S Although elementary school teachers have been encouraged for some time to use trade books as part of the science curriculum, little is known about the factors, including genre and teachers' assumptions, that influence decisions about the books they choose to use. This descriptive study was designed to explore some of these issues. Drawing from resources offering suggestions about books for science instruction, our observations of trade books commonly used in elementary science, and our own selections of appropriate books, we compiled two text sets, analyzing them for genre, length, content complexity, and visual features. We asked a small group of elementary school teachers to select from each set of science books those they felt would enhance their curriculum on two science topics. We also asked for their reasons for their selections. Findings revealed that teachers considered content, visual features, readability, and developmental appropriateness, as well as potential uses for the books that they selected. Teachers' stated reasons for selections, few specifically focused on genre, revealed underlying assumptions that science is boring, that stories and dual purpose texts will add feeling to science, and that information books are too difficult to read aloud. In light of these findings, we contemplate the role of text in elementary science instruction, including its place in supporting teachers with the nature, or enterprise, of science, as well as assisting teachers in moving toward orientations that support a fuller range of scientific genres in their classrooms. Si bien los docentes de escuela primaria han sido alentados a utilizar libros de circulación general como parte del currículo de ciencia, se conoce poco acerca de los factores, incluyendo el estilo y los presupuestos de los docentes, que influencian las decisiones acerca de los libros que eligen. Este estudio descriptivo fue diseñado para explorar algunos de estos temas. A partir de fuentes que ofrecen sugerencias sobre libros de enseñanza de la ciencia, de nuestras observaciones de los libros de circulación general usados comúnmente en ciencia elemental y de nuestras propias selecciones de libros apropiados, compilamos dos conjuntos de textos y los analizamos tomando en cuenta el estilo, la longitud, la complejidad de los contenidos y los aspectos visuales. Solicitamos a un grupo pequeño de docentes primarios que seleccionara de cada conjunto de libros de ciencia aquellos que pensaban podrían mejorar el currículo en dos tópicos científicos. También les pedimos las razones de sus elecciones. Los resultados revelaron que los docentes consideraron el contenido, los aspectos visuales, la legibilidad y la adecuación evolutiva, así como los usos potenciales de los libros seleccionados. Las razones de la selección formuladas por los docentes, pocas centradas específicamente en el estilo, revelaron presupuestos subyacentes acerca de que la ciencia es aburrida, de que las historias y los textos con doble propósito agregarían sentimiento a la cienci...
S In this article, we have taken a critical look at the issue of scaffolding in children's writing, beginning with a consideration of the ways in which children's productions of text have been supported in previous research on writing development. From that initial look, we developed a series of tasks to explore what 24 focal children, four each at kindergarten through fifth grade, knew about two very commonly used school genres, stories and informational texts, so that we might learn more about the complex relationships among development, task, and genre knowledge. Tasks ranged from those that provided little support to children (a prompt to write a made‐up story) to those that provided high levels of support (describing how children knew whether a book was an information book or a story afEn ter examining its pictures and listening to it read aloud). Our findings suggest that while scaffolding can assist children it may also, at times, hinder children in demonstrating their full range of genre knowledge. Patterns displayed in children's responses also point to periods of shift in cognition, during which children who may have implicitly performed a task may become unable to do so as their understandings shift from implicit to explicit forms, a phenomenon described in cognitive research by Karmiloff‐Smith (1992). Finally, our findings have compelled us to reexamine our own thinking on the study of texts, making room for individualauthors' aims in our look at genre. En este artículo adoptamos una mirada crítica sobre la cuestión del andamiaje en la escritura infantil, comenzando con una consideración de las formas en las que la producción textual de los niños ha sido planteada en investigaciones previas sobre el desarrollo de la escritura. A partir de esta mirada inicial, desarrollamos una serie de tareas para explorar los conocimientos de 24 niños ‐ cuatro en cada año, de nivel inicial a quinto grado ‐ acerca de dos tipos textuales muy comúnmente usados en la escuela: narraciones y textos informativos. Nuestro propósito fue comprender mejor las complejas relaciones entre desarrollo, tarea y conocimiento de los tipos textuales. Las tareas abarcaron un amplio rango, desde aquellas que proporcionan poco apoyo a los niños (indicación para escribir una historia inventada) hasta las que dan gran apoyo (describir cómo los niños saben si un libro contiene un texto informativo o una narración, luego de examinar las ilustraciones y escuchar su lectura oral). Nuestros resultados sugieren que, si bien el andamiaje puede ayudar a los niños, en ocasiones también puede impedir que los niños demuestren el rango completo de su conocimiento de los tipos textuales. Asimismo los patrones manifestados en las respuestas de los niños indican períodos de cambios cognitivos, durante los cuales los niños, que implícitamente podrían haber realizado una tarea, se tornan incapaces de hacerlo. Ello se explica porque su comprensión de formas implícitas se ha tranformado en comprensión de formas explícitas, un fenómeno descripto en la i...
This study examined two preschoolers' understandings about letter associations during repeated alphabet book read alouds with their parents from a Piagetian perspective. Data for the present investigation was excerpted from a larger study in which six preschoolers, ages 3 1/2 to 4 1/2, read seven picture storybooks and two alphabet books three times each in a multiple baseline design over approximately a 30-day period. Applying the principles of Piaget's clinical or inquiry method, a qualitative analysis of the two children's responses to their parents' prompts or use of the formulaic phrase “—– is for —–” showed that neither one associated representative letters with the beginning sounds of names or other appropriate words. Letters were either associated indiscriminately with objects in the pictures or with words in the oral dialogue, irrespective of their beginning sounds. A psychogenetic theory of alphabet book reading is postulated where children first associate letters with any pictured object, then with selected words in the oral text, and only later with initial sound segments. Implications for research and practice regarding the slow evolution of metalinguistic differentiation at the phoneme level and the influence of genre on parent-child discourse are offered.
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