The following article by Wendy Chapman was commissioned by and for Scan, the teacher-librarians' journal. It originally appeared in Vol 17 no 4 (November) 1998, pp 12-15. Reprinted with permission. Copyright (c) 1998 by NSW Department of Education and Training. Scan is available on subscription by faxing (02) 9886 7413.

Literacy through book raps for Years K-2

In this article, teacher-librarian Wendy Chapman outlines how Internet book raps are used with infants classes at Wollondilly Public School to enhance and extend the teaching of literacy.

Our school's participation in oz-TeacherNet's Internet book raps (online book discussions) during the last eighteen months, has proven to be an invaluable tool for enhancing literacy, and broadening our concept of this complex process. Book raps have allowed us to effectively integrate several aspects of literacy through one seamless, and highly motivating focus. Book raps involve students: talking; listening; reading; writing; and engaging in information literacy.

J. David Cooper, in his online article Literacy, literature and learning for life, argues strongly that schools must "broaden their concept of literacy" so children will experience "communicating through technology" as well as through more traditional media. "Literacy must be viewed as the ability of individuals to communicate effectively in the real world. This must involve... preparing students for the Communication Age. Broadening the concept of literacy means that schools much broaden the type and scope of activities that they provide under the heading of literacy learning."

What used to be defined as "the ability of individuals to read and write" (Smith, 1965) has now become a much more complex issue, with prominent educators suggesting there are seven or possibly eight different literacies.

Planning a whole-school approach to literacy (1997), a publication produced to support the implementation of the State Literacy Strategy, states that "effective literacy recognises the variety of ways in which literacy is relevant to the daily lives of people within diverse social and cultural contexts". Children, and indeed adults, are constantly moving into "different situations or specialised areas of learning", and experiencing "new technologies". All of us "are continually required to adapt and extend our knowledge and literacy skills" so that we can "understand and use language appropriately".

The book rap experience

The previous Scan article, and earlier ones such as 'Bridge to Terabithia book rap' (in Scan vol 16 no 4), have described the procedures involved in book rapping. Archives of recent book raps can be found at the 1998 book rap info page on the World Wide Web at: http://rite.ed.qut.edu.au/oz-teachernet/projects/book-rap/br.html by scrolling to the link Student book rap email list archives: past and present.

Each book rap experience is unique. Among the factors that contribute to the 'flavour' of a book rap are:

• The nature of the book chosen (eg fiction or non fiction; its structure; its message)
• The nature of the rap points, as designed by the rap coordinator
• The variety of schools participating (and the individuals contributing to the responses)
• The teachers' guiding and extending of the rappers' experiences 'behind the scenes'.

As teaching and learning experiences, K-2 book raps have assisted in the achievement of numerous English K-6 student outcomes (see Table 1).

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 indicators for these outcomes are listed on pages 20, 22, and 24 of the English K-6 syllabus. Many of them are evident in the course of a book rap.

Book raps, information skills and technology

Book raps have also contributed to additional skills for our students, which underpin Cooper's broadened concept of literacy as mentioned earlier.

While participating in book raps, our K-2 students:

• Participate in group processes and contribute to team efforts with collaborative problem solving opportunities
  
• Use information skills to locate other rappers on their 'rap maps', using indexes and atlases
• Use information skills (selecting; organising; presenting) to discuss factual rap points, and issues arising from them
• Develop increasing familiarity with technology (eg sending and receiving email), acquiring skills in context of need, thus empowering learning and demonstrating that technology is a tool
• Recognise the protocols and etiquette of email messages, and the reasons for them (eg including accurate subject lines)
• Interact with other students, both geographically and culturally distant, thereby extending their understanding of differences and developing appreciation for diversity
• Examine literature closely to discover different ways of responding to text, and viewpoints of other people
• Engage in cross curricular activities, thereby enjoying the integration of learning processes across several key learning areas.

This year, students from each of Wollondilly Public School's seven K-2 classes have participated in book raps via the Internet. Each of the six book raps we have participated in this year was developed to its own organisational structure within the school. One of the advantages of the book rap concept is that there is opportunity for participants to tailor their involvement to suit the needs of particular students and teachers.

A key component of my role as teacher-librarian, I believe, is to seek out ways I can actively support teachers and their learning programs. With this agenda, I keep a watchful eye on the online 1998 Book rap calendar for new raps to be advertised, and then I invite teachers to participate in forthcoming opportunities. Interest has spread throughout the school, often via overheard snippets of enthusiastic staffroom conversation - and yet another teacher's curiosity is piqued!

In our school's experience, book raps provide a perfect opportunity for effective collaborative planning, programming and teaching (CPPT), whereby learning is enhanced and specified outcomes are achieved through a team approach between teacher-librarian, class teachers and students. Through CPPT, I am kept aware of current class units and teachers' working styles, and these factors assist me when matching rap invitations to particular classes.

The next step is to clarify just how a particular book rap could best contribute to current learning outcomes. Sometimes I work closely with the class teacher throughout the project, assisting with rap responses and information processes that arise. At other times, teachers have requested for me to work with a small extension group, independent of current class thematic units. On occasions, I have simply been the intermediary, receiving and sending rap messages with class Rap Reps each day, leaving teachers to integrate the activities as they wish.

During Term 1, some our K-2 classes were working on the English unit Australians write. The Wilfred Gordon MacDonald Partridge book rap became a pivotal aspect of this unit and provided many opportunities for literacy development. The teacher-librarian's role in this rap was to: subscribe our school to the listserv; assist the Rap Reps with daily access to their incoming mail; print out the email messages; and support different class activities emanating from the rap points.

One of these classes used incoming email messages as invaluable reading material and, on occasion, they became samples for editing practice when spelling and syntax were incorrect. This experience of using relevant, real life examples of text for modelling the editing process greatly enhanced learning. It also ensured that students checked their class responses very carefully before sending them out. The teacher was delighted with the experience, and used her creative, professional talent to make the most of other learning opportunities that emerged. The book rap really invigorating her students about literacy and she remarked, "There was so much more we could have done, if only we'd had time!"




Travel buddies: extending the book rap experience

Term 2 saw the commencement of the Teddy bear rap. While not tied to one specific book, this rap was advertised specifically as suited to Kindergarten and Year 1 classes. With adequate prior warning, both Kindergarten classes elected to base their term's work on teddy bears, using the rap as a key unit stimulus. On her curriculum mapping data sheet, one of these teachers described this initiative as "a very productive unit, especially in achieving talking, listening and writing outcomes". Another teacher included in her unit an investigation of real bears, and information skills were introduced to these young students through the use of video and CD-ROM resources.

After initially alerting the teachers to this particular book rap prospect, my role was to: explain book rap procedures; receive and send email (I supported them with technology on their steep learning curve); and assist with teaching and learning activities as requested.

At the conclusion of this rap, schools were invited to exchange their classroom teddy with another school, using the 'travel buddies' concept, another of oz-TeacherNet's Internet projects (see the online Travel buddies - home page). Wollondilly's two bears were 'snail mailed' interstate - one to Perth in Western Australia and the other to Innisfail in Queensland, carrying with them the students' teddy bear stories and photo albums of procedural texts, which had been created as the classes observed their teddies being knitted by a school clerical assistant, step by step. There were also photographs of the school's Teddy Bears' Picnic outing.

Both classes were thrilled when, in return, they received Snowy from Innisfail and Honey Bear from Perth, complete with stories, photos and diaries from their respective classes. The travel buddies project, as an extension of the book rap, provided a significant bonus for professional development, as we were able to note the different approaches to literacy learning and teaching, and gather new ideas for subsequent units.

When Year 1 teachers at Wollondilly expressed a need to provide some extension work for a group of their able readers, The bad tempered ladybird book rap was an excellent stimulus. This time, I met with these enthusiastic rappers each day in the library. Together we located other rappers on our rap maps, read the rap points, and crafted our own group responses. The students worked as a group to send and received the email messages, and also maintained their rap folders. At the conclusion of this rap, the students also completed a self-evaluation rap reflection sheet, which was included in their portfolios as a reminder of the great work they had completed.

As one of the rap points asked participants to describe their daily timetable, we decided to graph some of the school times of the book rap schools across Australia using a computer. When a South African school happened to mention a creature of which we had never heard in one of their responses, the students conducted their own information skills process to find out more. When parts of Victoria had experienced severe flooding, Merrissa, one of the Year 1 rappers, heard a news report which mentioned Bairnsdale. She checked her rap map, pointed out to me that a Bairnsdale school was rapping with us, and asked if we could email them expressing our concern. This we did, and we were delighted to receive a 'thank you' message from the Principal the next day. If I had ever worried that rap information was beyond infants students' understanding, this experience confirmed for me the inherent power within what Cooper refers to as "real world literacy".

When an enterprising Year 2 student brought a live turtle to school, it launched one class into a spontaneous investigation of turtles and tortoises, eventually evolving into a unit of work. The announcement of the Yakkinn the swamp tortoise book rap, just days later, was serendipity at its best.

Although the class teacher expressed reluctance - or was it apprehension? - to be involved, my previous experiences had convinced me of the educational value of this book rap. Therefore, I offered to take a small group of her students and work with them on the rap each day in the library. This method was very successful, and the students maintained their own 'Rap records' (folders of their book rap work) which complemented the class work. Reporting their experiences back to their classmates allowed others to benefit from the rappers' newly-learned field knowledge.

Book rapping in the classroom

At the beginning of Term 3, The jolly postman book rap was announced, and a Year 2 teacher responded to the invitation to participate. Up until this point, classes had been sending two Rap Reps to the library each day to connect to the Internet, and download, file and print their email messages. I was concerned that other students' interaction with the Netscape browser itself was too limited. I was also uncomfortable about the reams of paper being consumed by printing out of so many email messages.

As our school is not yet networked, a solution was found by saving mail to disk. Now, when classes want to participate in a book rap, I simply load Netscape onto their classroom computers, and provide a simple text procedure for accessing mail from a floppy disk. The students can now read their mail in their classrooms offline, and are thus becoming more familiar with Internet browser layouts at the same time.

In our experience, book raps have brought benefits far beyond their literacy merit. The library profile has been enhanced by its role in initiating and supporting new learning opportunities. More importantly, the teacher-librarian has been able to demonstrate, in a new context, her desire to work collaboratively with teachers to stimulate learning.

The book rap experiences described in this article, together with the active and practical support of the school library, has encouraged several teachers at this school to plan further collaborative learning activities with me. Others have commented that book rapping has been a wonderful professional development exercise, giving them unexpected insights into other teachers' approaches, and a new purpose for learning about the Internet and the integration of technology into the curriculum.

A special mention must be made of our principal, Phil Irvine, who allocates extra time to the library from the school budget, thus nurturing these programs. I also pay tribute to the fine members of the teaching staff at Wollondilly Public School, who have actively grasped these new opportunities, and courageously extended their own horizons. Without their conscientious support, book raps could not have contributed so powerfully to the learning programs at our school.

In Cooper's words, approaches to literacy must "combine a variety of resources and activities" to allow students to have many different types of "authentic literacy learning experiences" (Cooper 1993). Internet book raps provide an excellent context for such experiences. They open doors to much student and professional teaching and learning.

1998 book rap info page (online) at: http://rite.ed.qut.edu.au/oz-teachernet/projects/book-rap/br.html

Australians write. English K-6 teaching unit level 2. Curriculum Directorate, NSW Department of School Education, 1994.

Chapman, W., 'Bridge to Terabithia book rap', Scan 16 (4) November 1997, pp 20-21.

Cooper, J. D., Literacy: helping children construct meaning (2nd ed.), Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Cooper, J.D., 'Literacy, literature, and learning for life', Reading Center: literacy, literature, and learning for life (online) at: http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/literacy.html

English K-6 syllabus. NSW Board of Studies, 1998.

Planning a whole-school approach to literacy: incorporating the Year 7 English Language and Literacy Assessment (ELLA) results. NSW Department of School Education, 1997, p 7.

oz-TeacherNet projects (online) at: http://rite.ed.qut.edu.au/oz-teachernet/projects/projects.html

Smith, N.B., American reading instruction. International Reading Association, 1965.

Travel buddies - home page (online) at: http://rite.ed.qut.edu.au/oz-teachernet/projects/travel-buddies/travel-buddies.html