Arisa Sanchez and Professor James S. Jacobs, McKay School of Education: Teacher Education
One of the most essential things a child will learn in elementary school is how to read. Countless hours of research have been done trying to discover the best methods of literacy instruction. As I was taking my education classes to prepare me to be an elementary school teacher, I too wondered about the best methods of teaching children how to read. Many of the methods and theories that are taught as “best practice” originate in New Zealand.
New Zealand is a world leader when it comes to literacy. When I discovered that there was an option to do a study abroad to New Zealand within my major, I decided to take the opportunity to do some of my own comparative research with literacy instruction in Utah and New Zealand. For my project, I compared the types of materials in the classroom, how those materials were used, and how the students responded to those materials. I collected data from the classroom that I completed my student teaching with in Utah, and the classroom that I completed a practicum with in New Zealand.
I hypothesized that the New Zealand classroom would have more trade books (library books) than the Utah classroom. I was not sure how the classrooms would differ in how the literacy materials were used. However, I did think that the New Zealand students would respond better to the literacy materials because of New Zealand’s high literacy rate.
To compare the types of materials used in each classroom I counted the number of books/texts found in each classroom. There were four different types of materials found: trade books, newspapers/magazines, school journals/basal readers, and student work. Trade books are non-leveled commercial books that make up the greater percentage of books found in a library. School journals are from New Zealand, while basal readers are from the U.S. School journals and basal readers are books that include many different types of stories and genres (poems, non-fiction, fantasy, etc.). They are leveled, which means that the text is created specifically for a certain grade level, and are designed to assist in teaching literacy. Student work is a student’s own piece of writing.
The Utah classroom had significantly more trade books, school journals/basal readers, and newspapers/magazines than the New Zealand classroom. However, the New Zealand classroom had significantly more pieces of student work displayed in the classroom than did the Utah classroom.
In my effort to compare how these materials were used, I ran into some difficulties. Because both my New Zealand class and my Utah class used their literacy time for small groups, it was difficult to keep track of how many minutes were spent with all the different literacy materials. To report my findings, I gave a descriptive explanation of how literacy instruction time was spent. In New Zealand, students were split up into leveled groups. Each group was assigned a long-term project to work on. The teacher would work with a different group each day while the other students worked independently. In Utah, the students were split up into leveled groups. Each group rotated through assignments (centers) that were to be completed in 15-20 minutes. One of the centers was to meet with the teacher for guided reading groups.
The third part of my project was to see how students responded to the different literacy materials. In order to assess this, I gave the students two assignments. I gave students a survey in which they had to rank order each type of text (trade books, newspapers/magazines, school journals/basal readers, and student work) from their favorite to their least favorite. Both my New Zealand students and my Utah students indicated that trade books were their favorite type of text. The classes differed greatly on all of the other texts. Newspapers were ranked as the second favorite of New Zealand students, while Utah students indicated them as their fourth favorite. School journals/basal readers were marked as third favorite for New Zealanders and marked as second favorite for Utah students. Student work was marked as fourth favorite for New Zealand students and third favorite for Utah students.
The second assignment given to students to assess their response to the materials was a worksheet. I read the students an example of each type of text. After I read the example, they had to fill out the worksheet which asked them to draw three picture of something they remembered from the text. It then asked them to answer the following questions in writing: Did you like the text we read? Why or why not? The process of going through all four types of texts was spread out over a week.
I had anticipated that some students would not do very well on their drawings. However, almost all the students were able to respond appropriately in their drawings. The written explanations that students gave varied a lot. However, in comparing New Zealand and Utah in the simple yes/no answers they gave, the results reflected the answers they gave in their surveys. About the same percentage of Utah and New Zealand students said they liked the trade books. With all three other types of text (newspapers, school journals/basal readers, and student work) the difference in percentage of students that said they liked the text varied from 10%-30%.
The results of my research were not what I had expected, but were still very beneficial in helping me to understand how different literacy materials can be used effectively. I feel that further research could be conducted in regards to the reasons students like or dislike texts. This research could be done comparatively with American students and New Zealand students, or could just be done with one group of students.
For more information on my research project please see the printed copy of my thesis in the Honors Thesis Collection found in the BYU Harold B. Lee Library.