Using Literature to Teach Reading Literacy in the Classroom

Introduction: Literature as a Foundation for Literacy

The use of literature in the classroom is well-documented in pedagogy as a way children can enter the world of imagination and genre while learning the basic skills of reading and writing. As instruction progresses through grade levels, teachers gain an ever-increasing toolkit of resources. Literature comprises so many different ideas, concepts, and plots that it can be easily used to reinforce core competency in almost every subject. Rather than being simply didactic in approach, the relevancy of stories shows children how concepts move from theory into practice and clearly expands the skills of critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis (Lehman, 2007). If a task is pleasant and stimulating, the child will naturally gravitate toward it — and few approaches are more effective than covertly teaching a science concept through a story about pioneers or ocean explorers.

Literature-based reading instruction allows teachers to connect academic content to narrative experience, making abstract concepts tangible and personally meaningful for young learners. This approach supports not only language arts objectives but also the development of cross-disciplinary thinking skills that students will rely upon throughout their education.

Using a literature-based approach to literacy and other core curriculum areas allows for greater flexibility within the classroom environment. Different seating arrangements can be used depending on the subject matter, the activity, and the available resources. For example, when studying Columbus Day and its consequences, the classroom could be divided into three areas representing different points of view: Columbus, the Native peoples, and the European sponsors or royalty. A core text or set of texts would be used to develop competency, and then teacher-prepared excerpts presenting each group's perspective would be distributed to individual groups for study, discussion, and development.

Cross-Disciplinary Literature Instruction in the Classroom

The central questions would include: Why did Columbus come to America? Did he find what he expected? What were the overall results of his voyage? Numerous activities could follow: illustrating the major point of view of each group, developing a presentation to the sponsors assessing the situation, writing a thoughtful paragraph about the major issue the group identifies, or using the group's perspective as the basis for a short story, poem, or play. Using literature in this manner allows for a renaissance and even Montessori-like, hands-on approach. One benefits from robust readings while also bringing in other disciplines:

Thus, in a single unit or lesson, literature-based study surpasses the goal of inquiry and critical thinking while allowing the creative instructor to tailor the curriculum to the needs of students and to reinforce concepts that now carry real relevance — for example: "If Mixtli owned a maize field of…" or "If we had 100 men per ship and our ocean voyage was 42 days, how much food and water would we need to make that journey?"

Monitoring progress in literacy using literature may be accomplished in numerous ways. Children can write a short paragraph about a book they liked or did not like. Teachers can develop checklists to complete while listening to children read. Specifically, teachers can observe whether students: (1) show interest in words; (2) can tell a familiar story; (3) can point to individual words on a page; (4) turn pages at the appropriate time when a story is being read aloud; (5) can find a familiar book on a shelf; (6) choose to read or write during free time; (7) notice words and symbols in the classroom environment; (8) spell words developmentally; (9) ask questions about print; and (10) are aware that print carries meaning. Teachers should become continuous observers who monitor each child's interaction with materials in the educational environment (Sloan, 2003).

There are two primary approaches — or a combination of both — to utilizing literature as a literacy-based instructional model: teacher-centered approaches and child-centered approaches. In teacher-centered approaches, the instructor's function is to transmit facts, skills, and values through the mastery of knowledge. This approach focuses on learning, understanding, and identifying themes in the literature in a guided manner, and allows larger groups of students to receive knowledge efficiently. While it does enhance literacy skills, it is less effective at allowing other skills to come to the forefront.

Child-centered approaches, by contrast, do not require such a clear definition of exactly what should be taught or "received" from the chosen literature. Themes may be presented, but individual children are asked more open-ended questions about what they learned, how they felt, and what moral or culturally relevant issues were uncovered. In this approach, it is the teacher's responsibility to elicit robust and useful questioning that engages every learner (Walsh, 2005).

Most parents will accept a teacher's observation that a child is making progress in reading, even without the reinforcement of test results. A child who is an enthusiastic reader by the end of third grade will continue to develop competence in the upper elementary grades (Forgan, 2003). The literature-based approach has been similarly documented to be superior to basal learning programs and allows for more robust language development. Students accustomed to reading widely through literature are less perplexed when dealing with narratives of increasing complexity (Anderson, 2000). They have been engaging with authentic reading materials for so long that their task becomes simply learning new vocabulary and adjusting to smaller typefaces, more intricate sentence structure, and greater complexity of plot design (Johnson, 1987; Yiio, 2009). Children's literature is also quite relevant in teaching problem-solving skills, as many moral issues and dilemmas are catalogued in library and teaching resources that match appropriate books to concepts such as death, loss, and anger.

Monitoring Literacy Progress and Instructional Approaches

Phonemic awareness is a component of phonological awareness in which students are able to hear, identify, and manipulate the smallest units of speech. This manipulation at the micro level has been found to improve children's reading comprehension and to help children understand the basic building blocks of words. For instance, the spoken word "cat" can be separated into three individual phonemes: /k/, /ae/, and /t/. The most common approach to this has long been the familiar instruction to "sound it out" (Linan-Thompson and Vaughn, 2007, pp. 1–3).

The National Reading Panel selected phonemic awareness (PA) instruction for additional review and analysis and found that using PA in early childhood reading programs — as well as in evidence-based remediation programs — significantly improved reading comprehension and scores across the board when compared with other methods. The three major reasons for enthusiasm regarding PA were:

First, correlational studies have identified PA and letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first two years of instruction. Such evidence suggests the potential importance of PA training in the development of reading skills.

Second, many experimental studies have been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of PA training in facilitating reading acquisition.

Third, there is currently much interest in PA training programs among teachers, principals, parents, and publishers because of claims about their value in improving children's ability to learn to read (NRP, 2000).

Phonemic Awareness and Phonics at the Word Level

Say a word and have students say each sound they hear; ensure they articulate each sound clearly. Repeat the word until the sounds are distinct. Use this activity daily until basic phonemes are mastered. Sample words read by the teacher: (1) yes, (2) dig, (3) sip, (4) ten, (5) hum. Show students how to segment sounds in a word and demonstrate the process. Follow the same routine with the word "man," then have students work in pairs and continue with: tan, cat, mat, can, stop. Continue daily instruction until three- and four-phoneme word skills are mastered ("Phonemic Awareness Intervention," 2006; Guidry, 2003).

Phonics uses a cueing system to move students from simply understanding sound clues to understanding clues of meaning. The three cueing systems are as follows (Source: "Phonics Interventions," 2003):

Meaning (Semantic): Does it make sense? This system involves making sense of text and establishing meaningful connections. It draws on context clues found in the text and on background knowledge rooted in the student's own experiences.

Structure (Syntactic): Does it sound right? This system involves making sense of the actual words within sentences. Structural cues come from students' knowledge of correct oral language structures — the way language is organized into sentences, phrases, and paragraphs.