C&T840FinaleBookPaper

JohnB.Coffey
UniversityofKansas
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AudienceandReaders

Thisbookhasbeencreatedforstudentsinthethirdgrade.Itwillprovidestudents

anopportunitytoreadaninformationaltexttheycanreadindependently,usingthekey

featuresembeddedintotheebook.Moststudentsinthethirdgradearereadingatthe

consolidatedalphabeticstage.Atthislevel,EhriandMcCormick(1998)argue,Students

shouldengageinmuchpracticeusingthevariousknowledgesourcesandstrategiesto

readwordsduringtextreadingsothatwordreadingbecomesautomaticandfluent

(p.156).Thefocusonteachingcomprehensionskillsandvocabularybecomesmore

prominent,asstudentsareaabletodecodeandunderstandvarioustextfeatures.

Topic

Everyday, students across the United States are being affected by airplanes. Some

of them fly to visit family and friends; other students live near busy airports. Nearly all of

them buy, use, or eat various products transported by aircraft. Flight is a very important,

yet many third graders are better able to identify a picture of Taylor Swift than the

inventors of the airplane. It is important that students know that air travel is now taken for

granted.

Throughout most of human history, such expedience was not possible. Here in

Ohio, students should be even more inclined to read about the Wright brothers because

they study Ohio history. The Wright brothers lived in Dayton; the state license plate

includes a picture of their plane; the major Air Force base is named for them.

Common Core Standards

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CCSS.ELALiteracy.RI.3.7

Useinformationgainedfromillustrations(e.g.,maps,photographs)andthewordsina

texttodemonstrateunderstandingofthetext(e.g.,where,when,why,andhowkey

eventsoccur).

CCSS.ELALiteracy.RI.3.1

Askandanswerquestionstodemonstrateunderstandingofatext,referringexplicitlyto

CCSS.ELALiteracy.RI.3.4

Determinethemeaningofgeneralacademicanddomainspecificwordsandphrasesina

textrelevanttoagrade3topicorsubjectarea.

CCSS.ELALiteracy.RF.3.4

Readwithsufficientaccuracyandfluencytosupportcomprehension.

EbookFeatures

PrintFeatures

Thetextinthisbookwaswrittenina14pt.fonttomakeitmoreappealingtoyoung

readers.Subtitleswerepostedinabluetexttodrawattentiontoanewchapterinthe

book.Rarevocabularywordswerewritteninboldtoillustratetheirimportance.They

werealsoconnectedtoaglossaryforstudentstoutilize.Atableofcontentswasplacedat

thefrontofthebooktohelpstudentsfindcertainsections.Amaphasbeenincludedas

well.

Word Recognition

Students in the third grade, who are reading at the consolidated-alphabetic level,

are able to decode and recognize more words. EhriandMcCormick(1998)notethatit is

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easier [for students] to store longer words in memory (p.154); therefore, I have included

multisyllabic words in this text. I have also used some analogous words, so students can

learn new words by recognizing familiar ones. For example, the words gliding and

glider can be derived by the reader, once he or she becomes familiar with word glide.

Fluency

Fluency is one of the main pillars of literacy that has been identified by the National

Reading Panel. The focus is often on rate, accuracy, and expression, but comprehension is

becoming a fourth element of evaluation. Marcell (2011) illustrates that students are more

likely to be engaged in reading, understanding, and re-reading of texts, if they can read

about factual information (p. 448).

One of the best practices that an e-book can offer is a narrated audio version of

the text being read by an experienced reader. This would be ideal, but the technical

difficulties of using a Macintosh with the CAST software made this task unpractical.

Vocabulary
Vocabularyacquisitionisamainobjectiveofthistext.Studentsinthirdgradeare

abletolearnandusemanymorewordsoncetheyhavereachedtheconsolidated

alphabeticstage.Twodozenvocabularywordshavebeenselectedfromvariousgrade

appropriatelists.Althoughthismanynewwordsforonetext,Brabham,Buskist,

Henderson,Paleologos,&Baugh(2012)arguethatvocabularyfloodscanbepowerful

toolstoimmersestudentswithrichvocabularywords.

Theauthorsrecommendhavingstudentsusethevocabularyinmeaningfulways.Instead

ofjustlearningthewordsindependently,studentsnowhaveatextthatincorporatesmany

ofthewordsinasingletext.Similarly,thewordsareusedrepetitively,whichhasbeen
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showntobeabestpractice.Studentscanusetheglossaryinitially,iftheydonotknowa

word;however,manywordsareusedtwothreetimesinthetext,sostudentsshould

begintoretaintheirmeanings.

Comprehension

Severaltoolshavebeenusedthroughoutthetexttopromotecomprehension.The

picturesmaybeonethemosthelpfultoolsforstudents.Maderazo,Martens,Croce,

Martens,Doyle,etal.(2010)findthatwithyoungerstudents,Readingthepictorialtext

providedstudentswithanotherpathintothestorythroughwhichtoconstructmeaning

(p.445).Pictureswerecarefullyselectedtobebothinterestingandmeaningfultothetext.

Literalquestionshavebeenavoidedaswell.HarveyandGoudvis(2013)statethat

Answeringliteralquestionsistheleastsophisticatedpracticeofcomprehension(p.435)

Contrarily,thecomprehensionquestionsposedbythecoachesandattheendofthestory

areoftenopenendedquestionsthatrequireinferencestobemade.Theytapintowhat

HarveyandGoudvis(2013)callthecomprehensioncontinuum.Forexample,aquestion

isasked,WhatdoyouthinklifewouldbelikeiftheWrightbrothershadnotinvented

theairplane?

Theconceptsillustratedinthistextareasfollows:flightwasnoteasilyachieved,

theWrightbrothersdidsomethingquiteremarkable,andaircrafthaschangedtheworld

forever.

BeforeReading

Beforethestudentbeginsreading,fourquestionsareposedaboutairplanes.They

arebroadlystatedandmeanttopromptthestudenttothinkabouthisorherbackground
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knowledge.ThenextpageshowsapictureofOrvilleWrightintheairplane.Another

questionisposedtothestudentaboutthepicture.

DuringReading

Studentsareaskedquestionsbythecoachthroughoutthetext.Captionsprovide

notesonthepicturestohelpthereadercomprehendthetext.Theglossaryhelpswiththe

unfamiliarvocabularywordsinthetext.

AfterReading

Attheconclusionofthetext,thereaderisaskedtocompareandcontrastthe

originalWrightFlyertoamodernaircraft.Fivecomprehensionquestionsareaskedatthe

conclusionofthetext.Onceagain,theyarehigherlevelquestionsonthecomprehension

continuum.
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References

Brabham, E., Buskist, C., Henderson, S. C., Paleologos, T., & Baugh, N. (2012).

Flooding vocabulary gaps to accelerate word learning. The Reading Teacher, 65(8),

523-533.

Ehri, L.C. and McCormick, S. (1998). Phases of word learning: implications for

instruction with delayed or disabled readers. Reading writing quarterly: overcoming

learning difficulties, 14:2, 135-163, DOI 10.1080/1057356980140202.

Harvey, S. and Goudvis (2013). Comprehension at the core. The reading teacher. 66:6, p

432-439.

Maderazo, C., Martens, P., Croce, K., Martens, R, Doyle, M. et al., (2010). Language

Arts. 87:6, 437-446.