How to speak aloud (7 )

The Three Little Pigs

1. Once upon a time there were three pigs.

2. The pigs built three houses.

3. The wolf blew down the straw house.

4. The wolf blew down the wood house.

5. The wolf could not blow down the brick house.

Discussion

Posting the key events around the room is not necessary, but it provides important language support. For instance, students are more likely to use the past tense because that is what appears in the sentences we have posted for the reporters.

Heterogeneous grouping in this activity encourages peer tutoring. For example, students with skills in writing can model their ability to other group members. The key is that students who are more able should try to enable their groupmates; they should not do tasks for their groupmates. Students, as with most people, often want to do tasks in the quickest way possible. However, the focus in classrooms is on learning, with the task as a means of promoting learning. Thus, the scribe in each group should not necessarily be the best writer in that group.

11. Cartoon versions

The issue of whether or not to use cartoons in literacy education is often a controversial one. However, many educators feel that cartoons do have a role to play as a bridge to other types of reading. Furthermore, more and more material, including non-fiction, now comes in cartoon form. In the activity below, groupmates collaborate to sequence frames from a cartoon.

Steps

a.          The teacher cuts a cartoon version of a story into individual frames. Each group receives one complete set of frames with the pictures face down.

b.          Group members distribute the cartoon frames face down in such a way that everyone has an equal number (or as equal as possible). Students look at what is shown in their frames without letting others see.

c.          The teacher reads aloud the story, stopping at various points. If students think they have a cartoon frame that fits with something the teacher has read thus far, they show that frame to their group and explain how it matches something read by the teacher.

d.          Groupmates agree or disagree and place the frames in the correct order.

e.          When the teacher has finished reading, groups try to agree on the order of the frames. The teacher calls a number, and students with that number go to another group and listen as the members of that group take turns to explain, not just tell, the order of their cartoon frames.

Discussion

The fact that students cannot see their groupmates’ cartoon frames promotes equal participation. Imagine the situation if all the frames were visible to all the group members. In that case, one or two people in the group could more easily do all the thinking (and learning).

Two extensions of this activity are: i) Group members divide up the task of writing speech bubbles or sentences to accompany the cartoon frames. The resulting cartoons can be made into mini-books or posted on construction paper. ii) Students write and draw their own cartoon versions of books – fiction or non-fiction – that the teacher reads aloud. Copies of these, in turn, can be cut into frames and used with future classes.

12. Silent reading by students

Last, but maybe best, when the read aloud session is over, students can get their own books and read silently. Some teachers like to read just the first chapter or any particularly engrossing section of a book and then let students finish the book silently on their own. After all, silent reading is the main form that reading takes, and one of the prime reasons for reading aloud to students is to excite them about reading so that they will spend more time reading silently on their own. Therefore, why take away students’s reading time with more class activities, however valuable those activities might be, and, instead, why not give students the maximum possible amount of time for their own reading.

Conclusion

A long-raging debate in language pedagogy revolves around the terms teacher-centred and student/learner-centred instruction, with other terms, such as learning-centred having been thrown into the mix. This article argues for a felicitous combination of two forms of pedagogy from what would seem to be opposite ends of the student-centred – teacher-centred continuum. CL seems to be squarely in the student-centred camp, with students talking more (CL principle of simultaneous interaction) and depending on themselves more (CL principle of group autonomy). On the other hand, reading aloud by teachers appears to have both feet firmly planted in teacher-centred territory, with teachers talking and students listening.

        However, closer examination finds that the demarcation lines are actually rather blurred. Teachers play important roles in CL. These roles include: co-organising the groups, helping students learn and utilise collaborative skills, making available the knowledge students will need to do their group tasks, monitoring the groups and assessing the groups’ products and processes. Similarly, reading aloud by teachers is less one dimensional than it might appear to be. As explained in Section 3 of this article, a good reading aloud session will include a good deal of talking by students as they respond to the teacher’s questions, ask their own, voice their opinions and relate their experiences. Furthermore, a key purpose of read aloud sessions is to encourage students to do more silent reading, a very student-centred activity, particularly when students choose their own reading material. In a similar vein, Section 4 of the article offered more suggestions as to how to reading aloud by teachers can take on student-centred dimensions.

        In conclusion, this article began with two sections introducing CL. The first discussed some of the history, research support, theoretical foundations and principles of CL, while the second explored connections between CL and language pedagogy. The article’s third section explained why teachers should read aloud to their students and gave suggestions on how this might be done. The key section of the article, Section 4, presented ways of combining these two powerful pedagogic ideas – CL and reading aloud by teachers - in order to promote language learning.

Moreover, CL and reading aloud by teachers both not only promote language learning. They also promote, albeit indirectly, active citizenship. This is why. CL encourages students to stand on their own, rather than always depending on an authority figure. Additionally, the CL principles positive interdependence and cooperation as a value encourage students to see others as allies rather than adversaries and to strive for win-win solutions. These two perspectives – taking responsibility rather than leaving everything to the authorities and seeking to collaborate with others – are essential elements of citizenship. Literacy, which reading aloud seeks to promote, provides people with the information they need to take wise actions in their roles as citizens of their country and planet.