Oklahoma Reader 57-1

ISSN 2640-1649 (online) ISSN 0030-1833 (print)

VOLUME NO. 57 // ISSUE 1 // SPRING 2021

THE OKLAHOMA READER YOUR LITERACY JOURNEY STARTS TODAY

A PUBLICATION OF THE OKLAHOMA LITERACY ASSOCIATION

Finding inspiration through reading and writing.

Contents Departments 3 Editors’ Overview and Insights 7 Letter from the OKLA Chair 41 Teacher to Teacher 48 Children’s Picture Book Reviews 61 Research Summary 65 Tech Talk 70 Prof. Development: Off the Shelf 73 Call for Proposals / Guidelines 75 Conference Flyer 76 Back Matter

On the Cover: The photo on the cover of this issue is a 3-D collage of the covers of some new and old texts related to issues of social justice and is intended to stress that such books offer both opportunities and imperatives for educators to educate themselves about such issues.

(Photo by Barbara McClanahan)

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Drafting a Social Justice Narrative to Explore and Interrogate Identity

Lara Searcy, Brogan Spears, and Kyle E. Foster Northeastern State University Out of the Shadows: Bringing the Tulsa Race Massacre to Light in Our Classrooms Shelley Martin-Young Oklahoma State University

“Speak the Speech”: Teaching Children How to Read Expressively Keith Polette University of Texas El Paso Fanfiction as a Support for Writing Engagement and Development Leslie Haas and Jill T. Tussey Buena Vista University

Overview & Insights FROM THE EDITORS One day there'll be no more anger left in our eyes One day the color of our skin won't cause a divide One day we'll be family, standing hand in hand And we will see the promised land, we will see the promised land (One Day by Cochran & Co., 2021)

Although we did not issue a call for a themed issue for Spring 2021, we became aware, as we reviewed the submitted manuscripts, that a mini-theme was developing, specifically a social justice theme. Reading through the manuscripts and working with the authors to finalize them, we also became aware of a heightened political climate related to this topic, not just nationally but in our own state as well. We felt it incumbent upon ourselves to think through and deliberately discuss our position, not just as co-editors of this journal, but as three white women educators. As Maribeth pointed out in our discussion, realization may be the most operative and appropriate word to apply to our thinking.

We must begin with the realization that we, as white women, initially look at everything through the lens of who we are. We must also realize that failing to look through the lenses of others not only limits our understanding of the world around us but can actually be hurtful to others who deserve our fair consideration. The first feature article in this issue deals directly with the issue of determining who we are and how we perceive others. Dr. Lara Searcy and her colleagues Brogan Spears and Kyle Foster share with us how writing our own social justice narrative can put us in a position to understand ourselves better in relation to others who are different from us.

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Realization also involves not listening to the clamor and turmoil around us but investigating all things honestly and carefully to come to opinions and decisions that are helpful and productive in supporting all of our students. We realize we cannot shy away from issues of equity and social justice in the classroom, but we can seek to address them from a reasonable and yes, research-based, position, understanding that there is never only one side to any issue. In this issue, Mollie Kasper’s review of Cornelius Minor’s We Got This.

Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be addresses this very issue. The book itself is an encouragement to stand up for what we know is best for students against those impacting education with other goals in mind, and you will enjoy the connections Mollie makes to it.

Our realization must extend to the fact that the issue of social justice is particularly important in our role as literacy educators. In a recent article in Voices from the Middle, Carol Kelly (2020) discussed how she goes about teaching her white students about race and what that means for them. She clearly makes the point with her students that “the history of racism is a white issue,” but she is able to do so using literature and discussion in a way that does not engender shame or blame. She ends her article with this: We can’t make middle school students feel burdened or shamed by the past, but we can give them a sense of responsibility and a belief in their own agency to be guardians against allowing the problems from the past to reemerge, or even to work for greater equity and justice in the future.

(Kelly, 2020, p. 33) With that admonition in mind, you will want to read Shelley Martin-Young’s article on the Tulsa Race Massacre, where she describes her shock 4

at learning about the event for the first time during her graduate studies.

Much like Carol, Shelley is committed to raising awareness of all of us in an effort to prevent such a horrendous event from ever occurring again.

The article is replete with resources teachers can use to make sure their students are not ignorant of the past.

In our discussion, Maribeth shared a reflection on realization that one of her students, Cheyanne Bolding, wrote this spring: “Realization...That love deepens and deciphers everything. In our room - Love conquers all.” As you explore the articles we have highlighted above, may that realization be yours as well.

Two other feature articles in this issue address writing and speaking.

Leslie Haas and Jill Tussey share their take on how fan fiction can support writing at the earliest grade levels through high school and then provide outlines for two lesson plans at first/second and third/fourth grade levels.

Finally, Keith Polette offers chapter and verse on what it really means to teach students how to read with expression that leads to meaning-making; he offers practical suggestions as to how to make that happen.

Our Teacher-to-Teacher article by Shuling Yang and colleagues deals with a technique they have developed for teaching the alphabetic principle.

In addition, most of our usual columns are here. Dr. Sue Parsons offers reviews of both children’s picture books and young adult books. You’ll find that many of her recommendations at both levels are for multicultural books and resonate with a social justice framework in the classroom.

Shelley Martin-Young is back with the second installment on digital teaching. Dr. Linda McElroy reviews a research study in which a text structure intervention was implemented with 4th and 5th graders with 5

positive outcomes for the intervention and implications for current teachers of those grades and others. Dr. Julie Collins is taking a hiatus for this issue, but she will be back in the fall issue to update us in the Policy and Advocacy column.

References Cochren & Co. (2021). One Day lyrics. Retrieved from https://www.last.fm/music/Cochren+&+Co./_/One+Day/+lyrics) Kelly, C. (2020). Tough talking: Teaching white students about race and responsibility. Voices from the Middle, 24(4), 31-34.

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Letter from Sylvia Hurst Chair, Oklahoma Literacy Association

Greetings from the Oklahoma Literacy Association (OKLA)!

Congratulations to all the educators who have completed their school year.

This has been an incredibly challenging time in countless ways, and it has been gratifying to see how diligently students, educators, and communities have worked together in both new and old ways . Thank you for all you have done to support literacy, and we are wishing you a relaxing time for self-care and rest before starting to prepare for the next school year.

We were pleased to have many of you at our virtual conference in March, featuring Kylene Beers and Bob Probst. OKLA is now happy to announce our inperson conference for Spring 2022! We are excited to have Tim Rasinski coming to Oklahoma on Saturday, April 2, 2022. The conference will be held on the campus of Rogers State University in Claremore. Please save the date and we will be sharing more details soon on the Oklahoma Literacy Association’s website: https://www.literacy.org.

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Lara Searcy, Brogan Spears, and Kyle E. Foster Drafting a Social Justice Narrative to Explore and Interrogate Identity When educators understand who they are, specifically through the mode of narrative writing, they are able to remember that writing has the ability to change, to transform, and to move students toward justice, awareness, and empowerment (Fredericksen et al., 2012). In order to understand social justice as it exists in a classroom setting, it is important to define it by the key concepts of awareness and power. Social justice is the knowledge of students, community, and cultural diversity in order understand how to teach all students more fairly and equitably (National Council of Teachers of English, 2010). Educators in public schools support students when they acknowledge that schools’ growing diversity of backgrounds and perspectives help students “develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills” to become better “engaged in their own communities” (National Education Association, 2018, p. 1). This article details two recursive actions for educators to explore and interrogate their own identities so they may, in turn, help their students explore the identities they are developmentally just beginning to create.

This article specifically focuses on how literacy (through the act of writing a social justice narrative) has the potential to impact how we come to understand and ultimately share our experiences with the world, through reading/speaking our own narrative and/or reading/listening to others’ narratives.

As article authors on this topic, we affirm what Borsheim-Black and Sarigianides (2019) state in their text, Letting go of literary whiteness: Antiracist literature instruction for white students, by also acknowledging that as White English teachers, we “were not doing a good enough job addressing [topics of social justice]” (p. 1) with our own students. This understanding of ourselves (as article authors and educators) is important because educators must first engage in and model the process of “locating and implicating themselves in [this] work” (Cherry-Paul, 2020, p. 1). A resource we used in this work is Learning for Justice’s guide, Let’s Talk!

Facilitating Critical Conversations with Students (2020), which asks educators to consider potential vulnerabilities, strengths, needs, and possible exposure (p. 11). There may be initial hesitation or discomfort in approaching these questions in general, but “students want to talk about these issues because they recognize the injustice inherent in racism, gender bias, ableism, anti-immigrant sentiment, religious and anti-LGBTQ bias and more—and they see these prejudices at work in the world every day” (Learning for Justice, 2020, p. 2). Therefore, to prepare students for these conversations, educators should: send a letter home to parents/guardians alerting them to the kinds of conversations that may occur. . . [B]ecause the United States has not provided in-depth teaching and learning opportunities on [topics such as] race and racism in K-12 schooling, family members may be learning alongside students and educators as they engage in these [conversations]. (Cherry-Paul, 2020, p. 1) Since “every critical conversation has its own context and content, but almost all touch on identity and injustice” (Learning for Justice, 2020, p. 5), these conversations may be uncomfortable; thus, educators should seek “brave spaces” grounded in mutual respect, with

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established community agreements and protocols (Cherry-Paul, 2020, p. 1). In order to lay the groundwork for working toward social justice awareness, educators, first with themselves and then alongside their students, can use literacy strategies, such as class readings, discussions, and especially writing.

Using Narrative Writing Narrative writing engages students in “experimentation with different approaches in a text, with deep revision, and a commitment to precise expression that [is] critical to learning writing” (Juzwik et al., 2014, p. 27). As a literacy strategy, narrative writing allows us to engage in meaning-making, giving students a place to process their own understandings and experiences about the text and their world (Baikie &Wilhelm, 2005; Yageleski, 2009). The power of narrative writing is showcased in Dr. Sanford’s book, From Thought to Action: Developing a Social Justice Orientation (2020), when Sanford models the importance of embracing her own personal history, specifically through narrative writing. This process allows her to “experience an awakening . . . through reflection and sympathy for all people’s lived experiences” (Sanford, 2020, p. 12). Our experiences allow us to see that “the complexity . . . of the world is fixed into a sense of coherence and causality in terms of what caused the events and the experience and why” (Holmegaard et al., 2015, p. 4). This understanding of complexity is imperative in our educational worlds, because the spaces in which we teach “are not free from bias or inequity,” and thus we are called “interrogate the forces” that contribute to our ideas and biases (Ebarvia et al., 2020, p. 100).

Drafting a Social Justice Orientation Narrative In Dr. Searcy’s Social Justice Literacies course, undergraduate and graduate students are given the assignment to draft a Social Justice Narrative, using Dr. Sanford’s “My Journey to Social Justice Orientation” section (Sanford, 2020) as an exemplar (as well as additional course readings and reflections). Starting in the first week, they begin to consider their own identities and their membership in different identity groups (ability, age, body type, ethnicity, gender identity, home language, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc.). They consider these identities and how the messages associated with them affect their daily lives, especially growing up (Learning for Justice, 2020, p. 6). These answers naturally lend themselves to the narrative mode of writing, which becomes the final assignment, with the purpose to help writers identify, critique, and ultimately change the world (Fredricksen et al., 2012). When students are asked to reflect and apply their knowledge on course topics (identity, social justice, diversity, young adult literature, literary theory, and anti-racism instruction) they can see their social justice growth extend from their first week responses of social justice consciousness (“awareness about oneself in relation to personal surroundings;” Sanford, 2020, p.3) into a more finalized draft that details their journey toward social justice orientation (“a desire to end oppression of the marginalized;” Sanford, 2020, p.3). The following are two recursive actions educators need to engage in to move from social justice consciousness to social justice orientation.

Action 1: Explore First, educators need to explore the “central question to describing [their own] personal identity” by asking themselves “who” they are (Jensen & McConchie, 2020, p. 153). By

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establishing a classroom where students know who they are and feel like they belong, they are “more likely to engage in positive academic behaviors that produce higher levels of engagement and performance” (Jensen & McConchie, 2020, p. 152). Students’ sense of belonging is categorized by cataloging whether or not they feel their identity (alone and in relation to others) is “seen and valued,” whether they “fit in,” and whether or not they feel “good enough,” cared about, or belong to their environment (Jensen & McConchie, 2020).

The answers to these questions help us understand who we are as individuals (Kedley, 2015), so we can then explore how our identities unite and fit into the larger classroom community. When students feel like they are a part of the classroom community, students feel a sense of belonging. The question, then, becomes how educators can help students build the “basic values of empathy and tolerance that education among diverse students brings” (National Education Association, 2018, p. 1). In an English language arts classroom, literacy helps “[students] [be]come active subjects combing the texts for connections to their daily lives and experiences in order to forge individual and collective self-determination” (Mirra, 2018, p. 8).

This act of collectivism and critical perspective gives students context that we are complex individuals who must negotiate and reconsider our positions within society to “truly seek to ‘feel into’ someone else’s experience” (Mirra, 2018, p. 8) and build empathy for those around us.

Inclusive practices help teachers and students alike build empathy and foster a community within the learning community. By affirming the identities and learning differences of all peoples in a classroom, we can teach students how to, as Deborah Appleman cites Paolo Freire, “read the word and the world” (2015, p. 2).

Action 2: Interrogate Next, educators must introspectively investigate the intersectionality of their identities by metacognitively analyzing behavior and acknowledging biases in their journey to “social justice orientation” (Kedley, 2015; Sanford, 2020, p. 3). Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality is “a means to name overlapping forms of discrimination otherwise overlooked when only accounting for one vector of identity” (Fenner, 2020, p.1). When investigating identity, it is imperative for educators to root themselves in the understanding and exploration of intersectionality so that they may create a more rounded understanding of themselves and how their viewpoints and biases may impact their students. This investigation of all aspects of self—even the parts that are intentionally concealed—helps educators bring an awareness to the complexities of how identity is defined. This, in turn, helps educators understand how their students may define themselves.

When fashioning one’s own identity, it is necessary to recognize that “it’s not enough to simply belong; [we] want to feel special and uniquely valued” (Jensen & McConchie, 2020, p.

153). That recognition and vulnerability provides a space for understanding that identity is not a monolithic phenomenon. To see students for who they are is to create what bell hooks describes as an “exciting” classroom, that sees students “in their particularity as individuals . . . and interact[s] with [them] according to their needs” (hooks, 1994, p. 16). Boyd affirms that “social justice . . . is first and foremost sudent-centered” (2017, p. 11), and when we center students’ identities and experiences in the classroom, they can begin to interrogate the intersections of their identities. The teacher’s understanding of self through narrative introspection is similar to applying their own oxygen masks first before they may assist those around them.

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Social Justice Orientation Narrative Exemplar As authors on this topic, we utilize a critically conscious reader response approach established in #DisruptTexts (Ebarvia et al., 2020) to recognize that our views on social justice topics are limited because of certain identity privileges we have in learning/reading about topics instead of experiencing certain intersections of identity-based injustices. In order to deepen our understanding of critical issues, we (the article authors) seek to write about our own experiences so that we may recognize our narrational similarities with those who are alike or unlike ourselves (Ebarvia et al., 2020). We offer the following exemplar of the process.

As I (Brogan) wrote my own social justice narrative, I came to understand the care afforded to me through therapeutic, narrative introspection into how I came to exist in the world.

Writing about my accomplishments and future commitments forced me to tend to the peaks and valleys of what shaped “who” (Jensen & McConchie, 2020, p. 153) I am: The visibility and presence of my non-herteronormative family at school events taught me who I could trust, and it also made me somewhat of a magnet for kids who knew I would accept them . . . this gave me my first real taste of the strength and power of feminism.

Therein, I also recognized my own identity whilst “recogniz[ing] who is privileged and who is marginalized by language use” (Baker-Bell, 2013, p.360): I found myself asking “so, what?” a lot, and I found myself asking it louder and louder. I always knew that I would yell and scream for the rights and acceptance of [others], but I never expected to find a way to yell and scream for the rights of myself in the process. I ended my high school career as a known debater for the reproductive rights of women and the acceptance of my LGBTQIA+ friends. I was fired up. I was angry. But, I was also very, very scared.

As I wrote, I realized I was a “teacher-text” in the classroom as I practiced this interrogation by “reading” (Kedley, 2015, p.366) my own messages—the ones I sent both overtly and subversively—which allowed me to engage in risk-taking, as demonstrated in my own writing: It was time for me to take my love of righting wrongs and turn back to face my lingering notion that there was something my teachers weren’t telling me. I knew that my classes, up to that point, had been extra-accommodating to white, wealthy students, particularly young men. I knew that it was time for me to change universities, declare myself an English education major, and embrace that my future would be in a classroom that was a safe community for all, regardless of sex, gender, gender expression, race, ethnicity, culture, age, ability, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, weight, body type, socioeconomic status, or religious affiliation.

It's a (Writing) Process!

Just like the writing process includes multiple rounds of revision, educators will come to realize that “social justice orientation is a gradual, ongoing process of learning, experiencing, and evolving” (Sanford, 2020, p. 9). This journey is never ending. Drafting a soial justice narrative

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helps one to complete a critical first step in their journey: “(a) embracing personal history” (Sanford, 2020, p. 3). From there, one begins: “(b) sympathizing with other people’s histories” and finally arrives at “(c) a desire to end oppression of the marginalized,” (Sanford, 2020, p. 3) with “equality and equity for all” (Sanford, p. 5). By writing a social justice narrative, educators and students can “see themselves anew” and “envision themselves for their futures” (Boyd, 2017, p. 16). As with any other aspect of teaching, educators must have experience with Who and What they are teaching. The process of leading students to draft a social justice narrative gives educators a critical chance to learn with and from their students. Ultimately, the students benefit from having educators who practice the processes they teach in their classrooms to become living exemplars for their students.

Dr. Lara Searcy (she/her) is an Associate Professor, English Education Specialist at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK where she teaches and advises English teacher candidates. She is a former high school English teacher and middle school Literacy Resource Specialist and is Nationally Board Certified in AYA-ELA. Her research interests include teacher efficacy, standards-based reforms, social justice literacies, and teacher professional development. She can be reached at SearcyL@nsuok.edu.

Brogan Spears (she/her) is a fifth-year high school English teacher and graduate of Northeastern State University. She will begin pursuing a PhD in Social Foundations of Education at Oklahoma State University in the fall. Her research interests include curricular inclusivity; social justice education; the exploration of student identity to foster safe learning spaces; anti-racist teaching; gender, race, and sexuality studies; inclusive curriculum; literary theory; disrupting the literary canon; and gender theory in education. She can be reached at Spears11@nsuok.edu.

Kyle E. Foster (he/him) is a third-year English teacher and graduate of Northeastern State University. He is pursuing a M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership, English. His research interests include using narrative to explore self, social justice education, and helping students develop a social justice orientation. He plans to earn a PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture. He can be reached at Fosterk@nsuok.edu.

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References Appleman, D. (2015). Critical encounters in high school English: Teaching literary theory to adolescents (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Baikie, K.A., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11, 338-346. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.11.5.338 Baker-Bell, A. (2013). “I never really knew the history behind African American Language”: Critical language pedagogy in an advanced placement English language arts class.

Equity & Excellence in Education, 46(3), 355-370.

Borsheim-Black, C., & Sarigianides, S. T. (2019). Letting go of literary whiteness: Antiracist literature instruction for white students. Teachers College Press.

Boyd, A. (2017). Social justice literacies in the English classroom: Teaching practice in action.

New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Cherry-Paul, S. (2020, February 25). An educator's guide to Stamped: Racism, antiracism, and you. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=an-educators-guide-tostamped-racism-antiracism-and-you-Jason-Reynolds-Ibram-Kendi-lesson-plancurriculum Ebarvia, T., German, L., Parker, K. N., & Torres, J. (2020). #DisruptTexts: An Introduction.

English Journal, 110(1), 100–102. https://library.ncte.org/journals/ej/issues/v1101/30854 Fredricksen, J. E., Wilhelm, J. D., & Smith, M. W. (2012). So, what’s the story?: Teaching narrative to understand ourselves, others, and the world. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fenner, A. (2020). “Reach everyone on the planet . . .”: Kimberlé Crenshaw and intersectionality. Feminist German Studies, 36(2), 115–117. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Holmegaard, H. T., Ulriksen, L., & Madsen, L. M. (2015). A narrative approach to understand students’ identities and choices. In E. Henriksen, J. Dillon, & J. Ryder (Eds.), Understanding Student Participation and Choice in Science and Technology Education.

Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7793-4_3 Jensen, E., & McConchie, L. (2020). Brain-based learning: Teaching the way students really learn (3rd ed.). Corwin Press, Inc. Juzwik, M. M., Whitley, A., Baker Bell, A., & Smith, A. (2014). Re-thinking personal narrative in the pedagogy of writing teacher preparation. Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education, 3(1), 27–35. http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol3/iss1/4 Kedley, K. E. (2015). Queering the teacher as a text in the English language arts classroom: Beyond books, identity work and teacher preparation. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 15(4), 364–377.

Learning for Justice. (2020, January). Let's Talk! Facilitating critical conversations with students. Learning for Justice. https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/lets-talk Mirra, N. (2018). Educating for empathy: Literacy learning and civic engagement. Teachers College Press.

National Council of Teachers of English. (2010, November 20). Resolution on social justice in literacy education. NCTE. https://ncte.org/statement/socialjustice/ National Education Association. (2018). Legal guidance on students’ rights: Discrimination and

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harassment based on race, religion, national origin, and immigration status. https://neaedjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/NEA-Legal-Guidance-on-StudentsRights-2018.03.13.pdf Sanford, A. A. (2020). From thought to action: Developing a social justice orientation.

Cognella.

Yagelski, R. P. (2009, October). A thousand writers writing: Seeking change through the radical practice of writing as a way of being. National Council of Teachers of English: English Education, 42(1), 6-28.

Just like the writing process includes multiple rounds of revision, educators will come to realize that “social justice orientation is a gradual, ongoing process of learning, experiencing, and evolving” (Sanford, 2020, p. 9). This journey is never ending.

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Shelley Martin-Young Out of the Shadows: Bringing the Tulsa Race Massacre to Light in Our Classrooms Introduction Take a walk in the Greenwood District of Tulsa today and you will be in the heart of the African American community. Here you can experience art, culture, theater, music, and more.

You can visit the Greenwood Cultural Center or walk the labyrinth and view the bronze sculptures at the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park. You can visit The Black Wall Street Gallery, eat lunch at Wanda J’s and even get a haircut at Tee’s Barbershop. However, you can also see burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement that serve as two of the very few reminders of the atrocities that happened here 100 years ago. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, 35 blocks of what was then known as Black Wall Street were looted and burned to the ground by white residents and society leaders. This event, the Tulsa Race Massacre, has been called “the single worst incidence of racial violence in American history” (Ellsworth, 2009).

The Tulsa Race Massacre From the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, you can learn the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre. In short, on the morning of May 30, 1921, there was an incident in an elevator between a young black man, Dick Rowland, and a young white woman, Sarah Page. The exact story of what happened in the elevator differs depending on the person. Some say Rowland and Page were in a relationship. Some say Rowland stepped on her foot and Page screamed. Some say Rowland tried to rape Page. Whatever you believe about the story, the headline in the Tulsa Tribune newspaper on May 31 read “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator.” Tulsa police arrested Rowland on May 31 and began investigating the incident. The headline from the Tulsa Tribune fanned the growing flames of racism in Tulsa, and a confrontation between black and white armed mobs happened at the courthouse where Dick Rowland was being kept. Shots were fired, and the African Americans, being outnumbered, began retreating to Greenwood.

On the morning of June 1, 1921, Greenwood “was looted and burned by white rioters.

Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa” (Ellsworth, 2009). The Guardsmen helped put out fires and removed African Americans from the custody of the vigilantes, gathering up all other blacks, imprisoning over 6,000 people at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrouns for up to eight days. Twenty-four hours later and it was over: • 35 city blocks were burned to the ground.

• 191 businesses, several churches, and a hospital were destroyed.

• 1,256 houses were destroyed and another 215 were looted but not burned (Willows, M., 1921).

• What was once reported as only 36 deaths are now believed to be over 300.

Currently, mass graves are being searched for in Tulsa.

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The Massacre was not a random event. The fires of this event had been smoldering for a long time. “Jim Crow, jealousy, white supremacy, and land lust, all played roles in leading up to the destruction and loss of life on May 31 and June 1, 1921” (Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, n.d.). Further, Chris Messer states, “[t]he destruction of the community was rationalized as a necessary and natural response to put them back in their place” (Fain, 2017), “them” being the prosperous African Americans in Tulsa. How do we keep this from happening again? Education.

Why Is This Important?

As a lifetime resident of Oklahoma, specifically Tulsa, and a 30-year veteran teacher, I was shocked when I learned of the Tulsa Race Massacre. I was 50 years old, at the beginning of my PhD program, and attending Oklahoma State University Writing Project in the summer of 2016 when I discovered the atrocities that had happened in my own back yard. I learned about this event on a field trip to the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park. There on a plzque, I read the story—the story of an even I had never learned about, an event I had never taught.

I received my public education from first Tulsa Public Schools, then later at schools in surrounding districts all in Tulsa County. In the surrounding school districts, I was immersed in an education that can only be described as White. Despite attending schools in Tulsa County, I had never learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre. It wasn’t in the textbooks I learned from. It wasn’t mentioned by the White teachers that taught me. Growing up White in a predominantly White place, attending predominantly White schools, being taught by predominantly White teachers—something was missing—a connection to locally relevant issues (Taylor & Silvis, 2017). Teachers have an incredible opportunity, whether it is in science, social studies, or English language arts to situate their students in community issues that have consequences for their daily lives (Jurow & Shea, 2015).

The Tulsa Race Massacre is one such community issue that still has consequences for teachers and students today, 100 years later. This topic was covered up and left out of state standards and textbooks for at least 80 years. As we near the 100-year commemoration of this tragic event, discussion of the Massacre, inside and outside of classrooms, has become more prominent in the community. Many new resources are available to share with your students. The following are my favorites.

Units of Study The Zinn Education Project (2021) houses many strategies you can use to teach your children abou the Tulsa Race Massacre. One contributor, author Linda Christensen, shares one of my favorite resources. In “Burned Out of Homes and History: Uncovering the Silenced Voices of the Tulsa Race Massacre,” Christensen encourages teachers to teach students that events of the past still impact communities today. In this unit of study, Christensen introduces the different players of the Tulsa Race Massacre through a dinner party (described below). This strategy allows students to gain the perspectives and stories of many different people involved in the Massacre from Dick Rowland and Sheriff McCullough, to a Mexican immigrant that lived in the area. The unit also includes reading and writing of both poetry and historical fiction. Christensen

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also includes survivor stories and leads students in a discussion of reparations. Finally, the author share titles of books and documentaries that she uses to teach this unit.

The Tulsa Race Massacre Dinner Party Mixer, created by Linda Christensen, is a strategy that assigns each student a person involved in some capacity in the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Christensen wants to make sure that all voices from that time are heard, so she includes people of different cultures, ethnicities, education levels and socioeconomic statuses. Each student is given background information on their person. Students learn about their individual, and then the class has a “dinner party.” Students walk around the room asking questions of each other (suggested questions are included). In this way, students learn how each person, whatever their station, was involved. Christensen says, “These roles allow students to understand that even in moments of violence, people stood up and reached across race and class borders to help” (Christensen, n.d., p. 3). The Dinner Party Mixer can also be found on the Zinn Education Project website.

Dr. Shanedra Nowell from Oklahoma State University created a lesson entitled “The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and Its Legacy: Exploring Place as Text” (Nowell, 2011). As a social studies teacher in Tulsa, Dr. Nowell was surprised when most of her students had never heard of this event that happene within five miles from where she was teaching. Nowell developed this unit to teach students about Oklahoma before the massacre, during the massacre, and especially how the segregation that is still in Tulsa today comes from the horrific happenings on May 31, 1921. Nowell says, “I believe the lessons from Tulsa’s past, present, and future extend beyond its borders, and serve as an example of Americ’s struggle to rise above our ethinic and cultural divisions in order to create a more united United States” (Nowell, 2011, para. 4). This unit includes the jigsaw strategy to analyze primary sources. Four groups are created, and each group is responsible for one of the following: photographs, narratives, newspaper articles, or government documents. Another strategy is Ekphrastic poetry, which is poetry written in response to artwork. The final activity is for students to create maps of need and desire focusing on the development of north Tulsa.

The Oklahoma History Center has a short lesson on teaching about Tulsa before, during, and after the Massacre. They link the lesson to Oklahoma Academic Standards. The lesson uses an interview with Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, to set the stage for this unit of study. The students are then directed to the Oklahoma Historical Society (n.d.) website that has a section dedicated to the Tulsa Race Massacre. The final project from this unit is the completion of an argumentative presentation.

Literature A great way to introduce the Tulsa Race Massacre on a level that everyone can understand is through the digital graphic novel The Massacre of Black Wall Street (Chang, n.d.). Created by Natalie Chang and The Atlantic’s Marketing Team and paid for

by Watchmen on HBO, this graphic is a blow-by-blow account of what happened during the Tulsa Race Massacre. The well written account ends with an interview with Dr. Scott Ellsworth, a leading scholar on the Tulsa Race Massacre. It also incudes a section of recommended readngs if you want to learn more about the Tulsa Race Massacre.

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Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre (2021), written by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, is a brand-new picture book that brings the success of Black Wall Street to life for young students. Children then learn about the horror that also visited this affluent area of Tulsa. The book end with images of Reconcialiation Park.

Opal’s Greenwood Oasis (2021) written by Najah-Amatulla Hylton and Quarayash Ali Lansana and illustrated by Skip Hill is another new picture book that celebrates the joy and resilience of Greenwood. Students can experience Greenwood through the eyes of another child as she celebrates all the people in her community that look like her. Enjoy a conversation with the author and illustrators at Brown Bookshelf. Author Quarayash Ali Lansana, a Tulsa Race Massacre scholar, who is a professor at Oklahoma State University, uses books like this one to help teach empathy in children. Lansana wrote an article for Tulsa Kids Magazine, sharing how you can use picture books to teach empathy. You can rad the article here.

Two older books that I use in the workshops I teach are Tulsa Burning (2002) by Anna Myers and Dreamland Burning (2018) by Jennifer Latham. Both Latham and Myers are Oklahoma authors and are easily available to come speak to your classes. Both women spoke at my last workshop, and they have great information to share. They spend time speaking about being white women writing about the Tulsa Race Massacre. Tulsa Burning was one of the first books written about the Massacre. Myers shares that there wasn’t much information available when she started to research for the book. Latham’s book is written for a little older group. Both are fictionalized accounts of the events in Tulsa in 1921.

Other books to use when learning about or teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre are listed below.

Fiction Books: • Fire in Beulah by Rilla Askew (New York: Viking, 2001).

• If We Must Die: A Novel of Tulsa's 1921 Greenwood Riot by Pat Carr (Chaparral Books, 2002) • Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Harper Collins, 2011) • Up From the Ashes by Hannibal B. Johnson (Eakin Press, 2000) • Holocaust in the Homeland by Corinda Pitts Marsh (2017) Non-fiction Books: • Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Scott Ellsworth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

• The Tulsa Race Riot: A Scientific, Historical and Legal Analysis by John Hope Franklin and Scott Ellsworth, eds. (Oklahoma City: Tulsa Race Riot Commission, 2000).

• Riot on Greenwood: The Total Destruction of Black Wall Street by Eddie Faye Gates (Austin, TX.: Sunbelt Eakin, 2003).

• They Came Searching: How Blacks Sought the Promised Land in Tulsa by Eddie Faye Gates (Austin, TX.: Eakin Press, 1997).

• "Angels of Mercy": The American Red Cross and the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot by Robert N. Hower, (Tulsa, Okla.: Homestead Press, 1993).

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• • • • • • •

Events of the Tulsa Disaster by Mary E. Jones Parrish, (Tulsa, Okla.: Out on a Limb Publishing, 1998).

The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Tim Madigan (St. Martin's Press, 2001) Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation by Alfred Brophy (Oxford University Press, 2003) Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy by James Hirsch (Mariner Books, 2014) Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District by Hannibal Johnson (Eaking Press, 2014) Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District (Images of America) by Hannibal Johnson (Arcadia Press, 2014).

Long Road to Liberty: Oklahoma’s African American History and Culture by Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department (2000).

Other Resources The Rudasill Library in Tulsa has a Tulsa Race Massacre Teaching Kit that teachers can check out. The kit includes videos, photographs, newspaper articles and more. Rudasill Library also houses the African American Resource Center that includes an entire section on the Tulsa Race Massacre. This section includes both children’s and adult books, photographs, maps, DVDs, and online resources.

The Tulsa Historical Society has many resources available. They have books, reports, archives, photographs, many oral histories, and a curriculum you can use to teach the massacre.

They also have a traveling exhibit available for teacher, library or organization check out. It is only available for the Tulsa area. The traveling exhibit is free of charge, and volunteers will deliver, install and pick up the exhibit. The exhibit is two-sided and contains the history of Greenwood on one side and the Tulsa Race Massacre on the other.

Oklahoma State University-Tulsa and the University of Tulsa both have digital collections. Students can take a virtual tour of John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park. They also have a big collection of lesson plans. Oklahoma State University Writing Project, in conjunction with Reconciliation Park, also has a host of resources and lesson plans.

Videos: The Night Tulsa Burned (History Channel, 1999) can be found on various YouTube sites, such as https://youtu.be/98mO9qkPwcQ. The Tulsa Lynching of 1921 (Cinemax Reel Life, 2000) can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtrJos7scE. The resources I have shared here are some of my favorites. There are many more resources available to teach the Tulsa Race Massacre to any age of student and can be easily incorporated into English Language Arts classes along with social studies. This is an important

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event that students in Oklahoma need to learn about. Learning about the past prepares students for the present and the future.

Shelley Martin-Young is a doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant at Oklahoma State University. She can be reached at dawn.martinyoung@okstate.edu.

References Chang, N. (n.d.). The massacre of Black Wall Street. https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/hbo-2019/the-massacre-of-black-wallstreet/3217/ Christensen, L. (n.d.). Burned out of homes and history: Uncovering the silenced voices of the Tulsa Race Massacre. https://www.zinnedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Tulsamassacre.pdf Ellsworth, S. (2009). "Tulsa Race Riot". The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved February 15, 2021.

Fain, K. (2017, July). The Devastation of Black Wall Street. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/the-devastation-of-black-wall-street/ Hylton, N. & Lansana, Q.A. (2021). Opal’s Greenwood oasis. Calliope Group.

Jurow, A.S., & Shea, M. (2015) Learning in equity-oriented scale making projects. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 24(2), 286-307.

Latham, J. (2018). Dreamland burning. Little Brown Books for Young Readers.

Myers, A. (2002). Tulsa burning. Fitzhenry and Whiteside.

Nowell, S. (2011). The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and its legacy: Experiencing place as text. https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/search/viewer.php?skin=h&id=initiative_11.04.08_ u Oklahoma historical society. (n.d.) The Tulsa Race Massacre. https://www.okhistory.org/learn/trm

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Taylor, K.H., & Silvis, D. (2017). Mobile City science: Technology supported collaborative learning at community scale. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1, 391-398.

Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. (n.d.) 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/#flexible-content Weatherford, C.B. (2021). Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre. Carolrhoda Books.

Willows, M. (1921). Disaster Relief Report: Riot June 1921. Red Cross. Retrieved from https://www.tulsahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/1921-Red-Cross-ReportDecember-30th.pdf Zinn education project. (2021). Teaching people’s history. https://www.zinnedproject.org/

[As]Chris Messer states, “[t]he destruction of the community was rationalized as a necessary and natural response to put them back in their place” (Fain, 2017), “them” being the prosperous African Americans in Tulsa.

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Keith Polette

“Speak the Speech”: Teaching Children How to Read Expressively Expressiveness of oral reading and individual interpretation of text constitutes the core of personal response. Delivery, tone, pitch, and volume become components of expression as the reader strives to share the emotion of the text. Personal interpretation results in individual response as the meaning one derives from the text gives rise to the emotional effort behind the oral interpretation of the text.

—Marjorie R. Hancock, A Celebration of Literature and Response Children are, for the most part, energetic beings who love using words. To listen to them at play, for instance, is to hear language bubbling and bristling with life. Such language is immediate, brimming with vigor and vitality. The language of children is nearly always an essential act, one painted with bright emotional colors and textured with the grit and grain of specific, self-selected purposes.

Even though children, especially young readers, may speak dynamically, they are limited in what they say by the number and kinds of words they have internalized (Beck, McKeown, & Kugan, 2002; Fox, 1999; Gee, 2017; Vygotsky, 1978; Willingham, 2017).

If we want children to internalize rich language, that is, language that has the tang and density of lived experience, we will succeed if we to teach them how to translate that dynamic quality of their expressed language from speech to print, from the way that words are spoken spontaneously to the way that words are read aloud deliberately. In other words, if children don’t hear and speak new words and new sentences (and new rhetorical forms: paragraphs, poems, stories) in vigorous and robust ways, they will not mentally digest them. When children make this transference with practice over time, they will come to infuse what they read aloud with those same urgent energies that they use when they speak (Rasinski, 2014). In this way, they will find that reading aloud is an authentic and potent way to discover, create, and express meaning. When children repeatedly read fluently and expressively, they will necessarily internalize the language of the texts they are reading (Beckman, 2018; Goodman & Goodman, 1994.)

When children in the elementary grades (and even those in the middle and high school grades who struggle with reading), read aloud without thorough preparation, however, we often hear one of two things. Some children, who are effective at decoding, will often read a text as quickly as they can, and even though they read without any hint of expression, they tend to get most of the words “right.” Other children, who lack decoding skills, will frequently stumble across the page, without expression, until they haltingly reach the end of the text. As we listen to so many children read with expressionless voices, we might wonder: Where is the energy and vigor that punctuates their voices when they speak at play? Where is the emotion? Where is the meaning?

Where is the fluency? Where is the vitality and the intentionality?

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One problem that attends such expressionless recitations is that neither effective nor ineffective decoders have a full, fluent grasp or a complete understanding of what they are reading (Cypert & Petro, 2019). When most children read aloud, especially if they are reading “cold,” that is, with no preparation or practice, they comprehend little of what they read. Some readers may catch hold of some content, but most will miss deeper levels of implicit meaning. Typically, as children read aloud, they often concern themselves with the denotative layer of the text and ignore levels of connotation that are available to them. Overwhelmed by print and unable to read on more than a surface level, many children, especially those who lack fluency skills, do not know the how to process and read print material in expressive and meaningful ways—in ways that help them enjoy high levels of fluency, comprehension, and self-confidence. If children read aloud without fluency and without expression, or if they struggle when they read aloud, and thus fail to construct meaning, then their silent reading will suffer as well from a corresponding lack of expression and ability to construct meaning (Gee, 2017; Martens, 1997; Webman-Shafran, 2018). If we want to help children become stronger, more confident, and more self-directed readers, both orally and silently, we would do well to teach them, as a key component of our literacy programs at all grade levels, how to read aloud effectively, that is, how to read fluently and expressively (Beckman, 2018; Godde et al., 2020; Gross et al., 2013; Gutiérrez et al., 1997).

Reasons to Teach Children to Read Aloud Here are ten reasons why our students will benefit from being taught how to read expressively.

1. To enhance fluency. Fluency is an essential part of successful reading. Fluency is based on automaticity, that is, a reader’s ability to recognize words automatically. If children are to become both automatic and fluent readers, they need to practice. Preparing to read a text aloud expressively provides children with the time and means to recognize words, phrases, and sentences automatically and to read a text with a high percentage of accuracy. When children practice by engaging in repeated oral readings, their levels of fluency and comprehension increase significantly (Rasinski, 2014; Goering, 2010; Kuhn & Schwanenflugel, 2018; Martens, 1997; Rasinski, 2000; Samuels, 2002).

2. To strengthen comprehension. When children use techniques for expressive oral reading, their comprehension of what they are reading dramatically increases. Since fluency is closely tied to comprehension, as children become smoother and more accurate readers, they will also become more knowledgeable ones. By practicing a text, children will become more familiar with its words, sentence patterns, and organizational structure.

Once children become familiar and comfortable with a text, they are then in a position to make discoveries about the different kinds of meanings, both denotative and connotative, that may emerge from their interaction with the text (Apol & Harris, 1999; Miller, 2002).

Because they are approaching and envisioning reading anew, children who know how to read expressively show a greater understanding of the meanings of the texts they have chosen to read because they are, in effect, hearing it spoken inside their heads, which was how they were introduced to language in the first place, through interactive speech acts in the home (Cypert & Petro, 2019; Davis 1997; Groen et al., 2019; Kuhn & Schwanenflugel, 2018).

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3. To develop critical reading skills. For children to read expressively, they must make conscious decisions about how to read and what they should emphasize while they are reading so that they can effectively communicate both the surface and deeper meanings of a text. For instance, if children are to read and communicate both the denotative level (content) and the connotative components (emotions and attitudes) of the opening line of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “My Shadow” (“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me”), they must decide both what the text is literally saying and what emotions are being implied. Once children have discerned what emotions and attitudes are being implied, they will then be able to decide how to use their voices to communicate those emotions and attitudes (Barton & Booth, 1990; Popp, 1996). By reading and expressing two levels of the text at once, children have necessarily engaged in critical thinking: they have examined and analyzed the text, made inferences, drawn conclusions, and made informed decisions about how to vocally communicate those inferences and conclusions (Richards, 2000). In this way, children who learn to read aloud expressively will become more sensitive to the workings of print language and will thus be able to construct meaning on multiple levels (Maley & Duff, 2007; Martinez et al., 1999).

Additionally, when children gather in reading response groups to rehearse their readings and gain feedback from their peers, they learn how to use critical listening to critique one another’s readings. As they critique one another’s readings and give supportive and helpful feedback, children will learn that texts are open to interpretation and negotiation, and that meaning is a matter of how they analyze and perform the text (Enciso & Edmiston, 1997).

4. To develop other important reading skills. When children prepare to read expressively, they will develop competence in grammar, memory, attention, sequencing, and understanding cause and effect (Healy, 1990; Kennedy, 2011). Reading well takes time, focus, and attention, and if children are going to read aloud well, they must give the requisite time, focus, and attention to preparing the text. As children prepare a text for oral reading, they will gain a greater understanding of how grammatical and rhetorical structures (sentences, stanzas, and paragraphs) work and how the sequencing of words and ideas plays an important role in the delivery of meaning (Dehaene, 2009; Hancock, 2000).

5. To help struggling readers. When struggling readers learn to use expressive oral reading skills and apply them to something they are going to read aloud, they become stronger readers. By rehearsing their readings through repeated practice, struggling readers improve their accuracy and word recognition abilities (Goering, 2010; Hodges, 2011; Morado et al., 1999).

Additionally, as struggling readers read aloud, they can more effectively monitor themselves. As they read, they can listen to discover if what they are reading “sounds right” and if it makes sense. Moreover, they can also record their readings and listen to themselves. Through the use of such recordings, struggling readers can locate specific areas that need improvement and, with a teacher’s help, devise ways to revise and improve upon them. By monitoring themselves as they read aloud, struggling readers become more fluent and more confident readers (Armbruster et al., 2001; Noltemeyer et al., 2014; Optiz & Rasinski, 2008).

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6. To build confidence. When children read with expressive skills, they will also develop more confidence in themselves as readers. No longer limited either to rapid word-calling or to stumbling over print, children will discover that, with practice and guidance, they can become more fluent, purposeful, and effective readers of the kinds of print material that had previously frustrated or befuddled them. With repeated success, their confidence levels will rise (Davis, 1997; Hodges, 2011; Maley & Duff, 2007; Noltemeyer et al., 2014).

7. To facilitate collaborative learning. As children gather together in small groups, that is, in reading response groups, to practice their oral readings, they will receive feedback from the other members of the group. Through the exchange of ideas about the practice readings and through the critical feedback that they give one another, children enter into collaborative learning. As children work to assist one another to become stronger expressive readers, they work together to increase the purposefulness of learning, that is, how to connect with one another and how to connect new skills to texts they are choosing to read aloud (Shaffer, 2016).

Furthermore, as groups of children learn to use expressive reading skills to read to one another in various venues (e.g., choral reading, shared reading, and readers theatre), they will naturally step into the oral tradition of literature because they will have taken a large part in creating a community of interested readers and listeners. In such a community, words are relished, and the sounds of speech are celebrated. Spoken words again take their rightful place at the fountainhead of communal literacy development (Gutiérrez et al., 1997; Temple & MaKinster, 2005).

Additionally, such a community is important because it sustains itself and it is self-supporting (Egan, 1997; Terry, 2015; Vygotsky, 1978). Since all children are reading aloud in a variety of formats, there are many avenues of support available to them, such as individual support, buddy support, reading support groups, and whole group encouragement. When children realize that they are reading expressively in a supportive, psychologically safe atmosphere, they will relax, make discoveries, and begin to take risks. In a psychologically safe environment, children will more rapidly take ownership of their reading and learning (Cambourne, 2002; Probst, 1988; Willingham, 2017).

8. To enable second language learners to make gains in English literacy. If second language learners are going to develop literacy skills in English, they should engage in repeated practice, they should have scaffolds for learning new words in a meaningful way, and they should use language in a socially interactive way. By teaching second language learners to read aloud expressively, we give them the opportunity to practice the reading selection many times. In the classroom, they practice with, and get feedback from, their reading response groups. Because the groups are small, and because there is a clear response procedure to follow, second language learners will feel freer to take the small risks necessary to managing and mastering a new language. Moreover, through repetition, these learners will begin to assimilate new words and word patterns (Ferguson & Young, 1996). When these learners approach new texts, they can learn unfamiliar words in a safe atmosphere, and they can work with a reading partner, or with members of their reading response groups, or with the teacher. Each of these experiences can provide a meaningful scaffold for learning new words (Abbot & Grose, 1998; Miller, 2002; Pereira et al., 2019). When these learners present their texts in individual readings, in readers theatre, or in choral readings, they will be dramatizing the texts they have

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chosen in ways that involve social interaction. Through such dramatic social interactions, these learners will more rapidly internalize the words, structures, and meanings of a second language.

9. To share newly crafted abilities with others. Once children learn how to read aloud expressively, they often become so excited that they want to read aloud more often and in more varied situations. As children become more effective oral readers, they will often want to read aloud in the classroom, at home, and for other classes (usually of younger children) in their schools. Moreover, because they have mastered new skills, children who often felt like failures as readers will shine with new excitement as they realize and share their newly-built reading expertise with others (Optiz & Rasinski, 2008; Stayter & Allington, 1991; Terry, 2015).

10. To address the national standards. NCTE/IRA Standard # 4 (Farstrup & Meyers, 1998) asks students to adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. For instance, Standard 12 states that students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes, e.g., “for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information” (Farstrup & Meyers, p. 3). As students learn to read expressively, as suggested here, they will be using spoken language for their own purposes for learning, for enjoyment, for persuasion, and for the exchange of both factual and emotional information.

Preparing Children to Read Aloud Teaching children at all grade levels to read aloud entails more than inviting them to choose a text and to rehearse reading it. Reading expressively involves a number of specific factors, all of which can be taught to children. When mastered and combined, these factors will lead children to become more effective oral readers. These factors also provide a means of evaluating how well children read aloud (Morrison & Wilcox, 2020).

Before children tackle a text orally, they need to understand what emotions and attitudes are stated or implied; that is, children need to learn to “get the feel” of a text (Booth & Moore, 1988; Noltemeyer et al., 2014; Samuels, 2002). Through multiple readings and discussions, children will begin to get a sense of a text’s emotions, especially with the guidance of the teacher. One way to discern what emotions are nested in a text would be to employ inferential skills. To do so, we could teach children that, essentially, four kinds of inferences can be made when reading a text: generalities (eg., emotions and concepts), associations, causes, and effects. Once children have learned how to discover which emotions are being conveyed in a text, then they can be taught how to express them through the body and the voice (Maley & Duff, 2007, Richards, 2000).

For instance, we might ask students what emotions are present in the following lines by Walt Whitman?

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O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red!

Where on the deck my Captain lies Fallen cold and dead. (from “O Captain! My Captain!” in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, 1855) These are not joyful lines; rather they express relief, fear, and shock. And the voice that reads them must communicate those strong emotions. To read aloud effectively, students must learn, then, how to use vocal variety.

Vocal Variety Children who read in a monotone are often directed “to read with expression,” but we generally don’t hear any noticeable improvement. One significant reason that children fail to read with expression is because they do not know what “expression” is.

Expression, or vocal variety, is the linchpin of effective oral reading because it is the music of the voice performing the text. If children are to read aloud effectively and expressively, they must understand and use all of the elements that comprise vocal variety. In other words, “expression” is a term and an activity that is comprised of seven interlocking parts of vocal variety: volume, pitch, rate, duration, tone, articulation, and emphasis. By teaching children to understand and to use these seven components, we can help them become readers who read well because they are “reading with expression.”

Volume. Volume refers to the raising or the lowering of the sound of the voice.

Readers use volume by shifting their voices from whispers to shouts. Whispers often indicate suspense, fear, stealth, or quiet anger. Shouts often indicate happiness, anger, shock, or recognition (trying to get someone’s attention).

Pitch. Pitch refers to the raising or lowering of the inflection of the voice.

Readers use pitch by shifting their voices from high to low, from a squeak to a bellow— and anywhere in between. A high pitch can indicate shock, surprise, humor, exhilaration, happiness, or relief. A low pitch can indicate anger, seriousness, sadness, worry, mystery, or even deep happiness. For instance, when reading a ghost story, a reader would most likely use a low pitch; when reading a description of a celebration or a victory, a reader might use a higher pitch.

Rate. Rate refers to the speed at which a sentence or passage in a text is delivered.

Higher pitches usually require a fast rate; lower pitches usually require a slower rate. A quick rate of delivery can indicate excitement, anxiety, or fear. A slow rate of delivery can indicate sadness, satisfaction, or confusion. When children read a poem that has rhythm and rhyme, it is essential that they vary the rate of each line to avoid a sing-song delivery.

Another aspect of rate is the pause. Pauses are essential as they give the listener time to “catch up” to the content, the emotions, or the ideas in the text. Pauses also help create suspense. But the key is to decide where to pause and for how long. Most of the time, punctuation marks will signal the reader where to pause. But with poetry, for

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instance, it is sometimes important not to stop at the end of each line if there is enjambment or a line-break.

Duration. Duration refers to the time-accent given to a particular word, to how quickly or slowly a word is said. Sometimes it is essential to stretch out the delivery of a word by prolonging the internal vowel sounds (e.g., schooooooool). Stretching out words can indicate deliberation of thought, happiness, playfulness, or seriousness. Quickening the sounds of words, or clipping words short when speaking them, can indicate precision, certainty, anger, or seriousness.

Tone. Tone refers to vocal quality. Examples of tone include nasal, gravel, hollow, scratchy, screechy, whispery, whiny, or solid. It is important to choose the tone that best expresses the ideas and emotions in the text that is to be read aloud. For instance, if a reader is reading “Casey at the Bat,” he or she would probably not want to use a nasal or whiny tone because those tones don’t enhance the suspense of the poem.

Articulation. Articulation refers to the kind of pronunciation that the words of a text receive. Clearly pronounced words are important for effective oral reading. If words are smeared over or run together, the reader will not be understood. Readers must instead be sure to shape the sounds of words accurately. Sounds that are especially important to shape clearly are plosives (p, b, t, d, k, and g in words such as asked, taught, tenth, proud, and bat) and fricatives (f, s, v, z, and ch and sh in such words as fast, super, vivid, zebra, child, and should).

Emphasis. Emphasis refers to the stress that a word or phrase receives from the reader. The right emphasis makes all the difference. Usually emphasis should be placed on (in this order) verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions.

But phrases can also receive emphasis: participial, gerund, infinitive, absolute, appositive, prepositional. For instance, notice the subtle differences of meaning when the emphasis is shifted in each of the following lines: I’ll take those ruby slippers, my dear.

I’ll take those ruby slippers, my dear.

By using these seven components, the skills of vocal variety, children can make great improvements in their expressive reading abilities. By knowing what a text is designed to communicate and by applying these skills to the act of reading the text aloud, children will be able to read authentically and to share ideas and emotions in ways that may have previously eluded them (Godde et al., 2020; Kennedy, 2011). The key to using these skills is variety; the reader must seamlessly employ all of the skills without emphasizing one over the other.

Applying Vocal Variety Skills to Texts To use vocal variety when reading, children might want to think of the text as a piece of music; in place of notes, however, are words. Just as a musician brings to life the notes on the page, so too will the children make vocal music from the words of the text. If children are to perform the text, they will benefit from making notations that indicate where they are going to use the skills of vocal variety. To that end, it will be beneficial if children mark the text with a pencil or with sticky pad sheets and use symbols that indicate where they will change the volume and pitch; where they will slow down, speed up, and pause; which words will be elongated and shortened; and what tone of voice they

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will use. They will also want to make note of any words that will require special attention for the sake of articulation The following symbols are suggested for children to use when marking the text: loud volume: high pitch: fast rate: pause: / emphasis:

L soft volume: /\ low pitch: (f) slow rate: long duration: < ________

(s) \/ (sl) short duration: >

Here’s how a text looks after it has been marked with the vocal variety notations: Dumpty Down (entire poem to be read with a somber tone) \/ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall (sl).

He waffled, / toppled, / <fell< / —splat!—from the wall. /\ L As his jagged pieces / besplattered the ground (sl), Not a single shell-shocked onlooker uttered a sound. ( sl ) <All< the king’s horses / and all the king’s men Silently gazed at the goo; / they were crestfallen. \/ The king looked down, / gave a small egg salute, And sighed as he said, / “He needed a parachute.” ( sl ) Another way to mark a text for expressive readings would be to use colored highlighters. The color red could indicate “loud,” yellow “soft,” green “long duration,” and so on.

It is important to model the process and to guide children through the notation process repeatedly. After they see first how you mark and perform a text a few times, then they will be better prepared to be guided through the process themselves.

First, you might put your marked text on display via PowerPoint, Elmo, or a poster-sized chart, and then read it aloud so that the children can see how the notations correspond to your vocal variety. After you have demonstrated the notational technique a number of times, you might then display an unmarked text and read it aloud using the vocal variety skills. After you have performed the text, ask the children to tell you where your volume, pitch, and rate changed; where you paused; and what words you elongated and shortened. By doing this, you will help the children develop the kind of “ear” that is needed to attend to and recognize the skills of vocal variety.

Additionally, you might want to use Echo Reading at this point. As you read aloud a poem, a line at a time, and the children mimic the rhythm and intonation of your reading, let them know where and why you are applying the particular skills of vocal

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variety. (One note: Echo Reading can also work to enhance critical listening if the students do not have a copy of the text from which the teacher is reading. However, Echo Reading is also effective if the students do have a copy of the text from which the teacher is reading. Whether or not to provide the students with a copy of the text for Echo Reading would be a matter of choice for the teacher.)

Reading Response Groups Once you have familiarized children with the notation system, invite them to select a brief text to prepare to read it aloud. Let them work in pairs when they begin marking the text. As they work together, they should talk to each other about how to mark the text and why. After they have each marked the text, they should read aloud to each other; in this way, they can rehearse their readings. Such rehearsals, or practice sessions, are essential if children are to become comfortable, confident, and knowledgeable when they read aloud (Cramer & Castle, 1994; Maley & Duff, 2007; Ray, 1999).

After they have marked and shared the text, the children should move to Reading Response Groups (four children per group, for example). Reading Response Groups are an essential part of the oral reading process because they allow children to receive constructive feedback, they allow children to gain further control over their reading, and they provide a scaffolding for further learning (Johns & VanLeirsburg, 1994; Optiz & Rasinski, 2008). In the Reading Response Groups, each child reads his or her marked selection, using the synthesized vocal variety skills. The other members of the group will provide feedback based on how the text was read. Their feedback should follow the P.Q.P. method: Praise, Question, Polish.

During the first phase of P.Q.P, the reader should listen while the other members of the group should offer specific, positive feedback (praise). Their feedback should consist of a discussion of the skills of vocal variety. Their feedback is most effective when it begins with a specific, positive comment, e.g., “Your volume changes were great; when you said the word, ‘splat’, real loud, that made a great impact.” Next, the listeners ask questions about the reading, e.g., “Why did you pause at the end of the first line?”

“Why did you raise your pitch on the third word?” Finally, the listeners should use the skills of vocal variety to offer revisions or suggestions (polish), e.g., “You might want to speed up the rate on the third line or you might want to pause after the third word in the first line.” When children respond in these ways, they are developing critical listening skills. As they no longer focus solely on content, they are now attending to how effectively the text was conveyed and how, specifically, it might be improved.

One important note: the full use of marking the text before they perform is best suited for children who are capable of reading and understanding texts on their own, that is, children who are (roughly) 8+ years of age. For younger children, it will be most effective to teach them to use one vocal variety skill at a time and to spend a good deal of time on that skill. For instance, when teaching children who are ages 5-7 to use vocal variety, it will be effective to teach them one skill per week. For example, it would be worthwhile to teach them how to change the pitch of their voices one week and practice that skill several times throughout the week, via the mimetic reading and the Choral Reading technique, before teaching the next skill.

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Evaluation The vocal variety skills can be employed to create a form (Figure 1) to evaluate the reading performance of children. Each skill is a specific part of the evaluation form and is assigned a point value; as children read, you can then determine which skills the children have mastered and which they need to continue to revise (Morrison & Wilcox, 2020; Skelton et al., 2014; Samuels, 2002).

Figure 1 Oral Reading Evaluation Form DOES THE READER COMMUNICATE THE MEANING OF THE TEXT: _____ change the volume (loud & soft) _____ vary the pitch (high & low) _____ vary the rate (speed up & slow down) _____ find effective places to pause _____ Stretch out some vowel sounds to emphasize the emotions suggested by certain words _____ use an appropriate tone of voice: nasal, hollow, firm, gravelly, screechy, whispery, somber, high pitched, etc. _____ emphasize key words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs) _____ pronounce consonants clearly The evaluation form, which is related in some ways to Optiz and Rasinski’s (2008) “Multidimensional Fluency Scale,” is equitable because it lets the children know precisely how they will be evaluated and because it eliminates as much subjectivity as possible. It is generally effective to distribute the evaluation form to the children at the beginning of the oral reading lesson; that way they will know what they have to do to be successful. Moreover, the children will discover that the items on the evaluation form are the same skills that they will practice at home and that they will discuss in their Reading Response Groups.

Final Thoughts In Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong (1982) suggests that different texts demand different kinds of readings and different kinds of readers. Teaching children of all ages how to read expressively will not only enable them to develop stronger literacy skills and more positive attitudes towards reading, but, perhaps more importantly, will enable them

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to become the necessary kinds of readers that different kinds of texts demand. In this way, children who have learned to use expressive oral reading skills will be able to meet a text on its own terms and to speak it alive with power and precision. Moreover, when children learn to use and to employ the skills of effective oral reading consciously and carefully, they will discover that they have moved themselves into a much stronger position to express understandings of texts that may have previously eluded them, and they will be able to offer a powerful and meaningful “core response” to a rich and robust literary experience.

Keith Polette is a Professor of English at the University of Texas-El Paso. He can be reached at kpolette@utep.edu.

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Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: the new science of how we read. Penguin Books.

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Leslie Haas and Jill T. Tussey Fanfiction as a Support for Writing Engagement and Development There are a variety of academic literacy levels within individual classrooms (Bippert, 2017). This diversity offers opportunities to support students by understanding and incorporating individual schema, interests, and motivation into literacy instruction, allowing engagement to be the catalyst for learning (Bippert, 2017; Haas & Tussey, 2021; Posey 2019). Student “goals for reading and writing may not be directly connected with school achievement, so educators need to tap into these existing skills in order to make literacy meaningful to the students” (Bippert, 2017, p. 19-20). Therefore, it becomes crucial for educators to think outside the box when considering how to engage and develop students as writers.

Fanfiction Popular culture offers opportunities to support academic literacy through student interest (Bahoric & Swaggerty, 2015; Jennings et al, 2021). Fandoms based on popular culture and their embedded literacies, often consist of shared interests and/or activities such as comics, movies, television, and video games. When teachers capitalize on these fandom narratives as a model or inspiration for writing, students have opportunities to create fanfiction.

According to Jamison (2013), “today we largely understand fanfiction as writing that continues, interrupts, reimages, or just riffs on stories and characters other people have already written about” (p. 17). It allows students to explore an original work and then alter it by changing one or more aspects such as characters, conflict, plot, point of view, and/or setting (Jamison, 2013). Examples of fanfiction across through the ages include the following: ● Paradise Lost by John Milton ○ based on the Bible ○ creates a whole new perspective on an existing story ○ turns Satan into a tragic hero ● The Aeneid by Virgil ○ based on The Odyssey and The Iliad ○ new epic based on Aeneas, a minor character from The Illiad ● A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain ○ based on Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory ○ changed to a comedy about time travel ● Wicked by Gregory Maguire ○ based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum ○ creates a whole new perspective ○ offers a more sympathetic portrait of an iconic villain Other fanfiction examples include Clueless based on Jane Austen’s Emma, 10 Things I Hate About You based on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, and the Fifty Shades of Grey series based on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.

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As a pedagogical tool, fanfiction has become an important aspect of teaching literacy (Hellekson & Brusse, 2014; Jenkins, 2008). By focusing on a specific aspect to alter in fanfiction writing, educators can target instruction to develop specific writing skills including those associated with comprehension and language acquisition (Black, 2008; Larsen & Zubernis, 2012). Additionally, fanfiction can offer literacy support by acting as mentor texts. According to Haas & Tussey (2021b), Mentor texts take the full cognitive load of creation off students and allow for focused attention on one particular aspect of writing. For example, when a popular comic book is chosen as a mentor text, students can focus on developing the point of view of a less developed or minor character without also needing to focus on setting and plot. This type of support can be particularly advantageous for English Language Learners because mentor texts can offer quality examples of dialog, imagery, sentence structure, etc. . . . within the context of the chosen genre (para.4).

Writing skill development begins during a student’s elementary career. Joanna Polisena (n.d.) shared that “introducing and practicing writing with engaging activities in elementary school, can foster confidence and a lifelong love of writing” (para. 1). Therefore, it is important for educators to embed engaging activities into lessons supported by quality writing strategies.

Fanfiction can be both an engaging activity and a quality writing strategy, as it allows student interest to drive the selection of mentor texts used for writing support. Additionally, fanfiction can increase engagement so students can feel more supported during the brainstorming and writing processes.

Writing Development Writing instruction is often reflective of a teacher's comfort level. Graham (2019) highlights that “teachers devote more time and attention to teaching writing if they are better prepared to teach it, feel more confident in their capabilities to teach it, derive greater pleasure from teaching it, and consider it an important skill” (para. 15). It may be beneficial for teachers to familiarize themselves with the concept of fanfiction prior to embedding this concept into writing lessons and activities. Additionally, educators may share their personal interests with students through fanfiction writing activities to increase engagement and strengthen the studentteacher relationship. When educators develop lesson plans and curricular units, writing activities can be naturally embedded to provide students with a variety of opportunities to practice and strengthen their skills. However, as with most academic areas, students need writing skills modeled and supported. According to Graham (2012), before expecting students to become independent writers, “teachers should ensure that students have the background knowledge and skills they need to understand and use a writing strategy. Then, teachers should describe the strategy and model its use” (para. 7). As students become stronger writers, the level of support reduces allowing opportunities to demonstrate skills and knowledge.

Shanahan (2020) offers that “reading and writing draw upon the same body of knowledge and skills” (para. 7). This supports fanfiction activities which require students to engage with reading prior to starting writing activities. Furthermore, “research has found that when children read extensively, they become better writers. Reading a variety of genres helps children learn text structures and language that they can then transfer to their own writing (K12 Reader, n.d.,

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para. 2). Therefore, by allowing students to write fanfiction based on their choices, prior knowledge already exists.

As teachers develop writing projects, they should consider how to best support struggling writers. Examples of support include writing warm-ups, providing pre-writing, using graphic organizers, and allowing for student choice. Ebert (2017) shares the importance of choice by providing that “even a little choice goes a long way with student writing. When students feel invested in a topic they will have more to say, thus more to write” (para. 17). Furthermore, consistent feedback helps writers, especially those who are struggling, and is a valuable classroom practice. Alrubail (2015) highlights that consistent student feedback, “ensures that they'll stay on track in terms of completion and motivation” (para. 8). Scheduling time to provide feedback can be challenging; however, peer feedback can provide valuable guidance and support in a timely manner.

Formative and summative assessments are often embedded into daily instruction and unit plans. According to the University of Reading (n.d.), “well-designed assessment can encourage active learning especially when the assessment delivery is innovative and engaging” (para. 4).

Rubrics for writing can be developed by educators for most writing activities and utilized by students before, during, and after writing activities. Brookhart (2013) shares that rubrics “show students how they will know to what extent their performance passes muster on each criterion of importance, and if used formatively can also show students what their next steps should be to enhance the quality of their performance” (para. 26). Educators can adapt narrative writing rubrics which assess skills such as focus, conventions, organization, plot, sentence fluency, and voice to fit the specific components of the fanfiction assignment.

Activities for Engagement and Development There are a variety of ways to use fanfiction to support student writing. Modeling fanfiction lessons for students can provide needed support. During the modeling portion of the writing process, Cutler (2019) shares he takes 25 minutes to compose his own response and “encourages students to call me out on whatever mistakes I might make, from content-related issues to writing style” (para. 8). Students benefit from the write aloud process as steps of the writing process become more clear. Prior to assigning students independent writing activities, teachers should plan to model the process. Educators can select a different fandom or fan-based narrative to model their thinking and writing process. Two examples at different grade levels have been provided. Fandoms within these examples can be substituted for fandoms of interest to students participating in fanfiction creation.

First and Second Grade Standard: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.3 - CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.3 Fandom: “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” Purpose: Students will create a narrative focused on a sequence of events which will include a beginning, middle, and end. “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” will provide students with developed characters and settings to support narrative development.

Activity: Develop a fanfiction narrative using the following steps: ● Students will watch an episode of “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” on PBS Kids (https://pbskids.org/daniel/videos).

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● The teacher and students will discuss the show and what aspects of the show they enjoyed and/or could connect to their own lives. ● The teacher and students will retell the beginning, middle, and end of the episode. ● The teacher and students can create a list of the main characters in “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” to use for their fanfiction writing. ● Students will select their favorite character to write a new adventure where the story has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. ● Students may include other characters from the television show and add digital or drawn illustrations to their writing. ● Students will read their adventures to partners once their story is complete.

Assessment: A rubric can be utilized to assess students writing pieces over three events, signal words, and a closure. This rubric may also include the inclusion of actions, thoughts, and feelings for second grade. The rubric will be reviewed prior to the start of the project.

Third and Fourth Grade Standard: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3.B - CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.3.B Fandom: SuperHero Comics Purpose: Students will create a narrative focused on dialog and descriptions to show the response of a character to a new situation. A superhero comic chosen from a preselected grouping of Marvel and DC comics will provide students with developed characters and mentor dialog to support dialog development for a new situation.

Activity: Develop a fanfiction narrative using the following steps: ● Students will bring to school an approved comic book or choose from preselected teacher offerings. ● Students will read their individual comic books. ● The teacher and students will discuss the dialog embedded within the comic books and share examples. ● The teacher and students will discuss and review writing conventions related to dialog. ● Students will discuss with a partner how they might alter a situation and how their superhero might react before beginning their writing. ● Students will develop and write dialog related to how their superhero reacts to a new situation. ● Students will work with a partner to read aloud their dialog in a Reader’s Theater performance.

Assessment: A rubric will assess the quality and quantity of dialog as well as character development included in the narrative. Writing conventions are a required part of the rubric. The final component of the rubric will be connected to the Reader’s Theater performance with a focus on expression and fluency rate. The rubric will be reviewed prior to the start of the project.

Conclusion Fanfiction offers engaging and meaningful opportunities to develop writing skills.

Additionally, it offers teachers the opportunity to bridge the literacy gap between home, school,

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and community. This integration frames literacy as more than its individual components; instead, it becomes a set of cultural practices (Gavelek et al, 2000; Haas & Tussey, 2021a, 2021b).

Dr. Leslie Haas is an assistant professor of education and curriculum director at Buena Vista University, Storm Lake, Iowa. A former publicschool teacher, she now focuses on preparing preservice teachers. She is particularly interested in underrepresented students who can be reached through popular culture literacies. She can be contacted at HaasL@bvu.edu.

Dr. Jill Tussey is an assistant professor of education in literacy/early childhood at Buena Vista University, Storm Lake, Iowa. She has over ten years’ experience teaching at the elementary level. As division chair of Literacy, Early Childhood, and TESL, she works with preservice teachers, focusing on student engagement, motivation, digital literacy, and poverty. She can be reached at tussey@bvu.edu.

References Alrubail, R. (2015). Strategies to help struggling writers. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/strategies-to-help-struggling-writers-rusul-alrubail Bahoric K., & Swaggerty E. (2015). Fanfiction: Exploring in and out of school literacy.

Colorado Reading Journal, 26, 25–31.

Black, R. (2008). Adolescents and online fanfiction. Peter Lang.

Bippert, K. (2017). Fan fiction to support struggling writers. TALE Yearbook Volume 4: Literacy Alive and Well! Supporting Effective Literacy Instruction for All Learners. Texas Association of Literacy Educators.

Brookhart, S. (2013). How to create and use rubrics for formative assessment and grading.

ASCS. http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/112001/chapters/What-Are-Rubrics-andWhy-Are-They-Important%C2%A2.aspx Culter, D. (2019). Modeling writing and revising for students. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/modeling-writing-and-revising-students Ebert, W. (2017). 12 strategies to support struggling writers in elementary. Teach Writing. https://www.teachwriting.org/blog/2017/6/14/12-strategies-to-support-struggling-writersin-elementary Gavelek, J., Raphael, T., Biondo, S., & Wang, D. (2000). Integrated literacy instruction. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. Pearson., & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Volume III. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Graham, S. (2012). Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers. Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-elementary-school-students-beeffective-writers Graham, S. (2019). Changing how writing is taught. Review of Research Education, 41(1). https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X18821125

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Haas, L., & Tussey, J. (2021a). Equity and engagement through digital storytelling and gamebased learning. In Haas, L., & Tussey, J. (Ed.), Connecting disciplinary literacy and digital storytelling in K-12 education (257-277). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-17998-5770-9.ch013 Haas, L., & Tussey, J. (2021b). Enhancing language experience through digital literacy and popular culture. World Literacy Summit Blog. https://www.worldliteracysummit.org/enhancing-language-experience-through-digitalliteracy-and-popular-culture/ Hellekson, K., & Busse, K. (2014). The fan fictions studies reader. University of Iowa Press.

Jamison, A. (2013). Fic: Why fanfiction is taking over the world. Smart Pop. Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press.

Jennings, L., Moran, R. M., & Pierce, B. (2021). Using fan fiction to bridge students' understanding of science. In Haas, L., & Tussey, J. (Ed.), Disciplinary literacy connections to popular culture in K-12 settings (142-161). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-4721-2.ch007 K12 Reader. (n.d.). The relationship between reading and writing. https://www.k12reader.com/the-relationship-between-reading-andwriting/#:~:text=Research%20has%20found%20that%20when,can%20use%20in%20thei r%20stories.

Larsen, K., & Zubernis (2012). Fan culture: Theory/practice. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Polisena, H. (n.d.). Importance of writing in elementary schools. http://www.communicationacademy.com/wpcontent/uploads/2017/07/VR_Importance_of_Writing_Global_Post.pdf Posey A. (2019). Engage the brain: How to design for learning that taps into the power of emotion. ASCD. Shanahan, T. (2020). How can we take advantage of reading-writing relationships? Shanahan on Literacy. https://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/how-can-we-take-advantage-of-readingwriting-relationships University of Reading. (n.d.). Why is assessment important? https://www.reading.ac.uk/engageinassessment/why-is-assessment-important/eia-why-isassessmentimportant.aspx#:~:text=Well%2Ddesigned%20assessment%20can%20encourage,insight %20into%20the%20assessment%20process.

Fanfiction can be both an engaging activity and a quality writing strategy, as it allows student interest to drive the selection of mentor texts used for writing support.

Photo credit: Santi Vedri

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Teacher to Teacher Shuling Yang, Natalia Aledsandrovna Ward, LaShay Jennings, Rachel Waldroff, and Edward J. Dwyer Developing Understanding of the Alphabetical Principle Among Beginning Literacy Learners Introduction We have worked with students in a variety of literacy learning environments and have found that fostering learning to apply knowledge of phonetic principles is very difficult for some students. A strategy we have found helpful is working with letter tiles and a blank grid. We have found that working with a physical product that involves manipulation of letter tiles is enjoyable for students and fosters learning based on the alphabetic principle as defined by McGee and Richgels (2012); the alphabetic principle is “a guiding rule for reading and writing whereby both processes depend on the systematic use of sound-letter correspondences” (p. 376).

Review of Literature The International Literacy Association (ILA, 2019a) emphasized the importance of focused, explicit, systematic, and authentic instruction in learning letters and the sounds associated with those letters in a position statement titled Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction. Authenticity, in this context, involves students applying their ability to identify letters, learning the sounds typically associated with letters, and recognizing how letters combine to make words in an alphabetic language like English. ILA researchers stressed how such learning must take place during engaging activities where the utilization of developing competencies is evident. In this light, Gill (2019) determined that “… to grow into fluent readers and writers, children need several years of systematic instruction to learn the intricacies of English orthography” (p. 39).

In addition, ILA (2020) researchers proposed in a literacy brief titled Phonological Awareness in Early Childhood Literacy Development that phonological awareness, defined as “sensitivity to the sound (or phonological) structure of spoken words” (p. 2), provides the foundation for attaining competence in phonemic awareness, which is the ability to hear individual phonemes within words. ILA researchers further proposed that the ability to hear phonemes, the smallest units of sound in the English language, is critical for learning to read, and that students who enter first grade without the ability to hear and identify phonemes in words have great difficulty in learning to read.

ILA (2019a) researchers in a position statement titled Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction determined that sustained practice is essential for developing phonemic awareness competencies as opposed to short term study undertaken with the assumption that that the target material will be or has been learned sufficiently. We propose that working with what we call the Word Builder Grid provides opportunities for engaging, authentic, and academically sound learning strategies. We propose that the strategies suggested engage students in activities that provide opportunities for enjoying interacting with letters and building words while strengthening phonemic awareness and recognition of letters of the alphabet.

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Producing the Work Builder Grid and Tiles Developing readers need to become thoroughly familiar with all of the letters in both uppercase and lowercase forms. The Word Builder Grid can be used to foster letter naming competencies and, especially, for distinguishing between the uppercase format and the lowercase format of the same letter. For example, a student might have difficulty remembering the graphic presentation of certain letters. Saying the names of a letter and physically placing the letter on the grid over the same letter reinforces learning. Once learning uppercase letters has been mastered, or almost mastered, we encourage students to place the uppercase format of a letter on the grid over the lowercase format of the same letter and vice versa. The uppercase and lowercase letter grids with a single tile on each grid are presented in Figure 1. A letter grid with words is also presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Letter pages in page protectors and grid for letter matching and word building.

Instructions for making the Word Builder Grid and tiles are as follows. Print two sets of uppercase and lowercase letters in grids with 1.5” x 1.5” boxes and one blank letter grid that is the same size. Print three each of uppercase and lowercase vowels in the same sized boxes. The extra vowels are needed for word building. Copy the grids with the letters on 110” or 60” cardstock, and cover the uppercase and lowercase grids that will be used to make tiles with clear laminate such as Contact™ or Duck™ or use a laminating machine. Arial 72 pt. font works well. Color coding is very helpful. The extra set of vowels can be on white cardstock while the other pages are printed on colorful cardstock. Regular copyweight paper can be used for the templates that will be in page protectors but is too flimsy for making tiles.

The blank grid can be copied on white cardstock and placed in a page protector. An alternative that we like is mounting the blank grid on a piece of plastic sign board. The 24” x 18” signs are typically used to promote events and political candidates. They are usually held up by wire frames that are stuck into the ground. Each sign can be used to produce four 8.5” x 10” grids. We cover the grid with clear laminate. The plastic sign grid (Figure 2) is easier for students to work with and they can easily slide the letter tiles off the grid and pick them up

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because of the .25” thickness of the grid boards. Sturdy cardboard can also be used to make the grids.

Figure 2: Grid made from a plastic sign board.

The uppercase and lowercase letter tiles are made by cutting out the boxes on the laminated cardstock. A short black line can be placed at the bottom of the box of the lowercase letters b, d, m, n, p, w, and z and the uppercase letters M, W, and P to indicate direction. This helps students to avoid confusion when matching letters. A zip-lock bag containing the tiles is presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Upper case and lowercase letter tiles in a bag for storage.

Extra consonant and vowel letter tiles can be kept in a plastic container with little drawers that is designed primarily to hold nails, bolts, and screws. We stick a letter on each drawer to indicate which letter tile is stored in the drawer

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Place the same number on the back of every tile in each set of tiles. This is helpful for keeping track of the sets of tiles. When students are working at tables, it happens that sets of tiles get mixed together. Having a number on the back of each tile makes it easy to keep track of letter tiles in the classroom. In addition, every student has a Word Builder Grid set to take home and keep at home for practice with siblings, friends, and anyone else who wants to work with the student in learning. Having their very own set of materials at a minimal cost is advantageous for encouraging students to study and fosters what Chen and Myhill (2016) proposed are activities that encourage engagement in authentic literacy tasks. The students physically and mentally construct words which leads to competence in reading and writing.

Teachers provide guidance on the school web page and on printed directions that accompany the kits when the students take them home. Young children love possessions! We make a nameplate for each Word Builder Grid with the student’s name printed boldly, placed on a colorful cardstock frame, and covered with laminate. The nameplate can be placed in the bag with the tiles or in one of the page protectors.

Strategies using the Word Builder Grid The Word Builder Grid provides teachers, coaches, parents, and other interested persons with a set of materials that can be productively used in a variety of instructional environments. In light of research undertaken by Hruby (2009), use of learning materials such as the grid provide learners a physical product that they can manipulate to foster the development of neurological patterns for encouraging long term memory.

Jackson (2008) determined that students benefit from physically working with concrete materials because there is a sense of permanence. Jackson proposed that the sense of permanence is lacking when students’ study is overwhelmingly visually oriented. Consequently, we see the grid as a means to encourage physical as well as visual input relative to learning. Picking up the pieces and placing them on the grid provides both physical and visual input. In addition, students are invited to say the words they build aloud. Using the grid can complement word and letter study practices in a wide variety of formats.

Many students in kindergarten, first, and second grade need continuing support for learning letter names, sounds associated with letters, and how letters are used to make words and how words are used to compose sentences. Not surprisingly, we have found students in grade three and beyond who can benefit from support for learning using the Word Builder Grid. This is especially relevant when working with English Language Learners. Perhaps the most enjoyable experience we have encountered is guided cross-grade support. For example, nothing in school seems to delight fourth grade students more than to help their first-grade friends learn literacy competencies using the Word Builder Grid and other engaging literacy-oriented activities.

As mentioned above, phonological awareness competencies are essential for learning the relationship between sounds and the letters that represent them in words. Phonological awareness is the gateway for enhancing phonemic awareness, the ability to distinguish phonemes within words (International Literacy Association, 2020). The Word Builder Grid provides a platform for studying how phonemes in words contribute to learning how to pronounce words, consequently, strengthening understanding of the alphabetic principle. For example, we can place the word “cat” in the grid but with empty boxes between the letters. Students work with a reading coach and attempt to pronounce each sound/letter in the word “cat.” The student can then physically move the letters so that they are adjacent and make the word, “cat.” In addition, blending

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individual phonemes in the manner suggested above can be used for assessing phonemic awareness. This approach, we have found, is much easier to work with and assess knowledge of phonemic awareness than having a test administrator pronounce a word and then ask the student to make the sounds associated with each letter. In addition, the grid can be helpful for introducing onsets and rimes to students who are ready (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Grid with the letters that can be merged to make the word big. More advanced students can begin to study onsets and rimes as presented in the top grid.

In addition to working with the grids in studying phonemic awareness, we invite students to place a large copy of a letter over their neck in a hang tag format (Figure 5). For example, a student might have the letter c, another might have the letter a while a third student has the letter t. The students demonstrate, sometimes with help, the sound associated with their letter. At first, they stand apart and then as they pronounce the letters, they physically move closer together to blend the letters to make the word, “cat.” Students are generally competent in recognizing letters when this type of activity is undertaken. We review letter names during the initial phase of this activity and reference each letter in a printed format on a wall chart.

Figure 5. Letter hang tags

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Conclusion We like the Word Builder Grid because of ease of use and how quickly students adapt to practicing with the materials. Consequently, limited time is needed for transitions or for organizing activities. We see students actively engaged in what Galloway and McClain described as “joyful language play” (p. 306).

We want as much time as is feasible for reading aloud to students, engaging in reading texts, and working with such strategies as echo reading, choral reading, and experiencing stories being read aloud. In addition to stories read aloud in the classroom, we experience stories read aloud by actors from the Screen Actors Guild (n.d.) at storylineonline.net in school and we encourage parents to do the same at home.

Creative teachers can use the Word Builder Grid in a variety of engaging learning environments to complement other literacy learning strategies. Teachers can modify the formats presented depending on their goals and the evident needs of their students. The strategies presented address many state and national literacy learning standards. We especially like that the Word Builder Grid can be readily available for all students as a basic right, as discussed in ILA’s position statement titled Right to Supportive Learning Environments and High-Quality Resources, for [l]earning spaces, including building materials, furniture, displays, technology, and instructional materials [that are] supportive of the physical, social, and learning needs of all students within the class or school community …” (ILA, 2019b, p. 4).

In addition, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (2019) in a position statement titled Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education proposed that the best instructional materials and practices must be made available to all young children to encourage the elimination of “patterns of inequity” (p. 15).

We have found that large numbers of the kits can be produced by college students in literacy classes and students who are involved in service learning projects. In addition, parent and grandparent volunteers are often eager to provide additional support. Creative teachers can use the suggestions presented herein with their students in a variety of contexts. Children must believe that they can become good readers and good writers, but they must also appreciate that becoming highly literate is important.

References Chen, H. & Myhill, D. (2016). Children talking about writing: Investigating metalinguistic understanding. Linguistics and Education, 35, 100-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/).linged.2016.07.004 Galloway, E.P. & McClain, J.B. (2020). Metatalk moves: Examining tools for collective academic discourse learning. Reading teacher 74(3), 305-313.

Gill, S. R. (2019). Sounding it out is just the first step: Supporting young readers. Young children 74(1), 38–42.

Hruby, G.G. (2009). Grounding reading comprehension in the neuroscience literatures. In S.E. Israel & G.G. Duffy (Eds.), Handbook of research on reading comprehension (pp.189223). Routledge.

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International Literacy Association. (2020). Phonological awareness in early childhood literacy development: A position statement of the International Literacy Association. Author. literacyworldwide.org Retrieved from https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/defaultsource/where-we-stand/9457_Phonological_Awareness_1-2020_Final.pdf International Literacy Association. (2019a). Meeting the challenges of early literacy phonics instruction: Literacy leadership brief. Author. literacyworldwide.org. Retrieved from https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-meetingchallenges-early-literacy-phonics-instruction.pdf?sfvrsn=8847b88e_6 International Literacy Association. (2019b) Right to supportive learning environments and highquality resources: A Research Brief of the International Literacy Association. Author. literacyworldwide.org Retrieved from https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/defaultsource/where-we-stand/ila-right-to-supportive-learning-environments-high-qualityresources.pdf Jackson, M. (2008). Distracted: The erosion of attention and the coming dark age. Prometheus.

McGee, L.M. & Richgels, D.J. (2012). Literacy’s beginnings: Supporting young readers and writers (6th ed.). Pearson.

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2019). Advancing equity in early childhood education. Author. Retrieved from NAEYC.org/equity Screen Actors Guild (n.d.) storylineonline.net.

Shuling Yang is an assistant professor of literacy at the Clemmer College of East Tennesse State Univeristy. She can be reached at Yangs2@etsu.edu.

Additional authors—Natalia Aleksandrovna Ward (WardNA@etsu.edu), LaShay Jennings (jenningsjl@etsu.edu), and Ed dwyer (Dwyer@etsu.edu) are also instructors in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at East Tennessee State University. Final author Rachel Waldroff (zreh14@etsu.edu) is a graduate student in the literacy program at East Tennesee State and teaches special education classes in Memphis, TN.

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Children’s Book Reviews Sue Christian Parsons, Ph.D.

RECOMMENDED: BOOKS THAT CHALLENGE, DELIGHT, AND INSPIRE Bold Biographies for Young People What empowers a person to reach beyond what is given to and expected of them to consider and reach for what else might be? One powerful function of a story is to offer possibility. A wellchosen biography not only captivates the imagination but may challenge assumptions about what has been, what is, and what might be. Beyond a simple “who” and “what,” a strong biography calls readers to consider what truly matters in our lives and society. In the best learning contexts, biographies spark dialogue about the world today and tomorrow.

Given the increased importance of visual imagery in communication and the vital push to publish more books that reflect diverse, frequently marginalized cultural experiences, multicultural picturebook biographies deserve particular attention on classroom shelves. In their “trueness,” they offer relevance and a sense of attainability. Because they are short, they afford space on the shelf for many cultures and perspectives.

Christopher Myers (2014) observes that children “see books less as mirrors and more as maps.

They are indeed searching for their place in the world, but they are also deciding where they want to go. They create, through the stories they’re given, an atlas of the world, of their relationships to others, of their possible destinations” (p. 1). The protagonists of the true stories highlighted below lived lives in contexts that tried to restrain their possible paths. Yet, they also found encouragement and inspiration within their communities that helped them move beyond. And, as path-forgers, they intentionally cleared paths for others to move ahead as well. “Also recommended” books offer possible text sets for content and thematic exploration.

Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen Bryant (author) and Frank Morrison (illustrator). 2020; Abrams Books for Young Readers.

Young Elgin Baylor and his friends wanted to play basketball, but the city parks in Washington, D.C. were “whites only.” “But things can change in time, the child knew. Time was important. That’s why his own name, Elgin, came from his father’s favorite watch” (n.p.). Eventually, a hoop appeared in a nearby field, and Elgin Baylor’s basketball prodigy appeared, too. From neighborhood court to high school standout to college star (in Idaho because D.C. colleges were “whites only”) to the NBA, Baylor’s style of play was so different that “people stopped what they were doing and watched." When questioned about where he learned his moves, Elgin always told them, “It’s spontaneous.” But civil rights progress in the mid-twentieth century was anything but spontaneous. Bryant narrates Baylor’s

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barrier-breaking career in tight counterpoint with acts of courage in that era that caused people to stop what they were doing to watch. Baylor leads his first college team to victory as Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat. When newspapers wrote about the 1958 college basketball championships, they also write about the courage of black students in Arkansas integrating a previously all-white school. As activists implemented lunch counter sit-ins, we see Baylor sitting out of a game in protest of his being denied access to restaurants and hotels while traveling with the team, an act that led the NBA to refuse to patronize discriminatory businesses. Bryant’s descriptions of Baylor’s playing style surge with energy and excitement while the long-view treatment of his story gives readers insight into the slow arc toward justice and the steadfast intentionality of those who worked to win it. Morrison’s illustrations vibrate with movement in the sports scenes but solidly center the change agents on pages depicting taking a stand. Back matter includes a generous author’s note detailing Baylor’s influence on the NBA and the game of basketball and explaining the social significance of his career, a detailed timeline of his life so far, and suggested further readings and resources.

The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown by Mac Barnett (author) and Sarah Jacoby (illustrator). 2019, Balzer + Bray.

There are few books for young children more ubiquitous than Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. In this unconventional biography, Mac Barnett evokes Brown’s, The Important Book, noting the most important thing about Margaret was that she wrote books. Every book was authored, Barnett begins, by real people in the real world, who do real everyday things, some of which might be important to others to know. In rapid-fire, he poses and answers direct questions about Brown’s life—her birthday, the color of her hair, whether she ever fell in love, did she have dogs. “Is any of this important?” he asks. “What is important about Margaret Wise Brown” (n.p.)?The pages that follow illuminate a life lived in interesting stories. Young Margaret skinned a dead pet rabbit and wore the pelt. As an adult, she liked to swim naked in cold water and she spent all the money she was paid for her first book on filling her house with flowers and throwing a party Barnett acknowledges might be questioned as appropriate for a child’s book, but they are, like her books, true and beautiful, just as they are strange. Barnett devotes 18 pages to the vigorous and ongoing rejections of Brown’s work by New

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York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore who deemed them worthless and not suitable for purchase. Barnett’s emphatically unflattering depiction of Moore is punctuated by images of bunnies from Brown’s books plastered with “not recommended” stamps. But in just one two-page spread, Barnett and Jacoby capture one event that encapsulates Brown’s broad response to such criticism. Barred from a library gathering of famous authors and illustrators, Margaret and her editor held a tea party right in the middle of the library steps. To get in, guests had to walk around them. Brown’s life ended early and unexpectedly, a fact that Barnett, true to the spirit of his subject, doesn’t dodge but rather invites the reader to consider and wonder about--because life is strange, true books are important, and Margaret Wise Brown wrote such books for children.

Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell (author) and Natasha Donovan (illustrator). 2021, Millbrook Press.

Young women in the 1920s were not expected to enjoy math, but Mary Golda Ross loved it and used it to launch a career that, eventually, helped land the first person on the moon. Readers encounter a statement of four primary Cherokee values in the front matter and the last page of end matter restates these values in Cherokee syllabary, transliterated with the English alphabet with pronunciation, and translated into English. In between, Sorell demonstrates how these values guided Ross throughout her life. Ross’s commitment to the value of gaining skills in all areas of life led her to the university where she majored in math because she recognized it as a language that would help her understand a technical world. After college, Ross’s work teaching and mentoring young people enacted the value of ensuring education for all. When World War II broke out, Ross began work as a mathematician for Lockheed Aircraft Cooperation where she found a passion for designing aircraft. Again undeterred by gender expectations, she juggled college and work to earn her engineering certificate. As the first female engineer at Lockheed, Ross, following the value of working cooperatively, became a trusted and respected member of the team. She eventually became part of the top-secret team working on space travel. No matter how impressive her achievements, Ross stayed true to the Cherokee value of humility.

Instead of seeking public recognition of her impressive achievements, she quietly encouraged others, including new generations of women in STEM. Donovan’s comic-style illustrations have a retro feel that fits the story of this humble STEM superhero. Rich backmatter also includes a detailed timeline of Ross’s life, author’s note, and resources.

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Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist by Julie Leung (author) and Chris Sasaki (illustrator).

2019, Schwarz and Wade.

Contextualizing this story is important. The history of immigration in the United States is complex, but the same pattern persists over centuries. Immigrants come seeking a better life and willing to work for it but meet resistance and prejudice from those whose ancestors were already able to get a foothold. In the mid-nineteenth century, with China struggling economically, many Chinese immigrants arrived through the Angel Island immigration center near San Francisco. The Gold Rush in the U.S. was a hopeful draw for many who, after the rush, stayed, many providing labor that fueled industrial and economic progress, including most of the hard work that went into developing the Transcontinental Railroad. When the U.S. economy became depressed, though, folks that had been here awhile rushed to blame the new immigrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, banned Chinese immigration to the U.S. But the specter of opportunity and hope still beckoned and hopeful immigrants found a way. In her author’s note, Leung explains that exceptions were made for “those of high status or blood relatives of American Citizens,” so an industry was born providing false identities. Immigrants able to pay the high price for these “paper” identities had to memorize intricate details to pass interrogation and be allowed to enter.

Wong Geng Yeo, a passionate young artist traveling with his father, was separated and detained at Angel Island, a boy all alone. In interviews, he was able to remember the many details of his paper identity and, finally, was released to his father to embark on a new life in the United States.

In school, his name was Americanized to Tyrus Wong. Both Wongs worked hard so Tyrus could attend art school where he developed a style fusing Asian and Western traditions. Graduating at the top of his class, Tyrus began work at Walt Disney animation studios in a low-level job, filling the space in between key scene images. When studio animators struggled to find the right scenery for their new production Bambi, Tyrus offered paintings using his unique culturally merged style. Disney loved his work and Wong’s images became Bambi’s world. Yet, in the movie credits, Wong was only listed as an animation assistant. Illustrator Chris Saaki notes that Wong’s work inspired him and many other artists, Asian or not, to challenge lines of limitation and create new ways of seeing and being. The end matter includes the author's and illustrator's notes and photos of Wong as a child and an adult.

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The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Ground-breaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne by Lesa Cline-Ransom (author) and John Parra (illustrator). 2020, Simon and Shuster Books for Young Readers.

Born in 1911, Ethel Payne grew up “with an equal measure of discipline and love” and surrounded by stories, from the tales her relatives told, to the stories found at the library her mother took her to each week, to the words of the African American newspaper, The Chicago Defender, which her father helped distribute to the black community by tossing stacks from the train on which he was a porter. Ethel honed her determination to fight injustice as a "black girl who dared to go to school with whites” and who, though a strong writer, was barred from working on the school newspaper. After graduation, as World War II raged, Payne became involved in community activism. After the war, she took a job as a club social director on a military base in Tokyo, recording the stories she was told in her diary. An article she wrote addressing the unjust treatments of black U.S. soldiers gained an audience in newspapers back home. Upon her return to the U.S., Payne took a job at the Chicago Defender. Her stories shown a light on community issues like housing, jobs, and healthcare and covered the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where civil rights issues took the stage. One of only three black journalists with press access to the Eisenhower White House, Payne determinedly asked questions calling attention to issues related to race and justice that were ignored by the white press. After Eisenhower, she questioned Kennedy, then Nixon, then Johnson and Carter, eventually making “readers of all races pay attention to the plight of African Americans.”

Parra's folk-style illustrations claim most of the real estate on each page, setting the scene for ClineRansom's simple but effective narration of Payne's story. In a two-page spread toward the end of the book, an image of Payne’s hands on her typewriter take a place alongside pictures of Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. End matter includes an author's note, bibliography, source credits for quotations, and suggested related readings.

Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom by Teresa Robeson (author) and Rebecca Huang (illustrator).

When Wu Chien Shiung was born in Liuhe, China, most people thought girls were not as smart as boys. They were not sent to school or encouraged to learn. But Wu Chien Shiung’s parents thought differently.

In fact, they felt so strongly that girls could and should learn that they ran a school for just for girls. The name they gave their daughter meant “courageous hero,” and they believed she would be just that and make a

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difference in the world. And make a difference, she did! Courage, passion, and a confidence instilled in her by her parents fueled Wu on a journey to becoming a groundbreaking nuclear physicist. Robeson addresses complex scientific and sociological concepts clearly and accesibly from Wu’s groundbreaking research on beta decay in atoms to the racism and sexism she encountered along the way. Overlooked three times for the Nobel Prize despite her important contributions to the recognized work, Wu persisted and perservered. Wu’s curious, determined and generous nature shines through the story, a testament to the power of love and encouragement.

“Sometimes Chien Shiung did not get the jobs she wanted, either— because she was a woman, because she was Asian.

Was she sad? Yes. Was she disappointed? Often.

Was she discouraged? Occasionally.

But she did not let those feelings stop her from doing what she loved because Baba always said, “Ignore the obstacles. Put your head down and keep walking forward” (n.p.).

Back matter includes an overview of Wu’s accomplishments, a glossary further explaining physics terms, and suggested books for readers sure to be inspired to know more.

The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read by Rita Lorraine Hubbard (author) and Oge Mora (illustrator).

Mary Walker lived her childhood as a slave. She knew the rules: “Keep working" and “slaves should not be taught to read or write or do anything that might help them learn to do so” (n.p.). Mary dreamed of freedom, specifically being able to rest when she wanted to and to learn to read.

When she was 15, the Emancipation Proclamation released Mary to freedom but not from poverty and hard labor. The Freedman’s Bureau helped her family find shelter in a one-room shack, and Mary helped her mother provide for the younger siblings, churning butter, cleaning houses, and caring for other people’s children. She worked long hours but wasn’t allowed to eat, drink, or even use the outhouse until she got home at night, all for a quarter a week. One day an evangelist handed her a Bible, telling Mary her civil rights were in that book. Someday, Mary hoped to learn to read it, but for now, there was too much work to be done. When Mary married, she and her husband toiled long and hard as sharecroppers. When her first son was born, a friend wrote his name in the Bible for her. Mary added her mark as she did for the births of her other two sons. With a growing family, Mary took on extra jobs. “Words would have to wait” (n.p.). Mary held on to and cherished her Bible, hoping someday to read it. Mary’s sons read to her, but she outlived all of them. At 114

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years old, living in a retirement home, Mary still yearned to learn to read. And, so, she joined a reading class offered in her building. “Could someone her age learn to read? She didn’t know, but

by God, she was going to try” (n.p.) And she did!

News of Mary’s achievement traveled far!

Newspapers covered it, the city of Chattanooga celebrated it, and the U.S. Department of Education gave her a certificate officially deeming her nation’s oldest student. Gifts arrived from all over. President Johnson sent birthday wishes for her 118th; President Nixon did, too, for her 121st.

All those years, Mary found comfort and company through reading and reading to others, whom she always reminded, “You’re never too old to learn” (n.p.) Hubbard’s telling of Mary’s struggles, yearning, and determination deftly balance matterof-fact recounting and poignant moments evoking deep feeling. Mora’s textured collage art uses space and line to evoke struggle, community, and the hope that moves Mary's life along.

Coming soon!

Reference Myers, C. (2014, March 15). The Apartheid of children’s literature. The New York Times.

Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-ofchildrens-literature.html

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Between Two Cultures: Young Adult Writers Explore Identity Children come into the world bearing stories—stories of those who came before them, those who birthed them, and those who will raise them, as well as the swirling stories of the families, communities, and cultures they enter. The ways they come to understand themselves depends in good part upon the stories told to them and about them. Their own experiences shape the stories, too, of course, with many day-to-day details lost, but others firmly entrenched in memory.

Fortunate children have caring adults who listen to them well, helping them learn to find and tell their truths.

As children grow into adolescence, they enter a critical stage in their life stories—a revision stage.

Any writer knows that revision is hard work. It involves looking critically at a story and deciding which parts matter most, which parts can (at least for now) be placed to the side, and what new elements may need to be created. Because the future audience might be judgmental or even capricious, there is a natural concern with getting it all right while not playing too safe. Crafting the story from childhood to adulthood is hard. The right YA book can serve as a mentor text for the process.

The best children’s authors are great listeners, having attended thoughtfully to their own experiences and considered, as well, the stories of others. Historically, from its roots in the 1970s “problem novels,” YA acknowledges the inherent tension in moving from childhood to adulthood, looking it directly in the eye, without easy answers but with the earned wisdom of hope and the truth of possibility. The books featured below show protagonists living in intersections of culture as well as the intersection of childhood to adulthood, trying to make sense of themselves. We may assume that the work of adolescence is complicated by the need to navigate more than one cultural world, and that may be true. But as these stories suggest, that very complication can provide more possibilities for young people to work with as they craft their stories. Perhaps this is a primary role of books in young adults' lives, to help them see all the possibilities in themselves and the beauty in others.

Everything Sad is Untrue (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri (2020, Levine Querido).

I met this book in a parking lot in Edmond, OK. Invited to attend a virtual conversation with authors whose novels were recently published by Levine Querido, I had to connect from my car as I waited out my child’s athletic practice. When I apologized for my odd positioning, one author quickly responded. “Wait. You said you are in Edmond? My book is set in Edmond!” That night I ordered the book, and I read it days later while again sitting in the lot and waiting. I was not at all happy to have to put it down to drive back home.

Daniel Nayeri moved to Edmond, Oklahoma when he was eight years old. Born in Iran into an old and well-respected family his life was suddenly transformed when his mother, a physician, was forced to flee to save her life. She had converted to Christianity, a capital

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crime, and had been caught helping the underground Christian church. Khosrou (later called Daniel) and his sister went with her; their father stayed behind. After a stop at a refugee camp in Italy, the family made their way to Edmond, from where 12-year-old Daniel narrates the story as if speaking directly to the reader. It is clear in the book that he is telling these stories again and again, including for class assignments, to try to make others see him as more than just a “smelly refugee boy.” (Daniel repeatedly references Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights, telling stories to save her life.) The ache of not belonging, of not feeling safe, is palpable, as is the unwavering love, faith, and tenacity of his mother. Daniel interweaves the telling of his experiences with Persian history and folklore as well as his own family’s extended history and the stories that hold it. The telling moves between different times and places, through stories of love, loss, tragedy, resilience, and beauty. The images are vivid and abiding.

The most significant parts of Daniel’s story develop a bit at a time, with Daniel referencing an incident here and a related one there, each anecdote a strand in a complex tapestry that takes shape as the book progresses. Every so often narrator Daniel pauses to share an observation about life that rings so true it seems to reverberate as the storytelling picks back up again. The “patchwork” stories Daniel tells are understood through a child’s eye and understanding, the facts perhaps colored by perception and memory. But they also hold a breathtaking truth—the truth of faith and family, of insistent and persistent hope.

Read this book, then purchase the audio version read by Nayeri, then read the book again. Keep something to write with handy, because you will want to hold on to lines from this book.

Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth (2020, Levine Querido).

In this exquisitely crafted free-verse memoir, Gansworth (enrolled Onondaga, raised at the Tuscaroras Nation) explores what it means to be Indian in the wake of historical attempts to obliterate the culture.

Anyone familiar with Gansworth’s work knows his affinity for the Beatles, which informs this book as well. The term apple in the title has a double meaning—the Beatles’ Apple Records and the racial slur suggesting someone who is Indian on the outside but white in the middle. Additionally, the four collections that make up the book as well as some of the individual poems feature Beatle-themed titles relevant to the content.

The first collection, “Apple Records,” speaks to Indian boarding-school brutalities that came wrapped in promises of “the opportunity of a lifetime” but resulted in death, both actual and cultural. Gansworth’s grandfather was one of five children shipped away and one of only two to return, leaving an extended family forever cleft and the next generations struggling to piece back together what it means to be Indian. “And two generations later, we continue to find those fragments, pick up pieces and situate them in the puzzle frame. We hope we can figure out what all the missing pieces should look like, so we can rebuild them from scratch” (p. 14).

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The second collection, “The Red Album,” explores Gansworth’s boyhood and his young adult years, using snapshots in the family photo album as a map to explore his family and community.

The early poems move from photo to photo, Gansworth narrating the story and meaning behind each moment, then the poems broaden to pictures of reservation life. Fascinated with Batman, Gansworth spent his early years masked and caped, even in the photos, many taken by his oldest brother for whom photos tethered the family together when he fought in Vietnam. Gansworth’s fascination with costumes and superheroes reemerges throughout this longest collection, a delightful personality note but also thematically significant, as this work explores cultural masking and unmasking, covering and uncovering, naming and renaming, true identities and assigned identities in tension with expectation and representation. Gansworth notes that he writes the books he wanted to see, for as a child he wondered, “[W]hen do I get to see the Indians as the superheroes, not the super hapless, when are we the victors, not the victims? How much longer do I have to wait (p. 102)?”

Each poem in collection three bears a title that is also a title of Beatles song. “The Side A” subseries reveals a freshly graduated Gansworth working a menial job and trying to figure out what else might be. In “Side B,” he finds his way to community college, where he initially struggles with how to do college but finds his way and finds it “world richening.” He chooses a health major, not knowing that people actually major in art and writing. (A “bitter high school counselor” told him that “writers and artists only succeed after they’ve died.”) Eventually he moves out of his mother’s home into an apartment in the city. “You and I already know here, I’ve lived my last Dog Street year” (p. 225).

In collection four, “Get Back,” Gansworth moves into adulthood, into that strange space in which creating your own life and home bathes where you started in a different light. In these poems he revisits home and the people and places we've met earlier, illuminating them more fully than the earlier child's perspective could offer. These are poems of love and loss, of knowing and forgiving, of coming to understand more fully who we are.

Initially conceived as a visual-art project, Apple is enriched by family photos and Gansworth’s art.

The author’s note explains the Beatles’ connection and details the meanings behind the musical references in each section. Apple: Skin to the Core will hold up to reading again and again.

The Other Half of Happy by Rebecca Balcárcel (2019, Chronicle Books).

The modest home 12-year-old Quijana shares with her loving parents and little brother tilts. No one is sure why, but it leans so much that a bowling ball set in the kitchen would roll through the house and into her bedroom on the far side. Her world is starting to feel off-kilter, too. She’s starting junior high. Her mother is balancing her job and classes for her master’s degree. Her three-year-old brother is still not talking, and the family is getting worried. And suddenly her parents are “Spanish-izing” their house.

Bright yellow and orange curtains and bold green and red pots glow in the living room. Gone are the familiar baby pictures, replaced by a photo of a group of people she doesn’t recognize, though she knows they are her

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father’s family—and they are moving from Chicago to Bur Oak, Texas where Quijana’s family lives. A large painting of Lake Atitlán is now a feature in the living room, a celebration of her father’s Guatemalan roots. Quijana is horrified when her parents—including her American-born mother, who she thinks should know better—suggest that she wear the colorful huipil her Guatemalan grandmother sent her for the first day of school. They suggest it will make her stand out as special, but the last thing Quijana wants is to stand out. “Everybody knows that standing out in the seventh grade is bad, as in disastrously, monstrously, don’t-be-ridiculous-ly bad, especially the first day” (p. 7).

Quijana has always felt centered by her close relationship with her maternal grandmother, a marine scientist. The sea-turtle bracelet Quijana wears on her wrist and the manatee poster on her bedroom ceiling anchor her, and frequent Skype conversations with Grandma Miller are a lifeline. But as Quijana struggles to find her place at school, news that Grandma Miller has cancer sends her tilting world into a spin.

At school, Quijana loves her English class and teacher but finds Spanish class to be agony.

Everyone assumes she speaks Spanish, but she does not, a struggle that is magnified by her fear of being unable to communicate with her father’s family when they arrive. As her world shifts, Quijana becomes fixated on her inability to speak Spanish. Spanish-speaking classmates sneer and call her “coconut,” and she is convinced her newly arrived and capably bilingual cousins think less of her. She cringes at the thought of speaking to her Guatemalan grandmother on the phone, and when her parents excitedly inform her of an upcoming trip to Guatemala, Quijana hurls headlong into a plan to avoid the trip by selling the huipil online to buy a bus ticket to go to Grandma Miller in Florida.

As Quijana struggles, she is steadied by new friendships with Zuri, who also lives in a bicultural family, and outgoing Jayden. But Jayden has her unsteady as well, as her burgeoning romantic feelings make her unsure of the nature of their friendship. Reeling with change and loss, Quijana stumbles but, steadied by loving family and good friends, she is able to discover new strengths and find joy in a newly balanced cultural foundation.

Finding one’s own identity is a common theme in adolescent literature, one that can become an easy cliché. But Balcárcel’s characters are nuanced, richly realized, and complex, as are the developing friendships and extended family relationships on both sides. Love, belonging, and even security aren’t predicated on sameness. Language is not directly equated with culture. And despite the constantly shifting sands of our lives, the bonds of family and friendship can adjust and hold steady. Like newly hatched sea turtles, we just need to follow that light.

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Related and recommended: The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020, Random House Graphic) Tién’s family recently immigrated from Vietnam. He helps his mother learn English by reading to her from folk and fairy tales from the local library.

While these traditional stories are culturally situated, they are also in many ways universal. As Tién reads, his mother shares Vietnamese tales, traditional stories, and her own memories from life in Vietnam. At the same time, as he helps his mother bridge language and culture gaps, Tién tries to find the words to tell her he is gay. This graphic novel is infused with the beauty of story and the timelessness of family love.

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed (2020, Dial Books) After his father is killed in the Somali civil war and they are separated from their mother, Omar Mohamed and his younger brother Hassan spend their childhood in a Dadaab Refugee Camp. Hassan suffers from a seizure disorder, and Omar strives to care for him and secure their future. The harsh realities of the refugee experience, the strength we find in love, and the insistent persistence of hope shine through in this graphic novel based on Omar’s true story.

The Land of Cranes by Aida Salazar (2020, Scholastic Press) Nine-year-old Betita’s father always told stories of her Aztlán ancestors, who made their home where the southwestern U.S. is today. This ancestral land was known as the land of the cranes, and stories told of the people’s destiny to fly back someday to live among the cranes again. Betita’s family migrated to the U.S. to escape cartel violence in Mexico. Her father tells her they are cranes that have come home. But now her father has been deported, and Betita and her pregnant mother are held in a detention camp at the border. While she finds hope and comfort in the community that develops among the detainees, budding poet Betita wonders if her family will ever be whole again.

The Leavers: A Novel by Lisa Ko (2017, Algonquin) Deming Guo is in fifth grade, living in the Bronx, when his mother, Peilan, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to work and never comes home. Put into foster care and eventually adopted by a white couple, Deming is renamed Daniel and moved out of the city. This story is told from the dual but intertwined perspectives of Daniel and Peilan, Daniel struggling to make sense of loss and divergent identities, and Peilan wrestling with unimaginably

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wrenching choices. The tension in the dual storytelling propels the mystery of Peilan’s disappearance, along with Daniel’s yearning, to the very end.

Efrén Divided by Ernesto Cisnero (2020, Quill Tree Books) When twelve-year-old Efrén’s mother is deported, he must step up to care for his younger siblings while his father works a second job to make ends meet.

Efrén feeds them, makes sure they get to school and tries hard to keep them both physically and emotionally safe. He also needs to keep up with his own schoolwork and deal with his own grief. Isolated by secrets, he struggles to figure out who he can trust with knowledge of what is happening in his life.

Cisneros depicts this overwhelmingly difficult situation with clarity and honesty. In that same clear light, the beauty of a caring community and the ways love and hope fuel resilience come into focus as well.

Suzii Parsons believes that books truly matter in the lives of young people.

She is the Jacques Munroe Professor of Reading and Literacy at Oklahoma State University. You can contact her at sue.parsons@okstate.edu.

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Research Summary Dr. Linda McElroy

Informational Texts: Challenges and Ideas Teachers are responsible for helping students develop strategies that will enable them to become effective readers of all types of texts. Upper elementary students are learning about strategies for informational texts, in preparation for the types of advanced reading they will be expected to do in upper grades. Previous research has demonstrated that students’ reading comprehension benefits from instruction that helps them become aware of informational text structures, such as compare/contrast, problem/solution, sequence, and description. Despite the efficacy of text structure instruction, it is frequently a missing element in classroom instruction, both in reading and in writing instruction.

The focus research study for this column gives helpful ideas for strengthening the use of text structure for informational text in literacy instruction. The 2020 article by J. Z. Strong in Reading Research Quarterly was titled “Investigating a Text Structure Intervention for Reading and Writing in Grades 4 and 5.” The study was done with fourth and fifth grade students, and the ideas could be adapted for other grades as well.

The author of the study described important ideas from previous research that were used as a basis for this research study.

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Teaching students about the ways texts are organized and using this knowledge to organize and recall ideas in written summaries can strengthen both reading comprehension and writing quality.

Teaching students about the use of signal words that cue readers about the ways that texts are organized can be done in varied ways. Examples of signal words include: because, therefore, consequently, first, next, last, in comparison, and others. Some interventions teach students to underline or highlight signal words to identify text structure during reading, then use them to signal organization in their own writing.

Other interventions teach students to make initial judgements about a text’s structure based on the organization of ideas, then use signal words to confirm their judgements.

Teaching students to use graphic organizers can help them with reading different types of texts (including compare/contrast matrices, sequence frames, cause/effect organizers, problem/solution frames), then with taking written notes and using them to write informational passages.

Teaching students about summary writing can be supported by instructing them to use text structures to organize ideas.

Both of the instructional patterns in the research study incorporated the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model (Pearson and Dole, 1987). This approach begins with the teacher explicitly teaching and modeling a skill or strategy, then including shared applications of the skill or

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strategy with support from the teacher, until the children are ready to implement the skill or strategy on their own.

The researchers identified two research questions that guided the study: 1.

To what extent does a text-structure intervention focused on reading and writing improve fourth- and fifth-graders’ awareness of information text structures, reading comprehension, and writing quality as compared with an alternative treatment?

2. To what extent do fourth- and fifth-grade teachers perceive the goals, procedures, and effects of a text structure intervention for reading and writing as socially valid? (p. 546).

The research study was done in three elementary schools in a rural school district in a South Atlantic U.S. state. The district includes diverse students (57% Caucasian, 33.3% AfricanAmerican, 4.3% Hispanic/Latino, 0.4% Asian), and 87% of the students were eligible for federal lunch subsidies; 351 students participated in the study. The research took place over 12 weeks.

Fourth- and fifth-grade teachers were randomly assigned to one of two interventions and were provided with a two-hour training session on the goals, procedures, and materials for the intervention. Teachers administered pretests at the beginning and posttests at the end. The researcher also conducted teacher interviews in the final week.

The two interventions used in the study both employed explicit instruction. Both included 16 two-day lesson plans and a student workbook using the same texts in the same order. The texts were selected based on content, text structure, and text complexity.

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One intervention was a text structure intervention (Read STOP write) that included reading a passage, summarizing the main idea and details, identifying the text structure, organizing details using a graphic organizer, and planning and writing an informational paragraph about the topic using the same structure.

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The second intervention was a comprehension strategies intervention (RARE Reading and Writing) that included reading a passage, answering comprehension questions, reviewing questions and answers, rereading the passage, restating the main idea and details using a graphic organizer, and explaining the topic of the passage in a written summary.

Quantitative data were from measures of text structure awareness, reading comprehension, and writing quality, using a researcher-developed Text Structure Identification Test on which students identified paragraph-level text structure. Students also completed researcher-developed reading and writing assessments including reading a brief passage, writing a summary sentence, selecting the text structure, constructing a graphic organizer, and writing an informational paragraph.

The pretest scores showed no statistical differences between the groups at the beginning.

Posttest scores showed statistically significant differences, favoring the text structure intervention on a researcher-developed Text Structure Identification Test, on the use of graphic organizers, and on ideas and details. Compared with students who received the comprehension

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strategies intervention, students who received the text structure intervention were better able to identify the text structure of a passage, use text structure to recall and organize details after reading, and use text structure to organize ideas and details in writing.

Qualitative data came from the interviews with the teachers. The research was also examining teachers’ perceptions of the social validity of each intervention. The researcher used open-ended questions related to the teachers’ perceptions about the importance, acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness of the intervention used with their class. Teachers who taught with the text structure intervention indicated it was especially effective. One teacher had reservations because the grade-level text was difficult for some students. All teachers, in both interventions, described improvements in students’ literacy skills (identifying main ideas and details, identifying text structure, using graphic organizers, informational writing). Teachers in the text structure intervention groups emphasized students’ use of strategies taught in the text structure intervention when reading and writing informational texts in other content areas.

The effects of the text structure intervention showed statistically significantly larger gains on the task of constructing graphic organizers, although the modest size of the effect may have been due to similarities in the procedures for using graphic organizers in the text structure and comprehension strategies interventions. Themes from the teachers’ interviews included three goals of text structure interventions: • • •

using structure to comprehend and organize ideas in informational text combining literacy instruction with content area instruction by using text structure to build knowledge teaching students to use text structure to navigate complex texts.

Teachers viewed the procedures as appropriate because they fit within their schedules, the materials facilitated explicit instruction, the gradual release of responsibility was supportive, and the instructional routines were not too complex to implement. The inclusion of components such as explicit instruction, signal words, graphic organizers, and writing influenced students’ improvement in skills, including their ability to use an instructional routine that they could consciously and independently implement when reading or writing informational text.

The researcher concluded that the text structure routines from this study warrant further research as alternatives to traditional instructional practices such as question-answering. Literacy instruction as described in this study has the potential to support teachers in meeting the demands of state standards and the needs of their students.

Teachers in the Oklahoma Reader audience can find helpful ideas from this research study. Teachers have such a powerful influence on students! Explicitly teaching and modeling strategies such as using graphic organizers and noticing signal words were effective with these students in fourth and fifth grades. The strategies can be equally effective with students in other grades. Integrating content-area reading with writing instruction helps students’ reading comprehension as well as their proficiency in writing. Using a Gradual Release of Responsibility Model helps students learn to use the strategies and to implement them in reading informational texts on their own.

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References Pearson, P.D. & Dole, J.A. (1987). Explicit comprehension instruction: A review of research and a new conceptualization of instruction. The Elementary School Journal, 88(2), 151-156.

Strong, J.Z. (2020). Investigating a Text Structure Intervention for Reading and Writing in Grades 4 and 5. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(4), 545-551.

Dr. Linda McElroy is a professor at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. She previously taught in Oklahoma schools as a classroom teacher and as a reading specialist. She can be reached at lmcelroy@usao.edu.

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Tech Talk Shelley Martin-Young Teaching Digitally (or anywhere): Part 2 As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise and as the push for getting our students back in school happens, many teachers continue to teach remotely. As you struggle through another year of uncertainty, I am sharing ways for you to easily integrate technology into your classroom whether you are teaching remote, in-person, or hybrid. In part two of Teaching Digitally, I share tools that include ways to effortlessly collaborate with students or other teachers, ways that you can share lessons digitally with your students, and a few assessment tools. Most of these tools can be integrated with your Google Classroom.

Interactive Whiteboard Tools Whether you are teaching face-to-face or online this year, you probably have access to a board of some kind – white board, chalk board, Smart board. Whiteboards are a great way for students to share and collaborate in a face-to-face situation. However, you can also simulate this online. There are several tools to use on whiteboards in the digital realm that will enhance your students’ learning. These tools can be used when you are face-to-face or virtual.

Google Jamboard is a free collaborative whiteboard that is part of the Google platform.

It is cloud based and allows visual collaboration between users in real-time. It functions as a whiteboard on each student’s screen. Students can collaborate on projects. Teachers or students can model skills in math, art, or other content areas. Concept maps work great on a Jamboard. It is excellent for brainstorming or notetaking or anything that you typically use a board for in a face-to-face classroom. Jamboard allows users to add images from Google, save work in the cloud, draw with a stylus or erase with your finger. There is also a handwriting and shape recognition tool. This tool makes learning visible and accessible to all collaborators in what Google calls a “jam session.” Jamboard integrates seamlessly with Google Classroom. Check out the following Jamboard resources: Jamboard for beginners tutorial, Using Jamboard in Google Classroom, Using Jamboard in Google Meet, and Annotating Google Slides with Jamboard.

Here you will find many ways to use Jamboard in the classroom, and here are 20 free interactive Jamboard activities.

Figure 1: Example of Google Jamboard

SeeSaw is a classroom platform used for meaningful student engagement. SeeSaw is geared more toward elementary-aged students. It allows students to show their work, teachers to gain insights about their students, and parents to be able to easily connect with their students and

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the teacher. Students use the digital tools that are built into SeeSaw to create a digital portfolio.

Teachers and parents can see all of the steps in the students’ thinking and working processes, and there is a fabulous home-to-school connection. Some of the digital tools available in this platform include draw, record, collage, video, pens, labels, shapes, and more. Watch this video to see how students engage with Seesaw. Seesaw is built for all devices including Chromebooks.

Resources include: Getting Started with Seesaw for Prek-2, Using the Whiteboard Feature, and Seesaw Drawing Tool Tutorial. My favorite thing is the Seesaws that are already available.

Check out these Earth Day Seesaws, Seesaws that celebrate diversity, Women’s History Month Seesaws, and Seesaws for Spring and the outdoors.

Figure 2: Students choose how they display their work (Screenshot from SeeSaw website)

Explain Everything is an online whiteboard. Students can collaborate in real time from their homes, their classrooms, and all around the world. Students can collaborate with students from your class or classes all over. You can add drawings, images, videos, and documents.

Annotation and making presentations are easy with Explain Everything. Students can create and share their own tutorials and animated stories as they become the teacher. Explain Everything is good for notetaking or brainstorming sessions in the digital classroom, but it is a great app to use on technology that you have available in a brick-and-mortar setting. Take a tour of Explain Everything in this video. Learn how to take visual notes here. Explain Everything even has webinars you can attend to learn more.

Drawp is another platform for creation, collaboration, content, and workflow management. It includes design tools, easy sharing, and cloud storage. It is partially funded by the National Science Foundation. You can choose tools such as a language scaffolding tool or text-to-speech to add on to this app which are found in the Chrome Web Store. There is also a repository of educational resources available to teachers. Students can create portfolios with Drawp, and there is Common-Core Aligned content along with easy ways to communicate with parents and students. This app is great for use with kindergarteners all the way through college.

Click here for the Drawp for school blog. Here is a demo of this app. Watch this video of getting started with Drawp.

Miro is an online whiteboard available for remote collaboration. It is very easy to use and free forever. Netflix, Spotify, and Twitter all use Miro to collaborate with each other. Miro has a template library that can help teachers and students collaborate more quickly. They have such templates as story maps, prioritization matrix, blueprints, workflow, concept maps, Venn 66

diagrams, monthly planners and more. Get started with Miro here. Here are some videos to help you get started: Board Basics, 10 tips for getting started, and Miro 101.

Lesson Recording Tools Lesson recording isn’t just amazing for virtual teaching; it is also helpful for students who are absent or may need directions given more than once. Sometimes it is very helpful for students to be able to “pause” the teacher and work or go back and listen to something again and again. It is also great for the flipped classroom model. The following tools are my favorites.

Flipgrid is my very favorite lesson recording tool. I discussed Flipgrid at length in the last Tech Talk column. You can read that in this issue of The Oklahoma Reader. There has been an update to Flipgrid since my last article. They have added a screen recording feature. Watch this video to learn more about this feature.

Screencastify is a perfect recording tool for both teachers and students. Screencastify is a free Chrome extension that allows you to record, edit, and share videos. It is great for both blended and remote learning. Teachers can create full sized or mini lessons with this recording tool and can also create assignments and give directions. Thinking is made visible with this tool which also helps to make students’ voices audible. Teachers can give real-time verbal feedback to students with Screencastify. This tool integrates easily with Google Drive or Classroom, is safe and secure, and includes a huge list of resources to help you get started and to master the Screencast. There are webinars, certification courses, and tons of suggestions for using Screencastify in your classroom. Watch this tutorial to get started.

Loom is a video messaging app that is used to record video messages of your screen, your camera, or both. It is faster than sending an email and works great for all of those times that you can’t meet face to face. The videos are ready instantly and are easily shareable on any device. This is a great app to use for those students that have a hard time writing or even typing.

They can just video what they want to say. Loom for Educators gives teachers the ability to create unlimited videos. They can be up to 45 minutes in length. There is a personal library, a shared library and a team library. Teachers can create folders and it is easy to search. Along with the custom recording tools there are also emoji reactions and drawing tools. Loom is free for teachers and students. One teacher blogs about Loom here. Watch the Loom tutorial video here.

Assessment Tools Assessment is one of the key activities a teacher carries out in her classroom. We want to make sure that students are understanding the content we are presenting. The tools discussed below are great for both formative assessments (assessments as the lessons are happening) and summative assessments (which happen at the end of a lesson).

Quizizz is a way to create free quizzes and interactive lessons that will engage all students. Students connect from any device and the teacher gets instant feedback. There is no grading required after the teacher creates the quiz. Quizizz also has many premade quizzes on topics ranging from math and social studies to science, creative arts, and career education.

Besides quizzes you can create gamified polls and lessons. You can choose between teacher-led or self-paced quizzing. There are also competitions, replays, power-ups, and sounds to keep the students engaged, and you can create flashcards for independent learning. The quizzes and lessons are easy to share through messenger or email. The reports from the student interactions can be saved or downloaded and shared. Start exploring Quizizz here. Read a blog about Quizizz 67

from a fellow teacher. By watching this video, you can learn how to integrate Quizizz with Google Classroom.

Using Edpuzzle allows you to monitor a student’s participation in video assignments that you give. With Edpuzzle you can pull in videos from YouTube, Khan Academy, National Geographic, TedEd and more. You can also create videos yourself. With Edpuzzle you simply load a video and build in questions for students to answer at various times while they are watching. Here is an example with a video of Walter the French Bulldog. The video was taken straight from YouTube and the teacher simply added the questions. You can easily track whether students are watching the videos you assign, how many times they watch the video, and any areas of concern. The lessons are self-paced and Edpuzzle is free for teachers and students. I love the curriculum already available for elementary, middle, or high school. They are easy to use and simple to assign. Edpuzzle also includes links to many video services that are easily integrated into their platform. Simply search for your topic and choose a video. Lesson examples include an elementary lesson on narrative writing, a middle school lesson on the states of matter, and a high school lesson on poetry by Langston Hughes.

Bulb is a web based (no app to download) portfolio system perfect for those schools that use standards-based grading or portfolios. With Bulb, students can keep a yearlong portfolio where they can post assignments that demonstrate mastery or growth. The portfolios are easy to share with administration and families alike. You can use portfolios to keep student writing throughout the year. You can keep a record of science experiments or blogs about books the students have read. Here are an elementary, middle school, and high school example of Bulb portfolios. Bulb portfolios work with Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Flipgrid, and Notability.

Formative is a great assessment tool to use in the elementary grades. Teachers can see students’ work in real-time, give feedback, and track student progress. You can upload your own content or easily embed content from other websites. There are several different formats of questions that you can choose from including drawing, essay, sequencing, math typing, drag and drop, graphing, or audio recording. There is also a library with thousands of pre-made formatives. You can even edit the pre-made content to make it work for your students. It only takes one click to assign a formative to your students. With Formative, you can easily keep track of all of your students’ assignments and can even tag your state or school’s standards. This assessment also integrates with Google. Watch the video tutorial here. Another video is available here.

There are many digital tools available for assessments. You can also check out Edulastic, Quizalize, Socrative, and Spiral. In part 2 of Teaching Digitally, I have shared some of my favorite tools for interacting with whiteboards, recording lessons and assessment. These tools are ideal for an online classroom, but they are also useful for classrooms that are meeting face to face. Many of the tools shared are easily synced to your Google Classroom and many contain a component that easily allows communication with parents. In the next Tech Talk column, I will be sharing about interactive notebooks with a focus on reading and writing notebooks, Hyperdocs, and Gamification tools.

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Shelley Martin-Young is a doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant at Oklahoma State University. She can be reached at dawn.martinyoung@okstate.edu.

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Professional Development: Off the Shelf Mollie Kasper

We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be: A Review I’m a teacher. I’m not a hero, a martyr, or a saint. I am, however, a highly trained professional whose work is to educate others, and I have long felt that the superhero myth is a weight I cannot carry, a standard I cannot live up to. In We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, author Cornelius Minor opens by examining the “hero teacher” myth and explaining the damage it does to teachers and the teaching profession. In reality, the hero myth serves as a trap; it ignores the humanity and fallibility of teachers. As Minor states, The problem with this narrative is that it erases the complicated calculus of becoming and being a hero, a leader, a change agent, a teacher. This narrative does not allow heroes to be imperfect or to be nuanced. It does not allow them to grow tired, to fail, to learn publicly, or to grieve. As such, it is exclusive, (p. 3).

Minor goes on to explain that since the 1770s, U. S. teachers have fought for equity, and there are, of course, forces working against that work. The “hero teacher” myth has arisen, in part, “[b]ecause if educators are working toward equity, one way to silence them is to deify them” (p. 4).

If we, as teachers, are called to be change-makers and equity fighters (and many of us are), and if the hero myth is designed to silence us, then We Got This. is a manual for taking back our voices. It provides a road map for reexamining our teaching practices and discovering where we can increase equity, accessibility, and inclusivity in our classrooms.

The book is organized in two sections of three chapters each. In each chapter, Minor introduces a topic, explains its importance, and then goes on to provide tools for implementation.

Chapter one details the act of listening. Minor describes how the labels we associate with others, such as black, white, male, female, gifted, and challenged, “cannot cover our whole humanity,” (p. 11) and often prevent us from listening to them. “We lose lots of human capital each year because people bearing essential insights and experiences are wearing labels that we’ve been conditioned to ignore” (p. 11).

As he does throughout the book, in this chapter, Minor illustrates his point by allowing readers to witness his own fallibility. He relates the story of a student, nicknamed Quick, who came to him for help. Minor dismissed Quick because he wore the “good student” label; Quick’s grades were fine, therefore Quick didn’t need Minor’s help. The student, who needed help on a personal matter, became frustrated; “Minor, all y’all want to… save my future, but none of y’all know anything about saving my now,” he complained. As a teacher of low-income, struggling readers, this story was a gut-punch for me. I know the importance of reading for my students’

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futures, but how am I relating it to their nows? Am I truly listening to what they need right now?

I wasn’t even sure how to begin that task. How do you explain the importance of reading to kids whose main goal is to get another skin on Fortnite?

Fortunately, Minor provides a plan. For each of the topics he covers, he delineates the step-by-step process of implementation and provides a series of planning sheets available as downloads on the Companion Resources website (http://hein.pub/wegotthis). Minor presents the planning sheets not as yet another form for teachers to complete, but as thinking guides, questions to ask yourself.

Once you have listened to and truly heard your students, the next step is to consider all students who may be left out by your current classroom culture. Minor offers a template for planning an inclusive, student-centered classroom that responds to your students’ needs and priorities. Teachers should view themselves as allies, not saviors. “We are most powerful when we labor to understand young people and when we work alongside (not for) them . . .Teaching without this kind of engagement is not teaching at all. It is colonization” (p. 28).

Subsequent chapters explore various aspects of implementing change in the classroom. In “Do Your Homework and Then Go For It,” Minor explains that exploration and inquiry are needed but cautions against getting bogged down in extensive research: “[R]esearch quickly, try courageously, fail reflectively, stand up, and try again” (p. 51). The chapter entitled “Show Kids That You Hear Them” explores the power of relationships. “Relationship building must be intentional,” (p. 83) Minor states, and class meetings, student feedback, sharing of power are ways of developing relationships with students. One way he shares power is to ask one student to be a timekeeper. “In all honesty, I don’t really need a timekeeper, but when building classroom community, the public sharing of power matters” (p. 89).

Additionally, Minor gives a concrete plan for what to do when the curriculum you are given does not meet the needs of the students you have, stating that “my job as a teacher is not to teach the curriculum or even just to teach the students; it is to seek to understand my kids as completely as possible so that I can purposefully bend curriculum to meet them” (p 104-105). He advocates a universal-design-for-learning framework to remove barriers to learning and increase inclusivity, and even finds a way to think about required test-prep activities and make them into what students actually need.

Finally, Minor addresses the internal struggle of many teachers between being a good teacher or a good employee. He notes that in general, teachers tend to be rule-followers; “When merit or school standing is at stake, and we are asked to do a thing, we tend to be the kind of people that do the thing. As asked” (p. 126). We sacrifice our creativity and growth on the altar of evaluations and teacher rubrics, and Minor, referring to Gloria Ladson-Billings, names this as a “classroom death,” the by-products of which are “student disengagement or failure” (p. 127).

Yet there is hope for a resurrection, and true to form, Minor offers a plan for that as well: Our way forward from here must recognize a new power: ours.

The work can be hard, but the steps are simple.

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We set our goals, we learn, and we put that learning to use.

We stop regularly to reflect (p. 144).

Early in the book, Minor shares that as a child and young adult, he loved skateboarding.

He practiced and practiced, and fell, and fell, and fell. His body was often covered in scrapes and bruises, which he considered “the currency that I paid for the ability to fly” (p. 9). As teachers, we have permission to experience failure—epic, glorious, down-in-flames failure—in the context of practice, reflection, and repeated effort.

We Got This. would make an ideal candidate for a teacher-led book study. The chapters are short and easy to read but provide inspiration for profound reflection. Even though it’s an “easy” read, with multiple, comic-book inspired illustrations and relatively large print, you’ll want to take your time with this book. Use a highlighter. Stop and reflect as you read. Download the planning guides and fill them out, thinking deeply about your students and your classroom.

Finally, discuss your thoughts about the book with others, and try out what you’ve absorbed.

Learn to fly.

Reference Minor, C. (2019). We got this. Equity, access, and the quest to be who our students need us to be.

Heinemann.

Mollie Kasper is a classroom teacher, with seven years’ experience with special students. She has taught the last five years at Forney Independent School District in Forney, Texas, but will be moving to a fourth-grade class at Phillips Elementary in Kaufman, Texas, in the fall. She is a reading specialist with a master’s degree from Texas A&M-Commerce and can be reached at molliemd24@gmail.com.

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Authors are requested to submit only unpublished articles not under review by any other publication. A manuscript should be typed, double spaced, not right justified, not hyphenated, and should follow APA, 7th Edition guidelines (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). Tables and graphs should be used only when clarification is needed. Include a cover page giving the article title, professional affiliation, complete address, e-mail and phone number of the author(s).

Special sections have specific requirements that are described below.

The editors reserve the right to revise and/or edit all copies.

The Oklahoma Reader welcomes manuscripts that support the growth and development of classroom teachers, reading specialists, and other literacy professionals throughout their careers. Manuscripts should successfully translate literacy research into practice through concrete strategies and techniques. Considering that the main audience of The Oklahoma Reader consists of PreK-12 teachers, manuscripts that offer practical ideas for successful literacy instruction are encouraged and prioritized. Manuscripts should be limited to 4000 words including tables, figures, and reference(s). Submit the manuscript electronically as a Word document attached to an email message addressed to oklahomareader@gmail.com. Manuscripts will be reviewed anonymously by three members of The Oklahoma Reader Editorial Advisory Board. Manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of clarity, interest, organization, content, and style. If accepted, revisions may be requested. Manuscripts must be original work which has not been previously published nor is undergoing simultaneous review in another journal.

GUIDELINES

FOR

AUTHORS for the Oklahoma Reader

The Oklahoma Reader also seeks submissions dealing with instructional practices (teacher-to-teacher), classroom research (teacher research), and book reviews recommending texts that can be useful for individual or group professional development. These are described as follows. All submissions should be submitted electronically as a Word document attached to an email message addressed to oklahomareader@gmail.com.

Teacher to Teacher: Submit descriptions of teaching activities that have helped students learn an essential literacy skill, concept, strategy, or attitude. Submissions should be no longer than 1500 words and align with the following format: Title: (if adapting from another source, cite reference and provide a bibliography) Purpose of Activity, including the literacy skill, concept, strategy, or attitude the students will learn Description of activity with examples, questions, responses. Please provide enough detail so someone can implement the activity.

How activity was evaluated to know if purpose was achieved

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Guidelines for Authors Continued Teacher Research: Submit manuscripts that describe research or inquiry conducted in classrooms.

Submissions should be 1000-2000 words and align with the following format: Description of the question or issue guiding the research/inquiry, including a short review of pertinent literature.

Description of who participated in the study, what the sources of data were, how the data were gathered and examined.

Description of the findings and conclusion from the research/inquiry.

Title, author, publisher of the resource. Short description of the resource.

Critical review of the resource including strengths and weaknesses. Short discussion of how the resource might be useful to a teacher.

Membership in the Oklahoma Literacy Association (OKLA) gives all persons interested in literacy education the opportunity to develop and support literacy initiatives and activities at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Opportunities to participate in activities that support quality professional development, partnerships with other agencies advocating for literacy, research, as well as the promotion of quality instruction, materials, and policies are all extended and enriched through membership in OKLA. We invite you to become a member of the Oklahoma Literacy Association if you are not yet a member!

Membership information can be found here.

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https://www.oklahomaliteracy.org

April 22, 2022 Oklahoma Literacy Conference with Tim Rasinski Rogers State University, Claremore

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VOLUME 57

ISSUE 1

SPRING 2021

THE OKLAHOMA READER A JOURNAL OF THE OKLAHOMA LITERACY ASSOCIATION, AN AFFILIATE OF THE INTERNATIONAL LITERACY ASSOCIATION Maribeth Nottingham Barbara J. McClanahan Susan Morrison

Southeastern Oklahoma State University Southeastern Oklahoma State University Southeastern Oklahoma State University

Assistant Editors

Cindy A. McClanahan Shelley Martin-Young

Georgia Institute of Technology Oklahoma State University

Editorial Review Board

Gretchen Cole-Lade Karen Coucke Tammi Davis Rebecca Marie Farley Petra Hutchison Mollie Kasper Linda McElroy Becky Morris Claudia Otto Sarah Ramsey Lynn Schroeder Donita Shaw Jackie Taylor Jill Tussey Amanda Wilson

Oklahoma State University Rockwood Elementary, Oklahoma City Mustang Public Schools Oklahoma Baptist University Oklahoma State Univeristy - OKC Phillips Elementary, Kaufman (TX) ISD University of Sciences & Arts of Oklahoma Bethany Public Schools Oklahoma State University Northeastern State University Sequoyah Public Schools Oklahoma State University Jenks Public School Buena Vista University - Iowa Oral Roberts University

Editors

Oklahoma Literacy Association Officers Chair Chair Elect Secretary Treasurer Past Chair ILA Coordinator 76

Sylvia Hurst Rebecca Marie Farley

University of Central Oklahoma Oklahoma Baptist University

Eileen Richardson

Cameron University at Rogers State

Debbie Yarbrough

Woodward Public Schools

Sheri Vasinda

Oklahoma State University

Linda McElroy

Univ. of Science & Arts of Oklahoma