Beyond Exposure: The Uses of Informational Texts in a Second Grade Classroom
Beth Maloch
The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the uses of informational texts within an ethnically diverse, second grade classroom and how the teacher carefully scaffolded students’ developing understandings about these texts. A community of practice theoretical framework was employed to better understand the ways in which informational texts were embedded within
the larger classroom community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Three themes generated during constant-comparative and discourse analyses provide insights into how the teacher and her students built shared knowledge about informational texts over time within their community. First, students had multiple opportunities to engage in and with informational texts. The teacher made available a variety of informational texts and placed value on their reading of these texts. Second,
the teacher facilitated students’ access to these texts by helping mediate the difficulty level of texts, supporting their learning of key vocabulary and concepts, and scaffolding their sensemaking as they engaged in discussion around these texts. Finally, the teacher engaged in explicit talk and teaching about text features prominent in informational texts. Rather than stand-alone teaching of text features, the teacher’s explicit teaching was embedded in and grew out of the students’ multiple opportunities and experiences with informational texts. The teaching of informational texts, then, did not occur in isolation, but rather as a part of mutual engagement in the joint enterprise of learning. To this end, these findings demonstrate the ways in which the learning of “technological skills” or features of informational texts were embedded in the community’s uses of and valuing of these texts and textual practices.
Volume 42, Number 3, February 2008
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