Explicit Instruction in a Second-Grade Picture Book Author Study

• In Event: Reading and Writing in Personhood and Childhood

Abstract

Using Learning by Design multiliteracies framework, the researcher worked with four second grade teachers in an urban public elementary school to redesign their Kevin Henkes author study, as their students created narrative picturebooks. The researcher addresses two research questions: What explicit writing instructional practices did teachers enact? What impact did these practices have on children’s composing work? The researcher documents teachers’ explicit instruction, harnessing social cognition of the learning community, resulting in students’ application of an expanded semiotic landscape to express narrative understandings. Students demonstrated knowledge transformation and metalinguistic understandings. The researcher concludes that curriculum design is always a work in progress, always in need of redesign to be responsive and supportive of the children in front of us.

Author

• Theodore B. Kesler, Queens College, CUNY