Reimagining Performances of Reading: English Language Learners Third Graders’ Vocabulary, Intertextual, and Embodied Knowledge in Nondramatic and Dramatic Reading Events

• In Event: Literacies, Learning, and Drama: Engaging Multiliterate Knowledge Through Action Within Possible Worlds

Abstract

The most effective instructional settings documented for ELLs consistently include among other factors: contextualized literacy learning opportunities using a wide range of speech functions and oral and written academic discourses, complex and creative higher order thinking, and joint productive academic tasks that are meaningful and authentic (Brock, Lapp, Salas, & Townsend, 2009; Peregoy & Boyle, 2008; Tharp, 2000). These same factors are among the most prevalent classroom outcomes created when process drama is used as a means for literacy development ( Heath & Wolf, 2005; Wagner, 1998a). This performance ethnography of third grade ELL students contrasts their social positioning and participation within the context of their classroom’s conventional reading groups with their classroom participation in dramatic approaches to the study of Shakespeare’s plays and language. Findings from this research extend the scholarship in ELL literacy education by showing how students’ embodied, literary, and linguistic knowledge can become visible, scaffolded, intertextual, and collaborative, even (and especially) when the text is highly challenging. In contrast, reading group events relied on individual performances of isolated vocabulary, with texts that were rarely interrelated, thus lowering the potential for ELL students to participate in meaning construction with shared vocabulary referents and engaging storylines.

This research, conducted from 2009-2011, asked what affordances and limitations do the recurrent non-dramatic and dramatic reading practices offer to intermediate and advanced English Language Learners? Case studies (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) of three ELL students representing distinct social positionings in reading groups (high, medium, lower levels) and English proficiency, were informed by a performance theory of participation in social life. A performative lens presupposes participants’ capacity to shift and reframe identities in different social contexts. In addition, as Goffman (1959) argues, performance is ongoing, active, and embodied. Traversing five phases of data collection, focused on non-dramatic, dramatic, and interrelated dramatic/non-dramatic reading events, I used a range of standard and innovative data collection methods to document ELL students’ and their teacher’s understanding of texts, language, identities, and relationships across reading performances. Data analysis relied on grounded theory and a priori theories of drama, reading, and ELL literacy education. I employed data reduction methods through comparative charts, photo analysis of movement and embodied meaning, and visual data maps of related events and word knowledge.

Non-dramatic reading events were characterized by IRE patterns, individual displays of fluency, and ‘knowing words’, and, thus, limited students’ opportunities to collaboratively construct vocabulary understanding. The introduction of Shakespearean texts created a parallel culture of reading focused more on possibility and inquiry. This second culture eventually overlapped with the first, and was characterized by collaboration and transmeditaion between linguistic and non-linguistic systems of communication. ELL students demonstrated consistent, engaged performances of deep thinking, appropriation of language, and intertextual inferencing. End-of-year, informal assessments of students’ Shakespearean knowledge showed high proficiency with archaic syntax and vocabulary, as well as intertextual thematic and character connections. All three ELL students described themselves as insightful readers of Shakespeare and as collaborative participants in classroom dramatic reading events.

Author

• Camille Cushman, Charlotte Mecklenburg School System & The Ohio State University