Beyond Words

Using the Arts to Enhance Early Reading

Comprehension

Kari-Lynn Winters, PhD

Originally a Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfillment Of

The Requirements For The Degree Of Master Of Arts
Department of Language and Literacy in Education
The University Of British Columbia April 2004

Winner of the 2005 Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada Masters

Research Award

Published by Look Again Press, LLC

ISBN 978-1-4524-9990-1
Copyright 2010 Look Again Press, LLC
www.LookAgainPress.com
All rights reserved.

Cover Art by Kate Greenaway, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”

Frederick Warne & Co, London, 1886.

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 Also By Kari-Lynn Winters

Oh Ducky Day
Runaway Alphabet
When Chickens Fly
On My Walk
aRYTHMetic: a Book and a Half of Poetry About Math
Jeffrey and Sloth

For more information about these books, see www.KariWinters.com

Abstract
This text investigates the way in which arts can be effectively integrated
with a reading program as a way to teach and evaluate global reading
comprehension strategies among less proficient readers. The project was
undertaken with twelve less proficient third and fourth grade readers in a West
Vancouver suburban public school for a total of seven months.
My study consisted of three phases. First the students were nominated,
observed and interviewed. Pre-program progress interviews, which included arts-
integrated evaluations, were also conducted. In the second phase, students were
taught five reading comprehension strategies. Students learned about and
practiced these strategies through nine arts-integrated lessons. Additionally,
informal interviews with the two teachers and post-program interviews took
place during this second phase. The third phase concluded by performing what
had been learned throughout the sessions, conducting group delayed-program
progress interviews, and completing student reflection sheets.
The research findings revealed that all twelve of the less proficient
students in the study generally improved their reading skills. When given
opportunities to construct and express their understandings through arts-
integration, they seemed to become more fluent decoders and appeared to
strengthen their employment of global/interpretive comprehension strategies
when reading printed texts.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF FIGURES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1 IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM

1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
1.4 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Local or Literal Comprehension
Global/Interpretive Comprehension
Other Significant Concepts
1.5 OVERVIEW OF THE UPCOMING CHAPTERS

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 PERSPECTIVES THAT HAVE INFORMED TODAY’S NOTIONS OF READING COMPREHENSION

Schema Theory and Reading Researchers
2.2 READER RSPONSE THEORY AND RESPONSE TO LITERATURE THEORISTS
Sociocognitive Constructivist Theories and Theorists
Multiple Literacies/ Multiliteracies Theory and Theorists
2.3 WHAT DO PROFICIENT READERS DO WHEN THEY READ ?
2.4 WHAT DO LESS PROFICIENT READERS DO WHEN THEY READ?
2.5 INSTRUCTION IN READING COMPREHENSION
2.6 EVALUATION IN READING COMPREHENSION
2.7 CAN THE ARTS BE USED EFFECTIVELY TO TEACH AND EVALUATE READING
COMPREHENSION?
2.8 CONCLUSION

III. METHODOLOGY

3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

3.2 RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION
3.3 RESERCH ENVIRONMENT
 3.4 RESEARCH SUBJECTS
3.5 RESEARCH DESIGN
Phase I Observations and Discussions
Overview of the Pre-progress Interview
Phase II Instruction
Post-Progress Interviews
Discussions
Phase III Presentation
Delayed-Progress Interviews and Reflections
3.6 DATA COLLECTION
3.7 DATA ANALYSES
Reliability
3.8 OVERVIEW OF THE NEXT CHAPTER

IV. FINDINGS

4.1 INTRODUCTION TO DATA FINDINGS

4.2 OVERALL FINDINGS
Overall Patterns of Change in Decoding and Fluency
Individual Change in Decoding and Fluency
Overall Patterns of Change in Literal Comprehension
Individual Change in Literal Comprehension
Overall Patterns of Change in the Global/Interpretive Comprehension
Individual Change in Global/Interpretive Comprehension
4.3 GROUP FINDINGS IN GLOBAL/INTERPRETIVE COMPREHENSION
4.4 SAMPLE LESSONS
Sample Art Lesson (Picture Mapping Collage) March 26, 2003, grade 3
Sample Drama Lesson April 2, 2003, grade 3
4.5 INDIVIDUAL CASE STUDIES
Sean
Tate
Boris
4.6 FINDINGS

V. CONCLUSIONS

5.1 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

5.2 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Arts-Integration Provides Opportunities to Collaborate and Discuss Texts
Arts-Integration Provides Opportunities for Students to Become Active
Meaning-Makers
Arts-Integration Provides Opportunities for Multi-Modal Expression
 Arts-Integration Provides Opportunities for Students to Become Reflective
5.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
5.4 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

VI. APPENDIX A: GLOBAL/INTERPRETIVE COMPREHENSION QUESTIONAIRE

VII APPENDIX B: GLOBAL/INTERPRETIVE COMPREHENSION RUBRIC

VIII APPENDIX C: DELAYED PROGRESS INTERVIEW QUESTIONAIRE

IX. APPENDIX D: STUDENT REFLECTION QUESTIONAIRE

X. APPENDIX E OVERALL THESIS DATA

XI. APPENDIX F: JEFFEREY’S WOR(L)DS MEET SLOTH MANUSCRIPT

XII BIBLIOGRAPHY

TABLE OF FIGURES

TABLE 1 SCHEDULE OF PHASE I

TABLE 2 SCHEDULE OF PHASE II
TABLE 3 OUTLINE OF LESSONS TAUGHT
TABLE 4 SCHEDULE OF PHASE III
TABLE 5 OVERALL GROWTH IN COMPREHENSION SCORES
TABLE 6 CLASS AVERAGE SCORES FROM THE PRE-PROGRAM PROGRESS INTERVIEWS
TABLE 7 CLASS AVERAGE SCORES FROM THE POST-PROGRAM PROGRESS INTERVIEWS
TABLE 8 CLASS AVERAGE GROWTH FROM THE PRE TO THE POST-PROGRAM PROGRESS
INTERVIEWS
 Acknowledgements
Theresa Rogers, You’re the best! How could I have come this far without
you? Your commitment to this project, your undying support, and
encouragement, and the confidence you instill will be with me always.
Infinite thanks are extended to my husband/life-long
supporter/editor/formatter/video technician. Without you, I would not have been
able to complete this creation.
Thanks also to my other committee members, Maureen Kendrick and
Rob Tierney, for stretching my meaning-making through your inquiry and
support.
Many thanks to the twelve students who performed, sang, drew, wrote,
and discussed their textual understandings so openly. And also to their teachers,
administrators and staff who welcomed me into their school community.
A special thank-you to Jacyntha England, Nataliya Becker, Sheena
Cholewka, and Lori Sherritt for their encouragement throughout and preparing
me for the thesis defense.
Thank you to Buzz (Matt), Andrew, Scott, and all the others in Surrey for
teaching me about video editing.
Thank you also to my family and friends in Ontario who could not be in
attendance at my defense, but who were with me in spirit.
 I. Introduction
I used to like video games and think reading was boring.
Now I see that reading is like video games. I found out that
reading is never boring. It tells you lots of stuff. I can
imagine books different now. Like, I can imagine myself in
different places and as different characters every time I
read. That is how it seems like video games. I also can
understand movies better too. Like with the movie Harry
Potter, before I didn’t know what was happening
sometimes. But now I just watch and imagine myself as the
characters being inside the movie. Learning to read taught
me that.
Nathan (a grade four student who participated in this study)

1.1 Identification of the Problem

People have widely varying understandings of what it means to be
literate. For some, literacy is narrowly defined as simply the
decoding/encoding and processing of print-based texts. For others, literacy
means having the ability to negotiate meaning, make connections, and
transact across a range of texts (e.g. print-based, computer/web-based,
performance-based, language-based, media-based). In this way, being
literate can be defined as the comprehending/composing of any mode of
representation that makes meaning possible. Despite their variety, the
different definitions of literacy all have one component in common:
meaning making is at the core of literacy (Eisner, 1998; Smith, 1994). As
humans we read, write, speak and represent to make sense of the worlds in
which we live in.
Across the spectrum of literacies I situate myself within the broader
framework, but as a teacher I also know the significance that schools place
on print-based literacies. I realize that contemporary Western societies
continue to privilege written texts, and I have seen first-hand what
research demonstrates: children who can not access print-based literacies
are given fewer opportunities and endure greater struggles in school and in
earning professional success than their proficient reading and writing
peers (Adams, 1990; National Research Council, 1998). Other researchers
add to these findings, noting that people who are unable to capitalize on
the resources of print-based literacies also feel inadequate or that they
don’t belong (See e.g. Purcell-Gates, 1995; Tovani, 2000). Indeed, our
technological and informational society requires that humans have the
ability to competently read, write, and especially compose meanings from
printed text.
Many children never acquire this ability to negotiate meanings from
print-based texts. They struggle in school and often fall substantially
behind. These struggling students can come to despise the written word,
leading them to read less and less. The gap widens as effective readers
continue to gain wisdom and expertise from print-based texts, while
struggling readers find themselves unable or unwilling to access critical
knowledge and skills. For instance, in British Columbia in 2001, 23% of
grade four students who participated (95%) in the British Columbia
Foundational Skills assessment were not yet within provincial
expectations
(www.bced.gov.bc.ca/assessment/fsa/results/2003/prov04.pdf). The large
number of students who are not meeting these standards indicates that
there is a problem worth examining.
This study is a response to this percentage of students who struggle
with reading comprehension, offering arts-integrated approaches as a
potential bridge to help them become more strategic and better able to
construct global/interpretive meaning from print-based texts.

1.2 Purpose of the Study

This study investigates the efficacy of using arts-integrated
programming as a way to teach and evaluate global/interpretive reading
comprehension strategies among less proficient readers. Research in
drama already demonstrates that students’ reading comprehension is
strengthened when there is a context for collaboration, active meaning
making, multi-modal expression and reflection (Booth, 1994; Heathcote &
Bolton, 1995; Rogers, O’Neill & Jasinski, 1995). This study hopes to
reveal that, for the same reasons (because they also provide collaborative,
active, multi-modal, and reflective contexts), music and visual art will also
be seen as valuable tools for furthering students’ reading comprehension.
I created an original program which used arts-integrated techniques,
specifically drama, music, and visual art, to teach and evaluate
comprehension strategies to struggling grade three and four readers. This
program was used in a “pull-out” setting: small groups of children were
brought to a separate, resource classroom (or library). The intent of this
program was to get children to develop deeper understandings of literary
texts.
My program included both reading comprehension and response to
literature strategies including: (a) recognizing the setting portrayed; (b)
engaging with and visualizing the story narrative, (c) bringing background
knowledge and experience to the text; (d) sequencing story events; and (e)
understanding the underlying themes and gist of the story. I selected these
five after examining some of the research on how to make readers more
strategic when comprehending and when responding to literature (e.g.
Allington, 2001; Duffy, 2003; Duke & Pearson, 2003; Harvey & Goudvis,
2000; Keene & Zimmerman, 1997; Pearson & Fielding, 1991; Tovani,
2000; Wilhelm, 1997). Although there are other strategies (e.g. story
framing, critical reading, monitoring understanding), I chose these five
because I felt that they were central to narrative comprehension and
because I thought they could be taught and evaluated through arts-
integration.

1.3 Significance of the Study

This research is significant in several ways. First, only a few research
studies (Berghoff, Egawa, Harste, & Hoonan, 2000; Enciso, 1992;
Mantione & Smead, 2003; Rose, Parks, Androes, & McMahon, 2000;
Short, K.G, Kauffman, G. & Kahn, L.H., 2000; Siegel, 1984; Wilhelm,
1997) have been done on the efficacy of teaching reading comprehension
strategies and literary understanding through arts-integration. Second, it
investigated the use of global/interpretive comprehension strategies across
a range of print-based (fables, poetry, short stories, picturebooks) and
performance-based texts (e.g. drama, art, music). Third, it provided
readers with experiences that could help them draw connections from and
engage with the story’s narrative. Fourth, this research invited other
researchers and educators to imagine new ways of helping less proficient
readers find the joys of literacy. Fifth, this study illustrated that all
children, even reluctant and struggling readers, have the potential to feel
successful when literature and arts-integration are offered in the
curriculum.
One of the benefits of drama-integration is that it makes the imaginary
feel tangible (Morgan & Saxton, 1987; Purves, Rogers & Soter, 1995).
This idea can be extended to visual art and music, as they also enable
students to experience narratives more concretely. An arts-integrated
program, in this way, helps to build or activate the necessary background
experience that readers need to comprehend across a range of texts. By
providing arts-integrated bridges that connect students both cognitively
and affectively to the written word, this approach holds promise to bring
less proficient readers and print-based texts together. Then, bolstered by
this sense of success, students can be guided to recognize their inner self-
confidence, which can be channeled into a willingness to participate. It is
my hope that this unique approach to learning reading comprehension will
encourage children to be less reluctant as readers and to enjoy the journey
of what different literacies have to offer.

1.4 Definition of Terms

Within the literature there is a range of definitions of reading
comprehension. On the one hand, reading comprehension refers to the act
of making sense of the words and sentences. On the other hand, it also
means implementing global strategies which help readers construct deeper
meanings of an entire narrative—getting beyond the content by
interpreting, engaging and making rich connections within and across
texts. I will define from both forms of comprehension.

Local or Literal Comprehension

• Local comprehension refers to the student’s ability to understand a
text on a literal level–the ability to understand the sentences of a
passage by drawing on local context. Although their decoding and
retelling skills may range from adequate to good, “local
comprehenders’ do not go beyond the text. They seem to lack the
strategies needed to make personal interpretations and meaningful
connections. When given multiple choice or fill in the blank type
assessments—which ask students to extract information from a
passage—they have the potential to receive a high score (getting
the facts right), making it appear as though they are good
comprehenders.

Global/Interpretive Comprehension
• Global/interpretive comprehension, on the other hand, calls upon
the students’ capacities to understand individual words and
sentences, but more importantly to focus on the larger process of
interpreting and transacting with an entire narrative text. In
addition to understanding sentences and drawing upon local
context, “global/interpretive comprehenders” also have the ability
to call upon a repertoire of strategies, enabling them
• to make rich connections with a text, to understand its implications
and go beyond its literal meaning. They actively interpret,
visualize, engage and connect with the ideas within and across
texts, all the while also monitoring their understandings about what
they have read. Moreover, students transact with the text—
bringing ideas, perspectives, and feelings to the text and taking
from it a revised set of ideas, perspectives and feelings. Because
their understanding is broader, they are able to score highly on
local assessments as well as demonstrate rich global
 understandings through discussion, or performance.

Other significant concepts

• “Less proficient readers” or “Non-strategic readers”: readers
identified by teachers who are displaying difficulties transacting
with texts. These readers may be using unsuccessful strategies like
only reading the text’s symbols or expecting others to help them
make meaning from the text. Or they may also have a limited
repertoire of comprehension strategies which they have to resort to
over and over again.
• “Arts-integrated” or “Arts-integrated techniques”: reading
comprehension strategies presented through fine arts-integrated
activities, specifically from the disciplines of visual art, drama, and
music. These techniques engage readers actively and multi-
modally (e.g. acting out the problem of the story, creating clay
sculpture of the story’s setting, or making a rap song about what
happened in the story’s narrative).
• “Pull out” or “Resource room setting”: small groups of low readers
pulled out of their regular classroom and brought to a separate
classroom to be taught direct literacy strategies.
• “Texts”: Although any type of message that can be perceived and
comprehended could be considered a “text,” in this study text
refers to the printed narrative (unless stated otherwise). Any text
that is not in the printed form I will refer to as a “performance
text.” Some examples of performance texts include a drawn
picture, a collage, a piece of music, a play, a choreographed dance.

1.5 Overview of the Upcoming Chapters

Four chapters follow this introduction. Chapter two summarizes the
literature on reading comprehension and the implementation of strategies,
outlining the importance of schema theory, reader response theory and
constructivist theory, as well as the influence of multiple literacy or multi-
modal pedagogies in this project. This literature review also poses the
question, “Can arts-integration be used to benefit less proficient readers?”
Chapter three presents the research questions. Here I will address the
methodology of the study, explaining the rationale for its design and
giving descriptions of how I collected and analyzed the data. This chapter
also provides details about the participants, the setting of the study and the
lessons taught. Chapter four summarizes the findings of the study. I
present three sample arts-integrated lessons and three case studies of
students as a way to demonstrate some of the rich contextual
understandings that students were constructing. Finally, in chapter five I
discuss the findings further and call attention to some of the limitations of
the study and recommendations for future research.
 II. Literature Review
Understanding, or comprehension is the basis of reading
and of learning to read. What is the point of any activity if
there is no understanding?
Frank Smith

The complex process of reading printed texts encompasses many

separate but layered skills. For instance, proficient readers must: recognize
graphemes; produce, segment and blend phonemes; retrieve vocabulary;
interpret phrases and sentences; develop fluency; and finally construct
global meaning. Of these skills, many theorists and researchers agree that
the latter, creating meaning from texts, is the most significant (e.g. Booth,
2001; Pearson, 2003; Pressley, 2000; Rosenblatt, 1978; Sipe, 2000; Smith,
1994; Wells, 1986; Wilhelm & Edmiston, 1998). Meaning-making is the
ultimate reason why educators teach the other reading skills. We teach
decoding not because we want students to simply be better decoders, but
because we want children to connect and engage with the text,
constructing understanding and interpreting the ideas that are written.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine notions of what reading
comprehension means today. I will briefly discuss four theories: schema
theory, reader response theory, sociocognitive constructivist theory, and
multiple literacy/multiliteracies theory. I will point to the ways they have
informed reading comprehension research and practice, and to how these
theories relate to this study. Then I will investigate what proficient and
less proficient readers are doing when they comprehend printed texts.
Next I will outline ways reading comprehension is taught and assessed in
today’s schools. Finally I will consider the contribution of arts-integration,
positing that it can be used as an effective way to evaluate and strengthen
readers’ abilities to comprehend texts.
2.1 Perspectives That Have Informed Today’s Notions of
Reading Comprehension
As we enter the Twenty-first Century, our ideas about what
constitutes literacy and being literate have expanded. In early western
civilizations, being literate meant understanding the mechanics of
decoding and encoding handwritten texts; by the middle of the Twentieth
Century, literacy began to be regarded as a process of thinking and an
ability to extract meaning from printed text; today, the dominant
interpretation of literacy refers to the reader’s faculty to construct meaning
from a range of texts (Heath, 1996).
Over the last three decades, researchers have come to agree that
meaning from printed texts can not simply be transmitted to a reader (e.g.
Anderson, 1977; Block & Pressley, 2002; Rosenblatt, 1978; Wells, 1996).
Thanks to psychologists, reading researchers, reader response theorists,
semioticians, and educators, we have come to know that without a reader’s
interpretation of meaning, printed texts are just symbols on the page. True
comprehension can only be attained when there is a convergence of
meaning drawn from both the reader’s prior knowledge or experience and
the text itself. I will now outline the contributions which inform this shift
in perspective about reading comprehension.

Schema Theory and Reading Researchers

To understand the mind’s knowledge structures and the ways in which
information is processed, cognitive psychologists including Bartlett
(1932), Ausubel (1963), Rumelhart (1975) and Anderson (1977) began to
examine the notion of schema (pl. schemata)—how humans organize and
construct meanings in their heads (cf. Anderson & Pearson, 1984 for an
historical overview of the schema-theoretic view). While Bartlett first
introduced this term in 1932, defining it as the “active organization of past
reactions or past experience”, the concept lay dormant for nearly fifty
years (cited in Anderson & Pearson, 1984, p. 257). It wasn’t until the mid-
1970s that schema theory began to be re-developed through research
(Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Pichert & Anderson, 1977) and through new
understandings of human thinking processes derived partly from computer
simulations of human cognition (Minsky, 1975 and Winograd, 1975, both
cited in Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Rumelhart, 1977, 1980; Pichert &
Anderson, 1977).
Rumelhart (1980) re-defined a schema as a “data structure for
representing the generic concepts stored in memory” (p. 34). I think of
schemata as being like a series of filing cabinets in the mind, where
information is organized, assimilated, and stored. According to Anderson
(1977), when this information is easily filed and retrieved it is able to be
“readily learned, perhaps with little mental effort” (p. 248).
These theories were then expanded and applied to other fields like
language and reading (Anderson, 1977). More specifically, this theory
migrated into the field of reading comprehension as scholars began to
believe that meaning from texts was not found in the words themselves,
but formed in the organizing structures of the reader’s mind (Anderson
and Pearson, 1984). Seeing how these theories were also relevant in the
classroom—getting readers to activate background knowledge and
connect what they gain from texts to what they already knew about the
world—reading researchers like Durkin (1978-1979), Pearson (1986), and
Tierney & Cunningham (1984) posited that reading comprehension could
be directly taught in classroom settings.
Several researchers draw on the strategies that ultimately grew out of
schema theory and schema research (e.g. Block & Pressley, 2002; Duffy,
2002; Harvey & Goudvis, 2000; Keene & Zimmerman, 1997; National
Research Council, 1998). These strategies continue to inform reading
comprehension instruction and evaluation today. Some of these strategies
are also featured in my study, including: bringing personal knowledge to
the text, story mapping or sequencing the story events, and understanding
the gist of the story.

2.2 Reader Response Theory and Response to Literature

Theorists
At around the same time that schema theory was being developed (the
late 1970’s and into the 1980’s) reader response theories emerged from
postmodernism (cf. Tompkins, 1980). Louise Rosenblatt, based on her
previous work in 1938 (Literature as Exploration) argued for a
transactional theory where readers were placed in the centre of reading.
Rosenblatt further developed this theory in her 1978 book, The Reader,
The Text, The Poem, in which she posited that readers read along a
continuum of efferent and aesthetic reading. First, the efferent stance is
one that focuses on outside information, such as reading a news article or a
recipe. “By ‘screen[ing] out all but the needed end result or residue’, this
reader concentrates on extracting a solution, information, or directions for
action from the text” (Rosenblatt, 1978, p. 43). And second, the aesthetic
stance is more of an inward process. Here, the reader, has a “lived-
through” experience with a text, as if it were a “poem”, that is not
complete until a reader brings meaning to it (Rosenblatt, 1978).
Reader response theories reminded us that comprehending literature
was not only a cognitive practice but also an interpretive, aesthetic,
literary process. Like schema theory, reader response held that meaning in
reading was not found in the printed symbols themselves, but in the
meaning that readers brought to the text. Rather, it involved the reader’s
ability—based on the text itself and his/her “reservoir of past experiences
with language, literature, and life”—to evoke responses, thoughts, feelings
and images in the mind’s eye (Cox & Many, 1992, p. 66).
In her book The Reader, the text, the poem (1978), Rosenblatt rejected
the idea that there was only one single meaning that readers could derive
from literature. Instead, her reader response theory asserted that readers
could construct multiple meanings when focusing on a text. So instead of
simply extracting knowledge from the text or discovering its inherent
meaning, readers could construct their own understanding of what was
happening in the literature by coming to the text with a given set of ideas,
feelings, values and attitudes about the world; interpreting and building
new knowledge from the print; and then leaving the text with greater
understandings of how the world worked. Rosenblatt named this process
“transacting—a reciprocal relationship where giving and taking each
conditions the other” (Rosenblatt in Karolides, 1999, p. 160). In literacy,
the term “transaction” emphasizes the back and forth relationship between
a reader and a text. Moreover, a reader brings to the written word a unique
set of linguistic and life encounters, and takes from it a set of new and
personal experiences.
This transactional process is a creative and dynamic event. For
although the text may be the same, different readers construct with each
experience different “mental models” and meaning from the text (Narvaez
cited in Block & Pressley, 2002, p. 159). At the precise moment this
construction is formed there is, Rosenblatt explained, a “negotiation”
between the author and the reader (Rosenblatt, 1978). This negotiation is
based on what the reader already knows and brings to the text.
Rosenblatt’s work, along with that of other reader response critics and
response to literature researchers such as Iser (1978); Bleich (1978), Fish
(1980), Benton (1992), Holland (1975), Rogers and Soter (1997)
influenced a number of researchers in the response to literature field (for
an overview of contributors to this field cf. Farrell & Squire, 1990 and
Marshall, 2000). This research, taken together, established links between
literature and readers’ personal responses to it inside language arts and
English classrooms. Further, it emphasized the reader’s literary
engagement and interpretation as key aspects of narrative comprehension.
It has been argued that when an instructional approach such as
response to literature is used within schools, students are more motivated
and have additional opportunities to expand their experiential backgrounds
and vocabularies (Morrow & Gambrell, 2000). Literature (including such
things as picturebooks, poetry, song lyrics, plays, etc.) is created to be
heard, looked at, enjoyed, and creatively responded to (Purves et al.,
1995). And as Fish (1980) pointed out, response-based reading instruction
creates an “interpretive community of readers”, in which all students in the
classroom work together to make meaning from texts.
For these above reasons, I made the conscious choice to use literature
as the pre-text for the lessons in this program (See Table 2, p. Error:
Reference source not found) for the list of narratives used in this study).
Additionally, I drew upon reader-response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978) and
its subsequent research (Beach, 1990; Benton, 1992; Rogers, 1990; Sipe
2000; Wilhelm, 1997) as I incorporated the following reader-response
strategies into this study: engaging with and visualizing the narrative,
bringing prior experiences to the text, recognizing the setting of the story,
and understanding the story’s themes.
Contemporary researchers are coming closer to developing a unified
theory to blend the cognitive psychologists’ and reading researcher’s
notion of schema—the way humans organize and construct meanings in
their minds—and reading response theorists’ notion of transactions—
complex response processes that can be aesthetic, emotional, social,
cultural and cognitive.
Two other theories, sociocognitive constructivist and multiple
literacy/multiliteracies, have informed this study and influenced today’s
notions of reading comprehension, and its instruction/evaluation. I discuss
these below.

Sociocognitive Constructivist Theories and Theorists

Through the work of developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1983),
we began to understand that knowledge is not innate but rather actively
constructed inside the mind. His cognitive constructivist theory showed us
that children progress at their own pace, always building on what they
already know. He believed that cognitive development in children
stemmed directly from their active involvement with their tangible
surroundings—through the “assimilation and accommodation” of the
world around them (Chapman, 1997, p. 43). Piaget’s cognitive
constructivist theory significantly altered people’s views of education and
instruction by emphasizing the role of the learner.
Although Vygotsky (1978) also believed that learning was the act of
building on what was known, he diverged from Piaget’s cognitive model,
asserting that learning is also inherently social and dependent on language
(Smith, 1994). In Thought and Language (1986), Vygotsky argued that
language is the tool that makes higher mental functions possible, for it
serves as a way of organizing and recalling experiences and also as a way
of communicating the internal thinking processes. His theory emphasized
that language plays an active role in children’s development because
thought and language are not developed separate from each other, but that
they are inextricably connected. Walkerdine (1982) added “language,
thinking and context are not separate systems but are jointly related to a
basic human need to know how signs of all kinds are interpreted” (cited in
Smith, 1994, p. 290). Vygotsky believed that language promotes thought,
and that collaborative experiences and interaction with others, especially
with those in mentor roles, both reinforce learning.
Sociocognitive constructivist theory combined the contributions of
both social and cognitive constructivist perspectives, for “learning is
constructed through transactions between the individual and the
community, between the personal and the social” (Chapman, 1997, p. 44).
In this study, the act of comprehending texts was seen as both a
cognitively and socially constructed process: one that was integrated with
various forms of thought representation (e.g. oral language, image,
gesture, etc.), active in nature, and situated within social contexts.
Students were given opportunities to actively manipulate their physical
environments through imagination and arts-integrated programming as
well as being able to construct knowledge from the collaborative
experience. They moved away from a reading curriculum which
emphasized facts and isolated skills, towards one that highlighted
collaborative contexts, and active learning–one that involved complex
thought and interpretation.

Multiple Literacies/ Multiliteracies Theory and Theorists

As I mentioned above, the notion of what it takes to be considered
literate has broadened in recent years. Where once the concept of literacy
exclusively meant decoding/encoding, or comprehending/composing
printed texts in isolation, scholars and educators now realize that literacy
is also connected with today’s changing socio-cultural contexts (cf. Rogers
& Soter, 1997). Nowadays, definitions of literacy have extended beyond
print and have moved outside of the classroom. Current conceptions of
literacy have become more multiple, shifting the term from literacy to
literacies. Similar to languages or cultures, which are always changing,
literacies are becoming increasingly dynamic and multi-modal (Cope &
Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 2000; Jewitt & Kress, 2003). Not only are today’s
children being asked to negotiate meanings from more varied types of
print (e.g. through internet use, books, non-fiction texts, magazines,
advertising, newspapers, picturebooks), they are also required to transact
across a variety of contexts, for example through film, web-based texts,
television, music, oral narratives, graphs, numeracy, performance, and
many others. Merely having the ability to comprehend and compose the
printed word is no longer adequate. In this way, multiple literacies are also
becoming increasingly muli-demensional.
Multiliteracies pedagogy emerged from the theoretical traditions of
semiotics, literary criticism, communication theory, arts-integration and
language research (Hobbs, 1997). It includes the ability to create
meaningful messages from symbols, despite the form of expression. These
messages relied on “modes of representation much larger than language
alone” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). including other forms of perception and
communication (e.g. “reading” and “composing” signs, gestures, graphics,
musical scores, performances, media, etc.).
Multiple literacy pedagogies directly informed this project. Students
were encouraged to read and compose representations that were print-
based, and performance-based through literature, as well as through
drama, visual art and music. Negotiations of meaning and rich transactions
with varied texts lay at the core of this study.

2.3 What do Proficient Readers Do When They Read?

Like Frank Smith (1994), I believe that the most significant aspect of
reading is meaning-making. Yet it is not surprising that so many students
are falling through the cracks when it comes to negotiating meaning from
printed texts: reading comprehension is a complicated and multi-layered
process. Besides decoding and knowing the literal content of the story,
students must also construct rich global meanings by recognizing settings
and characters; calling upon their prior background knowledge and
experiences; engaging with and visualizing the narrative’s action,
sequencing events; and understanding the underlying themes and gist, all
the while monitoring their understandings from the entirety of the
narrative. Teacher/researcher Jeffery Wilhelm (1997) took the time to
closely examine what engaged readers did when they read narrative texts.
Wilhelm presented case studies of nine adolescents, which included:
detailed field notes, surveys, interviews with students and class
discussions, His findings demonstrate that engaged readers had the ability
to get “inside the text” (pp. 46-47). They could enter the literature with a
given set of assumptions about the world, react to what they were reading,
and then exit the text, taking with them a new perception of the world
based on what they just experienced (pp. 46-47). It was this ability—to
enter into the story world and “transact” with it—that research has shown
deepened one’s understanding of narrative (Fish, 1980; Rosenblatt, 1978;
Sipe, 2000; Wells, 1986; Wilhelm, 1997).
According to Iser (1978) competent readers have the ability to fill in
the “gaps” left by an author. Wilhelm extended this notion, concluding
that proficient readers also have the metacognitive ability to step into and
out of the story world, to evaluate the author’s agenda or their own reading
process and relate these to their personal identities. “This ability”, said
Wilhelm, “gave proficient readers a distinct advantage in reading
comprehension” (p. 47).
Other researchers took a different stance on interpreting the
characteristics of proficient readers. For instance, Paris, Wasik, & Turner
(1991) stated that skillful readers had the ability to comprehend on two
levels; understanding locally (e.g. the words and sentences that the author
has written) and globally (e.g. using cognitive tools to interpret beyond the
text, relating with the entirety of the text). Pressley (1999) suggested that
proficient readers were also able to make prior predictions about the
content of the text, monitor its sensibility while reading it, and then reflect
on their own constructed interpretations following the experience.
Pearson and Fielding (1994) argue that expert readers are strategic.
Identifying the main themes or gist of a piece (e.g. Allington, 2001;
Rogers, 1990; Williams, 2002), visualizing and engaging with the text
(e.g. Keene & Zimmerman, 1997; Wilhelm, 1997), activating background
knowledge and experience (Duke & Pearson, 2003; Tovani, 2000) making
predictions and inferences about the meaning of the text (e.g. Duke &
Pearson, 2003; Keene & Zimmermann, 1997; National Research Council,
1998 ), sequencing or using story grammars (Allington, 2001), asking
questions while reading (e.g. Duffy, 2003; Keene & Zimmerman; Wilhelm
& Edminston, 1998), thinking meta-cognitively about texts (e.g. Harvey &
Goudvis, 2000; Wilhelm, 1997), and monitoring comprehension (e.g.
Harvey & Goudvis, 2000; National Research Council, 1998 ) were
examples of some of the strategies that proficient readers were able to
implement while engaging with print. Paris et al. (1991) noted that
“strategic reading [was] a prime characteristic of expert readers because it
is woven into the fabric of children’s cognitive development and is
necessary for success in school” (p. 609). I speak more about this strategic
approach to reading in the instruction and evaluation sections following.

2.4 What do Less Proficient Readers Do When They

Read?
As noted above, cognitive, reader response, and constructivist
theorists all contribute to the idea that meaning-making is an active
process (e.g. Adams, 1990; Duke & Pearson, 2003; Keene & Zimmerman,
1997; Pearson, 2003; Piaget 1983; Rosenblatt, 1978; Vygotsky, 1978;
Wells, 1986; Wilhelm, 1997). Believing that this was also true for
struggling readers, Wilhelm delved further. In both You Gotta Be The
Book (1997) and then in his follow-up Imagining to Learn (1998), co-
authored with Brian Edmiston , he asked the question “What are less
proficient readers doing when they read?” He discovered after several
months of research in the classroom that the struggling readers were
indeed active, but were actively busy with unsuccessful strategies.
Some were reading literally. Although they could actively retell the
story, they could not interact with it. They looked for the secondary world
in the print and could not see beyond the text itself (Wilhelm & Edmiston,
1998). These non-strategic readers wanted the text to tell them what to
think about, and were, as Wilhelm (1997) discovered, unable to “construct
a meaningful experience with the text” (p. 96). The following example is
taken from Wilhelm’s You Gotta Be The Book and precisely demonstrates
this:
Wilhelm: What does Mrs. Oakes look like?
 Kevin: It doesn’t say.
Wilhelm: But what do we know about her?
Kevin: Well, it says she’s middle-aged…she cleans and
cooks…sort of a maid… she lives down the road with
her husband…
Wilhelm: So, what might she look like? What clothes will
she wear to the house? What color hair?…
Kevin: It doesn’t SAY.
Other students were diligently trying to understand on a basic,
decoding level. Likewise, Paris et al. (1991) found that:
Novice readers in contrast [to expert readers], often focus
on decoding single words, fail to adjust their reading for
different purposes, and seldom look ahead or back in text to
monitor and improve comprehension… In addition, older
yet poor readers may have motivational handicaps, such as
low expectations for success, anxiety about their reading,
and unwillingness to persevere in the face of difficulty (p.
609).
Wilhelm (1997) contributed similar findings. For example, one
student busied himself with the symbols of the text. Instead of
participating in the secondary world and constructing personal meaning as
engaged students do, this less proficient reader exerted immense effort
simply decoding and pronouncing the words. Other students in Wilhelm’s
(1997) study were able to decode quite well; they could visualize
characters and settings in particular kinds of books, but they could not
transact with unfamiliar texts. One student in particular demonstrated that
she was unable to connect the world of the text with her own personal
experience (Wilhelm, 1997, p. 96). Pressley (2002), citing Williams
(1993) also notes that some less proficient readers can activate their prior
knowledge and experiences when reading, but only those readers who
remotely relate to the text.
Finally, Wilhelm (1997) noted that the struggling readers he worked
with lacked motivation and failed to monitor their comprehension.
Likewise, Paris et al. (1991) stated that novice readers lack important
meta-cognition strategies like monitoring and regulating comprehension
during reading. Although the students may have believed that they are
understanding the text, “[t]hey often proceed[ed] on ‘automatic pilot’
oblivious [of their] comprehension difficulties (Duffy & Roehler, 1987
cited in Paris et al., 1991).

2.5 Instruction in Reading Comprehension

Durkin (1975) asserted in her classic observational study that very
little time was spent in classrooms on explicit reading comprehension
instruction (only 45 minutes out of 11,587 minutes in total) (cited in
Durkin, 1984). She found that much of the time devoted to reading
instruction went to giving and checking written assignments or filling in
workbooks and ditto sheets, with the assumption that readers would
simply discover the inherent meaning in printed texts and then transmit
this knowledge to their mind (Durkin, 1984). Smith (1994) in his book
Understanding Reading explains, “[t]he text could be regarded as a
transmitter, the reader as a receiver, and the visual system as a
communication channel” (p. 246).
Researchers in the 1980’s such as Anderson and Pearson (1984),
Durkin, (1984), and Tierney and Cunningham, (1984) provided evidence
that, in contrast, students’ cultural and personal backgrounds were
intricately connected to how students read and understood written texts.
They argued that simply writing answers in workbooks or transmitting
information from one from text to another did not acknowledge the
complicated processes students were undergoing when they
comprehended written text. Smith (1994) added:
…information theory has severe limitations, with respect to
texts and readers. It can measure ‘information’… but it can
do nothing about meaning. It cannot say how meaningful a
text is, or how much understanding there might be….
Information theory loses its utility once we get inside the
 head (p. 247).
Gordon Wells (1996), a language and literacy researcher, also argued
that this transmission model of learning was “a mistaken one”, saying that
it forced children to be “passive recipients of information” (p. 218). In his
book The Meaning Makers, he explained that he came to find out through
a 15-year longitudinal research study of 32 students that it was not
possible for students to fully understand or know a text simply by having
the teacher or author transmit ideas. He wrote that “Knowledge cannot be
transmitted” because it is impossible for the student to have the same
knowledge that is in the mind of the teacher or author; rather,
understanding and knowledge must be “constructed by individual
knowers” (p. 218). Similarly, Wilhelm (1997) provided evidence from his
research that a transmission approach to comprehension actively
“reinforce[d] negative attitudes” and “disenfranchise[d]” readers (p. 10).
He added that when students are required to comprehend a text only for
information it blocked them from experiencing the world of the story.
As demonstrated in the above examples, traditional methods of
reading instruction were not successful. Workbooks, ditto sheets and other
“cookie cutter” forms of instruction that were taught in isolation and did
not consider what children brought to and took away from texts, did not
work for all students, and especially not for those who struggled with
literacy (Allington & McGill-Frazen, 1989).
Within the last twenty-five years we have diverged from this
transmission model of instruction. Increasingly researchers and educators
recognized the need for an innovative model of instruction that would
encourage diverse students to actively construct global meaning from the
printed word—one that will get students to engage with and experience
texts, interpret messages, relate meaning back to their own mental
constructions of the world, and monitor their understandings. By the end
of the Twentieth Century, more flexible and individualized notions of
reading comprehension instruction seeped into classrooms as educators
undertook the task of integrating theories and research with practice (e.g.
Booth, 2001; Harvey & Goudvis, 2000; Keene & Zimmerman, 1997;
Purves et. al, 1995; Wilhelm, 1997, 2001). These newer approaches to
instruction, which drew on strategic approaches to global/interpretive
comprehension of texts, collaborative learning, and guided practice,
supported the unique and diverse groups of learners inside classrooms.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, one prominent change was
that researchers and educators, including Duffy (2003), Harvey and
Goudvis (2000), Keene and Zimmerman (1997), Pearson (2003), Pearson
and Dole (1987), Wilhelm (2001), among others moved from a skill-based
approach to a broader instructional model which focused on the teaching
of strategies. Here, Duffy (2003) distinguishes the differences between
skills and strategies:
A skill is something you do automatically without thought.
You do it the same way every time. Tying your shoes is an
example of a skill… A strategy, in contrast is a plan. You
are thoughtful when you do it, and you often adjust the plan
as you go along to fit the situation… Good readers use
many strategies (pp. 21-22).
Beyond the transmission model or skill-based approaches to reading,
instruction in strategic reading comprehension gave students the tools they
needed to interpret and strengthen their global understandings of a variety
of texts (Beck, 1984). For example, by helping students see how strategies
could intersect and be implemented, strategic instruction moved readers
from basic literal levels of comprehension to spaces where they could
globally construct and reflect upon the meaningful encounters they have
with printed ideas (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). Likewise, Wilhelm (2001)
argued that strategic reading models offered students opportunities to
connect with the written ideas, activating personal knowledge and
experiences, and to individually transact with and make sense of a broad
range of texts. As Graves wrote: “We’ve seen the anatomy of reading
comprehension in one taxonomy after another. What we need is the
physiology, the actual working parts as a reader interacts with lively text”
(cited in Keene & Zimmerman, 1997).
From the research of Anderson and Pearson (1984), Benton (1992),
Enciso (1992), Harvey and Goudvis (2000), Keene and Zimmermann
(1997), National Research Council (1998), Paris et al. (1996), Pearson
(2003), Rogers (1990), Tierney and Cunningham (1984), and Wilhelm
(1997), I discovered six strategies that were discussed most frequently: (1)
bringing prior experience or cognitive schemas to the text, connecting the
known to the new; (2) visualizing the story, using sensory images to
enhance comprehension, or seeing the action of the story unfolding in the
mind’s eye; (3) active meaning-making, transacting and engaging with the
text, making predictions and inferences about the text’s meaning; (4)
sequencing or story mapping, summarizing texts by identifying important
ideas and putting them in a meaningful order; (5) understanding the gist or
themes of the story, analyzing what lies beneath the surface of the text;
and (6) monitoring understanding, meta-cognitively reflecting and
regulating comprehension. These were the primary strategies that I called
upon in my study.
Instruction in today’s classrooms has changed in other ways, too. For
example, literacy instruction is becoming more collaborative. Fish (1980)
wrote of creating “interpretive learning communities”, where members
shared “not only an approach to literary meaning-making, but also “the
learned perceptual habits, the humanly constructed models for making
sense of the world” (Cox, 1992). In this way, readers begin to see reading
as a social event, like a conversation with an author, with the characters, or
with other readers, where they are given opportunities to share their
responses about texts. Wilhelm (2001) also discussed this idea:
Vygotsky posited that two can do together what neither can
do alone… In sharing with peers and teachers, students see
that reading is an enjoyable social pursuit through which
they can relate to one another about texts and ideas… This
reflection helps students learn and use strategies on a self-
conscious level (p. 34).
Likewise, Duffy (2002) stated that by interacting with others—and
especially those who implement strategies—poorer readers gain more
“metacognitive control,” the ability to consciously direct their own
inferential reasoning processes before, during, and following reading
activities .
Finally, today’s instruction in reading comprehension has changed to
include more guided practice. Pearson and Gallagher (1983) proposed
that strategy instruction be explicit in the beginning, perhaps modeled
by a more proficient reader; then, through a “gradual release of
responsibility,” students should gain more expertise and be capable of
more independent practice. (For a visual model of this explicit
approach see Pearson & Fielding, 1991). This gradual release model
was similar to Vygotsky’s (1978) construct of the Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD). Bruner’s (1986) scaffolding model also
portrayed this idea: that an individual gradually attained more
independence, and that proficiency in learning was strengthened when
students had opportunities to practice their skills with the assistance of
a more experienced teacher or peer. Similarly, Duffy (2002)
maintained that “modeling mental processes” are key when educators
were trying to get less proficient readers to become more strategic. By
watching expert comprehenders physically model what they did when
they read, less proficient readers developed an understanding of the
process of reading. Hence they could move beyond literal
comprehension and feel more empowered when they attended to the
printed text. Given more opportunities to see how strategies were
incorporated, students soon realized they, too, could call upon
particular strategies to help them make meaning of particular text types
(Wilhelm, 2001).

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