Elfrieda H. Hiebert, University of Michigan
Walking into Mrs. Grattan's first grade classroom, visitors can't help but notice that literature pervades the room (Grattan, 1997). On the south wall are tall bookcases filled with I-Can-Read books such as Frog and Toad are friends (Lobel, 1970), books created by children over the years, books that follow a character such as Arthur (Brown, 1993), and outstanding picture books, ranging from fairly easy reads such as Fox's Hattie and the fox (1988) to more complex stories such as McCully's Mirette on the high wire (1991). Along the back of the room are more bookcases, again filled with books. On top of each bookcase are books grouped by different themes and topics (see Valencia & Lipson, Chapter 5), invitingly displayed. By the north wall, under the windows, are plastic tubs and crates, again filled with different kinds of books. Further, student anthologies from a popular basal reading program are in a nearby set of shelves. Clearly, Mrs. Grattan values and uses literature as a foundation for literacy instruction. But, Mrs. Grattan and other first grade teachers (see Chapter 7 for a description of Mrs. Araki's classroom) face some particularly difficult decisions once they've elected to move away from the "graded" reading materials of the basal reading program to building a program around trade books.
Teachers such as Mrs. Grattan and Mrs. Araki want their students to love literature, to understand the stories they read and hear, and to engage in reading and response to interesting stories, compelling nonfiction, and informational storybooks (Hiebert & Raphael, 1997), but this creates dilemmas. First, while teachers readily can identify compelling stories to read to children, it is more challenging to identify high quality literature that young children can read, at least at what has been termed an "instructional level." That is, with support, young children could read and make sense of the text. What can and should students be able to read independently? What are the features of these books? Second, while teachers want to use "real" literature from the body of published texts written by recognized children's authors, these are not written with literacy instruction in mind. Thus, they may present challenges to young readers (e.g., finding print in the midst of an illustration, understanding left-right progression when the author may be playing with text placement), making it difficult to practice literacy skills they are learning. Third, our field has justifiablybut rapidlymoved away from relatively limited readability formulas that determined text difficulty using only a few factors (e.g., word frequency, sentence length). Yet, nothing has replaced these formulas to guide text selection.
How can teachers of young children make informed choices about literature to use within their reading programs? What books should teachers select for students to read on their own? Which ones serve important purposes for teachers to read aloud? What kind of books provide the practice students need for becoming fluent readers? What of the tension between wanting to have students read from high quality literature while, at the same time, ensuring that they practice those word recognition skills that are fundamental to successful reading? To begin to answer these questions, my colleagues and I observed in classrooms and interviewed children (Fisher & Hiebert, 1990; Hagerty & Hiebert, 1989; Hiebert, Liu, Levin, Huxley, & Chung, 1995). The teachers in these classrooms were using literature to teach reading, and the students I focused most closely on were those who struggled the most in learning to read. What I found was that, while many of these struggling readers enjoy listening to books read aloud, they have not made much progress toward independent reading and writing.
I read the research literaturemuch written from perspectives of cognitive psychology and emergent literacyabout early readers and early literacy instruction. I then made connections between what I was reading and what I was observing among young readers and writers, Together, the readings and the research helped me develop a theoretical framework that can serve as a useful guide for teachers' decision-making about text selection, as well as guide future research by classroom and university researchers.
A unifying theme throughout the framework is that texts can serve as "scaffolds" for students learning. The metaphor of a scaffold has been often used in the research literature to describe features that, like a building's scaffold, provide temporary, adjustable support to young learners (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Scaffolds in texts can come from many different features: pictures, the frequency of the words that are used, the patterns of the words, and so forth. In this chapter, I describe different perspectives literacy educators and researchers have held about text scaffolds for beginning readers. Second, I present the components of a model of how these scaffolds work together to support beginning reading. Third, I present a set of guidelines for teachers who are seeking ways to support beginning readers' acquisition of independent reading skills that include interest and engagement in the ideas of texts.