Diana Weiss, Literacy Learning: the Middle Years, October 2009

Review from ACER- http://shop.acer.edu.au/acer-shop/product/A4085BK

Even among the plethora of excellent resources available to English teachers at present, this one sparkles. It is a gem.

In recent times, teachers have been bombarded with diverse advice about improving students’ facility with language as they read and write. Among other things, they have been told to use the three cueing systems (semantic, syntactic, and phonic), work within Vygotsky’s ‘zone’ that is just above each child’s ability to work independently, apply Bruner’s notion of scaffolding, employ Luke and Freebody’s ‘four practices’, incorporate Bernstein’s theory of instruction, and stretch and support students as they learn.

This book explains and illustratesthat these are not disparate concepts or practices; in fact, they combine to form a teaching sequence that requires teachers and students to work together – with the teacher as the significant ‘knower’ and ‘leader’ in the process. The focus of this teaching is students’ development of knowledge and skills so that they can demonstrate newly learned literacy practices.

In about 100 pages, the authors describe this powerful teaching sequence that has developed as ‘research in practice’ over the past 20-30 years.

The style is clear and easy to read; brief references to theory help to orient the reader and serve to clarify reasons for aspects of the described model and its constituent practice. The introduction offers practical social and educational reasons as to why this form of scaffolding enhances literacy learning. The conclusion highlights the dynamic nature of the teaching sequence, reminding readers that it constitutes a perpetual cycle that is forever available for recycling.

The middle section comprises three sections:

a. modelling meaning-making through careful steps in scaffolding reading and assessing reading performance through miscue analysis

b. the joint analysis of sentences and word constructions to scaffold the development of vocabulary, grammar and spelling through transformations and joint analysis of texts;

c. thinking (and acting) like writers through scaffolded sequences to develop new texts.

Throughout the book are examples of actual classroom applications of this teaching sequence with the recommended strategies and approaches. The authors are two classroom teachers who apply the teaching sequence in their classrooms, and a researcher who has been directly involved in recent development of the model.

Teachers in Queensland will recognise the planning patterns of orientation, enhancing and synthesising stages, even though these specific terms are not used. While the authors of this text use the teaching sequence in primary classrooms, it can readily be mapped onto, or replace, some of our current secondary practices.

This book must be recommended reading for all teachers. It has the potential to form the basis of valuable school-based professional development activities.

Dr Lenore Ferguson

This book is available from Literacy for Life. Ph: 0406 379 157