Literature as a Learning Tool: A Lesson Plan
As a parent, college student, peer tutor, and future college professor, I want to address and solve an important learning issue. Within the late twentieth century, there has been an increase on the emphasis placed on elementary, middle, and high school educators and administrators to spend more time preparing their students for the yearly standardized exams and less time forming and building their students’ reading and language arts skills. This paradigm shift in the early years of a college student’s learning techniques and development has made me increasingly concerned that today’s youth can make it all the way to college and still struggle to read and write at the level needed to successfully apply critical thoughts to complex texts. I would like to address this problem by focusing on enhancing students’ methods of thinking, learning, and writing with the use of literature.
In addition to attending classes a few days a week, many college students are also managing other full-time roles and responsibilities. In order to succeed in college and in their professional fields, and even to enhance social images for personal and professional networking, all students need to be able to express their thoughts and feelings in a critical manner. They should also be able to write effectively to communicate their thoughts most clearly to their intended readers. According to the updated NCTE position on education issues, “Often, in school, students write only to prove that they did something they were asked to do, in order to get credit for it. Or, students are taught a single type of writing and are led to believe this type will suffice in all situations” (1). Texting, audio devices that can read to us, and YouTube and internet learning have changed the formal methods that children and adults use to read and write. School trips to the neighborhood library to hear the librarian read the newest children’s book of adventures aloud or to help grade school students obtain their first library cards are no longer a common occurrence. Now that the focus in elementary school is to prepare students for end-of-the-year core exams, storytelling time in kindergarten is reduced or obsolete.
When I was an elementary student, penmanship and developing my cursive handwriting and weekly reading comprehension quizzes were all part of my grammar school education, as well as curriculum requirements. Also, as part of our writing practices, teachers across the nation would exchange letters written by their students with other teachers in other states, creating a culturally and popular educational tool called pen pals. The ability to read closely and to write clearly about what you have read has practical values in addition to educational values. These skills can help a student succeed in their other courses and beyond. As Rebecca Moore Howard, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick state in their article "Collaborative Pedagogy" (2000), “Scholars recommend the pedagogy of collaborative learning and writing not only because of its epistemological felicities but also because it offers students practice in common forms of workplace writing […]. For scientists too, collaborative writing is a familiar method […]. Even preachers engage in collaborative writing” (57).
As a way to restructure upper-level students’ reading and writing skills and in response to a 1997 resolution from the Board of Trustees, CUNY created the CUNY Proficiency Exam (CPE). It required all students who were either completing their associate degree programs or beginning their junior level college programs to take and successfully pass an exam that tested their writing and reading skills for proof that they were above college-entry level. CPE peer workshops and freshman and level two English literature classes helped students prepare for the exam and provided learning opportunities for students to build up their close reading and writing skills toward graduate-degree levels. In 2010, amid complaints that the costs of administering the CPE were more than it was worth, CUNY discontinued the exam. Though many students might have sighed with relief that this "ritual of passage," as we called it in my community of peer tutors, was no longer part of their academic program, its absence did not help get students up to par with their reading comprehension and writing skills.
Neither digital technology nor the discontinuation of the CPE exams and tutor sessions are entirely to blame for the lack of close readings skills that many college students exhibit. Even if we take into account the factor that many students also work full-time jobs, are full-time parents, and may not have full support at home for their higher educational goals, the problem could possibly lie in the lack of close engagement between professors and classmates in writing and reading classes. Because many incoming college students are required to take timed reading, writing, and math placement exams, the habit of doing hasty reading becomes an automatic procedure that they also use in their required course assignments. Assigning students reading material and asking them to write about what they read, as some freshman or remedial English class professors tend to do, is not an effective teaching method. As educators, we should change the practice of using basic assignments to simply pass students. Instead, we need to create lessons and assignments that will be more student-centered and engaging so that the writing and close reading skills they learn and develop in our classes and that emphasize their critical and creative thinking will become embedded and characteristic as they move forth in higher education and in professional development.
During my studies as an undergraduate, I was required to read, annotate, and participate in thoughtful discussions in three separate courses using three collections of readings: Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers, Philosophy: An Introduction Through Literature, and Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. Each book contained a diverse selection of literary works that integrated both classic and contemporary literature with discussions of current events and social interests that engaged students. As students, we were required to read and thoughtfully respond to the assigned readings via discussion board posts or write two page essays prior to the following week’s class. We would then submit our responses to our classmates and professors for review and in the next class, discuss our writings. By having to annotate reading passages, we were encouraged – even forced – to closely read the assigned material, especially since we knew that our responses were going to be reviewed and shared among our peers and not just submitted to the professor for grading. My experiences as an undergraduate student in the various English literature classes I took, and as a CPE peer tutor receiving feedback from my fellow students, were often more effective than the feedback from just the professor.
As college students, we tend to use the habits we acquired in elementary school in our writing. However, from experience I believe that once we reach the college level, we should be learning to write for our scholarly and professional peers. Many of the scholarly articles that we are required to read and use for our research papers are written by professionals in their fields primarily for their peers in similar fields to review and discuss. Therefore, based on what worked for me in college, my main instructional method for college students would be assigning short readings from an anthology of literature, requiring weekly reading responses to assigned questions to be completed at home, and mandating participation in classroom discussions. These combined activities would help students understand that their learning process is not just teacher-based but also student-centered, and that it is vital for their academic and professional success. My goal as an instructor would be to start training my students to write less to impress me as a professor and more to communicate ideas effectively to their peers in and out of the classroom settings.
For the remainder of this chapter, I would like to propose some specific and practical ways that faculty can use literature and peer reviews to help students develop their critical reading and writing skills. To begin this process, as I suggested above, I would have students read two to three assigned readings each week and write a one to two page response or reaction to what they have read. I believe that weekly assignments like this would assist with one of my goals, which is to get my students to adjust their writing behaviors from trying to impress their professors toward writing creatively and critically for their scholarly peers. I would also have each student email a fellow classmate their written response for a peer critique and annotated review. Each student would then receive their paper back from their peer with comments and then they would use the critiques for revision prior to the in-class discussions on the readings.
Since this might be the first time that many of my students are doing these types of peer writing exercises, I believe it would be best to have them first exchange papers with a couple of their classmates via email rather than using other types of collaborative writing forums, such as blogging and discussion posts on virtual blackboards which can be viewed by many. I want to create a safe place for my students to build their confidence. I also want to provide them with opportunities to learn how to accept and give peer-level critiques and annotations, and at the same time, assist with their developments out of their comfort zones of writing only to complete an assignment for grading by their teachers. According to Thomas Newkirk in "Direction and Misdirection in Peer Response" (1984), “When students are urged to consider their classmates as the audience for which they are writing for, then instead of writing to impress their teacher in order to earn a grade, the students’ writing styles and content will be more effective and appropriate for their audience of peers” (301).
The goal of peer review exercise is that students learn from each other how to critique, find overlooked grammatical errors, and build trusting relationships with their peers, while preparing and revising short papers during the beginning and middle of the semester. By the time the final and longer papers are due, the class as a whole will be better prepared and their thoughtful and critical reading and writing skills will be more developed than they were at the beginning of the semester. One of the many goals of using literary analysis and peer reviews of written assignments as open discussions in class together is to provide students with safe and comfortable opportunities to voluntarily read aloud their revised and corrected papers and to listen openly to feedback from fellow classmates. Another goal of this type of learning setting is to allow all students’ voices to be heard on various topics and subjects of personal and professional interests. A final important goal of this type of student-centered learning exercise is to encourage the quieter students who tend to shy away from in-class discussions to engage with their classmates more openly.
Literature can spark students’ curiosity to do further research on a particular topic. Making reading and writing assignments more engaging for college students will make learning feel less like they are being required to develop a skill that should have been developed before they graduated from high school. It will also build their willingness and enthusiasm to complete their assignments effectively and in a timely manner. In their anthology for readers and writers, In Making Literature Matter, editors John Schilb and John Clifford state that “examining literature is best seen as a process during which you gradually construct, test, revise, and refine your sense of a text. We think literature is most worth reading when it does challenge your current understanding of the world, pressing you to expand your knowledge and review your beliefs” (13). I believe that by assigning and using literature as a tool for writing exercises, it not only forces and encourages the student to read more closely to understand the points the author wants the audience to get, but it also provides many opportunities and discussion topics for the student to exchange insights with their classmates and teacher.
Traditionally, issues such as family relations, justice, love, and current events were the basis of the topics that students would read and write about for class. According to Schilb and Clifford, over the last couple of centuries, literary studies has turned to several new concerns, such as:
- Traits that significantly shape human identity, including gender, race, ethnic background, social class, sexual orientation, cultural background, nationality, and historical context
- Representations of groups, including stereotypes of others,
- Divisions, conflicts and multiple forces within the self
- Politics and ideology, including the various forms that power and authority can take; acts of domination, oppression, , exclusion, and appropriation, and acts of subversion, resistance and parody.
- Economic and technological developments, as well as their effects.
- Values---ethical, aesthetic, religious, professional and institutional.
- Desire and pleasure
- The body
- The unconscious
- Relations between ‘high’ culture and ‘low’ (that is, mass or popular) culture
- Relations between what’s supposedly normal and what’s supposedly abnormal
- Distinctions between what’s universal and what’s historically or culturally specific
- Boundaries, including the processes through which these are created, preserved, and challenged (39).
My first in-class lesson will be a combination of a few of the above listed literary topics with an introductory writing assignment that would allow the students to open up and meet the people they would be learning with for the next few months. Since this is an exercise I have done as a student in a few of my classes, I am sure this would be familiar to many readers However, I will also add a bit of a twist in the type of questions I will have my students answer and share. After distributing a set of index cards, I will give students three minutes to list as many descriptive terms as applicable as they answer the following questions: “Who am I now?” and “Who will I become in the next three years?” Depending on the size of the class, I will have them break up into groups of three or four and introduce themselves to their group members for three to five minutes. Afterward, each student will introduce their fellow group members to the class. I will also fill out a card and share my answers with the class. From my perspective as a student, when the professor shared a bit of themselves, it made the class setting and tone feel less structured and more open-minded for learning, and made the professor seem more personable and engaging; therefore, as professor, I would like to establish this type of atmosphere for my students in the beginning of the semester.
This writing exercise will also prepare the students for the first set of assigned readings, which are based on at least six of the new literary concerns listed above. The first two readings, which come from Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, are James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” and Edward Hoagland’s “The Threshold and the Jolt of Pain.” In his essay, Baldwin shares his account of growing up as a young black man in Harlem, and the effect it had on his writing career along with the impact of his relationship with his father. Hoagland’s essay also is an account of his relationship with his father, and the impact it had on his desire to be a writer. However, Hoagland’s childhood , challenges as a young white man obviously differ greatly from Baldwin’s.
This writing assignment will have two parts. First, students must compose a one to two page essay in which they compare and contrast the two authors’ points of view with respect to their relationships with their family and their race and class standings within their society, as well as the impact this has on their identities. Students will use the following set of questions as a guideline:
- What is the main point, message, or theme of this essay?
- Summarize at least three key points, specific details, or examples used in the essays that convey the author’s general message to the reader.
- What is your response to the main point? (Be specific in referencing passages, sentences or words as support.)
- Why do you think these two readings support the discussion we had in class today about our identities? How?
- What new information have you gained from this reading?
Since this will be the first set of assigned readings, in order to prepare for their future peer review critique assignments, students will first submit their essays to me, via email, by the deadline I set. They also must bring in their essays typed and prepared for a ten to fifteen minute peer review session by their classmates in the following week’s class. Students will also have opportunities to read their corrected essays out loud and discuss their reactions and thoughts about the readings with their classmates in the time remaining for this session. This type of assignments as well as the in-class discussion sessions will encourage and engage the students to start learning how to do a closer reading of literature in order to pick out the key concepts needed for writing a thoughtful and reflective essay.
These two autobiographical essays written by male authors will reiterate the theme of our first few class meetings: how the essays we will be reading, in the words of Maurianne Adams in Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, “places social identity in the broader context of identity development more generally and describes the ways in which one's identity develops through the interaction between a person’s internal sense of who one is (based upon one’s social groupings) and the views of oneself and one's group that are reflected back by others in the broader society” (7). All of the assigned readings will cover such a broad spectrum of social, historical, personal, and philosophical issues that each student should be able to find something to connect to and that will perhaps lead to their desire of wanting to do more research.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines literature as “familiarity with letters or books; knowledge acquired from reading or studying books, especially the principal classical texts associated with humane learning; and is also now a branch of study.” The image of a typical college student has changed since the OED was first published. However, what is still current is that by the time a student has entered college, they will have acquired and experienced at least a few life lessons. Digital technology and various forms of media offer people of all ages and from all over the world easy accessibility to information on various subjects. Today’s college student can vary from a young adult who is entering straight out of four years of high school to an adult who is in their mid to late sixties and may have a wider background of educational, job, and life experiences. By the time an incoming college student has begun their higher education career, they have likely already been exposed to a wide variety of topics.
Literature comes in many forms and genres, such as poetry, fiction, autobiography, and essays, just to name a few. It also covers an abundance of interests, points of views, topics, genres, and insights, from philosophical to political to religious to social. Having my students write, critique, annotate, and discuss assigned readings among their peers will provide them with opportunities to reflect on what they have read and teach them how to develop and critically apply their learning to issues that matter and that affect them personally and professionally.
Adams, Maurianne. 2000. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. New York: Routledge.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. 1980. "Two Related Issues in Peer Tutoring: Program Structure and Tutor Training." College Composition and Communication 31.1: 76.
Delbanco, Nicholas, and Alan Cheuse. 2010. Literature: Craft and Voice. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Howard, Rebecca M., Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. 2000 "Collaborative Pedagogy." A
Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary Tate. Oxford University Press. 54-70.
Kleiman, Lowell, and Stephen C. Lewis. 1992. Philosophy: An Introduction through Literature.
New York, NY: Paragon House.
Lopate, Phillip. 1994. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor.
"Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing." NCTE Comprehensive News. http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/teaching-writing/
Newkirk, Thomas. 1984. "Direction and Misdirection in Peer Response." College Composition and Communication 35.3: 301-311.
Schilb, John, and John Clifford. 2003. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Topping, K. J. 1996. "The Effectiveness of Peer Tutoring in Further and Higher Education: A Typology and Review of the Literature." Higher Education 32.3: 321-45.


4. TELLING A STORY
Everyone loves to listen to stories. There is hardly anyone among us who has not heard a story during our childhood. Stories keeps children engaged and let them feel that they are also participating in the process of story telling. Language learning, any learning for that matter, happens when children are engaged in meaning making activities. If story telling is made into an interesting experience and fun filled activity where the listeners also participate in telling, guessing, manipulating, it could be a joyous learning experience.
· To develop an understanding among teachers about the importance of storytelling in language classroom.
· To enable teachers to select stories for language classroom and to use story telling as a strategy for effective language teaching- learning.
· To familiarize teachers with techniques of telling a story and to create stories with children in the process of language learning
· To develop a perspective among teachers about the uses of story telling in terms of developing sensitivity to various world views and reinforcement of social values through stories
Read the following story with your friend
Funny Si Kabayan
Long ago, in Indonesia, Si Kabayan loved to play with words. Once, his father-in-law said, “Sing me a song.”
So Si Kanayan droned, “Sa-ri sa-r sari-”
“That’s no good,”moaned his father-in-law. “I want something gentle on the ears.”
“Try chicken feathers.” Said Si Kabayan.
“Forget singing then, you fool,” said his father-in-law. “Tell me a story
“Something long?” asked Si Kabayan.
“You useless fellow!” roared his father-in-law.
Something short, then?asked Si Kabayan.
“YES, YES. YES!”
“An ant,” grinned Si Kabayan. And that was the last time that his father-in-law asked him to do anything at all, which made Si Kabayan very very glad!
Now discuss with your friend
- Is it a humorous story?
- Will (y)our students like it?
- Is the story suitable for your students? Why do you think so?
- How can this story be used in the classroom? (a) Students reading individually (b) Students reading in groups (c) teacher telling the story to the class.
3. Story telling Vs. Teaching a story
We need to understand the difference between teaching a story and telling a story. In Teaching a story as a piece of work or literature as it happens most of our classroom where the teacher presents and explains the events, actions and characters of the story. Here the purpose is different. Story telling as a strategy for learning, more so language learning, serves as major language ‘input’ for learners and enables them, through experience, learn / acquire the language naturally.
4. Understanding the learner and his / her context
Children are impulsive for they have no apprehension and notions that will stop them from acting; they are inquisitive and want to know what is around them and what is happening to things and people; they have enormous energy that they will not stop doing things till they are extremely tired; they are spontaneous and social, and would like to be entertained always. Moreover, children crave for attention and love, as this is a natural instinct of a child. If our classrooms keep them engaged with right kind of entertainment in the process of learning, learning is ensured. This is because children are active learners and thinkers (Piaget, 1970). They learn though social interactions (Vygotsky, 1962) and learn better and more effectively through scaffolding by adults (Bruner, 1983).
Could you supplement some of the qualities of children mentioned in the last two lines of the above paragraph?
4.1. Teaching young children
We help children learn language when what we ask them to do is purposeful, meaningful, socially significant and enjoyable. They need to feel supported when they attempt to do something i.e. learning and this could happen when they are given context based tasks and activities. How can we make our classroom activities purposeful, meaningful and engaging? Can you list out some of the ways in which you want to do it?
5. Why stories for language learning?
Stories use a holistic approach to language teaching and stories support natural acquisition of language. We believe language is learnt in contexts and in chunks, not in isolation, word by word or sentence by sentence. Stories are meaningful inputs i.e. comprehensible inputs (Krashen 1985) that children receive as they listen to and tell stories. Comprehensible input refers to the language given to children just above the level of their present language competence. This helps them get engaged and motivate them to understand and find out the new words, structures and make meaning out of the input. Stories develop in children an understanding about other cultures, respect for others and other cultures. Stories help children develop critical thinking and making a judgement about things and happening and actions of people, ideas and so on. Above all children love stories.
6. Choosing the right kind of story
How will you choose stories for children? We have lots of them available in of textbooks, supplementary readers, publications of NBT, CBT and Sahithya Academy and many other private publications. Don’t you feel we need to choose the ones children like, those that that match their age and language level? So consider the following when choosing stories to tell in the classroom
- Find stories your children will like.
- Stories that match their age and language level.
- Choose stories you like.
- Choose stories with simple structures
- Choose stories with positive values (positive aspects of human nature-resourceful, humorous). Avoid didactic stories. Stories should be in such as children may understand and critique actions, characters, ideas, themes in them and make a judgement expressing their own opinions.
- Choose stories that relate to children’s daily life and their thinking, curiosity and interest. (Adapted from Pederson 1995)
With your friend
Can you suggest a story that you would like to tell your children? Give reasons for you selection.
“Having chosen a story how do I go about the task?” is the question in your mind now. Here is what a teacher tells us what she would do.
- Study the story’s background and try to test your selection
- Importance of vocabulary. Children will understand the text they read if they know at least 90% of the words (Joan Kang Shin 2007)
- If the story has a lot of unknown vocabulary, make sure that you can make it comprehensible before or during the storytelling.
- It helps if children know the most frequently used words.
7. Techniques for Story telling
Though children love to listen to stories, we need to begin with short sessions, if they are not familiar with storytelling in the classroom. You can make your own seating arrangement comfortable for children. You can have younger children sit on the floor around you. Begin with very short stories, riddles, anecdotes and tales which children like better. Here are some riddles
Water of two colours in a single pot
A mother carried her children around her neck
The old woman who eats only wood.
Golden lock for a small house.
(See the answers at the end)
You may ask children tell such riddles in their mother tongue or in English. This will serve as good starter to take children into the story telling session. Now read slowly and clearly the story and with expressions. While telling the story use the following techniques or actions to sustain children’s interest.
7.1. Tools for a story teller
· Concentration and visualization
Close you eyes and recall a story heard as a child, Picture the home you grew up in.
Remember some of your happiest moments; saddest times; times of anger; times of reflection
Take deep, slow breaths.
Enjoy and remember the silence and calm as you do this.
Try breathing in and our quickly as if panting, without moving shoulders or chest much so that you develop deeper, fuller breath support.
· Voice work
Chew, hum and stretch to keep your voice relaxed. Alto try voice exercises from vocal/ oral tradition of your region.
Read a newspaper line or say a nursery rhyme in different ways varying pitch, volume, texture, and feeling. Try talking in a monster’s voice, giving a king’s command or a beggar's plea.
Vary the pace, tone and volume of voice; pause where appropriate;
Disguise your voice for different characters.
Do not be afraid to repeat, expand, and reformulate.
· Encourage children to take part in story telling
Ask question that involve children.
Make comments about illustrations and expect a response from children.
· Sound and Silence
Listen to the sound of the spoken word.
Consider alliteration; explore the possibilities of rhyme; Add sounds to the right stories- animal noises; connect culturally.
· Word Play
Very short stories, tales, puns, riddle would do wonders.
(Adapted from Brewster, Ellis & Girard 2004
and Cathy Spagnoli year not mentioned )
Now read the following news items in three different ways. (Try and read giving emphasis on the bus, then ninety year old man and then crushing of the bus or the old man into pieces.)
Bus collided with a ninety year old man and crushed into pieces.
And discuss with your friend what technique you employed.
7.2. Pre-Story telling to Post Story Telling
Now let us see how we can design pre and post storytelling activities. Our aim is to capture the attention of children before we venture into our story telling session. Children learn with the help of their previous knowledge. They would pick up well and with interest, if they can connect to prior knowledge and experiences. Have activities, tasks, role play or actions that would connect their life experiences with the ideas, themes, incidents or the characters of the story. Also review language in the story children already know and teach new vocabulary or expressions. Children would love to predict what will happen in the story. So stop when you reach such a point where the tension mounts, and ask children to predict.
The above discussion yields the following pointers:
§ Capture children’s attention.
§ Connect to their prior knowledge and experiences.
§ Review language in the story children already know.
§ Teach new vocabulary or expressions.
§ Have children predict what will happen in the story.
§ Give them a purpose for listening.
Post Story Telling Activities
The following activities and tasks would enrich the experiences of children after listening to the story.
§ Questions and answers based on the story. This has to be oral.
§ Total Physical Response (TPR)*
§ Group retelling
§ Create your own ending
§ Drama and role playing
§ Story mapping
§ Story boarding
§ Games that check comprehension (Start & Stop, retelling with mistakes, picture out of order.
*Total Physical Response (TPR) is a language teaching method built around the coordination of speech and action; it attempt to teach language through physical (motor) activity (Jack C. Richards & Theodore s. Rodgers 1986)
Here is a story. Set pre story telling activities, then tell the story and set one or two post story telling activities.
Lake of Diamonds
The village of Paritaal had got its name from the lake in the middle of it. The lake was the life of the village. Stories were told of diamonds that lay buried beneath the lake-bed. But this summer things were different. There had been no rains for two years and the threat of another drought was looming over Paritaal. The lake had dried up. Eight-year-old Abdul lived with his family in the village. His grandfather was the village sarpanch.
One evening the whole village gathered to discuss the delayed rains. Vigyan, a well-read man and Haji, the potter asked the sarpanch about the legend of the buried diamonds in the lake-bed. “Let’s all dig up the lake and find the diamonds. Then we won’t be hungry and poor anymore.”
“Yes, yes, we must do that,” agreed Laxman, the carpenter. The sarpanch and the priest were worried. If it did not rain this year there would be mayhem. Hunger and poverty would make beasts out of men.
Abdul knew how difficult it was for them to get water. His mother and sister would be away for more than half the day, as they had to walk five km to fetch drinking water. They could not carry much water, just three pots. It was the same story in every house.
The villagers insisted that they should be allowed to dig up the lake and find the diamonds. Vigyan tried to dissuade the villagers and instead suggested that they should all wait and if they wish they should offer prayers. Abdul’s grandfather managed to convince the villagers to organize mass prayers.
But there were a lot of people who did not believe in the power of prayer and felt that the sarpanch was cheating them by not allowing them to dig up the lake-bed. Two days was too long a wait. Haji, the potter, whose idea it was to dig up the lake, was very restless. For Laxman this whole business of praying seemed foolish. Every member in his family including himself had been reduced to a bag of bones. He wanted to dig up the lake-bed. And that’s what he did. He kept at it all night aided by the light of the moon.
The day of prayers came. Before sunrise, all the villagers gathered at the lake, knelt down on the dry lake-bed and prayed. Abdul too had gone with his grandfather. It was a beautiful sight to see people united in adverse times.
Just as the sun rose, Vigyan came along with people and they had a yagna on the caked lake-bed. Just then, the villagers discovered Laxman’s attempt to dig the lake. The sight of the dug-up lake-bed was like a trigger that had been pulled up. The villagers seized any implement they could grab – pick-axes, spades, shovels, crow-bars-and started digging.
By afternoon it was baking hot. The sarpanch pleaded with them to stop but no one was in the mood to listen. By night, the lake was at least five times deeper than it was. Not a single diamond had been found. Like madmen they kept digging all night. By daybreak the lake was really deep. Suddenly water started oozing out. The soil became slushy and the digging stopped. Ropes had to be let down to pull the men up. The men were disappointed that there were no diamonds.
It took the wisdom of the sarpanch, Vigyan and others to show the men that water was the greatest treasure they could have. “Where there is water, there is work; where there is work there is wealth and prosperity,” said Abdul’s grandfather. The men saw the point. They were tired, but ready to plough their lands and prepare for prosperous times. (Young World, The Hindu, Tuesday, July 14, 2009)
8. Storey telling as a strategy to enhance oral language proficiency
Story telling is an effective strategy to help children obtain oral language proficiency. In instructed language learning situations where the exposure to English is only in school like in a majority of our schools, stories and story telling will serve the purpose of not simply promoting listening skills, but will also develop oral language proficiency. The following processes could be of use when we attempt to help children enrich their oral skills through story telling. Here children move from being mere listeners of stories to beginning storytellers in an interactive way. This is only suggestive and need not be seen in the linear way it is given. We can start children telling stories along with teacher’s story telling sessions. Prepare the children well with clear instruction and clarification before the start of any story telling session.
From listening to a story to interactive story telling
Teacher telling a story in a session.
v Children are involved
v Children participate, ask question
v They predict the possible ending or alternative end of the story.
v Whole class reading a story –choral reading (with and without teacher reading)
v Reading in groups
v One child reading out to the group / whole class.
Children telling a story
v Children tell a story individually to the whole class or to a group
v Children take turns and tell a story
v Children ask questions each other as they tell a story or after telling / listening to a story.
v Children bring stories from their experiences, from elders, etc and share by telling and exchanges with their peers.
v Teacher’s role: Teacher makes the session informal and does not intervene much.
v Critical Pedagogy: Children ask question on the ideas and beliefs, characters, happenings and intensions of the story (writer). This makes them analyse and judge and conclude.
9. To Sum up
Stories and story telling serve as an important input for enhancing language learning in the classroom. Teachers need to know how to select a story and the various techniques of telling a story and enabling children to be story tellers in an interactive way. Let us recall
- Find stories your children will like and appreciate.
- Stories that match their age and language level.
- Choose stories you like.
- Choose stories with a simple structure
- Choose stories with positive attitudes.
- Choose stories that children could connect with their daily life and their thinking, curiosity and interest.
Before your story telling session
· Study the story’s background and try to test your selection
· Importance of vocabulary. Children will understand the text they read if they know at least 90% of the words (Joan Kang Shin 2006)
· If the story has a lot of unknown vocabulary, make sure that you can make it comprehensible before or during the storytelling.
· It helps if children know the most frequently used words.
· Employ the techniques of both physical actions and oral modulation to tell a story
· Plan and design pre-story telling, post story-telling activities.
· Make Story telling as an interactive activity paving way the for enhancing the oral language proficiency of children.
Read the story given below and write a plan a session of a story telling session by the teacher and a session in which children take turns to tell the story. Mention the pre and post story telling activities.
Food for Thought
A young woman in Sri Lanka had parents who were extremely caste conscious. When they began to seek a groom for their daughter, they were most anxious that he should come from a high caste. Although they had little money, they turned down offers from rich lower caste men, preferring instead to find any possible husband, no matter how impoverished, from the higher castes.
Finally, the match was made and the woman was married to a high caste man who had few rupees indeed. The poor woman suffered great hardship in her husband’s home, for he was a good-for-nothing who neither helped her in the fields nor brought home any income.
One day, her parents decided to visit her. They approached the house, smelled the wood fire and saw their daughter scraping a spoon round in a pot. She invited them to sit down and they looked forward eagerly to a fine meal. They sat and waited. No food was served. Quite hungry, they waited a little more. Still, no food. At last, the mother went to see if the meal was ready. She looked into the pot and was very surprised. For even though the girl still moved the spoon in the pot, there was nothing to stir-the pot was empty.
“What are you cooking, my dear?” asked the mother, quite confused.
“We have nothing to eat,” replied the daughter, “So I’m roasting the caste that you value so much. (Adapted from “Grain of Rice” Ratnapala 1991 p137) The stories Funny Si Kabayan and Food for thought are taken from the book, Telling Tales from Asia: A resource book for all who love telling stories authored by Cathy Spangnoli published by Tulika. (year not mentioned)
Brewster, J., Ellis, G. & Girard, D. (2004). The Primary English teacher’s guide. London: Penguin.
Cathy Spangnoli (year not mentioned) Telling Tales from Asia: A resource book for all who love telling stories. Tulika.
NCERT (2005) Position Paper on Teaching of English. New Delhi
Pedersen, E.M. (1995) Storytelling and the art of teaching. English Teaching Forum, 33 (1) 2-5.
Richards, C. Jack Rodgers, S. Theodore (1986) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: A description and analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge Language Teaching Library.
Shin, J.K. (2006) Ten helpful ideas for teaching English to young learners. English Teaching Forum, 44 (2), 2-7, 13. http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol44/no2/p2.pdf
Slatterly, M., & Willis, J. (2001). English for primary teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


As an English teacher I have found great joy in the exploration of meaningful writing with junior and middle school children. Children acquire language skills when they engage in self-motivating activities that are stimulating, social and meaning based. Writing activities, I have seen, need to be a part of the entire language experience that children are engaged in, and they cannot be isolated from what children listen to, speak about or otherwise experience. In the same spirit, writing activities must focus on communication and meaning rather than on the form of the language.
When thinking about meaningful writing, several important questions arise. How is writing to connect with children’s imaginative and psychological inner worlds? Can there be a structure to the way children conceive of the writing process itself? And how is creative writing to be assessed? I will try and propose frameworks to approach these three questions in the sections that follow.
Writing personal narratives
This is your writing journal. It is a place for you to write in either at home or at school and you will give it to me once a week. I will read it and write messages back to you!
The type of writing you will be doing in this journal is called personal narrative. That means you will write about events, stories, people and memories in your life. You will choose one topic for each entry. So, you might write about taking a train ride. Another time you might write about how you learned to blow a balloon.
This is how a letter to each of your students might begin, if you were to try personal narrative journal writing. This can be a weekly activity throughout the year with each student maintaining his or her own journal. It is a meaningful form of communication going back and forth between teacher and student, gradually deepening the relationship between the two. What it isn’t, is a place for us teachers to correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and form. It is a place for us to respond to the feelings, events and thoughts shared by the child who is relating a particular narrative. It is, therefore, a response to content and not form.
What exactly does this activity entail? In spirit it is just like a child eagerly grabbing the teacher’s attention on a Monday morning, “Uncle…do you know what happened to me this weekend? I lost my third tooth!” “Aunty, yesterday night, I and my father got lost while we were coming home…and you know what…it was more scary because the current was not there!” Our complete attention is summoned by the intensity of emotion, touch of drama, and lucid details that the child brings. Her main goal is to reach her audience successfully. While we hear ourselves saying, in our minds, “my father and I…last night…not yesterday night . . .” we respond out loud, with, “Oh gosh, really?!” or we go on to ask searching questions (if we can get a word in!) because we are genuinely interested in knowing more. What we are instinctively doing is responding to content and tone, but not form, and this is the spirit with which we would read the journal entries.
An article titled Core Values of Progressive Education by Seikatsu Tsuzurikata and Whole Language (June 2 2007, International Journal of Progressive Education), by Mary and Chisato Kitagawa, gives us an insight into the significance of this simple yet fulfilling exercise. During the Great Depression of the 1 1930s, teachers in rural schools in Japan found the textbooks and prescribed curricula too abstract and removed from the experience of the children whose families were simply struggling to survive. The teachers finally decided to ask the children to write about their own lives and experiences in the form of journal entries. Quoting from the Kitagawas’ article: Students wrote about their hardscrabble farm life, describing their parents’ toil in specific terms. For example, one student depicted his father’s gnarled, soil-encrusted fingers as looking almost like the edible roots he was pulling from the ground.
Today this approach can be used to benefit children anywhere by ‘listening’ to their personal stories and acknowledging their emotions. We can do this by writing meaningful comments in the margins of these journal entry pages. Over the course of the year while these entries keep going, the teacher can do lessons in the classroom on the use of rich detail, focusing on a memorable moment (not a whole summer vacation!), and using colourful vocabulary—all the time remembering that the entries are to be retained as a special, expressive communication between teacher and student.
Keep in mind that your comments are pivotal for this to work. Children should be made to feel uninhibited, free to experiment with words and phrases, or to try out a writing voice and style. In the samples below, I highlight such language play.
Student: It was an everyday-type day until the doorbell rang.
Teacher: Your phrase ‘everyday-type’ day even sounds monotonous. I like how it rolls off the tongue!
S: It was nicer than that. Made of real leather. It even smelled like leather. Like the smell of a new leather jacket. And the seems were handstitched too.
T: Ooooh! I can smell it as you describe it. How closely you have observed this little gift.
S: There were mannnnny birds on the water.
T: I can see how excited you were to see that many birds-‘mannny’!
S: I didn’t know the birds names but I felt happy looking at the birds.
T: Isn’t it funny how we always want to name what we see while we could just enjoy looking at it at that moment? How nice that you felt happy seeing them.
S: OK now let’s go deep deep into the jungle.
T: What an inviting way to lead me into the next part of your story!
S: It was there that we heard about the Kerala rock.
T: Wow! I’m hooked.
I would like to end this section with these words from the Kitagawas’ article:
What makes this movement remarkable is the degree to which teachers succeed in making themselves trustworthy co-spectators…the reader can read without any other purpose than to appreciate what has been expressed.
Writing as a process
Writing is not just an end product awaiting correction and evaluation by the teacher; it is an evolutionary process that requires teacher involvement at every stage.
[Writing Conferences: Alternative to the Red Pencil by Glenda Bissex]
Below are my notes as I watched a writing class.
There’s a low hum and a shuffling of sheets as students settle into their little nooks in the classroom and make themselves comfortable. It is time for writing with the 10-12 year olds. For a period of two weeks or more, we have been taking a piece of writing from the stage of an idea, to making a list or holding a brainstorming session, followed by a first draft, then peer feedback, a revised draft, an editing stage and then to the final product. The children have chosen their genres (travel brochure, recipe, news article, instructions or poster). As they lean against the wall, exchange that glance with a friend, and then look at their papers, they are getting ready for their task in the process of writing their piece.
For a few it is the final stage of writing out that recipe they’ve tried at home. Two others, at the stage of revising their first drafts, go outside to read their pieces out to each other. They will follow that with searching questions and feedback, which will nudge the other into making changes and revising the draft. They will read it out instead of showing it, so that the listener can focus on content and not get distracted by editing errors or handwriting quirks! Most of the students this morning are still navigating through their first drafts—an exciting stage of expression where they can dream about how they want to reach that final product—a colourful, flashy brochure about Savandurga Hill, perhaps. They can also freely put down all they want to say and in the way they want to, knowing they’ll be able to go back to it and reshape it. Since each student has chosen his or her own genre and topic they are quite motivated today as we settle down and proceed.
Rukmini has been painstakingly folding and refolding an origami crane making sure she writes down the instructions correctly. Finally she comes to me with a brainwave, “Aunty! Now don’t worry, I will also write how to make the crane but can I stick an actual paper at each step, with the correct folds, so that whoever reads it can see exactly how to fold it?” Over the last few days, she has discovered how complex it is to write about and draw out instructions for the folding of an origami crane, but she seems to have found a way out! As I look around, there are two students missing and I remember that they are off interviewing staff members for a news article. They should be back presently with their notes.
Suddenly I sense a queue of students developing on my right. Some need help in editing, one is not clear what to do next, and one who is writing a novel from the perspective of a dog which lives on Savandurga Hill, is feeling stuck with no creative juices flowing today! If there are too many waiting for help I usually urge them to: start designing the layout of their final product, read a library book, or see if a classmate needs help with their piece—sketching or decorating.
A couple of minutes before the end we all gather. I have to go up to the balcony to make sure I have found everyone! The hum turns into giggles and loud exchanges. The students pull out the sheets on which they are tracking the stages of their writing process. They take a minute to report, in writing, what happened that day:
‘Couldn’t think of anything new for my novel.’
‘Shanti listened to my story and said it was nice.’
Maybe this is a moment for me to write down some observations as well:
‘Varun struggled to begin working independently and is not able to get the big idea of the process. Perhaps this is too open-ended an activity for her.’
‘Shalom has already reached a final—seems to be rushing in most activities.’
‘Shreya has grasped the importance of revision, and wrote notes for herself when Rahul gave feedback and asked questions.’
My notes are of what I have noticed today. As I sit and look through all their writing process tracking sheets later, I will realize the need to instruct the class more in certain areas, such as how to listen and give constructive feedback to your partner (not just say, ‘it was nice’), how to incorporate their ideas and actually make changes in the first drafts, and so on.
As a parallel to the vignette above, I could trace my own journey in writing this article. I first brainstormed ideas I wanted to include, wrote a rough draft to just pour sentences onto the page without worrying about exactly how it sounded, then shared it with a colleague who gave me some feedback. A few days later, I went back to it, made changes in paragraph format, took away unnecessary details, added some necessary ones, and then began to think of my audience (you!) more seriously. Finally I was ready to edit for spellings, grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation. It was only after that that I felt it was a finished product that could be presented in some way.
The belief that children are authors capable of taking decisions, like adults, forms the core of this approach to writing. In this scenario, writing is real, not just an essay in response to a prompt, or an answer to a question. It is a living thing that has a meaningful end: reading out one’s story to a younger group of children, giving copies of one’s recipe to others in the group to try out, displaying the travel brochures in the library, putting up posters for publicity and such like. In the younger classes when children are not as familiar with many different genres of writing, the whole group can be led through an exploration of one genre—news article, for instance—and while all the children write the article they can choose what topics to write about. As older children are more familiar with different genres of writing they can choose to work on one for a couple of weeks as described in the vignette above, and move through the steps. Over the course of the year, you can make sure they cover five or six different genres. Exactly when they do each one could be up to them.
How do we understand the revision step? When we are immersed in a first draft for a while, it becomes very hard to step back and see if it reads well, is clear and performs its function. We have become too close to it. Reading it out to someone helps us hear it better and allows for the natural process of questioning and feedback to emerge. Here are examples of what teachers and peers might ask:
Who do you mean by ‘she’?
Is this a few days later or on the same day?
You have used the word ‘good’ quite a lot.
I would like to know more about the bull that came towards you and your friends, rather than the restaurant.
Why do you say you will never forget that day?
It is most effective for the teachers to role play this type of interaction (perhaps at the start of the year) so that students see how to give feedback, what questions to ask, how to be respectful of the piece written, and how to listen and wait till the end. Here are some more general questions for the listener to ponder over:
- What was the best part and why?
- What was difficult to understand and how can it be changed?
- What was the writer’s main point?
- What do you want to know more about?
- Did the piece fit its purpose?
Putting the responsibility back into the writer’s hands and making him/her active in deciding how to change, add to, or rephrase the piece conveys a powerful message of trust, and gives the student confidence in his/her writing abilities and talents. It is also a shift in perspective: moving the focus away from the mistakes themselves to that of making constructive changes and revising the writing.
A tool for assessment
- There were hundreds of birds flying over our heads!
- It’s a fact that giraffes have killed predators by a single kick of their hind leg and have also fallen on predators and crushed them!
- It was not that Omri didn’t appreciate Patrick’s birthday present to him.
- No more tips for today. Read tomorrow’s paper for more tips. (A ‘tips for dogs’ piece)
- That’s all. Why are you just sitting there? Get out of your comfy armchair and go play the game! (The conclusion to an essay on football)
- Not being able to fit in? People not understanding what you say? Come to St. Rajappa’s Gibberish School!
- He served it to the king’s guests. ‘ “Wonderful!” they remarked. “What do you call it?” The cook thought for a while and said, “Avial…” And thus the famous dish was born.
When we read a piece of writing we may feel it speaks to us, makes us laugh, entertains us, leaves us wondering about something, or gives us important information. On the other hand, we may feel it makes us confused, leads us down many paths, doesn’t have a main point, or is misleading. This gut reaction we have is valid, but as teachers we need to also understand the exact reasons that make the piece ‘good’ or ‘bad’, effective or not. These reasons give us teachers the language necessary to describe the strengths and needs we see in children’s writing, and clarity about how to teach to that or to move forward.
Vicki Spandel, an educator from the USA, has created a program titled ‘6-Trait Writing Assessment and Instruction’. Essentially this type of assessment is a rubric or grid comprising six traits that all writing can possess:
- sentence fluency
- word choice
- conventions (capitals, punctuation and spelling)
The student self-assessment table shown expands on these. Students are exposed to literary extracts or anonymous samples of children’s writing that are strong or weak examples of each trait until they begin to understand the nature of that trait. For them to appreciate what an effective detail, a personal voice, a strong lead, rich vocabulary and sentence fluency actually sounds or looks like, they need to read and hear examples and understand for themselves. Finally, after weeks of assessing other works, they can apply it to their own and each other’s writing. This assessment tool can be used once in a while at the revision stage (instead of the peer feedback process) so that students can go back and fix or improve their pieces and then apply it again at the very end of their writing process.
Here is an example of how the rubric can be applied. One child’s sample reads thus:
Talk by the Dalai Lama
As the rain pours down on the parched earth, people run out to enjoy the earthen smell and when the rain trickles down their foreheads, the farmers pray for a good harvest. At last the monsoons have come. Although some people don’t feel so much happiness as they ride on a motorbike. For instance it happened to me yesterday when I was going to a talk by the Dalai Lama.
The essay ends with this: So that is why I missed a wonderful talk…because of the rain!
This is a piece that has:
- an interesting lead, setting the scene for something to come
- memorable and poetic word choice: ‘parched’, ‘earthen’, ‘trickles’
- sensory details that create a scene: ‘rain trickling’, ‘earthen smell’
- varied sentence structure
- clarity in format
- a personal voice: reaching out in that last line.
All these specifics can be entered into the rubric and one will immediately see where the strengths and needs lie. Another sample reads:
Last year, we went on a vacation and we had a wonderful time. The weather was sunny and warm and there was lots to do, so we were never bored. My brother and I swam and also hiked in the woods. When we got tired of that we just ate and had a wonderful time.
It ends with: I hope we will go back again next year for more fun than we had this year.
This is a piece that has:
- organization and control, a clear beginning, middle and end
- good spellings and editing symbols, easy for another to read aloud
- no eye-catching details or strong lead
- repetitive vocabulary, ‘wonderful’ and very common words: ‘lots’ and ‘fun’
- lack of build up to one peak event, just a rambling list of things done on a long vacation
- lack of personal voice (no particular person comes to mind as we read it)
In each of the trait categories we can have a scale of 1 1-3 3 as the table shows. A ‘1’ could represent a weak example in that category and a ‘3’ could indicate a strong example. Just like children seem to enjoy rating movies they have seen or books they have read, they seem to find this exercise enjoyable as well.
The same form is used by the teacher to assess the students’ writing. When the student, her teacher and maybe even a third person are able to evaluate a piece of writing in the same manner by using this form, it indicates an effective use of the rubric. Having put thought and care into our writing instruction, it is appropriate to find a form for assessment that can match it. I believe this type of assessment helps derive children’s strengths, highlights their needs, and gives us the information we need to improve our instruction.
STUDENT SELF ASSESSMENT FORM
My message is clear
I know a lot about this topic
I have included enough information
I have included deatils not everyone would think of
My writing has purpose
Once you start reading you will not want to stop
My opening line hooks you!
Everything ties together
It builds to the good parts
You can fllow it easily
The ending works well and makes you think
My tone and voice are right for this topic and audience.
This sounds like me and no one else.
This piece shares my feelings about the topic
It makes the reader laugh, smile, get the chills, etc.
It’s like I am having a conversation with the reader.
It creates word pictures
Wording is accurate and crystal clear
These arre strong verbs
Words are not often repeated- Only for effect
These are memorable moments wording or phrasing stays in the reader's mind
It is easy to read aloud and it flows well
The sentence vary in length and structure making it easy-on-the-ear
The tense- past, present and future- is consistent throughout
The sentences are all grammatically correct
A few sentence fragments are used for style and effect
It looks neat, edited, polished and mostly free of distracting errors (capitals, punctuation, grammar).
My design and presentation draw the reader to the main points.
Note: All quotes and children’s samples have been taken from classes held at Centre For Learning, Bangalore and adapted slightly for this article. Names have been changed.


Summer reading programs (SRPs) have been a staple for many, if not most, public libraries since the turn of the twentieth century. Their popularity attests to the continuing value of encouraging reading among primary and secondary grade children in communities across the nation.
Each summer, during the annual hiatus from school, reading skills often decline. This phenomenon is sometimes called “summer loss,” “summer learning loss,” or “summer reading setback.” One consistent finding of a number of research studies is that “summer reading setback”— presumably the result of a lack of adequate reading practice—is a very real phenomenon. It impacts children living in poverty the most, and its effects are cumulative.
Over the last two decades, research continues to show that reading scores tumble while voluntary reading rates diminish as children move from childhood to late adolescence. One real discouraging note is that nine year-old children read more than their thirteen- and seventeen-year-old counterparts.
One of the common assumptions about SRPs is that they are valuable in many ways for the children participating. Reading practice improves word recognition, builds vocabulary, improves fluency and comprehension, is a powerful source of world knowledge, and is a way to develop understandings of complex written language syntax and grammar. However, most children do very little reading out of school, and only a small number of children read for extended periods of time.
While there is a plethora of literature pertaining to SRPs, there is little literature that focuses on the evaluation of these programs. What literature there is can be conveniently divided into two broad categories: summer school programs and public library SRPs.
The Impact of Summer School Programs
My review of the research that has been conducted about summer school programs suggests that:
- Students who do not engage in educational activities during the summer typically score lower on tests at the end of summer than they did at the beginning.
- Summer school programs that focus on lessening or removing learning deficiencies have a positive impact on the knowledge and skills of participants.
- Summer school programs focusing on the acceleration of learning or on other multiple goals also have a positive impact on participants roughly equal to remedial programs.
- Summer school programs have more positive effects on the achievement of middle-class students than on students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
- Remedial summer programs have larger positive effects when the program is run for a small number of schools or classes or in a small community.
- Summer programs that provide small group or individual instruction produce the largest impact on student outcomes.
- Summer programs that require some form of parental involvement produce larger, positive effects than programs without this component.
- Remedial summer programs may have a larger effect on math achievement than on reading.
- The achievement advantage gained by students who attend summer school may diminish over time.
- Remedial summer school programs have positive effects for students at all grade levels, although the effects may be most pronounced for students in early primary grades and secondary school than in middle grades.
- Summer programs that undergo careful scrutiny for treatment fidelity, including monitoring to ensure that instruction is being delivered as prescribed, monitoring of attendance, and removal from the evaluation of students with many absences, may produce larger effects than unmonitored programs.
- On most days the majority of children did little or no reading. A child in the 90th percentile in amount of book reading spends nearly five times as many minutes reading per day as the child in the 50th percentile and over 200 times as many
minutes per day as the child in the 10th percentile.
- Summer reading setback is one of the important factors contributing to the reading achievement gap between rich and poor children.
- There is little difference in reading gains between children from high- and low-income families during the school year. Rather, the differences are the result of what happens during the summer.
- Children from high-income families make superior progress in reading over the summer, and over time the summer advantage can account for the social-class differences in reading achievement. This is a result of the fact that children from high-income families tend to read more over the summer.
- Children from lower-income families have more restricted access to books (both in school and out of school) than do their more advantaged peers.
- The more children read, the better their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Library Summer Reading Programs
The traditional SRP is designed primarily for elementary school children to promote independent reading during the summer vacation. A 1988 study defined effectiveness of a SRP as reaching a higher percent of the total number of school-age children.1 Libraries reaching more than 8 percent of the total child population were designated successful and an analysis revealed that successful libraries:
- were located in smaller communities;
- reached a mean of 11 percent of school-age children while unsuccessful libraries reached a mean of 3 percent (the range was from zero to 40 percent);
- produced a written evaluation report; and
- established goals and objectives for the SRP.
A survey of Pennsylvania and southern California public libraries found that SRPs are thriving, and attracting large numbers of children and families each year.2 These studies found that:
- Three-fourths of the libraries noted that circulation increases from 6 to 10 percent during the summer with the assumption that most of this increase can be attributed to the SRP.
- The majority of SRP children visit the library weekly.
- A third of the libraries report that the SRP attracts more than two hundred children.
- Children who attend summer library programs read on a higher level than those who do not attend—including those children who attend summer camp programs.
- Library events related to a SRP (crafts, songs, drama, storytelling, and puppetry) extend the reading experience.
- Summer library programs encourage parents to be involved in their children’s reading.
- Children participating in the SRP spend more time reading than their counterparts.
- Eleven percent of the parents reported that they spend more time reading with or to their children (fifteen hours or more per week).
- The amount of reading is substantial—36 percent of the children read one to twenty books; 17 percent read twenty-one to thirty books; 27 percent read thirty-one to fifty books; and 21 percent read fifty-one or more books.
- Participants are much more enthusiastic about reading.
- Teachers reported that 31 percent of the participants had maintained or improved their reading skills compared to 5 percent of nonparticipants.
Interestingly, the number of books read during the summer can make a difference. A number of studies suggest that reading four to six books over the summer helps readers maintain their skills, and reading ten to twenty books helps improve their skills.
Stephen Krashen asserts that free voluntary reading is the best way to better reading and language development.3 In short, practice makes perfect. Similar results have been found in several studies evaluating SRPs that have been conducted in
Canada, England, and New Zealand.
Focusing on the evaluation of the SRP can be beneficial from several different perspectives. If the library is soliciting contributions from the community to support the SRP, an evaluation provides the numbers and the stories to make a compelling story. Thinking about the outcomes the library would like to achieve in the lives of the children and their families will help the library determine what kind of SRP the library should be providing and what kind of data it should be collecting to demonstrate actual impact.
Using Richard Orr’s4 familiar evaluation model, it is possible to organize the many measures that libraries have used or could use in the evaluation of a SRP (see figure 1). Resources (inputs) are needed to organize and conduct the SRP. Children sign up for the program and a percentage of those who start will complete the program (outputs). And the children, their families, and the community will experience immediate and long-term consequences (outcomes).
Input measures typically include the monetary and staffing resources to plan, implement, and evaluate the SRP. Among the input measures that can be tracked are:
- Budget—Some portion of the budget will need to be devoted to promotional materials, marketing expenses, signage, and incentives (if used). Some libraries solicit funds from community organizations for the SRP so that, other than staff time, all the costs are borne by the donated funds.
- Staff—Library employees will be responsible for planning, conducting, and evaluating the program. In addition to tracking who is participating and what is being accomplished, some libraries ask staff members to also track the time they spend on the SRP. Additional staff or volunteers may need to be scheduled as a part of the SRP and to cope with the longer queues
waiting to check out materials. Measures might include:
● number of staff involved (FTE);
● number of volunteers involved (FTE); or
● number of outreach locations.
- Collections—Some portions of the collection may need to be organized as a part of the SRP theme for that particular summer.
- Facilities—Space for the SRP may need to be organized.
Obviously the intent of the SRP theme and the use of marketing materials are designed to encourage children to sign up for the program. In addition to avid readers, the library needs to recognize that three other groups may be more resistant to the marketing message. These groups, called alliterates by Beers are people who can read but choose not to.5 The three groups of alliterates include:
- Dormant readers—People who do not find the time to read but who like to read.
- Uncommitted readers—People who do not like to read but indicate they may read sometime in the future.
- Unmotivated readers—People who do not like to read and are unlikely to change their minds.
Output measures are typically counts of an activity, such as a SRP. Among the measures that might be used by a library are:
- individuals registered for the SRP (children, teens, adults);
- SRP participants as a percentage of school-age children and teens;
- number of individuals attending program events;
- number of individuals completing the SRP (children, teens, adults);
- number of books the participants read;
- number of children who read a minimum of X books during the program;
- number of checkouts while the SRP was in operation compared to the prior year;
- number of pages read (children, teens, adults);
- amount of time spent reading alone (children, teens, adults);
- amount of time spent reading with a parent or caregiver (children, teens, adults);
- does the child spend more time reading with parent or caregiver;
- number of new library cards issued to families of SRP participants;
- number of SRP-related programs; and
- total attendance at SRP-related programs (children, teens, adults).
Outcome-based performance measures attempt to measure the effect of the library’s SRP in the lives of the children, their families, and ultimately upon the community. The SRP participants might show improvement in a skill level, knowledge, confidence, behavior, or attitude based on a qualitative or quantitative assessment.
In addition to focusing on the participating children (teens), it is also possible to involve the parents or adult caregivers and teachers in the assessment process, especially if the library wants to identify theoutcomes or impacts of the SRP.
Obviously it requires considerably more effort to gather outcome-based measures about the impact of a SRP than it does to gather output measures. In order for an outcome-based measure to resonate with decision makers it would need to meet at least two criteria: (1) The SRP and the outcome must be closely linked—there must be a cause-and-effect relationship, and (2) The outcome must be measurable in a consistent and reliable manner.
A Survey and Analysis
In order to better understand how public libraries are currently evaluating their SRPs, a brief survey was prepared.6 A Web-based survey was available from May 12, 2009, until June 30, 2009. Because this was a convenience or accidental sample rather than a random survey, only descriptive statistics are reported. A total of 264 responses were received from public libraries located in 31 states, which represents almost two-thirds of all states. The average size of the community of the responding libraries was 55,966 with the range of size quite variable (the maximum population was 381,833; the minimum size was 558).
Almost all public libraries keep track of the number of children who register for the SRP. The survey respondents indicated that 92.80 percent of libraries identify the number of children who register for the program. Almost as many libraries—some 79.17 percent of the survey respondents—track the number of children who complete the SRP. The opportunities for spending time in various summer activities that do not involve trips to the library are many. In addition, surprisingly few libraries calculate the percentage of SRP participants compared to school-age children in their community— only 13.64 percent of the respondents in this survey.
Because research has shown that the number of books read during the summer is important, some libraries track the number of books read. A little more than one-third (34.47 percent) of the responding public libraries track the number of books read during the SRP. And of the sixty libraries reporting data, the average number of books read per participant was twenty-seven. The range was from a low of two to a high of one hundred books per child.
Similarly, some 31.82 percent of the responding libraries track the amount of time spent reading by each participant. On average, each child reads 3.22 hours per week. The range was a low of 0.33 to a high of 18 hours per week. And only a very small number of libraries track the number of pages read by each participant, with some 4.17 percent of the libraries reporting they gather this information.
In addition, the library wishing to learn one important perspective is to ask parents or guardians about their views of the impact of the SRP in the lives of their children. A little more than one-fifth of libraries (21.59 percent) report that they involve parents or guardians in the evaluation process. Of the reporting libraries, the parents or guardians note that improvements have been made in reading comprehension, vocabulary has improved, and time spent reading increased between 20 to 25 percent of the time as shown in figure 2. It is particularly encouraging to see that parents spend more time reading with children.
The perspective of teachers might be valuable when assessing a library’s SRP. Can the teacher discern any change in the reading ability of the students? Has the reading comprehension and vocabulary of students improved? Have their writing skills improved? Twenty-five percent of the responding libraries indicate that they had conversations with teachers about the impact of the SRP in the lives of their students. Yet only 2.65 percent of the libraries partner with schools in the use of standardized reading tests to determine reading achievement as a result of participation in the SRP.
Almost two-thirds of the libraries (66.29 percent) offer a separate teen SRP, and some libraries even develop a SRP for adults. Slightly more than two-thirds of the responding libraries (69.30 percent) prepare a written evaluation report about the SRP.
Some of the respondents provided comments about how they identify other outcomes of the SRP. These comments suggest the interest of librarians to better understand the impacts of the program but clearly none of the approaches are systematic.
From the results of this survey, it is clear that public libraries could be and should be doing more to identify the impact of the SRP in the lives of the participants. If libraries were to adopt a multi-pronged approach in evaluating SRPs by gathering data about the use of the program and determining the impact from the perspective of the children, parents, and teachers, they would begin to develop the data that would resonate with funders.
A public library should identify a minimum set of performance measures that will be consistently gathered year after year. This will allow the library to track trends. Obviously data reported to the state library should be considered as part of the minimum set of measures that are tracked. These measures, subdivided by age of the participant, might include:
- the number of participants who sign up;
- the percent of participants who sign up compared to the total community segment of the population (the library should be setting goals to reach significantly more than 10 percent of the children);
- the number of participants who complete the program;
- the number of books read by each participant;
- the time spent reading per day by each participant;
- the time spent reading per day with their parents/caregivers; and
- data from a short questionnaire for participants and their parents or caregivers.
Periodically the library could include additional SRP assessment activities to complement the regular evaluation efforts. For example, the library may want to discover the degree to which SRP participants continue to use library resources once the program has concluded. Or the library could compare where participants live with the location of all children in the community.
Specific recommendations for improving a library’s SRP include:
- Calculate the number of SRP participants as a percentage of school-age children. A library can quickly obtain information about the number of children in its community using census data. Every public library should be making this calculation as a part of their program goal setting process.
- Set participation goals that are aggressive.
- Developing a better understanding of the reasons why children drop out of the SRP would allow a library to design a program that is more compelling and keep the attention (and participation) of children during the summer.
- Focus outreach and marketing efforts on children who likely suffer “summer reading loss.” A public library would need to develop a marketing plan that identified various market segments (children with different characteristics: those who are not
readers (the alliterates), readers who are currently nonusers of the library (potential customers, infrequent customers, or frequent customers) and the associated marketing approaches that would be effective for each market segment.
- Expand its outreach efforts by more innovative and effective marketing. For example, the Torrance (Calif.) Public Library placed stickers on the elementary school report cards going home to parents. The stickers exclaimed: “Vacation reading
equals better grades. Take your child to the public library for summer reading.” As a result of the stickers, the number of children registering for the SRP jumped more than 25 percent.7
- Consider an outreach strategy that takes the SRP to children without requiring children to physically visit the library. Thus, the public library should be reaching out to latchkey programs, day care centers, the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Clubs, summer camp programs, summer recreation programs, and local home schoolers. This approach also suggests setting some specific targets for each market segment rather than relying on total registration numbers.
- Explore the possibility of developing partnerships with the local schools to involve teachers in assessment of the library’s SRP. Linking the results of standardized reading tests with participation in the public library’s SRP can potentially lead to
- Develop an online version of the SRP that would appeal to yet another segment of the community currently not being served by the library. Online SRPs have been successful in a few public libraries.
The benefits to the children and to the community of a public library’s SRP are significant and positive, especially to those at-risk children who will likely experience “summer reading loss.” The public library must become much more aggressive about reaching more children than the 10 percent of the community that are traditionally frequent library users. The challenge for the library is to evaluate the impacts of the SRP using a broader array of methods and to communicate the results of the evaluation efforts to the community’s stakeholders.
References and Notes
- J. L. Locke, The Effectiveness of Summer Reading Programs in Public Libraries in the United States. PhD Dissertation, 1988, University of Pittsburgh.
- Donna Celano and Susan B. Neuman, The Role of Public Libraries in Children’s Literacy Development: An Evaluation Report (Harrisburg, Pa.: Pennsylvania Library Association, Evaluation and Training Institute, 2001); Evaluation of the Public Library Summer Reading Program: Books and Beyond . . . Take Me to Your Reader! (Los Angeles: Evaluation and Training Institute, 2001).
- Richard M. Orr, “Measuring the Goodness of Library Services,” Journal of Documentation 29, no. 3 (1973): 315–52.
- G. Kylene Beers, “No Time, No Interest, No Way!” School Library Journal, 42, no. 2 (Feb. 1996): 110–14.
- The Web-based survey was graciously hosted by Counting Opinions, a firm that provides comprehensive, cost-effective, real-time solutions designed for libraries, in support of customer insight, operational improvements, and advocacy efforts.
- Walter Minkel, “Making a Splash with Summer Reading: Seven Ways Public Libraries Can Team Up with Schools,” School Library Journal 49, no. 1 (Jan. 2003): 54–56.