Reading and writing reviews with Stage 2 and Stage 3 students

Stanmore Public School won a State Literacy Award in the inaugural year of the awards, 1999. The school has a strong history of explicitly teaching how texts are constructed for particular purposes and audiences. Ruth French, teacher-librarian and executive teacher at Stanmore, describes how she worked with Stage 2 and 3 students to improve their understanding of reviews.

"This book is good because it's funny." Lots of teachers remember the ubiquitous homework book review of our own school days. It was a 'busy work' task that was meant to prove that you'd read your book, but it usually also spoiled any satisfaction and pleasure in reading. The social purpose of a review was rarely considered.

The English K-6 syllabus was revised in 1998. The new syllabus and support documents, especially the Modules, provide some excellent strategies for teaching about reviews. Most importantly, we no longer assume that our students "know" about such things. The syllabus documents emphasise the importance of explicitly teaching why reviews are written and how to write them.

They also advocate that students write reviews for real social purposes, and real audiences. At Stanmore Public School, the teachers have experienced that reviews have the potential to be a powerful way of encouraging students to be critical of what they read or view.

The teaching and learning cycle

In this article, I shall recount some of the lessons that were undertaken with our Stage 2 and Stage 3 students to enhance their understanding of review texts (English K-6). The lessons were a collaborative effort between the teacher-librarian and class teachers. We planned our work using the teaching and learning cycle, developed by Joan Rothery in her work with the NSW Disadvantaged Schools Program (Rothery, 1996).

The cycle emphasises the understanding of the social purposes of texts, and moves students through joint construction to the independent construction of texts. The focus of this article is on the activities that led to joint construction of a review in the students' library sessions. Following these lessons, the students went on to write their independent text reviews in class time.

The English K-6 outcomes that were addressed included:

• V6 Chooses to reflect on and share experiences of texts.

• RS2.7 Discusses how writers relate to their readers in different ways, how they create a variety of worlds through language and how they use language to achieve a wide range of purposes.

• WS2.14 Discusses how own texts have been structured to achieve their purpose and the grammatical features characteristic of the various text types used.

• RS3.7 Critically analyses techniques used by writers to create certain effects, to use language creatively, to position the reader in various ways and to construct different interpretations of experience.

• WS3.14 Critically evaluates how own texts have been structured to achieve their purpose and discusses ways of using related grammatical features and conventions of written language to shape readers' and viewers' understandings of texts.

(English K-6 syllabus, pp 16-19).

Contextualising reviews: social purpose

We began by asking the students where they had read, heard and seen examples of reviews, and about the purpose of reviews. This focus on the social context of texts is by no means new, but has been re-emphasised in the recent Focus on writing document (2000), produced as part of the State Literacy and Numeracy Plan.

The students reported that they had found reviews in many places. Most knew about the Bookshelf column in The School Magazine (NSW Department of Education and Training) and some knew about movie reviews in the newspaper. Other examples included: reviews of new music in magazines; film reviews on The movie show (SBS television), which was not watched by the students but they were aware of it; and, perhaps most obviously, the TV Guide itself.

When discussing the purposes of reviews, we found some significant differences between our Stage 2 and Stage 3 students. Most Stage 3 students had some idea of the purpose of reviews, although many saw reviews as having the purpose of recommending a text rather than giving a balanced or even negative judgement of a text where warranted. This may be indicative of the type of reviews to which students are typically exposed. Several astute students pointed out that sometimes texts which are ostensibly reviews are really just promotions in disguise, such as advertisements for films which involve interviews with the public but only positive comments are shown.

Our Stage 2 students had considerably more difficulty in identifying the purposes of reviews. We provided them with a range of reviews to read, gathered from the Internet, journals and magazines, and asked the students to answer a set of questions about the reviews (see Activity sheet 1, Reading reviews, p 6).

We discovered that many of our Stage 2 students had difficulty separating the review itself from the original text. For example, in answer to the question "What is the review's purpose?", students who had read a text review of Fudge-a-mania by Judy Blume wrote "Comedy - makes people laugh." When asked "Who do you think the review was written for?", the Stage 2 students reading a review of a book about the Titanic stated "Kids that like to read about ships."

It seemed that the idea of a text about another text created an additional level of abstraction that was a problem for some students with limited experience of reviews. We found that these students benefited from revisiting the Reading reviews activity in a whole class shared reading session. We read a review together and discussed its purpose and audience, explaining that the audience for the review and the audience for the book (or film, etc) were not necessarily the same.

Understanding the text: how are reviews written?

We found from asking the students "How is the review written?" that many of our Stage 2 students did not know how to structure a review. This was not really a surprise, as it is in Stage 2 that students are expected to move from "personal response" to "formulating simple critiques" (English K-6 modules, pp 177 and 273). However, many students were unable to offer any comment about how reviews are structured. One group did comment that a review "tells you a bit of the story then tells you if it's a good book." This was a helpful summary that we shared with the rest of the class.

Having read a number of reviews with the students, we asked them if they could identify any features common to most of the examples and we scribed these onto the whiteboard. They came up with:

Our next step was to provide the students with a summary of the structure of a typical review:

(English K-6 modules, pp 177 and 273.)

The students' own observations about the elements of reviews were then grouped and written up under these headings. For example, "characters" went under the heading Text description.

Armed with this fairly skeletal understanding of one way in which a review might be structured, we then asked the students to sequence sentences from a review which we had jumbled up. Here I selected, from a professional journal, a review of a fiction book with which the students had some familiarity, Bob the builder & the elves by Emily Rodda (see Activity sheet 2, Sequencing activity, p 8.)

Professional journals, such as Scan, Reading Time, Magpies and The Literature Base, are excellent sources of reviews. The reviews often have a little more detail than many book reviews written expressly for children, and they also have the primary purpose of reviewing. Some reviews for children function more as tantalisers than critical reviews, aiming to persuade the potential reader or viewer to "find out what happens".

I explained to the students where the text of the sequencing task originated and I also explained the role of the professional "book review" journals in helping librarians, teacher-librarians, and teachers to select books, thus linking the activity back to understanding of the social purposes of reviews.

The students enjoyed the jigsaw puzzle of sorting and sequencing the sentences. For those having trouble commencing the activity, we suggested that they first sort the sentences into the three categories (ie. Context; Text description; and Judgement). Questions that assisted understanding included "Is it saying what happened?" (Text description) and "Is it giving an opinion?" (Judgement). These questions are somewhat limited in that they assume that there is an obvious difference between fact and opinion, but they did provide the students with a useful starting point.

The students then carefully read and reread each sentence to locate clues to help with sequencing. Such clues included noticing when something was mentioned for the first time, and then subsequently referred to with a pronoun. For example, "However, he is determined to remain 'one of the blokes'." (Activity sheet 2, Sequencing activity) had to be placed after a sentence that mentioned Bob the builder by name.

It was here that several students noted, from their experience with reading and viewing reviews, that authors and "the words" were generally discussed in a review before illustrators and the pictures. Some also commented upon opinion adjectives that helped them to identify the Judgement sentences.

When complete, the students pasted their sequenced reviews onto A3 sheets of paper, leaving a space between each section to indicate the paragraph breaks. The sections were labeled according to their purpose in the structure of the text. Variations in the sequencing of some sentences were discussed and we agreed that, in a couple of places, the cohesion of the text was maintained by different plausible arrangements.

Writing reviews: joint construction

The next step was to jointly construct a review with the students, which we decided would have the purpose of providing a critique of a fiction book to their peers. The review was to be displayed in the school library with a depiction of the book cover. The review would also typed into the Review notes section of the resource's catalogue entry in OASIS library, for anyone to read for years to come!

We needed a shared experience of a book so that everyone could contribute ideas, so I selected a picture book which we could read in one sitting but was of suitable interest to our Stage 2 and Stage 3 students. (There are many such books; the example reviews accompanying this article are for: The butterfly by Roger Vaughan Carr & Ann James; and The last circus by Colin Thompson & Kim Gamble.)

I read the book to the class and then the class teacher and I asked the students to brainstorm words or phrases that could be used in a jointly constructed review. These phrases were scribed onto separate strips of paper. The strips were displayed on butcher's paper using a repositional glue stick, which allowed them to be moved around.

We wrote up the headings, Context, Text description, and Judgement, and then invited the students to move the words and phrases to the most appropriate sections. We then used this organised set of thoughts as the basis for our joint construction.

The jointly constructed review was written using an overhead projector and, as we went, there were many valuable opportunities to discuss ideas and word choice. For example, we tried to avoid imprecise adjectives such as "nice", or hackneyed judgements such as "This is a good book."

The notion of leaving the summary of the story as inconclusive was important, with students very keen not to "spoil the story" by giving too much away.

Having a language to say what it is about a book that works, or doesn't work, was clear. Students can only write about a book if they have developed the language to enable them to do this, "so technical language about books and a language of assessment and appraisal needs to be modelled" and explicitly taught by the teacher (English K-6 modules, p 274). At times, the teachers found it necessary to model or suggest ways of expressing a judgement about the text which students were struggling to formulate for themselves.

Finally, as promised, the students' reviews were published, and typed into OASIS library, enabling the students to see the social purpose of the exercise fulfilled.

Towards independent mastery

Having a real purpose and audience for a review was a powerful motivation for our students as we created our jointly constructed writing. These lessons enhanced the students' understanding about why we write reviews, and provided them with explicit instruction about how to structure their own reviews according to a specific purpose.

The class teachers with whom I worked have followed up these library sessions with similar experiences in class in order to develop students' independent mastery of the written review.

As teachers we have become more aware of our need to assist students to see how language and visual images work if they are to have the critical tools to go beyond personal response (ie. "liking" or "not liking" a book), to appraisal (knowing something about how the text is acting upon them to create that response). This is a challenge at which we continue to work.

There's certainly a lot more to reading and writing reviews than was tapped by the old homework task, including the potential to develop our students into more critically aware readers and more interesting and purposeful writers.

The butterfly

A review by 4R

This picture book is written by Roger Vaughan Carr and illustrated by Ann James; it is published by Random House.

Malani thought how weak and useless a butterfly is compared with her father's great elephant. This story tells of how the flutter of a fragile butterfly's wing can unleash the mightiest gale, carrying the wind around the world.

The watercolour illustrations are fantastic and have great depth. The language of the story is poetic and the book is thought provoking.

This is an interesting and imaginative children's book for slightly more sophisticated young readers.

Suitable for ages six and up.

The last circus

A review by 4/5P

Oscar the clown's home was in the circus - until the circus performers and animals got too old. All the performers split up and went to live all around the country. Oscar's friend Rosie the elephant was nowhere to be found so Oscar went around asking everyone where she was.

This interesting story is about friendship. The story is funny and original with clever patterning of language. It has emotional moments and the detailed illustrations are expressive.

It would appeal to all ages from five up.

References and further reading

Bruce, L. & Belling, O. 'Collaboration in action at Pennant Hills High School: students review the CBC shortlisted books', Scan 17(3), 1998, pp 10-13.

Carr, R. V. & James, A. The butterfly. Random House, 1996.

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

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

Focus on writing. NSW Department of Education & Training. 2000.

Rodda, E. Bob the builder & the elves. ABC Books, 1998.

Rothery, J. 'Making changes: developing an educational linguistics' in Literacy in society (edited by R. Hasan & G. Williams), Longman, 1996.

Shaw, J. 'The School Magazine', Scan 19(4), 2000, pp 36-37.

Thompson, C. & Gamble, K. The last circus. Hodder Children's, 1997.