended to have less verbal participation during
their first year in Trisha’s classroom later became the leaders as older and more experienced
students matriculated to the upper elementary classroom and new, less experienced students
moved up from the early elementary classroom (Mariage, in preparation).

A final analysis of the data that should not be overlooked is the sheer number and
quality of editing/revising conventions/suggestions made by students. In the editing task,
thirteen of the fourteen students recognized at least one of the three incoherent sentences in
the story and made important changes. Eight of these thirteen students recognized all three
(n=4) or two of the three (n=4) unclear sentences and made appropriate changes.
Moreover, twelve of the fourteen students made at least ten or more editing/revising
changes to the story. This finding is particularly important given the plethora of
documentation that suggests that learning disabled students tend to be much less strategic
writers and readers than their regular class peers, failing to monitor many aspects of their
composition and comprehension (Raphael, Englert, & Kirschner, 1989). This lack of
metacognitive awareness has come to define instructional recommendations for these
students (Palincsar & Ransom, 1989), and it appears that Morning Message is particularly
effective at helping special needs students come to gain control of and regulate the editing
and revision of another’s paper.

Of course, many questions remain. Flrst, these findings are not causal, as there
was no pretest data to control for background knowledge, nor was there a non-
experimental control group to compare results. Rather, these data represent a snapshot of
these students at one point in time. Second, it was beyond the scope of this study to
examine the quality of each individual student’s verbal participation. Verbal participation
was measured only as the quantity of turns, not on any qualitative measure. It remains
tenable that a child may not have extensive verbal participation but internalize a great deal.

However, it is hoped that the numerous transcripts have helped the reader come to learn

262

about some of the various students and lend some initial support for the assertion that
verbal participation may be an important indicator of the extent children had learned about
various features of the writing process. Finally, it was not possible to control for the
influence of other curricular events on the students’ ability to edit. It may be the ease that
students learned editing/revising conventions in other classrooms (e.g., their regular
education classroom) or in other curricular events. Though there are some powerful trends
in this initial transfer task, it is only speculative in nature. The above limitations are
important considerations for further study of the potential affordances of Morning
Message. The next section examines in more depth three students’ performances on the
transfer tasks.

Editinglrevising task and indemndent writing: Three cases. For purposes of
illustrating further the possible affordances provided in Morning Message, three students,
Hannah, Danny, and Ray were chosen. Hannah was chosen because of her number one
ranking in average verbal participation in Morning Message lessons. Hannah was a fourth
grade girl who had only recently qualified for special education services, and had
participated in Morning Message for just three months. Danny, a fourth grade student, was
chosen due to his extended participation in Early Literacy Project classrooms (i.e., 2.6
years) and his leadership role in Morning Message discussions. Ray, a second grader in
Mrs. Barnes’ lower elementary special education classroom, was chosen due to his
younger age and one year participation in Morning Message.

Both Hannah and Danny were active in their editing/revision of Shay’s story,
making 22 and 30 editing changes, respectively. As indicated in Figures 17 and 18, each
student made numerous mechanical corrections, including capitalizing the first letter of a
sentence, a special name (e.g., “D” in demon drop), and a city (cg, “L” in the city of
lansing; “H” for huff y bicycle). Other mechanical corrections included using commas to

create pauses in a list of names (e.g., Sara, Joan, and...), inserting periods at appropriate

263

full stops, and using apostrophes to indicate both contractions (e.g., don’t) and
possessives (e.g., Shay’s). When totalling the mechanical corrections, Hannah
successfully changed 9 of the 19 potential corrections while Danny changed 10 of the 19
possible corrections.

Hannah and Danny also engaged in more complex editing strategies, including
being able to assume the role of the parent audience and change the pronouns “we” and
“my.” For example, both students changed “we” to “Shay” and “my” to “her” in the topic
sentence, indicating they had internalized the importance of telling the parent audience the
specific author’s name (i.e., Shay). Without this critical change, the parent audience would
be left to wonder who the story was about. More impressively, each of the students
recognized the incongruities in all three of the incomplete sentences. Both Hannah and
Danny crossed-out the entire sentence fragment “1 like that” Danny simply eliminated the
sentence, while Hannah attempted to edit the sentence by crossing out the sentence
fragment, and changing the pronoun from “I” to “She.” Though it is difficult to discern, it
may be that Hannah intended to connect the sentence fragment to the next sentence, creating
a much more complex sentence: “She liked that her sister Julie and her friends Sara, Joan,
and Lori went on the Gemini.”

Hannah and Danny also edited the incomplete sentences “it is roller coaster upside
down” and “I went on the demon drop falls fast,” though in quite different and creative
ways. Hannah crossed out the period at the end of the previous sentence, “The Gemini is
scary,” creating a subject for the incomplete sentence “it is roller coaster upside down.”
The new sentence, though still not correct, approaches a more acceptable response: ‘The
Gemini was scary(,) it is (a) roller coaster (that goes) upside down.” Hannah then breaks
the next confusing sentence into two separate and appropriate sentences. She places a
period after “demon drop” and then uses a caret to insert the word “It” before “falls fast.”

The result is the two complete sentences, “I went on the demon drop” and “It falls fast.”

264

May 3, 1993

Shay's Morning Message
‘ihis weekend we went to cedar Wpoigtw with my}: er

grandma and grandpa smithMre-tba; Miner
sister Julie and her friends Sara,Joan§.ori

went on the Gemini .The Gemini is scary} it

is roller coaster upside down. i went on the

deamon dropfialls fast. When we got back

home todansing it was tit goodxfifihays

bicycle was stolen from the front yard. Shay
was not happy that she lost her huffy bicycle.
She was mada+ 77: epierson. WW fuck 56 rfl‘c w 18.

Figure 17 Hannah’s Independent Editing of Morning Message

265

May 3, 1993

She 's Mornin Messa e

figs weekendéé'iient to cedar point withmr
grandma and grandpa smith. Wt. My

. €- .
sister Julie andgefir friends Sarap'oargficri

winte on the Gemini. The Gemini ,1? Csmcary. )K

I ro ler coasterAlJpside down. lwent on the

 

deamon ritomfallskfast, .Wh‘gg we got back
auto lansing it was nt’good. Shays

bicycle was stolen from the front yard. Shay

wa§nm happy that she lost her Huffy stem.
QM
Shé‘was mad

Figure 18 Danny’s Independent Editing of Morning Message

266

Danny edited the incomplete sentences differently. Danny changes the verb tense
from the present tense, “is” to the correct past tense form “was” in the sentence “The
Gemini is scar”. Danny then crosses out the words “it” and “is” in the next sentence, and
inserts the words “the” and “went.” The resulting sentence, “the roller coaster went upside
down,” is a complete sentence. Danny then makes a similar change to Hannah’s in the
next sentence. Like Hannah, Danny uses a mret and adds the word “it” before “falls,” and
adds an additional word, “very” before the word “fast.” It appears that Danny intended to
create two sentences, “I went on the Demon Drop” and “It falls very fast,” though it is
difficult to tell, since there is not a period after the word “drop” and the word “it” is not
mpitalized to indicate a new sentence.

Finally, both Hannah and Danny inserted additional words or ideas that directly
affected the meaning and/or interest of the message. Hannah’s changes are particularly
complex, as she crosses out a period to make a compound sentence in one instance and
then adds a considerable number of words to clarify the end of Shay’s story. In the first
example, Hannah decides to cross out the period after the word “good,” and uses a caret to
insert the word “because.” The result of these two changes is the complex sentence,
“When we got back home to Lansing it wasn’t good because Shay’s bicycle was stolen
from the front yard.” At the end of the story, Hannah goes beyond the content of the story
and builds upon the sentence, “She was mad” by adding the string “...at the person who
took her bicycle.”

Danny also makes several changes; though not as complex as Hannah’s, they are
directly related to making the story more interesting to the audience. Danny feels that the
word “home” right before the word “lansing” connotes a double meaning, so he crosses
out the word “home.” He also appears to recognize that the ending of the sentence, “...it
wasn’t good,” is somehow incomplete. As a result, Danny uses a wet and adds the clever

words “a good site,” resulting in the sentence “When we got back to Lansing it wasn’t a

267

good site,” adding drama to the fact that Shay’s bicycle had been stolen. Danny then
inserts the word “very” in the last sentence, emphasin'ng the anger that Shay must have had
at losing her bicycle.

Clearly, both Hannah and Danny appear to have internalized many editing skills and
revising strategies. However, in order to further refine my understanding of the possible
factors that influence the internalization of these social dialogues, I conducted the same
independent editing task with the first and second grade special edueaticn students in Mrs.
Barnes’ early elementary class. This examination was particularly revealing, as it beeame
apparent that there was a ‘performance before competence” effect for the younger students
(Cazden, 1988).

Ray, a second-grade African-American boy who had participated in Morning
Message and similar activities (i.e., whole group construction of thematically related stories
that were edited using the same conventions as Morning Message) for one entire year is
particularly illustrative of this principle. In Ray’s edited story in Figure 19, a number of
editing and revising conventions are visible. First, Ray uses five carets, presumably
to insert additional words. Next, he draws an arrow and a star (i.e., asterisk) in lines three
and four, respectively, common conventions the group uses to indent paragraphs and move
an idea to another part of the paper. Finally, Ray inserts four periods, all at the far right
side of the paper.

What is so revealing about Ray’s example is that although he certainly has begun to
use a number of editing forms, or conventions, it is clear that he has not yet fully
internalized their functions in changing the meaning of written text. For example, it
appears that Ray has correctly noticed that carets are often used between two words to add
a new word(s) above the line, yet fails to add any words to change the meaning. He also
appears to have intemalized the rule that “periods go at the end of the sentence,” but is still
grappling with the idea that sentences do not necessarily. end at the right edge of the paper.

268

 

 

% this weekend we went to cedar point with my .

“ grandma and grandpa smith. llike that. My ~§ .

sister Julie and her friends Sara Joan Lori fl
went on the Gemini/\l‘he Ggmini is scary. it

9" is roller coaster upside downAl Went on trier"?
deamon drop falls fast /\When we got backu

1 home to lansing it was nt good. Shays,”

, bicycle was stolen from the front yardA Shay '

. was not happy that she lost her huffy bicycle,

( She waslrnad r

Figure 19 Ray’s Independent Editing of Morning Message

269

Ray’s example helps to shed light on the process of internalization in Morning
Message. Ray, like Hannah and Danny, has begun to appropriate some of the editing and
revising conventions that have been introduced in Morning Message. However, unlike his
older peers, Ray has not yet become facile in using these skills and strategies in conditional
ways that change meaning in the text. Ray, like a new apprentice, is “trying on” some of
the behaviors and actions he has observed in Morning Message. Unlike Hannah and
Danny, these behaviors appear to be somewhat random and disconnected.

This comparison across grade levels and experience seems a particulariy powerful
way to examine internalization, both within and between students over time. This brief
examination still leaves many questions unanswered. For example, it appears that Hannah,
in only three months, was able to internalize and use many of the conventions in Morning
Message very quickly. In her independently written Morning Message story in Figure 20,
we see additional evidence that Hannah has gained the ability to regulate and monitor her
writing. Hannah has incorporated the group’s convention of placing the circled letter “s”
above a word that needs to be clarified for spelling nine times. Interestingly, underlining a
potential misspelled word was not a common convention of the group, but is effectively
employed by Hannah to help her recognize words that have given her trouble. Hannah’s
accuracy in her self-monitoring is impressive. In eight of the nine words she marked as
nwding clarifieation, she correctly assumed that there was a needed change in spelling.
Hannah had only two words that she did not monitor correctly in the rest of her text, the

repeated use of “they” as “thay” and “bac” for “back.”

Hannah also shows evidence of using carets to change pronouns (e.g., “we” to
“they”; "They” to “Hannah") and to add new words (e.g., “went home” to “back to
school”). Hannah freely crosses-out words that do not fit and employs a number of

conventions learned in Morning Message, including the use of apostrophes to show

270
\‘ 3/ Th Ul‘Sfiy mane 3’ by

Hon nohs Class

.. Wan+ r,
”We/l eni +03 jay; 9528: OH fif::j;l:gp

 

 

Thursday June 3, 1993

Yesterday, Hannah’s class went on a field trip.

They went to Jackson Space Center. They study

space. Then when they were done studying about space
they went outside at Jackson Space Center and had lunch
then they played a game on the bars, but Hannah played
‘3fo Then they went back to school. Hannah had lot’s

0 un. .

Figure 20 Hannah’s Independent Writing of a Morning Message

271

ownership (e. g., “Hannah’s class”). Hannah also effectively eapitalizes the first letter of
each sentence and important words, like her name and “Jackson space center,” though she
thinks that this is one word and fails to capitalize the “s” in Space and “c” in Center.
Finally, Hannah uses a form of ending that Morning Message stories use nearly everyday,
the use of an exclamation mark to make the story more exciting.

Ray’s independent Morning Message story does not represent the complexity of
editing and revising that Hannah demonstrated, but does have a number of specific
changes, though too light to show-up on his copied story (Frgure 21). For example, Ray
correctly changes the word “We” to “Ray” in the first word of the well formed topic
sentence to insure that the parent audience knows who is being talked about in the story.
Ray also shows that he has internalized some of the eapitalization rules, including the name
of a local lake (i.e., Lake Lansing) and capitalizing “Ray” and “Marc,” though
overgeneralizing slightly and capitalizing “Me” in the second line. Though only evident in
the original copy, Ray erased several words to change the meaning of the text. For
example, in the last sentence, it is evident that Ray first had the sentence “we went to the a
Zak”, and then altered this sentence to read “and we what (went) to the prcck (park) and...”

What becomes evident in both Hannah and Ray’s independent Morning Message
stories is that both students have internalized perhaps the most important habit of all, that of
rereading their text to see if it makes sense. Unlike many special needs students who view
writing as consisting of only a single, unedited draft, it beearne evident in my observational
and written data that children came to develop the critical habit of rereading, appearing to
mimic the constant rereading of the text that their teachers did in Morning Message.

Though it appears that both age and experience in Morning Message are important
factors in the extent, quality, and range of editing and revising conventions, Morning
Message appears to be especially effective in affording students opportunities to change
children’s most fundamental belief’s about writing. Rather than view writing as something

272

. flay am! Marc w/ia)‘ 7LOLOJQ 1.. mgr/:5
We .WAaIL an/ 7’10 7‘}, 6. ocean MC ana’ 7191M:
W/zm‘ 2L0 Hie o’cep an/ 4m, We :WAafibflle
frock am/ Wale/a), far/K am’ we wid-

Ray and Marc went to Lake Lansing

we wentintotheocean MeandMarc
went to the deep end and we went to the
park and we played tag and we went

Figure 21 Ray’s Independent Writing of a Morning Message

273

to get “done,” these students have made the critieal shift to see their writing as needing to
make sense to the real audiences who read their stories. As children continue to participate
in the social dialogues around Morning Message, there is strong evidence to suggest that
children will continue to internalize and come to regulate more and more of the writing
process.

Summary

Morning Message represented a discourse space in which Trisha and her students
worked together socially to construct a written text around the personal experiences of one
student. Much like members of the community would help their neighbor raise a barn, the
teacher and other students helped the owner (i.e., the author) to build a text that would
stand up to the scrutiny of community members. Following such a metaphor further, it
was often the case that the community members (i.e., the audience) had greater numbers
and more knowledgeable members than the author, and it was expected that they would
offer more assistance. One particularly important more knowledgeable other was the
teacher, who had to move fluidly between the roles of facilitator, coach, trainer, apprentice,
and mediator.

The primary mode of discourse that drove the construction of text was what
Burbules (1993) calls “discourse as inquiry,” a form of discourse where speakers have a
specific goal to accomplish, yet collaborate with one another to share resources (i.e.,
knowledge) in the fulfillment of the group’s goal. However, in classrooms, it is difficult to
build a high level of commitment, participation, and sharedness from each of the group’s
members. In classrooms, unlike natural conversations between two intimate speakers,
there must be mechanisms by which members of the group (e.g., teacher, particular
students) involve one another to build ownership and give voice to those students who are
less inclined to participate. In this study, Trisha’s conversational involvement moves were

particularly important in aligning the cognitive and social participation of group members

274

(see O’Connor & Michaels, 1993). These moves, such as revoicing, floor-holding, and
repeating, served as the textual glue that created and reoriented social relationships among
group members and their relationship to the content under consideration.

A critical question has been the development of meaningful and purposive literacy
instruction for those students who bring to school vastly different linguistic resources and
experiences (Gee, 1989) than their middle class teachers and peers. Morning Message
afforded students a unique milieu in which to try out many writing conventions while
constructing a story based upon the personal experiences of a different student each day.

' As such, Morning Message was a particularly powerful bridge between students
experiences beyond school and their apprenticeship into the conventionalized knowledge of
the community of writers.

Finally, the study of literacy events like Morning Message must include both the
relatively stable features of the event, including the phases of activity and the rights and
duties of the various socially sanctioned roles, but also the moment-to-moment creation of
intermental contexts that result from the various discursive positionings. While the stable
features of the event largely determine the mode of discourse that is necessitated (e. g.,
inquiry, conversation, instruction, debate), it is equally important to understand how the
teacher and students create participant frameworks that align and realign both the content
and the social relationships among group members (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993).

CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Summary and Discussion

This study was an examination of how two literacy events, Sharing Chair and
Morning Message, were socially constructed and reconstructed by third and fourth grade
special education students and their teacher. This line of research is a particularly rich
field of study as it combines both the study of classroom activities that are cultural artifacts
and their construction through semiotic tools, especially discourse. In schools, it is largely
through instructional events and their patterned way of realizing the goals of that event that
meaning potentials are created, including the roles of student, teacher, and ways of
knowing and valuing disciplinary knowledge (Santa Barbara Discourse Group, l992b). It
is the particular enactments of instructional events that largely determine the educational
possibilities in which students will engage, including the opportunity to internalize and
transform various learning (Wells, 1994).

Beyond the theoretical implieations of studying the social construction of
instructional events, there seems to be a more important and more urgent need to study
these events, the assurance that language education is placed at the forefront of educational
reforms that continue to sweep across our nation (Wells, 1994). Specifically, it seems less
justifiable merely to study language for language sake, for if we are to move language
education into the forefront of learning in schools, then researchers and teachers must take
responsibility for studying how various literacy events are linked to particular forms of
learning (i.e., afford particular opportunities to internalize and transform literacy skills,
strategies, and ways of knowing). Ultimately, it is children who are the consumers of
curricular reform.

In order to understand how Sharing Chair and Morning Message were socially

constructed and reconstructed by Trisha and her students, it was necessary to ask a number

275

276

of sub-questions that might provide kernels of information that, taken together, described
the social construction of these literacy events. Before examining the impact of this study
on theory and practice, a brief summary and discussion of findings of this study follows.

In both Sharing Chair and Morning Message, there were rather explicit rights and
duties given to the roles of author and audience members. In turn, these rights and duties
served to frame the types of responses students engaged in with one another. For example,
students who read their journals in Sharing Chair, while given the right to eall on members
of the peer audience, also had the duty to respond to peers’ questions. As a result, student
authors were discursively positioned to engage in literate behaviors such as explaining a
particular point, justifying their actions, defending their position in the face of
confrontational queries, and clarifying information to help the peer audience to understand a
particular point. This finding is particularly important in that it suggests that when
researchers study different literacy events, they must take into account how socially
constructed roles and their unique rights and duties may result in differential discursive
positioning, and, thus, opportunities to learn. One should not assume that participating in a
particular literacy event will have the same impact on all students. Moreover, it seems
particularly important to ensure that all students have opportunities to participate in different
roles.

A second sub-question focused on how the discourse moves of the teacher and
students differed in the two literacy events. While only a small number of studies (see
Michaels, 1981) have examined classroom discourse in literacy events that moved away
from teacher-led question and answer sequences, this study also attempted to extend this
research by using a framework outlined by Burbules (1993). Rather than treat all literacy
events as having the same discourse goals, Burbules’ framework more clearly differentiates
events, making comparison of events within and across modes of discourse possible.

Sharing Chair and Morning Message, representing the discourse modes of

277

conversation and inquiry, respectively, placed different demands on both students and the
teacher. Although both of these literacy events had socially constructed roles for ‘author’,
‘audience’, and ‘teacher’, and both events used the personal experiences of students to
construct meaning, the goals of the two events (sharing stories and constructing a written
text) demanded different modes of discourse to accomplish their goals. These different
modes of discourse were particularly apparent when examining Trisha’s talk. In Sharing
Chair, with its goal the creation of a discourse space for children to share their stories in
conversations with one another, Trisha’s discourse profile showed that she accounted for a
relatively small percent (21%) of the total speaking turns. Importantly, the nature of her
turns were largely of two types, to facilitate the conversation and to model appropriate
conversational norms. Trisha sat on the floor with other audience members, bid for a
speaking turn by raising her hand after a student had read their story, monitored tum-
taking, modeled questions, and monitored the appropriateness of talk in the group.

Trisha’s talk in Morning Message, however, was dramatieally different. Trisha
served as scribe for the group and took 41% of the total speaking tums. Trisha
orchestrated a number of discourse moves, including a wide range of instructional, content,
involvement, and management moves. The content of Trislm’s talk showed that she was
introducing and extending students’ use of a number of conventions used by mature writers
in a wider community of authors. An examination of Trisha’s literacy content moves
showed that she was actively cultivating and apprenticing her students into a particular
literate discourse and literate behaviors related to reading and writing.

Furthermore, an analysis of the discourse profiles of each of the individual
participants revealed how different individuals participated in the two literacy events. A
. number of interesting findings, patterns and themes emerged in this analysis. First, there
was a wide range of verbal participation among students, including differences in the

percent of tums demonstrated by students in their different roles in the two events. For

278

some students, being the author was a powerful way to increase their verbal participation,
while other students were actively involved in both their roles as author and audience
member. Second, the quality of participation also differed across students and pointed to
the critical importance of creating discourse spaces such as Sharing Chair and Morning
Message to engage students in conversational and inquiry dialogues. As the example of
Gerry illustrated, teachers must not assume that children come to school with the
confidence, skills, and strategies of more experienced conversationalists. Learning
conversational norms such as telling a good story, asking appropriate questions, actively
listening, and describing your experience are discourse skills that must be developed in
school. Finally, there was a strong relationship between the level of verbal participation of
individual students in Morning Message and their ability to edit and revise another’s
Morning Message. Students with a high level of verbal participation tended to have a
higher number of revisions and made more complex changes to the unedited text.
However, it may be that these students were more verbally involved because they had a
deeper knowledge of editing and revision strategies to begin with. The notion of
“discourse profile” may have particularly important implieations for both assessment and
future classroom discourse research (see Hartman, 1991).

The results of this comparison in discourse profiles of the teacher and students
suggests that Burbules’ (1993) framework of discourse modes is useful in delineating the
types of discourse moves and literate behaviors that are afforded in different literacy events.
Different literacy events fostered the development of different conversational, discursive,
and cognitive abilities as students constructed meaning in response to the socially
sanctioned goals of each event. In the following sections, I extend the discussion and
summary by examining how the study of instructional events might impact both theory and
practice. I then conclude the chapter with an examination of the significance of this work,

its limitations, and possible directions that this line of research might take in the future.

\/'

279
Theory and Practice

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reform in ways that reflect a more constructivist approach to learning, it is imperative that
researchers have the theoretical understanding and methodological tools to capture the
complexities of studying how various contexts lead to the construction and reconstruction
of meanings (Green, 19%; Gee, Michaels, & O’Connor, 1992; Jacob, 1992).

Recently there has been a number of research ventures that have begun to draw
from these complementary fields in powerful ways (Christie, I991; Lemke, 1989;
O’Connor & Michaels, 1993; Santa Barbara Discourse Group, 1992b; Wells, 1994),
though the study of instructional events represents one particularly important step in
influencing the ways in which children experience school. In schools, it is largely in
instructional events that the conventions of culture are communicated and developed
(Christie, 1991), making them a particularly rich site for study.

In this study, I have attempted to show the complementary nature of a social
constructivist theory; tools of analysis taken from an interactional sociolinguistic
perspective, including discourse analysis and ethnographic methods (e.g., participant-
observation, fieldnotes, interviewing); and the study of two literacy events as primary units
of analysis. The results of this study have illuminated important theoretical and
methodological considerations, including several decisions that were made before

280

embarking on data collection and those that evolved from the study.

In this study, I adapted the study of literacy events in several significant ways to
address some of the potential problems outlined above. First, I followed the lead of the
Santa Barbara Discourse Group (1992a) and O’Connor and Michaels (1993) by choosing
an exemplary teacher. Unlike Christie (1991), whose study of the writing planning genre
revealed the lack of transfer in the meaning making process from the teacher to her
students, I chose apriori a teacher who I believed exemplified the potentials of the two
literacy events chosen. The ramifieations of this choice were to examine how one
exemplary teacher both created the relatively stable features of the event and used discourse
on a moment-to-moment basis to construct meaning with her students. By choosing
exemplary teachers, it is possible that researchers can begin to examine generic processes
that these teachers use across grade levels and events, leading to a more empirical base
from which to make instructional decisions.

A second choice that was made apriori was to use the work of Burbules (1993) to
inform my choice of literacy events to study. Importantly, neariy all of the research that
has examined classroom discourse in specific classroom events has focused on what
Burbules would call “discourse as instruction” (for exceptions, see Michaels, 1981).
Burbules’ framework provided an important first look at the various literacy events of the
Eariy Literacy Project, and accounted for both the goals of the instruction (convergent or
divergent) and the nature of the social relationship (inclusive, critieal). This framework
may be highly effective in further refining various events, raising potentially powerful
questions such as “What are examples of literacy events that represent each of the four
modes of discourse, instruction, debate, inquiry, and conversation?” and “What similarities
and differences do the literacy events in the various modes of discourse have with one
another?”

281

Following from the second, a choice was made to choose not one but two literacy
events that were believed to represent the discourse modes of conversation and inquiry.
The reasoning behind this decision was to examine how different modes of discourse might
result in different socially constructed meanings or affordances. More specifieally, if we
adopt some of the recent definitions of literacy that suggest being literate is one’s facility in
using a number of “school-based” (Michaels & O’Connor, 1990) or “secondary” (Gee
1989) discourses, then it will be imperative to begin defining what is meant by these
complex terms. If we take “school-based” to mean “those conventional ways of speaking
that occur through formal instructional events,” then the study of how various literacy
events result in different literate discourses magnifies their importance. Put another way, it
appears that the study of various literacy events may be instrumental in helping to define
and lend meaning to the very provocative notions of being literate as coming to adopt the
conventionalized discourses that are privileged in school and wider society.

Socially constructing discourse sm: Methodology agd edueational affggagces.
An interactional sociolinguistic perspective was a particularly powerful approach to the
study of instructional events, though this certainly should be considered only one such set
of tools. The resulting discourse analysis in this study was highly complicated. First, the
two literacy events of Sharing Chair and Morning Message, though certainly having
common generic features (e. g., phases of activity, rights and duties, socially defined
roles), also naturally led to different types of discourse analysis. For example, the “role”
of teacher was quite different in the two literacy events, which led me to spend much more
time analyzing the teacher’s talk in Morning Message, where Trisha participated in 41% of
the turns compared to just 21% in Sharing Chair. Importantly, the conversational goals of
Sharing Chair and the development of a written text in Morning Message resulted in
different discourse moves, including a much broader range of instructional, literacy

content, and involvement moves in Morning Message. Conversely, it was the students

282

themselves who were the primary participants in Sharing Chair, which led me to conduct
individual discourse profiles on each student.

Second, there was necessarily a movement from “part-to-whole” and “whole-to-
part” throughout the transcript analysis. While the primary unit of analysis was the literacy
event, it was the study of three levels or layers that was indispensable in gaining insight
into how these two events were socially constructed and reconstructed. Each level of
analysis produced critical insights that impacted the others. The first level of analysis was
to document those features of the literacy event as a whole that were, indeed, genericuthey
were patterned and relatively predictable and stable features of the events over time. These
generic features included the typical phases of activity, including how the event was
indexed and set the stage for undertaking particular types of work and the rights and duties
that were given to the various roles in each of the events (e.g., teacher, author, audience).
It was this level of analysis that was essential in determining that the socially sanctioned
roles of author and audience were critical determinants of the amount and nature of verbal
participation in which students might engage.

The second level of analysis then examined the range and types of discourse moves
and how, on a moment-to-moment basis, the teacher and students discursively positioned
one another to undertake particular types of response. This microanalysis of the moment-
to—moment discourse moves and the ways in which these moves aligned and realigned both
social and cognitive participation became central to this study. For example, in Morning
Message, one particularly powerful set of moves had the goal of involving either
individuals or the entire group. In Sharing Chair, a particularly powerful pattern of talk
was created as children told personal stories, which then positioned others to tell similar
stories that built upon and extended the original story.

Tannen’s (1989) study of conversational involvement strategies provided one basis

for studying the nature of this talk. However, when one moves beyond the study of talk

283

among intimate conversationalists to an entire classroom of students who may or may not
have the same intimacy, this notion of conversational involvement will need to be greatly
expanded In this study, the involvement moves of revoicing, floor holding, supporting,
permission, and humor were used in addition to the original involvement strategies of
repetition, imagery, and dialogue (T annen, 1989).

A final level of discourse analysis examined the question “How do individual
students participate in the various literacy events?” This analysis required that talk of
individual students be extracted from the transcript and then categorized depending upon
the role the child was in (i.e., as author or audience member), and the types of discourse
the child was using. This analysis was particularly important in attempting to understand
the complexity of discourse that various children engaged in. For example, in Sharing
Chair, a student who had quite low levels of participation, Gerry, was a student who was
only emerging as a conversationalist. Gerry told only one personal story over the five
Sharing Chairs, a two sentence story about his puppies getting hit by a car. Similarly, in
Morning Message, Gerry asked a partner, Byron, to help him explain where their sand
castle was located on the playground and how large it was. It was argued that Sharing
Chair and Morning Message are particulariy important milieus for developing these critical
conversational skills, skills that should not be taken for granted as occurring naturally with
many special needs students.

Two other findings were particularly interesting as a result of this examination of
individual students. The first was the importance of having socially sanctioned “roles” of
author and audience member, with their unique rights and responsibilities. Though there
were exceptions, it appeared that in both Sharing Chair and Morning Message, it was
important that each student be involved as the author. In several cases, the author’s role
accounted for over seventy-percent of the total turns a student engaged in. Since the author
had responsibilities in both Sharing Chair and Morning Message that required him or her to

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participate verbally, this appeared to be an important way to ensure that all children had
opportunities to be engaged in the unique forms of positioning that resulted in these roles.

The final theoretical consideration that this study attempted to help clarify and define
was the Santa Barbara Discourse Group’s (1992b) notion of “educational possibilities
analysis,” what I’ve also referred to as educational affordances. The purpose of using such
an analysis was twofold. Frrst, this study assumed that being literate is not a single entity
or something that someone has, but is situated in specific contexts and involves a wide
range of behaviors with their unique language using practices. Reading, writing, speaking,
and listening are tools to accomplish social goals. Different social goals, like reading and
responding to a story in Sharing Chair or constructing a group text in Morning Message,
afford students different opportunities to use and “try on” some of the conventionalized
ways in which the larger community of readers, writers, and speakers participate with one
another.

Second, the study of how exemplary teachers create educational affordances for
their students is part of a larger research movement to understand and clarify on a ease-by-
ease basis how teachers across grade levels and subject-matters create conditions that allow
students to engage in behaviors that redefine what it means to be a “student” in these
classrooms. If researchers are going to bring language-based theories of education into the
educational reform conversation, there must be a concentrated effort in linking discourse to
specific learning outcomes and a careful explanation of how particular teachers create
literacy events that afford opportunities for students to engage in particular literate
belmviors. In contrast to empirical studies that compare experimental and control groups
on some measure of achievement, the notion of educational possibilities is geared towards
describing how the individual teacher socially constructs and reconstructs the classroom

community in order to afford students opportunities to learn.

Educational Practice
Ultimately, it must be students who benefit from the creation of literacy events that
move beyond the more transmissive models of teaching that have fragmented learning

(Allington, 1992) for the very students who might benefit most from more meaningful and

....l

 

purposive anggflfiJHeshusius, 1989; Poplin, 1988 a,b). The study of how
Whers socially construct and reconstruct their classroom community and th \/
literacy events within this community does and must have a political motive-the
communication and clarification of teaching practices that engage students in qualitativel
different ways of being a “student” in school. The potential benefits of this program can

have far reaching consequences for all students (Lemke, l989a,c).

This study provides several important insights and directions for classroom «-~~~ .
practice. These insights and directions include (1) the teacher’s conscious choice of the 8
range and types of literate behaviors she wants children to engage in, (2) the cultivation of
the dialogical relationship as a fundamental condition for engaging students in rich forms of
discourse, and (3) the use of Sharing Chair and Morning Message as exemplars for
bridging students unique experiences beyond school and the conventionalized language
using practices of the larger community of readers, writers, and speakers. Each of these
suggestions for classroom practice are discussed below.

A range of literate behaviors and language using mtices. In this study, Sharing
Chair and Morning Message created conditions that allowed students to speak with one
another about text in quite different ways. In Sharing Chair, there was an emphasis on the
individual production of a written text in a journal and the publication of this writing
through reading among a group of peers. The peer audience, including the teacher,
provided feedback in the form of questions and comments, including the telling of one’s
own topically related story. Affordances in this curriculum genre included, but were not

limited to, practicing independent writing while considering the needs of an audience,

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developing questioning skills, responding to questions and comments through justifying,
explaining, critiquing, and defending one’s point of view, and learning critical skills and
strategies related to carrying on a conversation with others (including telling stories, using
the intertextual resources of others to build your own response, critical listening skills, use
of humor, etc.).

At first glance, a teacher might be hard pressed to find value in merely allowing
children to “talk” to one another around different students’ turns as author. However, as
the case of Gerry and others illustrated so vividly, children “used” this discourse space to
meet their own unique needs, including “trying on” various language using practices like
telling a story to try and capture an audience’s attention. To paraphrase Michaels and
O’Connor (1990), learning to participate in socially appropriate conversations in school
should not be assumed to exist apriori; rather, it is necessary that learning how to converse
with one another become a “school-based discourse” that is valued and privileged,
especially for children who do not bring these discourse forms to school. Teachers might
do well to ask themselves whether there are opportunities for students to engage in forms
of discourse that closely resemble those in which intimate partners might engage outside of
school. The ramifications for learning to become a socially competent member of such
discourse forms cannot be understated for students in special education classrooms,
students who are often perceived as being deficient in critical social skills.

Morning Message afforded students different literate behaviors. Unlike the usually
deliberate and relaxed pace of the conversations in Sharing Chair, Morning Message was a
more intense problem-solving venture in which students co-constructed, on-line, a written
story that the group negotiated with one another. The goals of this curriculum genre
necessitated a different mode of discourse (inquiry) and different skills and strategies. No
text existed apriori in Morning Message, but had to be created each time the class initiated

the activity. As a result, students participated in a way of knowing writing that included

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viewing writing as consisting of extended problem solving, the use of specific planning
(e.g., Who is our audience?), organizing (e.g., What categories should we use?), drafting
(e.g., What is the topic sentence? What would be an interesting concluding sentence?),
editing (e. g., carets, asterisks, cross-outs, underlining, paragraphing, spelling,
pronominalization), and revising (e. g., reorganizing words, sentences, or paragraphs)
conventions that the larger community of writers might use. In short, Morning Message
was an apprenticeship into many facets of the writing process surrounding a personal
information story.

The teacher plays a particulariy important role in gradually introducing and
apprenticing students into more complex writing conventions over time. Different children
internalize the various conventions at different rates depending upon prior experience,
background knowledge, and amount of practice. Especially important was the role that
experience plays in internalizing these social dialogues to guide independent behavior.
When comparing more experienced and older fourth-grade students’ independent editing
and writing of a Monring Message story to those of novice first and second—grade students,
the older students were able to make more editing changes and more complex changes to an
unedited text. More importantly, these students also used a wider range of writing
conventions and in more appropriate ways than the younger first and second-grade students
when writing independent texts without support. Though these findings are not surprising,
they do indicate that special needs students may need intense and sustained opportunities to
practice these conventions if teachers expect their self-regulated use in other contexts
(Baker & Zigmond, 1993).

However, a teacher should not hesitate in introducing fairly complex writing
conventions to very young first and second-grade special needs students. Even first and
second-grade special education students regularly used carets to insert words, asterisks to

move a sentence to another location in the text, and crossing-out words that did not make

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sense in their Morning Message stories. At the end of the year, most of these students
were seen rereading their text and attempting to use these conventions in their own writing,
if not in entirely appmpriate or meaningful ways (see example of Ray in Chapter 5).
Though these conventions are still at a performative level of development and lack the
conditional knowledge that comes with extended practice, this exposure forms a critical
backdrop for their self -regulated use in the future. _

The cultivation of the dialo 'cal relationshi . Developing a classroom community
in which group members genuinely share in each other’s achievements, respect one
another’s opinions, and have an esprit de corp takes extensive, hands-on work by the
leader of the community, the teacher. Teachers should not mistake notions of community
and equity to mean that the teacher does not have particular rights and duties as a significant
more knowledgeable member of the classroom. Rather, it is the deft ways in which the
teacher orchestrates cognitive and social participation that distinguishes the classroom in
which students and teacher develop a dialogical relationship based upon the communicative
virtues of trust, concern, hope, and appreciation:

While many are drawn to dialogue as a pedagogical approach because of

egalitarian sentiments, equality per se is not necessary for dialogue to exist.

Were this not true, dialogue could not exist, for example, between adults

and children. The fact that participants are unequal in knowledge,

experience, or intelligence is not a detriment to the possibilities of dialogue--

on the contrary, it often helps explain why partners are drawn into the

relation with one another. Two other characteristics are more important than

equalin for this dialogical relationship to succeed. There must be some

level of reciprocity that binds the partners together in a mutual relation of

concern and respect (a relation that is fully cognizant of their differences);

and there must be a real chance for everyone concerned to participate in,

contribute to, or withdraw from the discussion. While in specific dialogical

situations the nature and degree of actual participation by each member will

not be exactly equal to that of every other, this cannot in itself be read as a

failure of the dialogue. (Burbules, 1993, pp. 27)

In this study, Trisha paid unyielding attention to the daily construction of the

dialogical relationship. Just as the literacy events themselves had relatively stable patterns,

yet were constantly constructing and reconstructing new meanings on a moment-to-moment

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basis, so too was the dialogical relationship being renegotiated each day. Clear rights,
duties, and responsibilities were socially sanctioned for different speakers and the roles in
which they played, but the ebb and flow of discourse also required constant attention. This
constant attention was maintained largely through Trisha’s deft use of conversational
involvement strategies that aligned and realigned the social relationship of members
towards one another and to the content under consideration (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993).
For example, Trisha frequently held the floor for a speaker whose idea was not being
considered by other participants or revoiced a student’s idea to ensure that the child
received authorship for the ideas, yet did not necessarily have to defend their position. At
the heart of these involvement moves was an enormous respect for students’ contributions.
Trisha supported students’ verbal participation, resulting in the gradual development of a
community that came to honor and respect other’s risk-taking and involvement. In short,
Trisha gave each of her students a critical “voice” in her classroom, allowing each to
develop in a community that privileged their unique contributions.

Though I have defined in painstaking detail the anatomy of some of these
involvement moves, it should become clear that there is no steadfast formula or script for
their use. It is only through awareness, direct experience, and careful reflection that
teachers make these conversational moves their own.

Sharing chair and morning message as sites for constructing conventional

knowledge. Both Gee (1989) and Michaels and O’Connor (1990) have argued
vigorously for a discourse-based definition of literacy, one that views individuals as not
either “having” or “not having” literacy, but a definition based upon one’s experience and
facility with using literacy in different social contexts. The importance of this alternative
perspective of being literate has enormous ramifications for understanding school success
and failure. Rather than viewing students as being deficient in their abilities to read, write,

and speak, this perspective suggests that teachers must look closely at the fit between

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children’s language using practices outside of the home and those privileged in school
settings (Au & Jordan, 1981). For example, the work of Au and Jordan (1981) and others
(An & Mason, 19%) at the Kamehameha schools in Hawaii found that Native Hawaiian
children’s patterns of speaking at home were characterized by much overlapping of speech,
what was called “talk story.” In contrast to the strict rules for turn-taking in the round-
robin readinggroups that occurred in schools, these children and their parents
simultaneously built upon and added to one another’s contribution to create a story that was
the collective of the group. When teachers changed their reading instruction to match this
pattern of meaning construction, children’s reading achievement scores rose dramatically.
This, and other studies (see Heath, 19%; Michaels, 1981) have provided convincing
evidence that teachers must be sensitive to the language using practices that their students
bring to school.

At issue, then, is one of the most challenging questions in education today: “How
do we privilege the language practices and experiences that students bring to our
classroom, on the one hand, while also teaching students the conventionalized knowledge
of the larger culture of readers and writers?” Students entering American schools today are
more diverse than at any point in our history, with more non-English speaking and
bilingual students, in addition to ever increasing numbers of minority students and those
requiring special education services. The two literacy events outlined in this study, Sharing
Chair and Morning Message, seem to fulfill what Wells (1994) sees as essential for
students to make the bridge between their out of school ways of knowing and speaking and
the conventional knowledge that is attached to various curriculum genres:

Clearly, a key factor in the working out of the relationship between socio-

cultural background and school achievement is the nature of the activities in

which children are expected to engage in school. In principle, there is no

reason why school tasks should not be selected such that they validate and

build on the sociosemantic functions that individual children have already

mastered, while systematically introducing those that are as yet underdeveloped.
This would certainly be in keeping with Vygotsky’s conception of learning

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and teaching in the zone of proximal development (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988).

However, in practice, the tasks and modes of discourse that tend to be

privileged are precisely those that are least familiar to nonmainstream children;

as a result, a situation is created in which these children become educationally

disadvantaged. (Wells, 1994, pp. 76)

In this study, both Sharing Chair and Morning Message used student(s) own
personal stories, their unique feelings and experiences as the starting point for constructing
meaning. As was shown in both literacy events, it appears that having the opportunity to
become persorrally involved in one’s own and others’ stories was an important feature of
each of these activities. The nanative quality of both telling and constructing stories with
one another was a powerful precondition for the introduction of conventional knowledge.
Specifically, each activity created a level of involvement and commitment among students
and teacher. This dialogical relationship, in turn, seemed to be a critical feature in making
the introduction of conventional tools “make sense” for the group to use. Rather than
teaching literacy conventions in deoontextualized activities devoid of meaning and purpose,
teachers may want to introduce conventions in the context of constructing meaning with
one another. When teachers create literacy events that nurture the dialogical relationship,
they are simultaneously laying an essential foundation for the active uptake and ownership
of conventional knowledge. This critical dual condition, then, must be examined when
analyzing the effects of curricula on those students who do not come to school with the
same language using practices as their peers.

In closing, there is good reason for teachers to feel discomfort in initiating literacy
events like Sharing Chair and Morning Message. In each of the events, the teacher does
not necessarily know where the lesson is going. There is no scope and sequence chart, nor
are there scripted questions at the end of the chapter. The teacher gives up considerable
authority through transferring control of much of the meaning-making process to the
students. The two events require an investment in instructional time. And, finally, both

events involve modes of discourse that are unfamiliar to many teachers and classrooms.

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Yet, if teachers and administrators are serious about developing a type of classroom
community that is truly inclusive of all learners, that privileges the unique experiences and
language using practices that children bring to school, then there needs to be concrete
examples of how literacy events create conditions that give children access and ownership
of their learning. Sharing Chair and Moming Message afforded many different literate
behaviors to be exposed, practiced, and internalized by students. The special nwds
students in this study were actively engaged in learning the often implicit rules for
conversing with others, including asking appropriate questions, commenting on another’s
story, and becoming aware of rules for turn-taking. These students also were apprenticed
into the rich language using practices of writers, including the negotiation of all phases of
the writing process. If these literate behaviors are valued as being important in the literacy
curriculum, then these two events may be appropriate for many classrooms.

Si grrificance, Limitations, and Future Directions

Ultimately, the goal of studying language and learning is the education of children.
Changing language using practices in classrooms in not merely a shift in linguistic form.
Rather, these shifts alter the very ways in which children come into contact with, use, and
understand content The social contexts we create for children, especially the semiotic
systems provided in these contexts, will largely determine the types of learning that occur.

The study of exemplary teachers’ discourse using practices in specific instructional
events can allow teachers and researchers access to the ways in which these teachers create
social contexts that are qualitatively different from other classroom communities. The
educational lives of children, especially those children who come to our schools at a
disadvantage in sharing the modes of discourse privileged by most middle class students
and teachers, demand that we do a better job in making educational decisions based upon
classroom discourse data. In this sense, researchers of classroom discourse must now

assert themselves into the political and policy making bodies that influence education. To

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make this leap from research to policy, researchers will continue to need the rich
descriptions of exemplary teachers constructing and reconstructing meaning with their
students, studies that compare and contrast literacy events between and among teachers,
and studies that link literacy events to specific examples of the literate behaviors that might
be internalized and used by students.

Though I would agree with O’Connor and Michaels (1993) that the study of
classroom discourse should not be interpreted as leading to prescriptions and rigid scripts
for talking in classrooms, it is critical that researchers move beyond merely descriptive
studies of classroom talk and make visible how different literacy events can create
affordances for children through the ways in which they organize and use various semiotic
systems, including discourse (See McCarthey, 1991; 1992). Researchers must continue to
describe and clarify in rich detail what exemplary teachers do semiotically to create the
social contexts in their classrooms.

This sociolinguistic study shed light on the potential for studying literacy events in
schools. An interactional sociolinguistic perspective was used and proved to be a
particulariy valuable perspective for understanding both the relatively stable features of
literacy events and the microanalysis of the moment-to-moment discourse moves and the
ways in which these moves served to position members’ relationships to one another and
the content under consideration. This study described some of the literate behaviors that
were afforded for the students and teacher in two literacy events, and showed that two
different modes of discourse, conversation and inquiry, involved the teacher and students
in different patterns of talk, different levels of involvement, and different types of literate
behavior.

Though still unclear, it may be that the study of literacy events in school may be a
critical entry point in clarifying Gee (1989) and Michaels and O’Connor’s (1990) notions
of being literate as having facility in using a number of “secondary” or “school-based”

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discourses. More importantly, Sharing Chair and Morning Message seemed particularly
well suited to addressing the difficult question of creating instructional events in school that
can use students’ out-of-school experiences as an entry point into the shared conventions
used in the wider community of writers and readers. This finding is directly related to
issues surrounding authority and power, and suggests specific ways in which the teacher
might create literacy events that transfer control of the meaning—making process to students.

This study also had a number of limitations that point to future research. First,
though the study of exemplary teachers is a particularly powerful way in which to begin
describing, on a case-by-case basis the generic processes that these teachers might engage
in across grade levels and subject-matters, there remains a critical need for cross-case
comparisons of teachers and students constructing and reconstructing purportedly the same
literacy events. Cross-case comparisons of different teachers, both those believed to be
exemplary and those believed to be less so, will allow more vivid images of the contrasts
between teachers and make more visible those areas of difference.

Second, this study examined only five lessons each of Sharing Chair and Morning
Message over a three month period. Though I did conduct several transfer measures with
the younger first and second grade special needs students in another teacher’s classroom, it
became apparent that there would be enormous potential in examining the discourse in an
activity over an entire year and even across years. However, the microanalysis necessary
to examine transcript data is extremely time consuming, necessitating some constraints on
the corpus of data collected. It may be less beneficial to return to more global categories,
such as counts of the number of open ended vs. inferential questions the teacher asks
students, than to continue with smaller data sets that more carefully examine the
construction and reconstruction of literacy events.

Third, the primary unit of analysis for this study was the literacy events, not
individual students or the teacher. A sub-question of the study asked how different

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individual students participated in the two events, but in no way did this examination
constitute case studies of specific individuals. Again, a brief examination of different
students’verbal participation and their performance on the two transfer measures appeared
to point to some important research questions. For example, how might students with low
verbal participation be involved more frequently in the construction of meaning? How does
this involvement influence the literacy performance of these students? What is the
relationship of verbal participation and internalization as demonstrated on measures of
reading and writing?

Fourth, the methodology utilized in this study, borrowing from ethnography and
sociolinguistics, was violated in several important ways. Several decisions were made
apriori, including the choice of literacy events to study and the choice of an exemplary
teacher with whom I had been studying for two years. Additionally, I created and had the
teacher implement two transfer measures that were not naturally occurring events in the
classroom.

At the same time, as this and other studies have suggested (See McCarthey, 1991),
if the study of classroom discourse is to effectively influence teaching practice, then there
must be attempts to link discourse to learning. This means that studies of classroom
discourse must move beyond the kind of “value neutral” stance that has tended to pervade
past studies of classroom discourse (Lemke, l989c). In this study, several transfer
measures and an interview of the students that asked them to explain Morning Message to a
younger child were given to help shed additional light on what might have been learned and
internalized by students. In retrospect, it can be argued that these measures were not
dynamic in the Vygotskian ( 1978) sense, nor were they contextualized in meaningful and

purposive events. Future studies might benefit from a more tightly coupled dynamic

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assessment as students participate in meaningful events (see Campione & Brown, 1987;
Minick, 1987; for discussion on Dynamic Assessment).

To conclude, this study supported more recent definitions of literacy as including a
continuum of behaviors that occur in situated literacy events with their uniquely patterned
'ways of using language, including variations in both content and pedagogy. As
researchers continue to study the affordances created as teachers and students work
together to construct different literacy events, it is hoped that one day both researchers and
teachers will have a better set of lenses in which to view effective instruction for all
children, especially those who have not traditionally benefitted from the potential fruits of
school success. The programmatic study of various literacy events on a case-by-case basis
is positioned to further both teachers’ and researchers’ understandings of the link between
discourse and learning. And, ultimately, it will be our children themselves who are the

recipients of a very different way to “student” in school.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A
DESCRIPTION OF EARLY LITERACY PROJECT CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Choral reading. Choral reading is used to promote students' reading fluency. Big
Books, poems, and predictable books are used as sources for finding repetitive texts that
allow even the most reluctant readers access to reading connected text. Often times these
texts are rewritten on large chart paper. Then teachers and students chorally read the story
with the teacher pointing to each word Gradually, students take over increasing
responsibility for reading the text, pointing to words, and leading the comprehension
discussion.

Importantly, these Big Books, poems, and predictable books can often be
integrated into existing thematic units. For example, one project teacher used the Big Book
“Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing" during a thematic unit on ”Animals".
After chorally reading the book as a whole group, the teacher then had individual students
read the pages on their own. This narrative story was then extended by the teacher when
she brought in real pictures of different animals that the children labeled and
compared/contrasted depending upon their different body types. Finally, the teacher had
students invent a new animal by combining the characteristics of two animals, such as a
"shark with wings”. Students then brainstormed five pros and cons of such an animal and
wrote a story about their animal that was then illustrated, published, and shared in Author's
Chair.

Poems have been particularly useful, serving as both a sponge activity while the
teacher is waiting for students to return from their regular classes, and as central activities
in allowing students access to connected text during Undisturbed Silent Reading, Partner
Reading, and Author's Chair. Copies of poems are distributed to children and put into
poem folders. Children can read their poems to each other, take them home as a home
share activity and read them to parents, or use them publicly with partners.

The strength of choral reading seems to be that all children, even those unable to
read, are provided opportunities to read connected text that are repetitive and predictable.
Teachers are able to promote the matching of the spoken words and written text through
pointing to each word while reading. This process mimics the learning process that occurs
at home between parent and child, and provides an important context for beginning readers.

Partner reading. Partner reading is a collaborative effort between two student (or adult)
in which students take turns listening to each other read Students are usually given the
opportunity to choose their own partners and texts, but exceptions are made based upon the
needs of the class. A benefit of paired reading is its effect on both the more able and less
able reader. In keeping with much of the literature on peer-tutoring (Maheady & Sacca,
1987), both students seems to benefit as the less able reader listens to a more able model
and the able reader is given responsibility for helping the less able reader when nwded
Like Author‘s Chair, Partner Reading is an opportunity for children to read to a real
audience and listen to the oral reading of text.

Partner Reading is used both as an independent reading activity and as a key
component in gaining information surrounding a thematic unit. For example, in a thematic
unrt around African animals, one teacher had students Partner Read an expository text on
giraffes before coming to the whole group and brainstorm ideas for their group story.

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Partner Reading is an important activity as teachers attempt to ”up the ante” on poor
readers. ELP instruction includes varying levels and forms of support, from the heavily-
supported context of choral reading, the less-supported and joint reading of texts in Partner
Reading, and the solo reading of texts in independent reading.

Combining Partner Reading with Response to Literature (reader response groups)
helps to ensure that the focus of Partner Reading is the twin goals of developing reading
fluency and comprehension.

Undisturbed silent reading (USR). USR is an opportunity to give children many
opportunities to pick-up and read books of their own choosing and interest. This time can
also be used to promote students reading fluency on practiced texts. This activity requires
that the teacher and anyone entering the room engages in reading. As one of the primary
goals of USR is for students to view themselves as readers, it is critical that the teacher
model reading with text they are genuinely interested in.

Structuring the USR period is an individual choice. Interestingly, on the Early
Literacy Project, the very fact that teachers had an USR period resulted in teachers creating
richer classroom libraries and environments to support reading, such as bean bag chairs
and carpet squares. Some teachers have altered the USR time to include listening to stories
on tape at a listening center. This is particularly helpful for nonreaders, who listen to
stories while matching the spoken words to print/pictures on the books in front of them.

When children are given opportunities to choose their own texts, they have tended
to choose books that are appropriate to the support they require (e.g., reading alone,
reading to a peer, reading to an adult). Also, students tend to choose books that have been
introduced to the class by the teacher or read by other students.

It is useful to keep track of stories that children have read in their personal reading
logs that make-up part of their overall portfolio (Tiemey, 1991). Poems introduced to the
class are put on the computer and solicited for students to put in their poem folders. These
poems tend to be a favorite for the emergent reader during USR time and can also be
entered in the student's reading log.

Interactive reading During all forms of reading, including choral reading, teacher read
alouds, USR, and reading around the thematic units, teachers interact with students to
develop reading comprehension and the aesthetic responses of readers.

For nonconventional readers and writers, this time can be used to develop concepts
about books and print, such as: title, author, illustrator, word consciousness, letter,
sentence, paragraph, periods, and question marks.

For all children, there is a focus on the development of reading comprehension
during interactive reading. Titles and pictures in books promote children's abilities to make
predictions. During reading, children are guided in the identification of story parts, such as
the story setting, characters, problem, response (happenings), outcome, and conclusion.
Children are then led to generate their own written or oral story summaries or retellings on
the basis of this story grammar.

For expository texts, children are guided in identi/ying categories that occur in the
texts, usrng the organizational pre-maps as a way to scaffold their understanding and

 

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comprehension. An emphasis is placed upon children's ability to summarize based on the
organimtional maps of the information in the texts (Englert & Manage, 1991a).

Throughout the comprehension process, an overt emphasis is placed on making
visible to students a language (e. g., posters) that remind them of comprehension strategies.
Teachers model and guide children in predicting and confirming strategies, discussing
personal meanings and interpretations, relating text content to students' experiences and
background knowledge, projecting themselves in the story, summarizing stories, using
text-monitoring strategies, evaluating the text (e. g., 'What was your favorite part?”, ”Did
you like...?"), and comparing/contrasting two or more texts.

Stories are extended by teachers through oral or written activities. Teachers may
use the language patterns from predictable books, poems, or organizational maps as
scaffolds to help children write their own texts. Teachers write the language pattern leaving
blanks where students might generate their own words. Students may also use puppets or
pictures to retell the stories or act out story parts.

Rmnse to literature. Responding to literature can be conducted anytime students
read narrative text. In the beginning, it is recommended that the teacher model and think-
aloud each of the different responses before allowing students to complete responses
independently or in small groups.

Having bulletin boards or posters devoted to the different ways children can
respond to literature serves as a helpful scaffold for children and helps prevent
misunderstanding. It is important that responding to literature does not become a
worksheet task in which the students fill out the different response forms. For example,
one might want to conduct the responses orally in a whole class setting or have pairs of
sments complete an exercise together and then report back to the class on the text they
r .

Five activities used in the Early Literacy Project are (1) affective responses to
inform others, (2) illustrating and writing the story sequence, (3) mapping the main
character, (4) illustrating the story form, and, (5) writing a brief summary of the story.

In its ideal form, it is hoped that groups of students can form "clubs" in which they
constructively grapple with ideas in the text and think critically about what they have read.
Instructional procedures for guiding students in making affective reader responses, include:
(a) modeling the variety of ways of responding, (b) asking questions that require students
to use the various purposes of responding to literature:

*identifying the author's purpose (e.g., ”Why do you think the author said that?")

*comprehending stories (e.g., predicting, sequencing, and using story structure to

summarize)

*evaluating one's persona response to a text (”How did that make you feel?

Why?", ”Did you like....? Why/Why not?”);
and (c) prompting students to take ownership of the story dialogue in a four-step process:
"What questions have we been asking?” (List questions); 'What are some other
questions we can ask that we can add to our list?" (e.g., 'What did we
like/dislike?", etc.)

*teacher assigns student leader for first 5 minutes of reading group, using questions

to guide discussion,

*teacher seaf folds and support performance.

Over time, it is expected that students can begin to move beyond merely extracting

 

t_

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the author's intended meaning, to a more personal respome that links to prior experience.
This view of comprehension suggests that many traditional forms of instruction are only
partially suited to the full range of possible responses to what is read (Raphael, McMahon,
Goatley. Woodman, & Pardo, 1992).

Morning messagg. Morning Message is a language experience activity in which
students are able to draw from their personal experience both within and outside of school
to generate written text. The teacher serves as scribe and helps students to formulate therr

verbal responses into sensible written prose.

A large piece of chart paper is used for whole class construction and is placed on an
easel or the blackboard in front of the room. For older students, small cooperative groups
may generate their own Morning Message independently and then report back to the class.
During Morning Message, a student volunteers a personal experience that will be
constructed into a story. Other children ask questions of the student as they jointly
participate in writing about the experience. The teacher promotes students' control of the
writing process by asking the students questions, 'Do you want that in your story?", "How
can we say that?”, and "Where does that idea go?'.

Ideas can come directly from students, or on certain days the teacher may choose a
focus topic that seems appropriate given a thematic unit, a new student to the classroom, or
a worid event that is of great importance. For example, during the Persian Gulf Crisis, one
teacher chose to generate a topic for discussion such as ”If you were President Bush,
would you send troops to the Persian Gulf?" The students then constructed a class story
based upon their responses to the question.

The Morning Message format is also used to model writing and editing strategies
for stories that are written as part of thematic units For example, one teacher, working on
a thematic unit around monsters, put students' stories about monsters on an overhead
projector and had the whole class help the student edit their story.

Strategy and skills instruction can also be embedded in Morning Message. Topics
that can be discussed in Morning Message include: getting ideas for stories; the use of
main ideas, dialogue, story structure, humor, story detail, visual imagery, and clarifying
meanings. A variety of mechanical skills can also be introduced, including capitalization,
punctuation marks, pronouns, possessives, apostrophes, and paragraphing. Editing
conventions are introduced and modeled in Moming Message, including deleting and
inserting information, using carets, and using an asterisk to add ideas when there is not
ample room. At the end of the lesson, teachers can promote skill/strategy use by saying,
"How many people might use...in their next stories? Okay, let's see tomorrow how you
use this in your story."

Morning Message for each day are saved and at the end of each week are published
on the computer in the form of a classroom newspaper. The newspaper is then sent home
with each child and read to parents as part of a home share activity.

Sharing chair. Sharing Chair is an opportunity for students to participate in several
activities that are critical for developing a literate community in the classroom. Students are
able to make their work public through either reading their own or other's text (including
reading books) and receive recognition for their efforts.

As in all activities on the Early Literacy Project, how the teacher conducts Sharing

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Chair is an individual decision. For example, some teachers have allowed children to
come to a reading corner and sit on the floor while the author sits in a special chair while
reading his or her text, while others have maintained the whole group setting and have the
author sit in front of the room. In either case, the Sharing Chair is a special place where
the author is given respect by others and the responsibility to call on other students about
questions they have around the reading. The teacher is usually off to one side or in the
back of the room and becomes an audience member who models appropriate questions
asking as though they were another student. Giving the author a choice to have someone
help him or her read their text can help them allay fears and has served as an important way
for students to rely on each other for help.

Wflting Workshogléuthor's Centeg. To promote writing abilities, students engage
in several processes in writing, including planning, organizing, drafting, editing, revising
and publishing their texts. Teachers use whatever think-sheets are needed from the
Cognitive Strategy Instruction in Writing project (Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Fear &
Gregg, 1988) to support students' thinking. In teaching the process, teachers model the
thought processes that underlie writing a class story. Students then apply the strategies and
thought processes to construct their own stories. Whenever possible, teachers encourage
student-to-student collaboration during writing to promote students' acquisition of the
language tools they will need to regulate their own performance.

To develop writing abilities, teachers model writing with a group story to introduce
and model writing strategies. Teachers guide students in planning their stories, including
determining who they are writing for and why, and brainstorming ideas. Next, students
organize their stories using a "think-sheet" that corresponds to different text structures and
genres. For example, the "explanation” think-sheet has a section that answers text-
structure questions such as 'What is being explained7”, ”What materials are needed?", and
'What are the steps?". The key words for the explanation text structure are also listed
(e.g., first, second, next, and finally). Similarly narrative group story might have the story
parts consisting of "setting", "character”, "problem", "solution", and "conclusion”. The
emphasis in the Writing Workshop is to introduce students to the language and strategies
that good writers use. Each of the POWER (plan, organize, write, edit, revise) strategies
are listed on large chart paper to make the language and strategies of writers accessible.
Teachers also introduce other writing conventions such as the caret, asterisk, question
marks, etc. Upon completion, the stories are entered into the computer and illustrated by
students for the final publication. Having been exposed to a particular story type or text
structure, students can follow-up this group story by writing their own stories in Author's
Center. In the Author's Center, students are organized in a group to collaborate on
planning, organizing and drafting their stories. Students turn to each other as resources in
the writing process, and students conduct their own editing sessions.

Dialogg'e [ournal writing Dialogue Journals play a particularly important role in
developrng audience awareness and writing facility. Students are able to select their own

writing topics and usually write for between 10 and 15 minutes. Journals can then be read
rn Author's Chair or handed in. Regardless if children choose to share their journals in
Author's Chair, all students receive a written response from the teacher the next day.

. A variety of procedures can be used for journal writing. In many cases, no topic is
assrgned and students simply write about self-selected topics. However, this open-ended
format has proven difficult for some students. Some teachers elect to provide writing
topics for those students who cannot decide what to write about. For example, in many

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classrooms, teachers have developed an 'idea' bank that is visible in the room. Other
teachers have individual students jot down ideas in their writing folder any time a topic
comes to them. Experience shows that students who need extra support will elect to use
the teacher topic, while other students choose to write about their own topics.

At times, journal writing can be structured to promote planning to read or write.
These focus journals may require that students write in advance of a literacy activity to
activate background knowledge or alert them to topics that may be related to a thematic unit.
Focus joumalls have been particularly helpful when they precede a whole group
brainstorming of a topic. One teacher, who had been invited to the Barnum Bailey and
Ringling Brothers Circus, had her students expand upon the sentence stem "At the circus I
learned...” before having them come to the whole group discussion. In this way, even the
most reticent students have ideas written down and ready to share.

 

APPENDIX B

TEACHER INTERVIEWS
First Teacher Interview (Informal, Conversational)

‘lieso tT» tn: LLZLILL’; ' .. '1‘ ‘- 'ci-tion' e L; 'te .. Pro'ect

1. How does the Early Literacy Project Curriculum allow for the integration of new
students?

. How do you develop your work ethic in this community?
. How is instruction “individualized” in your classroom?

. Do you think there is a need for special education?

Uth-DN

. What sense do you get as to the “status” of your special education students in the
regular education classroom?

6. What is your perception of the type of teaching in regular education classes that would
support special education students?

7. How has your classroom management system changed as a result of participating in the
Early Literacy Project?

8. Why do you think that students will not participate sometimes?

9. Could you characterize what has changed in terms of literacy the past year as compared
to before the Early Literacy Project? (e.g., teaching reading and writing)

10. Explain your understanding of Project Read, the District endorsed literacy program, as
a “complete” literacy program?

11. Explain each of the literacy events in your classroom.

12. How do you use the three Apple computers in your classroom?

13. Talk about your thematic unit on the Desert.

Personal Background Igformatiog
1. Tell me about your family and background.

2. How did you get interested in teaching the deaf?
3. Tell me about your cunent and college education.
4. Tell me a little bit about your past six years of teaching.

304

305

School Context
1. How would you characterize staff relations in this school?

2. Characterize your interactions with the regular education teachers who have your
students? (Are most teachers supportive of special education?)

3. Can this type of instruction (ELP Curriculum) work in regular education classrooms?

4. Characterize your attempts at working with regular education teachers in more co-
teaching or inclusive arrangements.

SECOND INTERVIEW

Formal, Semi-Structured Teacher Interview
General Information on the Students, the School, and Instruction
1. Tell me about your students this year.
2. What would you consider the highlights so far?
3. What has been the most frustrating?
4. How is your relationship with the regular education teachers this year?
5. You have a new principal this year. How are things going?
6. What activities on the Eariy Literacy Project are you currently using?
7. What Thematic Units have you done so far?
8. What are your plans for the remainder of the term?
9. What do you consider the strengths of your instruction? Weaknesses?

Questions Sgific to the Activig Settings of the Study

10. What are your goals for using Morning Message? How do you adapt that activity to
”up the ante" for your students?

11. What are your goals for the Dialogue Journals and their daily use in Sharing Chair?
How have you adapted these activities to "up the ante” for your students?

12. What outcomes or benefits to students have you seen by using these two activities?

13. How do you think the students have used these activities for their own benefit?
(Example: How do you think different children have represented themselves by
talking about certain topics. As an example, Nathan seems to always talk about
"Superheroes” and appears fairly egocentric).

 

APPENDIX C
STUDENT INTERVIEWS
First Interview: Background Information and Beliefs about Literacy

Backgmgg Information: Outside School

 

1. Tell me about your family.
2. Tell me about your friends. Who are they? Where do you play?
3. Tell me about your neighborhood?
4. What are your favorite hobbies?
Sc ation
5. Who are yOur teachers?
6. Why are you in two different rooms?
7. What's different about Ms./Mr. 's_ Class and this class?
8. How do you like Longhaven School? (What do you like? What do you dislike? Why?)
9. What's you 're favorite activities at school? On the playground?

10. Tell me about the playground. What do you do outside? Who do you play with?

9QO Information
11. What kinds of things do you do in Ms. 's_ class? Which is your favorite?

Why?
12. How do you like being in Ms. __'s_ class?
13. Who are your friends in Ms. 's_ class?
14. Tell me about each of the students in Ms. 's_ class?

Q'te_ra_cy Knowledg

 

 

Reading

15. Do you like to read?

16. Do you have any books at home? Do you read at home? What?

18. What are your favorite books?

19. Does your parents read to you?

20. Who do you consider a good reader in your classroom? Why?

21. Do you consider yourself a good reader?

22. Let's imagine that this rs Ms. er. 's class (special edueation class). This
star represents the best reader rn the class (top star). This star represents the lowest reader
in this class. Where would you place yourself? Why did you choose that one?

*NNNfl-flfl-fl”

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307

23. Let's imagine that this is Ms./Mr. 's class (regular education class). This
star represents the best reader in the class (top star). This star represents the lowest reader
in this class. Where would you place yourself? Why did you choose that one?

*“flllflfllflflflflflflflflflfl

W 'tin :

24. How do you like to write? Why? Why not?

25. What are you‘re favorite things to writing about?

26. Where did you learn to write? How?

27. What do you think makes a good writer? Why is that important?

28. Do you write in your classroom? At home? When? How often?

29. What's the most difficult thing about becoming a good writer?

30. Let's imagine that this is Ms./Mr. '3 class (special education class). This
star represents the best writer in the class (top star). This star represents the lowest writer
in this class. Where would you place yourself? Why did you choose that one?

*flflfllflfiflflflflfiflflflflfifl

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31. Let's imagine that this is Ms./Mr. '8 class (special education class). This
star represents the best writer in the class (top star). This star represents the lowest writer
in this class. Where would you place yourself? Why did you choose that one?

*“flflflflflfllflflflflfiflfiflfl

Writing: Planning

32. Suppose you were asked to help a younger student write a paper about a wild animal.
What would you tell them to do first? Next?

33. What are some topics you have written about?

34. What are some topics that you would like to write about in the future? Where do you
get your ideas?

35. What types of writing do you do?

Writing: Drafting

36. What has helped you most in writing? (How do you use mapping, peers, to help you?)

37. When you are actually writing your paper, what are some of the things you think
about? (audience, reader sensitivity, interest)

38. Is Morning Message writing? Dialogue Journal? Why? Why not?

Writing: Editing, Revising, Publishing

39. Whatail‘oqyou do after you finish your first draft? (What kinds of changes do you
111 e.)

40. How do you do that? Do you ever talk to others, share your writing, or conference
with the teacher?

41. When you are all finished writing, what do you do? Where does is go? Who sees it?

M

42. (Using actual paper produced by child) "Tell me about this paper?” (Elicit topic
generation, planning, organizing, drafting, editing, revising, and publieation
conventions).

43. (Using Dialogue Journal) "Tell me about this type of writing?" (Elicit purpose,
audience, teacher's responses, enjoyment, frequency).

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SECOND INTERVIEW
Information about Morning Message

1. If you were to explain how to do Morning Message with younger students in Mrs.
Barnes’ room, what would you tell them?

2. How do you like Morning Message?
3. Has Morning Message helped you to become a better writer?
4. Do you use things you have learned in Morning Message in your own writing?

APPENDIX D
TEACHER’S DISCOURSE MOVES IN MORNING MESSAGE

Below are working definitions and examples of Trisha’s discourse moves in the discourse
space of Morning Message. Discourse moves are presented in four categories, including
instructional moves, literacy content moves, involvement moves, and management moves.
However, it is imperative that these categories not be viewed as being separate entities.
Rather, within the same utterance, there are almost always both pedagogical (i.e.,
instructional, management, and involvement functions) and content functions. For
example, the following utterance, “Hannah, should I put a caret there?”, would involve
three “moves” and be coded as follows:

Utterance Discourse Move or Function Tm of Move
“Hannah” Involvement Move Direct Call
“Should I put the caret there” Literacy Content Move Editing Process
“?” Instructional Move Questioning

Thus, the mode of delivery, or instructional move, is in the form of a question.
The literacy content under consideration involves the editing process, in this case the use of
a caret to edit a part of the written text. Trisha also uses the involvement move of directly
calling on Hannah so she has the speaking right to respond to the question. Importantly,
whether an utterance was coded depended upon the linguistic function of the utterance, not
the linguistic form. For example, if the same utterance was said in a derogatory fashion
and was aimed at managing Hannah’s behavior, then the utterance would be coded as a
Management Move with the type being Behavioral (as opposed to managing the
conversation or the community).

Instructional Discourse Moves
Instructional Discourse Moves are distinguished from other discourse moves in that
they function to communicate content to students. Whereas Literacy Content Moves focus
on the actual literate content being discussed amongst participants, Instructional Discourse
Moves include those ways in which content is presented to students, whether through the
form of questions, thinking-aloud, modeling, etc. This category refers to the mode of
delivery or construction of content.

Questioning

The most common way in which content was presented to students was through the
asking of questions. This instructional move usually functioned to ask an individual or the
entire group to respond to or consider a particular point. The importance of questioning in
Morning Message was that they usually functioned to turn responsibility for meaning
construction back to the students.

Examples: Trishm “So can we leave (the word) ‘her’ out?”
Trisha: “What do you want, ‘and then’ up here?”
Trisha: “Okay, how about this ‘and’?”

Thinking-Aloud

Making visible one’s inner thinking through thinking-aloud was a particularly
powerful discourse move that Trisha used in Morning Message. Thinking-aloud allowed
Trisha to demonstrate the thinking of a more knowledgeable member of the writing

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community to other group members.

Examples: Trisha; “Well, you know what we could do, we could get all the names up
here and then decide what to do?”

Trisha “Ok, the only way I know if that’s what is sounds like is if I reread
it. So I am going to reread this. I know we read the first
sentence and that worked out okay. ‘Hannah has a lot of
relatives in her family.’”

Modeling
As the scribe for the Morning Message lesson, Trisha was responsible for writing

the group’s message. This responsibility allowed her to demonstrate, or model a number
of skills and strategies that more able writers used while constructing their text. Modeling
was often accompanied by other instructional moves like thinking-aloud (a form of
modeling) or questioning, but was distinguished from other moves in that Trisha was
explicitly apprenticing students through a physical demonstration.

Examples: Trisha: “Ok, I’ve got a question. I want to know, I want you to describe
this person to me. So ifI say describe Hannah to me, you
would say she is a girl, she has red hair, she’s in fourth
grade. Okay. Sol want you to tell me about, this person,
listen, this person’s name is (reading really fast because
there are no commas) ‘auntSueauntJulieuncleReuben’.
Okay, tell me about ‘auntSueauntlulieuncleReuben’.”

Trisha: “I, and, I do not know how to spell it (Atari) though. I’m going to
guess (but) put an ‘S’ (reminder to check spelling later) up
her because I need to clarify the spelling.

Instructing

Though Trisha spent a great deal of time giving responsibility for meaning-making
back to the students, she also commonly stepped in and directly instructed students on
particular conventions. This form of move tended to be more direct, similar to a mini-
lesson a teacher might give on a particular convention students were having difficulty with
in their writing. There typically was less negotiation and more talking “at” students in this
move. Importantly, these instructing moves were most often introduced only after
extensive attempts at allowing students to construct meaning with less support were
provided. Specifically, instructing moves were often used only after less-supported
attempts were given to the students. The first example below illustrates this idea. After a
several minute discussion about whether the word “birthday” should be capitalized because
it was Angie’s “personal holiday”, and was thus an “important word” that would conform
to this capitalization rule, Trisha steps in and directly informs the group that this would not
be capitalized

Examples: Trisha: “So, even though you are convincing, and I was going to give you
guys a choice, but I think it should be the correct way so that
you guys will remember it. So we’re going to change this to
a small ‘b’.”

Trisha: “I can’t just, when I am changing (two sentences) into one
sentence, I can’t just say I am going to get rid of the period.
I have to do more than that.

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Trisha: “‘And an atari’ or just ‘and’? Ok. listen to the sentence though.
‘They are going to play nintendo and atari.’ I see what
you’re saying, you’re looking at this right here. But the

only time we change it to ‘an’ though, is when we have an

M

Broadcasting .
Unlike the directed and goal oriented nature of instructing moves, broadcasting

moves were one of the least intrusive ways in which Trisha gave students opportunities to
construct meaning for themselves. I use the term “broadcasting” in the sense that a person,
the teacher, announces something, but there is little indication as to who the message is
directed. The tone of this move was one of little affect Trisha simply gave information
back to the group to consider, without any attempt to sway thinking one way or the other.
Often times, this broadcasting consisted of simply reading what the students had written up
to that point or repeating what a member of the group said so more people could hear.
Importantly, it should be remembered that rereading the text and repeating what a child said
also functioned as involving moves. Though the linguistic form is identical, the social
function of broadcasting does not have the intent to involve students, but to merely put
information out there for anyone to consider.

Examples: Trisha “Angie’s birthday is on Saturday. She is having a party on the
24th They are going to play regular Nintendo.”
Trisha: “We have a ‘her’ here and a ‘her’ here. ‘Her’ here, ‘her’ here.”
(said in a deadpan tone)

Initiating
Initiating statements as defined here were statements that were
Examples: Trisha: “Okay, topic sentence.”

Trisha: “Okay, let’s listen.”

Trisha: “Go ahead and ask Juan.”

Evaluating
Evaluating statements were used very infrequently by Trisha. In this study,

evaluating statements were defined narrowly as those statements in which Trisha evaluated
a comment made by a student with a direct response. The function of this move, though
often discussed in the literature as being negative and effectively shutting-of f the voice of a
student, was to focus students’ attention or to state an opinion. Importantly, this move was
used to advance instruction, not to manage behavior.

Examples: Jerrod' "They’re all, they’re all...”
Trisha: “No, that’s not what I asked, this is all one name, that’s what it
looks like, “auntSueauntJulieuncleReuben.”

Angie: “Wouldn’t it be capitalized because we’re going to be celebrating it
(her birthday) tomorrow?”
Trisha: “No....Is Mr. Clinton going to be celebrating it?”

Directing Attention
Trisha would often direct students attention to particular features of the text to help
provide additional support and prompt thinking. Directing attention moves had the function

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of focusing attention, but differed from the direct instructional moves in that they tended to
withhold support and prompt students to construct meanings of their own. Often times a
directing attention move was used to point out a feature in the text that might need editing,
or to contrast two different possibilities put forward by the group.

Examples: Trisha: “Ok, how about this ‘and’?”
Trisha: “Ok, listen, I’ll do it both ways. Listen carefully. ‘Angie’s
birthday is on Saturday the 24th.’ That’s the first one.
‘Angie’s birthday in on April 24th on Saturday.”
Trisha: “How about ‘grandma’7”

1.1m

The notion of ‘uptake’ draws upon the work of Collins (1983). In this move, as
opposed to the teacher evaluating a student’s idea, the teacher “lifts” a student’s idea or
experience and gives it life by holding a place for the idea in the flow of conversation. This
move was used by Trisha in two ways. In the first use of the uptake move, Trisha used the
idea of an individual student or small group of students and gave the idea back to the group
for consideration. As examples one and two below illustrate, uptaking an idea in this
fashion often involved the teacher in repeating a child’s idea. However, unlike
broadcasting, where there was little affect and no discemable direction, uptakes tended to
highlight an idea and suggest to other members of the group that this idea is worthy of
attention.

A second use of the uptake move was used when Trisha drew upon an individual ’s
personal experience to help provide an example that might help the group over a hurdle.
This form of uptake, while coded as an instructional move because of its explicit focus on
advancing the understanding of the group, was also a potentially powerful way to give
voice to a student who may not have actually been a verbal participant in the conversation.
In the third example below, Nigel, a student who had not yet participated verbally in the
Morning Message lesson, was brought into the conversation by Trisha due to his unique
position as the only uncle or aunt in the class. Since the group was struggling with
whether to capitalize the word “uncle”, Trisha deftly involved Nigel to build support for the
group’s collective understanding.

Examples: Danny: “There are too many ‘an ’.
Trisha: “Too many ‘ands’. What are we gonna do?
Danny. “Commas!”
Trisha: “Commas instead of ‘ands’?”

Jerrod: “Her aunts and uncles.”

Trisha “We could of ,...”

Hannah: “I shouldn’t have said this.

Trisha: “No, its fine. We could’ve done it the way Jerrod just said, too.

Jerrod just said ‘her aunts and uncles’, basically like ‘her
aunts and uncles are...”’

Trisha: “Ok, I know that, Nigel, you’re an uncle, aren’t you?

Nigel: “Yeah.”

Trisha: “So does, when Monique (Nigel’s niece) grows up, is she going to
call you ‘Uncle Nigel? or just ‘Nigel’?”

Nigel: “Uncle Nigel.”

Trisha: “Okay, so for her, to Monique, is that your name, ‘Uncle Nigel?’”

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Nigel: “Yeah.”
Trisha: “So when we have a name, we have to do what?”
Danny: “Capitalize.”

Scaffold
In this study, the notion of scaffolding moves was defined narrowly as the teachers

provision of support in order for a student to accomplish a task they may not be able to
complete independently. In no way should this narrow operational definition of
scaffolding move be confused with the larger concept of “scaffolding” as it relates to
Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of zone of proximal development. The term scaffolding move is
used here to indicate Trisha’s explicit attempt to provide an explicit prompt or clue for a
student, while not giving the student an answer to a particular problem. In the first
example below, Trislm has a small group of students attempting to clarify the spelling of
the word “walleye” in the dictionary. The students had been at the task for several minutes,
and Trisha steps in to give them a clue to the location of the word if the correct spelling
starts with the letters “w-a-...”.

In the second example, Trisha attempts to help Hannah reduce a list of names that
were separated by the word “and”. Trisha’s first scaffolding move in this instance is the
direct question, “What part is not her name?”. After Hannah does not answer correctly,
Trisha continues to support Hannah’s thinking by raising additional questions that
eventually lead to Mark giving the correct answer, which Hannah then repeats (‘Her’) and
extends (‘Then’).

Examples: Trisha: If it is spelled “W—A” it should be on this page in this column (of
the dictionary)”

Danny: “But you need commas.”

Trisha: “Grandma and Grandpa Cheny. Is that JUST their names?
Ss: “Yes.” “Yes.” “No.”

Hannah: “Yes, that’s what I call them.”

Trisha: “‘...and then Grandma Cocking.’ What part is not her name?”
Hannah: “‘Grandma’”.

Trisha: “‘Grandma’” is not her name?”

Hannah: “‘Cocking’”.

Trisha: “‘Cocking’” is not her name?”

Mark: “‘Her.’ ‘Her.’”

Hannah: “‘Her’” and ‘then.’”

Pausin Partial Idea

Another move that served to scaffold students’ understanding was the use of pauses
or partial thoughts that provided a prompt for children’s thinking. This move often
resembled a kind of “fill-in-the-blank” game, where Trisha provided a particular thought
but left the “answer” for the students to fill in. This move provided a lot of support for
children, so was used mainly after less scaf folded moves were given. The tenor of this
move often resembled that of a game or competition, usually invoking more than one child
to yell out an answer. In the first example, students were struggling with verb usage,
including whether to use the words “has”, “have”, or “had” in the sentence “Byron and his
dad a cooler.” In the second example, Trisha uses a partial idea to prompt
Nathan’s to tell the group what the pronoun “they” was replacing in the text

 

Examples: Nathan: “has”, “have”.

315

Trisha: “Think about when this happened. When did this happen?
Danny: “A week ago. ‘Had.’”

Hannah: “Last week!”

Trisha: “Last week.”

Hannah: “‘Hadl’”

Trisha: “So ‘Byron and his dad ............. had a cooler.”
Angie: “‘hadl’”

Hannah: “‘hadl’”

Janitra: “‘hadl’”

Examples: Trisha: “Ok, that’s what they caught. I think what you wanted to change is
this one (pointing to the next sentence).”
Nathan: “"They. ’”
Trisha: “‘They?’” Very good. Instead of ........ ”
Nathan: “‘Byron and his dad.’”
Trisha: “Yep, you can use ‘they.’”

Resmnding
Trisha responded to questions that the students asked of her or to their efforts. This

move had an instructional focus in that Trisha’s response served to clarify or extend a
student’s thinking

Examples: Danny: “Do you need a pause (comma) in there?”
Trisha: “I don’t know, I know I need to capitalize “i” because its the
beginning of our topic sentence. Do I have to capitalize
‘week’?”

Angie: “I couldn’t figure it out, I thought about it.”
Trisha: “Probably because you put two classes (Angie: “Yeah”), so it
sounded funny.”

Transfer Control

Transferring control moves were moves in which Trisha explicitly gave control of
meaning-making decisions. Typically, these moves were addressed to an individual
speaker, giving them the speaking floor and decision making power. Again, the notion of
transferring control moves in no way captures the larger concept of transfer of control as it
relates to giving children increasing control of various processes (i.e., becoming self-
regulated learners) or to the role of transfer in control in apmenticeship models of teaching
and leanring. The term as used here is used only to define a small number of instructional
moves that were distinctly geared towards giving control of decision making to students.

Examfles: Trisha (Students are brainstorming topics for Danny, the chosen author, to
consider) “Okay, let me, just let me quickly write these
(topics) down. Okay, One: Camp. I am going to
abbreviate. Squirt gun. Okay, any other suggestions? Lam
gg'ng to give you a choice. Janitra?”

Trisha: “ still want you to be in charge Danny, so when they (audience),
um, when they make comments and stuff, you still choose

them.”

316

Jerrod: “‘Ms. William’s taking a class trip’.”
Trisha: “Some people think that’s okay. What do you think? (looking at
the author, Danny)”

Li teragy Content Moves
In Morning Message, and every instructional event, there are both pedagogical and

content registers (Christie, 1991). There is general agreement among researchers that
classroom discourse can be thought of as having both social goals (e.g., issues of
authority, power, rights and duties of speakers) and academic content goals (Barnes,
1992). In the Morning Message discourse space, a number of literate conventions were
introduced, practiced, and transformed by members of this classroom community. In this
study, the literate behaviors, skills, and strategies used in Morning Message have been
referred to as the literacy affordances, or educational possibilities (Santa Barbara Discourse
Group, 1992) that were created within this event. The following literacy skills and
strategies represent some of the conventions that were used by Trisha in the five Morning
Message lessons observed for this study.

Clarification
Example: Trisha: “And are you going to clarify that (spelling) for me?”

Trisha: “Thanks for clarifying that for me Nathan. I thought you meant
something different, I am glad you went back over that.”

Word Usage

Example: Trisha: “‘Relatives’ in place of what?”
Natharu “‘Family.’”
Danny: “‘People, people.’”

Trisha: “‘and then’ or ‘And then (pointing to message). What do you
want, ‘and then’ up here (after grandma cox)?”

Verb Tense
Example: Trisha: “Think about when this happened. When did this happen?”
Danny: “A week ago. ‘Had’.”

Trisha: “Because it already happened. ‘They had a cooler to put the fish
in.’ Now let’s see if that goes with the sentence before that just to
make sure. ‘Byron’s dad caught a walleye, and Byron caught a carp
iarrctl‘ a bunch of bluegills. Byron and his dad had a cooler to put the

rs rn.”

Editing Process
Example: Trisha: “Put a caret there?”

Trisha: “Do you want me to add this?”
Trisha: “So can we leave ‘her’ out?”

Trisha: “Ok, let’s list them.”

317

Trisha: “Now wait a minute, we got to go through this, because we didn’t
make any corrections.”

_ng'talization .
Example: Trisha: “Ok, ok, ‘Hannah’s family has a lot of relatives.’ Juan sard,
‘Doesn’t the “family”, doesn’t the “family” have to be

capitalized?”
Trisha: “Okay, so what do you think, should I capitalize ‘grandpa’?”

. Trisha: “A lowercase ‘b’ because its not the beginning anymore.”

Choice of Alternative Meanings
Example: Trisha: “‘First is Hannah’s grandpa cheney,’ or ‘Frrst is her grandpa
cheney?’”

Trisha: “Okay, but I need to know what you want up here though. Is that
what you want it to say?”

Trisha: “NO? Jerrod? Do you think we should leave it in here? ‘Nathan is
going to bring...’ instead of putting it towards the bottom?”

Punctuation
Example: Trisha: “Where’s the comma, right here?”

Trisha: “So everywhere I find and ‘and’ I am going to take it out and put a
comma?”

Trisha: “Ok, you do not want a period there?”
Trisha: “Apostrophe ‘s’, so I add a caret.”

Heather. “Yeah, exclamation point!”

Sglling
Example: Trisha: “Do you know how to spell it? (writing, sounding out word) ‘A-S-
H-C-R-A-F-T.”
Trisha: Do you remember how I said sometimes I write it to see what looks
good? (Trisha writes on board: ‘wolleye’, ‘walleye’,
‘whalleye’, and ‘wholleye’)”
Beg-leading

Example: Trisha: “Ok, the only way I know if that’s what it sounds like is if I reread
it. Sol am goingtoreread this. I know weread the first
sentence and that worked out okay...”

Trisha: “Ok, let me read it again, ‘Frrst is her grandpa..”

Cross-Outs
Example:
Trisha:
Trisha
Tgpjc
Example:
. Trisha
Trisha
Trisha

Personal Exmrience
Example: Trisha

318

Hannalu “Take that out (pointing to ‘who she’s manied to’).”

"This? (crosses out ‘who she’s married to’).”

“‘her’ and ‘then’. Let’s try to get rid of that (crosses-out). Let's 80
to the next one.”

Hannah: “1 know, but I should have wrote about something else (i.e.,

chose another topic as author)”
“No, this is a good topic.”

“That was a good subject (topic) Hannah, it was just a hard one to
figure out.”

“I am going to put ‘When he grows-up’ (as a possible topic).”

“Ok, I know that, Nigel, you’re and uncle aren’t you?...So does,
when Monique grows up, is she going to call you ‘Uncle

Nigel’? or just ‘Nigel’?”

Mm

Example: Trisha “Ok, we need a topic sentence. Also, Danny, would you like to
give that for us?”

Trisha “How can I show my topic sentence then?”

Qg'nion
Example: Trisha “Ok. right, but Nathan’s response was fine too, wasn’t it?”

Trisha “I do, I see what Angie is saying, and i see what Danny and Nathan
are saying. And that’s when we come into a problem and
what we’re going to DO about it.”

Unclear Meaning
Example: Trisha “It doesn’t sound right?”

Trisha “I don’t know, it says what it is supposed to. Let’s read it one
more time.”

Trisha “(to Vietnamese student who does not speak English) Ok,
canoeing, you have water (draws picture of watery/T here’s a
canoe, and you have paddles (draws). And you go in a boat
(simulates rowing with arms).”

Categorizatiflhiam’ng
Example: Trisha “What Angie is saying is that every time we usually write...we have

categories, right, and we talk about one thing first, and then
when we talk about something else, we indent, and then talk
about something else. Is that right ”

319

Trisha “Okay, let’s think about some categories. What do you want to
know about her?”

Trisha “‘Characteristics.’ Oh, I need a bigger circle. I didn’t think you
guys would remember that!”

ngndngzOrgammuon

Example Trisha “Okay, so what you are saying is, you want to keep this, but you
think it should go somewhere near the bottom later because
right now we want to talk about, we’re talking about what

we’re going to DO at camp.”

Trisha “Okay, raise your hand if you think this sentence is in the right
place. Its good, perfect, right there. Raise your hand if you
want to put is some place else later? Okay, that looks like a
majority.”

Trisha “So where does the next sentence start?”

Trisha “Okay, which one should we start with? What she eats, what she
wears, what she does, her family, or h her characteristics?”

Qgestioninngommeng'ng
Example: Trisha “This is a really tough one. Ok, how about another question, a
comment, another comment , and see where it goes. Let me
reread it, I am sorry.”
Trisha “Does anybody have any comment to add?

Trisha “Okay, any other questions for Byron?”

mm

Example: Trisha “Because she’s seen that this isn’t how we normally write. We
were writing as a whole group in what we were doing, or
what we were going to do. And then it switched right to
Nathan by himself. And so she was thinking...”

Trisha “YEAH, like everybody does one paragraph and then the next
paragraph could’ve been what everybody wanted to do
separately...l mean, it would have been a new paragraph on
that stuff.”

Trisha “I am going to do what Gerry said, he told me to indent.”

Asterisk

Example: Trisha “Okay, so take the period away and I’ll put "and here and put the
star (asterisk) here instead of down here (all the way at very
bottom of page)”

Trisha “Yeah, that’s what Janitra said. But do I need to put a star? Now
look, this rs all crossed-off, right?”

Pronoun Usage
Example: Trisha
Ss:
Trisha
Trisha
Dictigr_ag

Example: ' Trisha

Trisha
Conclusions
Example: Trisha
Dates

Example: Trisha

Audience Sensitivig
Example: Trisha

Trisha

Trisha

Contractions
Example: Trisha

Janitra:
Trisha

Run-On Sentence

Example: Trisha
Ss:
Trisha

320

“‘Byron’s dad...”

{

“‘I-IIS!!’ (dad)”
“You think ‘his’?”

“We do have a lot of ‘Byron’ (repeated use of name instead of
substituting other pronouns such as ‘his’).”

“‘Walleye’ is what we’re looking for. If you can’t find it under
‘W-A’, geez, I though that’s how you spelled it. Yeah, try
6w-09.”

“If its spelled ‘W-A’ it should be on this page in this column.”
“I know, I know. Do you want to end it? (put ending on story)”

“Okay, if I didn’t have this date up here (covers with hand),
would I have to have the month name?...But because I
have the date up there, I don’t need to put it in there.”

“Okay, you know what, we’ve already hear a little bit in Sharing
Chair. So its kind of like you’re jumping ahead, because
you have to think about your parents. Do they know...”

“And you’re talking about going somewhere or doing something
and the parents don’t know why you asked that or even said
that. So we might need to put something down so they
know what we’re talking about.”

“Okay, so let’s introduce our parents to Angie.”

“Okay, Tracey says that instead of saying she cannot wait for her
birthday to come, we should put she ‘can’t’ wait for her
birthday to come. How many people like ‘cannot’? Raise
your hand. How many people like ‘can’t’?”

“That should be a contraction.

“Okay, let’s make that a contraction.”

“Is that a run-on?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, let’s make sure we split it up. So want to put the period and
we don’t want to put the ‘and’ in.”

321

Involvement Moves

Involvement moves in this study were defined as discourse moves that functioned
to create an increased level of involvement in an individual, small group, or the entire class.
This category of moves borrows from Tannen’s (1986) notion of “conversational
involvement strategies”, in which three moves, repetition, imagery, and dialogue were
found to be used extensively between conversational partners to both give one’s self more
air time and to involve one’s addressee. O’Connor and Michaels (1993) also found that a
common discourse move, revoicing, was used extensively by several exemplary teachers
with whom they worked. Particularly important in this move was how this move realigned
both the social relationships of community members and the content under consideration.
Two features of classroom discourse make the study of involvement moves particularly
important. first, it is generally agreed upon that discourse not only communicates
academic content under consideration, but also negotiates the social relationship of group
members. Second, as curricular events with alternative discourse goals continue to be
introduced, it will be necessary to have new conceptual tools to understand how teachers
effectively transfer control of meaning-making to students through their talk.

Revoicing

Revoicing occurs when the teacher (or another student) takes an individual
student’s idea and reformulates the idea for other group members to consider. Authorship
for the idea is given to the student, but the reformulation of the idea by the teacher may
serve to realign the clarity of the content and/or the social relationship of members of the
community. (For detailed examination of this move, see Chapter 5).

Examples: Angie: “But, we can cross-out those (ideas, and put them later in the
story)”
Trisha “What Angie’s saying, I think, and tell me if I am wrong, okay,.
What Angie is saying is that every time we usually
write...we have categories, right, and we talk about one
thing first, and then when we talk about something else, we
indent, and then talk about something else.”

Trisha “So, but what you’re saying is that you really kind of wanted ‘April
24th’ in there somehow?”

Trisha “Ok, what he’s saying...But what he’s saying is that we could put
this in one sentence... “

Trisha “What she’s saying is that ‘Angie’s birthday is on Saturday’ and
‘She is having a party on the 24th’”

Reflung

Repeating what a student says can communicate to the speaker that you are actively
listening to what they have to say. In the classroom, this repetition also serves to help
ensure the other group members accurately heard a particular individual’s idea, giving the
speaker a sense of ownership. As with all involvement moves, repeating may serve to
realigtrre both the content of the discussion and the social relationships among group
mem rs.

Examples: Mark: “That doesn’t sound right”
Trisha “That doesn’t sound right.”

Janitra: “Angie’s birthday party is on Saturday...the 24th.”

322
Trisha “Angie’s birthday party in on Saturday the 24th.”
k-Reading

In Morning Message, re-reading the written text was an important way in which
Trisha reoriented attention and the involvement of the group towards the story they were
constructing. Trisha would either re-read a sentence, several sentences, or the entire text
the group had constructed up to that point in time. Since re-reading one’s text and asking
whether what you have written makes sense is the most fundamental aspect of the drafting,
editing, and revising process, this re-reading became a routine within the community.

Examples: _ Trisha “And now it says, ‘Angie’s birthday is on Saturday and she is
having a party on the 24th.’”
Trisha ”They are going to play the regular Nintendo.”
Trisha “Do you want to do that, take off ‘They’re going to play games’
because they already have ‘They’re going to play regular
Nintendo ’”

Supporting

Trisha often became a coach or cheerleader for the group, supporting the group’s
efforts, especially during particularly tough going. As Morning Message was often
cognitively difficult for the students, it was important to support and reward the efforts of
the group. These supporting moves usually served a maintenance function; trying to keep
the involvement of group members high during difficult or trying times.

Examples: Trisha “You guys can write it any way, we just said that. But what we

needtodoisasateamtofigureoutthebestway.”

Trisha “It DOES sound right. All of them sound right.”

Trisha “Mark, you had an excellent point though. I wouldn’t have even
thought of saying that’s, that’s a holiday for that person.
That was excellent thinking.”

Trisha “Oooh this is hard.”

Trisha “I didn’t think you guys would remember that!”

Danny: “Can their characteristics go, I mean, with family?”
Ss: “No, it goes with family.”
Trisha “It can, it can. It depends upon how you do it. It can.”

Directly Calling on Students
Directly calling on an individual student was an important way Trisha gave

speaking rights to particular students and involved them in the discussion. Though the
student author had the right to call on audience members after giving the topic sentence and
the completion of a sentence, the teacher reserved the right to call on students at other
times. This right allowed the teacher to call on particular students who might add important
Opinions and ideas to the conversation or to involve a student who had not participated
extensively in the discussion (See example of Nigel at beginning of this Appendix).

Examples: Trisha “I am going to do what Gerry said, he told me to indent.”
Trisha “You have to indent. Byron?”
Trisha “Okay, just a minute, Tracey you don’t want the period here?”

323

Trisha “(T o the author, Angie) Okay, let’s move on then. You get to
choose, what would you like to talk about next, your
family, what you do, what you eat, what you wear?”

Trisha “I don’t know. I don’t know, Hia.”

Floor-Holding
Trisha used her role as teacher to ensure that all students had opportunities to

contribute their voice to the group constnrcted stories in Morning Message. Often,
however, it was necessary for Trisha to “hold the speaking floor” for a particular student
who had either (a) not been heard by the group, or (b) had been interrupted by another
student. This floor-holding served to communicate to members of the group that the verbal
involvement of all members was valued. If students who are less aggressive in their
attempts at gaining speaking turns were to be continually denied access by “louder” voices,
they would soon cease to make efforts to gain the speaking floor. The teacher, then, plays
a critical role in trying to ensure access for all students.

Examples: Trisha “(Holds floor for Janitra, who raised but then lowered her hand)
Janitra, did you have your hand up? What did you want a
tategory on?”

Trisha “Okay, Danny, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

Trisha: “What Gerry?...What did you just say to me?”

Trisha “(Ignores Janitra’s comment to hold Danny’s idea) Is that what
you’re saying?”

Trisha “Wait, wait, wait. Stop. Janitra, what did you just say?”

Trisha Just a second. Byron, ‘together?’”

Humor

Humor is a potentially powerful way in which to create involvement within the
classroom. Lemke (1985a) found that when science instructors changed their discourse
with students from the typical question-answer sequences to a more non-conventional,
open-ended discussion format, the engagement rate of students increased dramatically
(three to four times). One way to reduce the asymmetry in power between teacher and
student, or what Goffman (1981) refers to as “role distancing”, may be to introduce more
humorous episodes into one’s discourse. Since humor is often created through the
juxtaposition of what is typical and that that is atypical, it seems particularly well suited to
altering the traditional teacher-student register. In turn, it appears that humor, when used
judcilciously and carefully, may be a powerful way to increase the level of involvement in
stu ents.

Examples: Angie: “Capitalize. Uncapitalize ‘and’, um, lowercase, um, ‘she.”’
Trisha “Uncapitalized huh (chuckles).”
Angie: “Yeah (laughs).”

Hannah: “Are we going to have different dorms?”

Danny: “Of course.”

Trisha “Want to put that? Danny?

Danny: “Parents like to hear that.”

Trisha: “(laughing) Parents like to hear that.”

324

Trisha “(a discussion about what a ‘fraction’ is ensues; Trisha has drawn
pictures of a pizza on the board to demonstrate) One, so she
gets one fourth too. This one’s Danny’s. We’re doing math
during Monring Message. And I cut it crooked on purpose
sol could have the biggest piece.”

Ss: “Ahhhh!!!”

Permission

A final way in which Trisha attempted to involve students was through asking for
permission to discuss or alter a particular idea. Just as using humor alters the typical
teacher-student discourse pattern, asking a student or group of students for permission to
alter their idea is also an atypical event in most classrooms. The implicit message being
sent by such a move is to transfer control and empower students as decision-makers with
legitimate authority. Since this move is atypical in most classroom interactions between
teacher and students, it serves also to distance the teacher from their traditional role as the
sole authority of knowledge. Though this move was used sparingly in Morning Message,
it was particularly powerful in privileging the voice of individuals and the group in general.

Examples: Trisha “What Angie’s saying, I think, and tell me if I am wrong, okay.”

emerrt Moves

As the leader in the classroom, the teacher has the right and responsibility for
ensuring that children have a safe, productive working environment. As part of the
classroom community a teacher creates for children, the teacher must make decisions as to
the normative features that talk takes in his or her classroom. The teacher’s decisions about
the rules, routines, roles, rights, and responsibilities that different speakers have in
particular circumstances provide the boundaries for the types of talk the students and
teacher will engage-in with one another. The teacher has the right to enforce and uphold
particular standards that the community has agreed are important. In this sense, a vital
responsibility of the teacher in a classroom is to use the inherent power in their role as
leader to manage the classroom community, the conversations, and the behavior of the
members. As Michaels and O’Connor (1990) note, successful classroom dialogues are
orchestrated by the teacher, which includes deftly managing aspects of the environment and
discourse itself to ensure the most productive outcomes of these engagements.

 

Conversational Management
In Morning Message, Trisha managed a number of aspects of the conversation,

including the beginning and ends of a lesson, turn-taking rights and duties, speaking rights
and duties, and the pacing of the lesson. Due to the often high-paced nature of Morning
Message, it was important that Trisha retained the right to manage particular aspects of the
conversation. Though management moves occurred rather infrequently, they played a
particularly important role in the event.

Examples: Trisha “Raise your hand if you think that’s the way we should start this
(topic sentence)?”
Trisha “Ok, she’s the new student (in the class), thanks for reminding me.
Ok, Angie, come up and sit in the chair (as author)”
Trisha “Ok, we have to stop for now because we have poetry and theme.
So what I would like to do is to think of some questions for
Angie. She’ll be in the chair again.”

325

Trisha “Read this with me (chorally as a whole class)”
Trisha “Angie. That’s just a suggestion. Ok, do you remember about
(hurt) feelings.”

Commgrn'ty Mmement

Occasionally, it was important for Trisha to manage the implicit and explicit
speaking norms and social relationships that guided the classroom community. This
category of discourse moves reflects Trisha’s attempt to create and sustain particular
standards for the students, especially the importance of inclusivity, equity, and sharedness
that underlie the rules for social interaction. Community management involved managing
the social norms that related to feelings and opinions. This form of management differed
from class and behavior management, whose focus were the violation of behavioral
standards at the group (class management) and individual (behavior management) levels.

 

Examples: Trisha “I think Danny was concerned about Nathan because, you
know what’s really hard, is that we are so close in this
room. We are. We’re the family in Room 104 , and nobody
want to hurt anybody else’s feelings.”

Trisha: “I do, I see what Angie is saying, and I see what Danny and Nathan
are saying. And that’s when we come into a problem and
what we’re going to DO about it. And that’s what I am
saying, maybe today is not a good time to do this, because
did you notice that after we did this, and we went to the next
sentence, it was hard to get back into it.”

Trisha “How many people see Angie’s point.”

Trisha “Okay, do you remember about (hurt) feelings?”

Class Behavior Management
Class management moves focused on behavioral rules violations at the group level.

Rules violations included such things as unsolicited or inappropriate comments, inattention,
lack of participation, and other off-task behaviors (e.g., pounding pencil on desk, turning-
around and bothering neighbor).

Examples: Trisha “Now this is, shhh, you have to work together.”

Trisha “Ok, you guys need to keep it down just a little bit. If you’ve got a
comment, please raise your hand, we want to hear it, but its
the little noises that are bothering the group.”

Trisha “Okay, read this with me. Okay, before we start this, I can see
what’s going to happen already. When we get down here,
please do not yell. You can get a little excited, but please
don’t yell at me.”

Individual Behavior Management
Individual behavior management focused on behavioral rules violation at the

individual level. Rules violations included such things as unsolicited or inappropriate
comments, inattention, lack of participation, and other of f -task behaviors (e.g., pounding
pencrl on desk, turning-around and bothering neighbor).

Examples: Trisha “Janitra, can you move your desk back. If she does something,
you make a choice (to Gerry)”

326

Trisha “Now Gerry, I’ve asked Janitra to move and she moved, and
you’re still having problems. This is mine (pencil). The
little one is mine (little pencil)”

Trisha “Gerry (stating name during behavioral incident)”

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W

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Allington, R. L., & McGill-Franzen, A. (1989). School response to reading failure:
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Alverrnann, D. (1990). Teacher-student mediation of content area texts. Ihfly into
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Anderson, L. M., Raphael, T. E., Englert, C. S., & Stevens, D. D. (1991). Teaching
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Au, K., & Jordon, C. (1981). Teaching reading to Hawaiian children: Frnding a
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Au, K., & Mason, J. (19$). Cultural congruence in classroom participation structures:
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Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Edited by M. Holquist. Austin, TX:
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Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Smh genres & other late essays. Edited by C. Emerson and M.
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