Teacher tales: the art and joy of teaching literacy (with a regional focus)

Transcript

Introduction:

You’re listening to the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership podcast where we showcase conversations with some of the world’s biggest thought leaders in education. We also bring you the thoughts and reflections of teachers and school leaders from across Victoria.

Melissa Pavey:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Teacher Tales, the series that celebrates the joy of teaching and learning. We are your hosts, Melissa Pavey and Cathy Buchanan-Hagen. Today, we're joined by inspirational literacy educator, Carol Hodgson. In today's episode, we're diving deep into mentor texts and sharing the joy that literacy educators can experience in their pursuit of inspiring students to become passionate readers and writers. A mentor text is a rich text that can be used to teach many aspects of literacy through repeated readings.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Okay, so we're talking about using mentor texts to create joy and inspiration in our classrooms. Carol, to start off with, when you say mentor text, what do you mean?

Carol Hodgson:

When I think of the word mentor, I think about my mentors and how they've helped me to learn new things. They know when to let me explore, when to guide, and when to explicitly share their expertise with me, and I learn from them. They provoke my thinking and inspire me to have a go at new ways of thinking. They stretch me beyond what I knew was possible. So when I think of a mentor text, I make a similar connection. Mentor texts help me to learn something. Mentor texts provoke my thinking, and they show me ways I can be inspired.

When I use mentor texts with students, I use them the same way. Mentor texts provide my students with models. They demonstrate multiple aspects of how texts work, and they let students into the intentional decisions authors have made. We can look at the overall writing, the craft, the form, the purpose, the audience, the characters, the shifts in tone, and how the illustrations work. Mentor texts can teach about sentences, the grammar, punctuation, sentence length. Mentor texts can teach about the words, long words, short words, the beautiful words that enrich our vocabulary; the literary devices; the synonyms; how nouns and pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs work; and the role the function words play in connecting those words. Mentor texts can teach about how the letters in words work, and we can learn about phonemes and graphemes.

The power of a good mentor text is captured in this quote, when Mem Fox in her book, Radical Reflections, which I've loved forever, says that "Texts teach whether we intend them to or not." So for me, rich mentor texts help us to learn about many aspects of literacy, language, and literature. They show us how texts work and how we can use this learning to craft a message and communicate it effectively to others. Throughout this podcast, I'll often refer to books that I read and reread as mentor texts. But I don't think of a book being the only mentor text. Lots of printed and audio materials can be mentors, like even just as simple as a shopping docket or a shopping list, instructions, newspapers, magazine articles, poems, advertisements, infographics, graphs, schedules, timetables, timelines, maps, audios, news reports, artwork, speeches, even podcasts, and the list goes on.

Melissa Pavey:

I love that quote from Mem Fox, Carol. I hadn't heard that before. How do you use mentor texts to create joy and inspiration in your classroom?

Carol Hodgson:

Well, Frank Smith once wrote about getting our learners into the writing club and being in the Reading and Writing Club is so important to me. I try and get my students that I'm learning with into that club as quickly as possible, and then I work in intentionally and strategically to keep them there. To do that, I set up an emotionally and physically safe and aesthetically pleasing environment because the culture of learning is really important.

Everything has a place and a purpose and is intentionally located, including where previous and current mentor texts are stored and displayed. We don't focus on something and then pack it up and forget about it. I want it located so students can either independently or with prompting go back to previous mentor texts to revisit the learning anytime they need to. These mentor texts are anchors for our learning throughout the year. I revisit these texts formally and incidentally just to remind students of how to use the mentor texts we've studied, and celebrate with great gusto when students apply their learning from mentor texts independently. It's important for me that I've created an environment and the conditions, the routines, the processes, and the predictability that supports all that nitty-gritty of learning and allows it to flourish.

I guess also I love books. I love to hold them, to turn the pages. I love the smell of the paper. I love the illustrations. I love to savor the words and let them slowly melt like my favorite chocolate or roll around like a boiled lolly. Can you tell I'm a sweet tooth? Then I play with them in my talk and my writing. I share my love of texts with my students. We talk about what I'm reading and what they're reading, what I can't wait to read next. That's all about that relationship building. Because I find if I can connect their hearts, then the skills that I want to teach them they'll attend to. I just find that then having a well-stocked classroom library means that I can find a great mentor text or two or three or more. So I want the students to get interested and curious and loving texts, and then I want them to see the power in the strong texts and how strong writing persuades and influences the reader, whether we're entertaining or informing.

Although I have a primary background, recently and rather excitingly my work's taken me into the secondary colleges. Some students have been reluctant to engage in texts, and so their teacher, or many of their teachers actually, who have exceptional skills in learning and teaching, they really value building relationships and getting to know their students. Some students were interested in hunting, camping, fishing, and motorbikes, so ChatGPT was used to help generate a mentor text that was age appropriate and engage the students in topics they were interested in. This new technology is something we're all exploring. ChatGPT was also used to write various rebuttals of varying quality and features, which we studied when the students were writing persuasively. We also used it to give some suggestions when the students were revising their own writing. Creating interest and accessibility certainly increases engagement and a willingness to have a go.

Look, text selection is really important at any year level, and I found this is definitely the case in the secondary space. When teachers provide a purpose and a well-chosen text, the engagement and participation of the students increases. Mentor texts have been used with great success because the texts are complex, the idea sophisticated, the language well structured, and all students have an entry point when exploring the thinking they generate and the craft moves they may choose to model from.

I guess I choose from a multitude of focuses, but being really boundaried and disciplined with what I want to teach keeps my focus tight and intentional. I'm familiar with the Victorian curriculum, and I know the developmental sequences for learning. When I don't, well, I slow down, and I build my understanding. I need each student to get just what they need when they need it, so I keep my teaching really targeted. It's not uncommon that there's additional learning that comes from these texts that I didn't plan for, but these are bonuses that enrich the experience.

I do not rely on incidental teaching. My work with mentor texts is scaffolded, intentional, and purposeful. Then once I've decided what my focus for reading, writing, and word study will be, which is often guided by my flexible scope, what I want the students to learn and sequence, when I want the students to learn it, I draw on my data and evidence and continue the planning cycle, considering what will be whole class, small group, or individual work, and how I can link back to students' prior knowledge of mentor texts and extend student learning with new mentor texts. This is really not ad hoc but thoughtfully designed. Often, I'll use the same text across reading, writing, and word study because, to me, well that just makes sense. But this is not a hard and fast rule.

I may have a couple of texts or part of texts I'm drawing on, but I want to make the point here that the learning we're doing in reading supports writing and supports word study. They're reciprocal and work together in an interdependent way. How long I use the text varies, too. It might be a lesson a week, a couple of weeks. Again, it depends on my purpose. Texts lend themselves so much, but I don't drag out every possible learning option out of them. I identify a focus and emphasize the aspects of the text that support this learning. I don't want to kill a great book by dissecting it so there's no pleasure left in it. So I keep it moving, keep it intentional, but I keep it engaging and joyful. Therefore when needed, I select another text to teach the next craft move: concept, strategy, or technique.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Carol, can you tell us about how you choose an appropriate mentor text?

Carol Hodgson:

Well, I draw on a wide selection of texts I know well, but I'm always scrounging for new texts that's perfect for my audience and purpose, so I visit bookshops, my school, and public libraries. I listen to the CBCA Judges' Talks and get to know the shortlisted or notable books. I actually browse anything with a shortlisted sticker on it. Oz Lit Teacher has a fabulous downloadable PDF with recommendations, Copyright Australia, PETAA, ALIA, and the International Literacy Association, the ILA, as well as the Department of Education's Arc site and the fabulous Literacy Teaching Toolkit. They all have great resources and units of study using mentor texts, and I've used many of these extensively.

I may not use, though, the unit entirely as described because my formative assessment guides the modifications that I would make to create a unit of study that meets the needs of my current class of students. I use these mentor texts as a study, as a guide, and then adjust them because it's about the learning that the students go through, not the task. Ah, I'd just like to mention here that these professional organizations have also guided my selection of mentor texts for staff professional learning as well as drawing on the work of lots of great literacy authors. So mentor texts are fabulous for teachers as well.

Going back to my students, though, my students learn to read like readers, they read like writers, and read like curious word learners. Exploring our mentor texts helps to teach them how to look and notice features in texts and consider the decisions authors have made when they're creating their own exciting texts. They learn to borrow an idea, a phrase, a golden line, a word, a style. They learn to hunt for what they want and need with a lot of intentionally designed and well-placed provocations on my part.

This doesn't happen simply by reading a text. It happens by using my formative assessment, knowing my students, and making decisions on what they need next to progress as learners. Then carefully selecting the right text, designing thoughtful questions, and guiding, nudging and scaffolding, encouraging the students to be curious, asking, "What if? or "I wonder." This collaborative inquiry is happening with highly explicit intentional teaching. I consider the teaching practices when and why I would choose to read aloud, engage in shared reading or think aloud, modeled writing, shared writing, or interactive writing. So the teaching practice I choose depends on the scaffolding the students need.

Melissa Pavey:

You mentioned a scaffold, Carol. Can you tell us a bit more about a scaffold that you use?

Carol Hodgson:

One of the scaffolds I use is innovating on text or innovating on a sentence in a text. An example that I want to share with you today is taken from a short text called My First Swim by Michael King, and the original sentence taken from the text reads, "For Christmas that year just before we left, I got a pair of togs, the spotted ones, the height of fashion for little boys in those days, and a bucket and spade."

This sentence was unpacked and used to provide the phrasing and the pace for a new piece. One of the students who'd traveled to Europe and was inspired by an experience she'd captured in a photo, wrote the following piece, "From the Cliffs of Moher one spring afternoon just after lunch, we looked out at the vast Atlantic Ocean to see surfers on their boards bobbing on the surprisingly calm water while seabirds hovered above." Exploring the writer's craft helps students learn and gather tricks and tips they can apply to their own writing. This just lifts the quality of their writing enormously. The students know when they've written well. I can see it in their faces, I can hear it in their voices, and I thank a rich mentor text for helping them to get there.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Wow, Carol, that's an absolutely amazing response. You just absolutely had me from the point when you said, "Being in the Reading and Writing Club is important to me." I try and get the students I'm learning with the club as quickly as possible and then work intentionally and strategically to get them there. I love the fact that you are a member of the club and that you are also a learner, so you're learning alongside your students, which I think is just such a wonderful model for the students to see that you're always learning. Your passion for what you do is just absolutely there in every single word that you say.

But also too, what I love is the intentionality of it. None of this is just done ad hoc. You know your students incredibly well, you know your curriculum incredibly well, and you know how to get the best out of all of your students because you really, really inquire. You are an inquiring teacher. I just want to be in a class with you, and I want to see all this happen, and I would love my kids to have been in a class with you, so what a wonderful response.

Carol, what is your favorite...? This is a really, really difficult one to answer, I know, because you've probably got lots and lots of favorites. If you could choose a favorite mentor text and then just let us know how you've used it so the people listening to this would come away with a really good idea of "This is a text that I love, and this is how I can use it to get the best out of the kids in my grade."

Carol Hodgson:

When I think, "What's your favorite mentor text?" you're right. There are so many. When I often think about that, one of the prompts that we've been using with our students is, "What does this text inspire you to do, say, make, or write?" which comes from Fisher and Frey's work with close reading. Then in the secondary space at the moment, the students have taken that and they say, "What are you going to run with?" and they love it. So after they've been doing some reading, they'll prompt themselves with, "Hmm, so what are you going to run with?" Then they go into their own piece of response or writing. For me, the one I'm going to talk about today, I could talk about so many, but the one I have decided to talk about is Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox. It's great.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

No relation to John Hattie, I would [inaudible 00:18:23].

Carol Hodgson:

It's just a great favorite, and I've used it for reading and writing and word learning. In a foundation class, first we read and we just enjoy the text. It was their heart read. Then we began to explore particular features from that text. So when reading, we looked at the sentence, "Hattie was a big black hen," and this was a good sentence. At a word recognition level, we could decode a lot of that. We studied "was" as a high-frequency word, and we looked at the A making /ah/ sound. In "was," I guess we also looked at the S making /z/ in "was." But that was all studied in word study. That was actually revised from Mrs. Wishy-Washy because in "Washy" the A was making an /ah/ sound as well, so it wasn't unfamiliar to the children.

Then when I think about the bridging processes, when reading aloud, the text was great for rhythm and expression, pace, the phrasing and the fluency. I just love it. "'Good grief,' said the goose. 'Well, well,' said the pig. 'Who cares?' said the sheep. 'So what?' said the horse. 'What next?' said the cow," and then that change of pace and speeding it up for "It's a fox! It's a fox!" that the kids love. They just love reading that book.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

I can see the interaction there. Yeah, yeah, highly interactive.

Carol Hodgson:

So when we're writing, then we innovated on that text. I drew on the students' current interest, honoring their ideas, and I prompted them with the sentence structures but stayed true to the learning intentions I wanted to achieve that were linked to the Victorian curriculum and that developmental progression of learning. So we went back to the beginning of the text, "Hattie was a big black hen." The main character in our book was going to be Ted, our classroom teddy bear. Ted stimulates many of our classroom experiences, and he has provided many purposes for reading, writing, speaking and listening, and word learning. So our text began, "Ted was a big brown bear." So thank you Mem Fox and Hattie and the Fox for helping us to learn about adjectives, in this case, words that describe size and words that describe color, and nouns, the name of the character, and the high frequency word, was, all in one tight sentence.

Then the text said, "One day Hattie looked up and said, 'Goodness gracious me! I can see two eyes in the bushes.'" So we unpacked the sentence and talked about where our story would take place: What would be hiding, where would it be hiding, what would we see? Because of a keen interest in dinosaurs for some of the students, we decided a pterodactyl was in the peppercorn tree in the schoolyard, and, "Ted could see two eyes in the peppercorn tree." To simplify the structure for our class story, we decided all the class would just reply with, "'Oh, no!' said the preps." So we had, "'I can see two eyes and a beak.' 'Oh, no!' said the preps. 'I can see two eyes and a beak, a sharp beak and wings in the peppercorn tree. It's a pterodactyl! It's a pterodactyl!'" So when writing our story, one of the students yelled, "Run! Everybody run!" so we added that.

Before the pterodactyl could get to the class, we added this line, and it was here that we then swapped to another favorite mentor text, which was Bears in the Night by Stan and Jan Berenstain. The students had read this book so many times and know each part really well. We went to the scene when the owls hooted and scared the bears. "So they run really fast down Spook Hill between the rocks, through the woods, around the lake, over the wall, up the tree in the window, back in bed. Hoo."

So the class went outside and ran away from the imaginary pterodactyl in the peppercorn tree. The students role-played where they ran and described each part: around the tree, across the grass, up the stairs, through the doors, back inside. These prepositions helped us to describe location and direction. We previously studied these words through the mentor text, Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins. So here was another opportunity to use prepositions in our writing. Then we referenced another much-loved mentor text. See, once you've got mentor texts, you just keep going back to them when it's appropriate. So we went back to We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. We borrowed that last line, "We're never going on a bear hunt again," substituting that for, "We're never going on a pterodactyl hunt again." Then we went back to Hattie and we borrowed, "And no one said anything for a very long time."

After revising and revising and revising and refining and feeling completely satisfied with our story, then came the illustrating for publication, and so began a new mini-inquiry into using mentor texts for publishing. I love it when our writing culminates with our Writers Festival. We follow the CBCA shortlisted book process and choose a book from each class then year level that demonstrates literary excellence, and we add the students' published text to the school library, complete with a borrowing barcode. They love it when they can go and borrow each other's books. So my overall use of mentor texts is to meet my learning goals, but flexible enough to embrace students' ideas and have an engaging, purposeful, joyful time playing with texts, phrases, words, and ideas.

Melissa Pavey:

Can I just say, as you were talking about that, you brought back a childhood memory of my dad reading Bears in the Night. We asked for that book, my brothers and I, every single night for about three months, I think.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

That's fabulous. So you made a text to the text connection there, Melissa.

Melissa Pavey:

Yeah.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

That's fantastic. Look, I absolutely love that. Really, if you think about the learning that is happening and in such a joyful, passionate way, it's just exploration of words. It's exploration of sentence, the sentence level. It's incorporating reading, incorporating writing, a lot of oral language there and collaboration.

Melissa Pavey:

And the students' voice, there's an agency coming through in that.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Yes, that they're active contributors in the process as well. I just see this as just such a joyful way. Also too, I love the way you did bring in there some phonemic awareness, some sight words, some high-frequency words, knowledge and usage as well, so all of these things are being integrated in the most joyful way, and you have a community of passionate readers and a community of passionate writers. So I just think this is a wonderful, wonderful way.

I've heard people say that every time you use a mentor text, you are bringing an expert into the classroom with you. I love mentor texts, particularly picture storybooks, and being a primary teacher, I generally do use picture storybooks, but I've used them with upper primary, and they love them too just as much. Some of our picture storybooks are incredibly thought-provoking books. But I absolutely love that all of those rich aspects of literacy are being addressed through the use of the mentor text. Let's not forget vocabulary, which is incredibly important when it comes to the learning of literacy.

Carol, we're going to wrap up now with what we call the fast five, and so we're kind of going to blast the question at you just to get a brief response before we finish up. So I'm going to do the first one, Carol. Again, these are really tricky ones to do. If you could choose one educator to bring with you to a dinner party or to invite to your dinner party, who would it be?

Carol Hodgson:

When I thought about this question, I had so many people I would invite to dinner. I think I would love to have dinner with [inaudible 00:27:10] because she was my college lecturer. I just feel she set me up so well at the start of my career with a teaching pedagogy that has actually lasted a lifetime. She introduced me to the amazing work of Brain Cambourne and the Conditions of Learning, and I still love the Conditions of Learning today. She introduced me to Donald Graves and the Writing Process, and aren't we so thankful for having that? And the work of Mem Fox who just makes everything this rollicking fun time. I think I'd also love to invite, though, my really special colleague, Keay Cobbin. I work with Kay now, and she continues to stretch my thinking about current literacy education, research, pedagogy and practice, and I'm just so fortunate that our paths have crossed.

Melissa Pavey:

I love that we asked you for one and you've snuck in two.

Carol Hodgson:

Anyone that knows me would just expect that.

Melissa Pavey:

Favorite children's author, Carol.

Carol Hodgson:

Well, everyone that knows me knows I will say Mem Fox. In 2004, I was at a school in Gippsland, and that school won a ticket to attend Possum Magic's 21st birthday celebrations at Dromkeen with Mem Fox and Julie Vivas. There were other guests. The business manager at the time just said, "It's a no-brainer," and the school sent me, so I was so excited.

Melissa Pavey:

What a great celebration. What about your favorite illustrator?

Carol Hodgson:

I think I'm going to go today with Alison Lester because Alison's a South Gippslander. Once I went to Fish Creek, the literature festival that is on there, and Alison kindly drew our classroom teddy bear, Ted. My class were beside themselves with excitement when I shared the picture with them back at school.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

What a wonderful treasure to have. I didn't realize that Alison Lester was a South Gippslander.

Carol Hodgson:

Yes, with her beautiful bookshop down there as well in Fish Creek.

Melissa Pavey:

Oh, wow.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Okay, that's it. I'm going to go visit.

Melissa Pavey:

Some of her books are set in South Gippsland-

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Oh, right.

Melissa Pavey:

... but you wouldn't know from reading them.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Yeah, fabulous. Next question, Carol, what's your most memorable student response to a mentor text?

Carol Hodgson:

Oh, how do I answer this question? I have 36 years, I shouldn't say that, of memories of stories about students. Beautiful. They're thoughtful, funny, inspiring, and insightful responses to text where they've borrowed lines and made them their own. These texts have made us laugh and cry and build connections as a community as well as building connections with texts. But I think one of my favorite student responses to a mentor text was when the student was illustrating Ted and the Pterodactyl, which I spoke about earlier. He was illustrating the page, and no one said anything for a very long time. He drew his classmates with talking bubbles, and there was no text in the talking bubble because no one said anything. I loved the way he represented this moment in his illustrations and that each speech bubble was left blank.

Melissa Pavey:

Oh, that's gorgeous. Carol, the best character in a children's book.

Carol Hodgson:

Oh, I could have so many characters at different times that have taught my children so much about life and living. But the one I'm going to choose today is Winnie-the-Pooh because I think Winnie-the-Pooh has stood the test of time and each new generation has just fallen in love with him all over again. His antics are role-played from walking around outside with an umbrella saying "Tut-tut, it looks like rain," and playing Poohsticks when we come to a creek in a bridge. His phrases and sayings are copied and used in our own talk and conversations. So, "Oh, I have a rumbly in my tumbly," when we're hungry or, "Oh, bother," when things don't quite go as we'd expect them to or, "Hmm, take the time to think, think, think," when we're doing some learning that takes serious thinking. Then when we are discussing days and events on the calendar, it's not unusual to hear someone say, "Today is my new favorite day." I love the quote, "We didn't realize we were making memories. We just knew we were having fun." So when I use mentor texts with students, I don't always realize just how much we're learning. I just know we're having lots of fun as we play and learn and learn our way to deeper and deeper understandings.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Wow, what a delight it has been to listen to you, Carol, to speak about the way you use mentor texts to create joy and inspire students to read and write passionately. I love the joy and I love the... The notion of the intentionality really, really gets to me because I really think that sometimes people think that when you're teaching with intention it can be really dry. But yours is full of curiosity and full of thoughtfulness and a real wish to inspire your students with a love of literature that you have. I think we can all accept that it just enriches everybody's life: books and texts and talking about texts and writing. I love the notion that you're learning alongside your students, too. I think that's fabulous.

Carol Hodgson:

They teach me so much.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Oh, kids do, don't they?

Carol Hodgson:

They do.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

It's lovely to... I do think when you're working with kids that there will always be at least one joyful moment and one funny moment in your day. There will be some tricky moments, and there'll be some challenging moments. But I love to just, at the end of the day, reflect on those joyful moments where you walk away and you go, "Yes, that went really well, and yes, the kids loved that," so they learned a lot.

Carol Hodgson:

The power of reflection, I think, is a really important part, too, to take into this work.

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Absolutely, yes.

Carol Hodgson:

It's reflecting all the time, what's working-

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Yes, that's right.

Carol Hodgson:

... what's not, what will I tweak, what will I add?

Cathy Buchanan-Hagen:

Yeah. I really hope that young teachers out there, all teachers out there listening to this can see that you can have an incredibly accountable literacy program, but one that's full of joy and passion and engagement, so that would be just wonderful for people to take that away. We hope that you did enjoy this podcast episode. You can find out more about mentor texts by visiting Oz Lit Teacher, where you can download a list of over a hundred picture storybooks organized by genre and year level with teaching recommendations for reading comprehension strategies, and for linking it to writing using the 6+1 traits. Carol mentioned Oz Lit Teacher, which is great for those sorts of things. If you know of any other literacy educators who have a passion for mentor texts, share this podcast and continue the conversation about joyful literacy classrooms including passion, play, and purpose. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening.

Outro:

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