Re-envisioning Reading and Writing Through Combined-Text Picture Books

© 2005 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 456–468) doi:10.1598/JAAL.48.6.2

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 8 : 6 M A R C H 2 0 0 5456

Deborah Dean, Sirpa Grierson

Re-envisioning reading and writing throughcombined-text picture books

Re-envisioning reading and writing throughcombined-text picture books

Guided practice in reading and writing a

combined-text picture book provides

scaffolding for students to develop

sensitivity to different texts, to

what they do when they read, and

to how they do it.

How can we help our students becomemore thoughtful, strategic readers andwriters? Combined-text picture books that unitemultiple genres of expository and narrative writingprovide tools for middle through high school stu-dents to re-envision reading and writing. As Paretti(1999) noted,“a genre is not simply a formal struc-ture but an epistemological framework—differentgenres provide different ways of knowing” (p. 122).That is, different genres provide different lenses ona topic (Murray, 1968). What one genre constrains,another allows. Through multiple genres, writersproduce text that is richer and more fully nuancedthan single-genre texts. Thus, the learning poten-tial from well-designed and written combinedtexts is great; these texts give teachers an opportu-nity to familiarize students with a variety of genreswhile teaching specific strategies for comprehend-ing and writing in those genres.

One such text, An Island Scrapbook: Dawnto Dusk on a Barrier Island by Virginia Wright-Frierson (2002), presents a peaceful portrait oflife on a barrier island off the coast of NorthCarolina in the form of a scrapbook. The first-person narrative of an artist and her daughter’s

day spent exploring the natural wonders of theisland is enhanced with lists, handwritten notes,brief reports, labeled watercolors, and more.Other examples of combined-text picture books

include Jane Yolen and HeidiStemple’s The Wolf Girls (2001), TheMary Celeste (2002), and Roanoke:The Lost Colony (2003), which intro-duce intriguing mysteries for readersto solve as they examine facts andclues for evidence presented throughthree genres: a storyline, vocabularylists, and expository paragraphs.

As Chapman and Sopko (2003) noted, com-bined texts are engaging and can help studentslearn to read for a specific purpose. Withoutteacher scaffolding, however, these texts can proveto be problematic because of the sheer quantity ofconcepts as well as the variety of genre types, eachwith its unique contribution to the overall text.The strategies in this article are described as theywere used with one seventh-grade class readingthe combined-text picture book One Leaf Ridesthe Wind (Mannis, 2002); however, we have alsoadapted these ideas to other grade levels and othercombined texts.

Research on explicit reading comprehensioninstruction indicates that in order for students toread strategically (purposefully and critically),teachers should give them a specific purpose (Flood,Lapp, & Fisher, 2003). To this end, students areasked to investigate the text of One Leaf Rides theWind, first to ascertain its structure and then to usethat knowledge to create their own combined-text

Dean teaches at BrighamYoung University (3119JKHB, Provo, UT 84602-

6245, USA). E-mail [email protected] teaches at the

same University.

picture books. Lessons employing active modelingof the desired processes (Baumann, 1983;Rosenshine & Stevens, 1984; Tovani, 2000) fol-lowed by guided practice (Flood et al., 2003; Hoyt& Therriault, 2003) are implemented as part of aprocess approach. As the students work with theseparate texts in One Leaf Rides the Wind they areencouraged to (1) think metacognitively, (2) acti-vate prior knowledge, (3) question the author, (4)include sensory imagery to deepen comprehen-sion, (5) make inferences, and (6) synthesize theirfindings (Keene & Zimmermann, 1997). Teachersemploy a gradual release of responsibility to en-courage students to read independently and even-tually to write their own combined-text stories(Baumann, 1984; Flood et al., 2003).

Reading a combined-text picture book is like“peeling an onion” (Chapman & Sopko, 2003, p.237). Discoveries are made by reading one layer oftext at a time. One Leaf Rides the Wind is a count-ing book that requires students to access and ne-gotiate three distinct “texts”: pictures, haikupoetry, and expository paragraphs (see Figures 1and 2). Each text works in harmony or conjunc-tion with the others—as the haiku poetry revealsthe beauty and grace of the garden in both toneand rhythm, the informative paragraphs addbackground knowledge or details, which in turnare depicted in the facing page illustrations.

Teachers with whom we have worked statedthat after the first time they attempted to read com-bined texts with their classes, they realized howmuch support and talk must go on in order for theseparate genres to be successfully negotiated.Because our overarching purpose is for students touse the book as a model for their own writing, werecommend reading and analyzing each layer oftext separately. This gives students a feel for howeach genre works and facilitates comprehension.

Picture walk: Discoveringvisual text The first layer of text contains the illustrations.Through an activity modeled on the picture walk

Re-envisioning reading and writing through combined-text picture books

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 8 : 6 M A R C H 2 0 0 5 457

B I B L I O G R A P H Y O F C O M B I N E D -T E X T P I C T U R E B O O K S

Byrd, Robert. Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer.New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 2003.

A beautiful book that contains a primary narrativeof da Vinci’s life with informational text boxes thatelaborate on a variety of topics mentioned in thenarrative. Quotes fill the end pages.

Cheney, Lynne. America: A Patriotic Primer.New York: Scholastic, 2002.

This text provides information about the UnitedStates in an ABC book format, each pagecontaining a number of genres that vary,including borders that are informational. Theback of the book contains Notes on the Text.

Cole, Joanna. The Magic School Bus: Insidethe Earth. New York: Scholastic, 1987.

One in a series, the text combines narration(complete with bubble dialogue) with insets offactual information presented in lists, dictionaryentries, or short reports.

Hicks, Peter. You Wouldn’t Want to Live in aWild West Town! New York: Franklin Watts,2002.

Part of a series, this book combines narrative,practical information for surviving in the timeperiod, comics, and illustrations which provideadditional factual information about the timeperiod (a good example of using voice innonfiction writing).

Mannis, Celeste Davidson. The Queen’sProgress. New York: Viking, 2003.

This is an ABC Book combining poetry withexpository text that details Elizabeth I’s annualjourney through the countryside.

Martin, Jacqueline Briggs. Snowflake Bentley.Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

In this book, a sidebar text runs concurrently withthe story text, providing more informational/factual material (including direct quotes) in amore formal voice. Caldecott Medal.

Sis, Peter. Starry Messenger. New York: VHPSHoltzbrinck (Sunburst), 2000.

This text has a story line about Galileo’s life, but

additional features, such as quotes from his own

(continued)

(Richards & Anderson, 2003), a teacher-led pre-reading strategy for enhancing visual literacy(Thibault, 2003), a teacher “walks” studentsthrough the illustrations in the book, beginning

with the cover. The teacher guides viewing by ask-

ing students to look for unique ideas, themes, and

rich details to facilitate prior knowledge activa-

tion and schema engagement. In this manner,

students are led to the more subtle aspects of il-

lustrations and the overall message of a picture

book instead of merely focusing on extraneous

details (Galda, 1993). Patterned after Richards

and Anderson’s STW (What Do I See? What Do I

Think? What Do I Wonder?) strategy (2003) and

Ogle’s K-W-L activity (1986), questions associat-

ed with the picture walk are designed to promote

critical thinking about visual text.

To begin, students are asked to examine the

title and front cover of the book, One Leaf Rides

the Wind. Possible questions include the following:

• Look at the front cover. What do you think this story

is about?

• Where do you think this book takes place? Why?

• What is the girl holding in her hands?

• Does this picture remind you of anything?

• Turn the page. What do you see? What do you think

is happening?

• What do you think will happen next? Why?

Student responses are recorded on an over-

head transparency sheet. These responses give the

teacher a sense of what interests students, what

prior knowledge they possess, and what details

need to be addressed or clarified. During the pic-

ture walk, the teacher could also point out other

connecting elements, such as the subtle story line

about a cat and a bird that is interwoven through-

out the illustrations—a charming aside that less

experienced readers otherwise might miss.

Exploring text: Discussingpatterns Once prior knowledge is activated and students

“read” and discuss the illustrations, they are

ready to examine the second layer of text, the



B I B L I O G R A P H Y O F C O M B I N E D -T E X T P I C T U R E B O O K S ( c o n t i n u e d )

writing in sidebars and a timeline at the end,

provide added information and interest. The

illustrations are informative as well as attractive.

Caldecott Honor book.

Stanley, Diane. Leonardo Da Vinci. New

York: William Morrow and Co., 1996.

In addition to the story of da Vinci’s life, this

picture book contains information about the

Renaissance, vocabulary lists and pronunciation

guides, and a bibliography for further research.

Illustrations enhance textual content.

Wright-Frierson, Virginia. An Island

Scrapbook: Dawn to Dusk on a Barrier Island. New

York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

The primary text of this book is a first-person

account of a mother and daughter spending a day

on the beach of a barrier island. The items they

see and find through their day inspire the labeled

sketches included as well as insets of lists and

simple reports that provide additional

information.

Yolen, Jane and Heidi E.Y. Stemple. The Wolf

Girls: An Unsolved Mystery From History. New

York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

This book uses three text forms—a narrative

presentation of the story, insets such as pages

from a notebook that contain background

material and journal excerpts, and definition

boxes to help younger readers with the

vocabulary—to present the clues to a mystery,

but not the answer. The book ends with the

reader being invited to review the clues and draw

an individual conclusion.

informational paragraphs. A paragraph from thebook for the number 5 follows:

The gently upturned roofs of the pagoda stand for earth,

water, fire, wind, and sky. With its soaring silhouette,

the pagoda is a prominent feature of the garden,

and a favorite place to pray or meditate.

Reading this informational passage aloud andthen discussing and rereading parts helps stu-dents digest the details, study the form, and buildbackground knowledge for understanding thehaiku, the third layer of the text. Through teachermodeling, students are reminded how to skim,scan, underline, and use key words from the textto make it their own (Harvey, 1998). New vocab-ulary words, such as pagoda, silhouette, and medi-tate, are examined to acquire “word knowledge[that] drives efficient reading and writing”(Templeton, 2003, p. 747).

While reading this second layer, students andteacher tackle confusing parts of the paragraphs.For instance, the paragraph above discusses thefive elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and sky.By referring students to the accompanying illus-tration page, teachers help students bridge theconceptual gap between the five elements and thesymbolic representation of five roofs on a pagoda.It is interesting to have students consider at thispoint why a numbering system is used as a formatfor the book—and how it might be different witha different organizational strategy. Perhaps theycould consider what other topics might lendthemselves to such a format—or why alphabetbooks might be better for some topics.

The final layer of text is the haiku poetry.While students will investigate the specific proper-ties of haiku at a later point, at this stage teachersask students to comment on the overall sensory im-pressions they receive during their reading of thepoems. They might ask students to consider whythe author chose to use this particular type of poet-ry with this subject. By this third reading of thebook, students are acquainted with many concepts

surrounding the theme of the Japanese garden andhave a greater sense of what the haiku refer to.

Upon completing the multiple readings of thetext, students begin to see emerging patterns. Eachpage contains a number at the top, followed by ahaiku poem in the center, and a short informativeparagraph at the bottom of the page. Each page isdesigned around a single number that is linkedwith a concept found in the Japanese garden. Thenumber relates to a topic introduced in the poemand explained with more detail in the paragraph.



F i g u r e 1A n e x a m p l e o f h a i k u

p o e t r y a n d e x p o s i t o r y t e x t

Reprinted from One Leaf Rides the Wind by CelesteDavidson Mannis; illustrated by Susan KathleenHartung. Copyright © 2002 by Celeste DavidsonMannis, text. Used by permission of Viking Penguin,a division of Penguin Young Readers Group (USA)Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Allrights reserved.

After the class reading of this sample passagestudents are divided into small groups and as-signed two or three pages from the book so thatthey can continue their investigation. Students arereminded to use the model of the whole-class ac-tivity as they examine these texts for commonali-ties and patterns. They take notes on papersdivided into two columns—one for the haiku andone for the paragraphs. As they read, studentsshould ascertain how the poems and paragraphsadd to the book. We posed this question: What dothe different kinds of texts do and how do they doit? The point is not that the students will find allthe answers but that they will gain practice in in-vestigating texts for these concerns. Each smallgroup’s findings will contribute something, withthe teacher’s guidance, to the learning that follows.

Venn diagram: Examining andcomparing textual differences After the small groups have had time to examinetheir passages, teachers initiate a whole-class ac-tivity where students bring their findings togetherto uncover further intertextual connectionsthrough rereading and discussion. A graphic or-ganizer in the form of a Venn diagram provides avisual summary of a discussion of One Leaf Ridesthe Wind. Discussion allows students to “interactwith text ideas, consider them from differentpoints of view, to converse internally about them”(Kucan & Beck, 2003, pp. 24–25). Student an-swers are recorded on an overhead projectionsheet containing three circles. Differences arewritten in the outer parts of the Venn circleswhile similarities are recorded in the overlappingsections. Figure 3 is a model Venn diagram to il-lustrate suggested divisions and placement ofideas based upon discussion.

Teacher-directed questions such as the fol-lowing can be used to further clarify textual in-formation:

• What form are the poems written in? (Haiku with5–7–5 syllable count.)

• What kind of picture book format is this? (A count-ing book.)

• What type of content do the prose passages contain?(Informative details, e.g., customs, beliefs, surprisingfacts.)

• What theme do the numbers introduce through theillustrations? (The travels of a cat, a blue bird, and agirl through a Japanese garden.)

As students discover, the illustrations expand de-tails and facts that are recounted in the haiku andinformative passages of text. The illustrations linkthe texts, summarize the haiku, and provide a spa-tial sense to what occurs in the haiku. Each in-formative passage begins with a topic sentencerelated to the Japanese garden. These clarifying de-tails echo the topic that has been introducedthrough the illustration on the facing page. Eachsection of informative text is replete with surprising



F i g u r e 2I l l u s t r a t i o n f r o m O n e L e a f

R i d e s t h e W i n d

Reprinted from One Leaf Rides the Wind by CelesteDavidson Mannis; illustrated by Susan KathleenHartung. Copyright © 2002 by Celeste DavidsonMannis, text. Used by permission of Viking Penguin,a division of Penguin Young Readers Group (USA)Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Allrights reserved.

details, historical facts and customs, and unusualvocabulary. The haiku passage is designed arounda counting-book pattern based upon the topic sen-tence. Each number is introduced above the haikuand then incorporated somewhere in the 5–7–5pattern of the poem. The haiku employs a personalvoice and provides a link between the prose pas-sages and illustrations. The processes described inthe multiple readings and the Venn exercise allowreaders to transform knowledge that they gainfrom reading and discussion into strategic behav-ior (Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983).

Writing for varying purposesThe reading strategies students have used to thispoint have provided them with declarative

knowledge—the “what” of how a variety of texttypes work. Procedural knowledge—“how” to usethe “what” to create their own texts—comes next.As Collins (1998) noted,“In composition, proce-dural knowledge supplies the actions, as a series ofsteps involving the manipulation of declarativeknowledge, to accomplish one’s purposes in writ-ing” (p. 52). Hillocks (1995) reminded us that nomatter how explicit the declarative knowledge is, ifit is removed from the procedural, students don’treally learn from it. The procedural strategies de-scribed here will be exemplified through one groupfrom the seventh-grade class discussed earlier.

The first step of the writing process encour-ages students to find a topic, after which teacherscan begin helping students through the inquiryand investigation that will prepare them to write.



F i g u r e 3 Ve n n d i a g r a m f o r O n e L e a f R i d e s t h e W i n d

Haiku format5-7-5

Introduces the topic

Number posted and written into poem

POEM

Personal voice

Counting bookSpatial

Summarizesthe poem

Vocabulary

Leaf

Information text

Paragraphs develop topic

Content: nature, tea ceremony

Surprising/clarifying

details

Historical details/

customs

Links written texts

Journey through the garden

Cat and bird interaction

Shows details and facts

ILLUSTRATION

PROSE

Depending on the needs of the students, teacherscan choose to do the writing in groups or as indi-viduals. If the writing is done in groups, as theseventh-grade class did, the class decides on a top-ic for a class book. If writing is completed individ-ually, as some older classes have chosen, studentschoose their own topics (and sometimes differentstyles of poetry to fit their topics). Both of thesemethods have validity. As Chandler-Olcott andMahar (2001) noted, when students choose atopic with the teacher, teachers offer options in anenvironment that helps students learn more aboutchoosing appropriately for a particular assign-ment. Such guidance “allows a unique opportuni-ty for teachers and students to meet in Vygotsky’s(1978) zone of proximal development” (p. 43).Allowing students to choose a topic individuallyhelps them find and create personal interests inwriting, as well as providing motivation and asense of writing as something that matters.

Either way, students should practice strate-gies to conduct their inquiry in a way that reflectsa good research model by researching broadly un-til the focus is clear and then researching deeplyto develop the focus. Strategies for helping stu-dents improve their writing processes are“amenable to instruction” (Farnan & Dahl, 2003,p. 996). Such strategic instruction is the object ofthe process described here, that of balancingteacher assistance with independent performance(Collins, 1998).

Broad research: Generatingpossibilities Researching broadly involves students in lookingat a topic for possibilities. A research guide forthis stage of inquiry (Figure 4) encourages stu-dents to go beyond a single idea to find at leastthree possibilities before they stop. Such a guideprovides a model to help students learn a keyconcept related to research and to learning ingeneral: to look for more than a single answer orpossibility. Such guidance is an important part ofyoung writers’ development as they learn to gen-

erate ideas, one of the four categories of activity(along with formulating meaning, evaluating, andrevising) important for writing development(Langer, 1986).

In generating ideas for a class book, stu-dents from the class brainstormed many possibletopics and decided to focus on a country aboutwhich they wanted to know more. In further nar-rowing the topic, the class decided to write itsbook on New Zealand, and student groups wereeach assigned a number for the counting book tohelp them focus their broad research. Studentsknew from their prior investigation of One LeafRides the Wind that some numbers connect moredirectly to the content than others. For example,the number 5 related to the five roofs of the pago-da, each symbolizing an element. However, thenumber 7 was associated with the sweets on thetray during the tea ceremony, and certainly therecould be any number of sweets on the tray. Fromtheir reading and discussion, then, students knewto look for both kinds of ideas: those connected tothe number directly and those that were impor-tant to the topic but not connected to any specificnumber. One group, composed of Bethany,Justin, and Asia (pseudonyms), was assigned thenumber 8 for its page. From their broad researchand through use of the research guide, the stu-dents noted the following as possible ideas fortheir focus: cultural greetings (connected: 8 peo-ple), government office hours (connected: open 8hours), and sheep (important but unconnected:the people there raise sheep). The class looked ateach group’s possible ideas and voted on the topicfor each number. Bethany, Justin, and Asia wereassigned the focus of sheep.

Deep research: Focusing in After establishing a topic focus, students shouldresearch it deeply. This concept is essential toquality inquiry. As Reither (2000) urged, “We needto bring curiosity, the ability to conduct produc-tive inquiry, and an obligation for substantiveknowing into our model of the process of writing”(p. 291). Like Reither, Hillocks (1995) posited the



need for deep inquiry in helping students learn towrite: “If we are seriously concerned with theteaching of writing, we must ensure that inquiry isincorporated into our model of what writing in-volves” (p. 15). Hillocks later noted that such in-quiry “lies at the heart of writing of any kind” (p.92). One way teachers can help students under-stand this important concept is to have them re-view several picture books that are based onresearch. In addition to the primary text, these of-ten tell the story of the author’s inquiry, depictingan amazing depth and quantity of research.

One such text is The Yellow House by SusanGoldman Rubin (2001). In the author’s note at theback of the book, Rubin reports that her “researchbegan with a trip to Chicago to meet with the cu-rators” of an exhibit of Gauguin and van Gogh.She “flew home with a briefcase stuffed with ma-terial—letters from the artist, excerpts from jour-nals, and chapters from critical works written byscholars. I carried a bag full of books and sent formore” (p. 30). She reports how much time shespent in this process—and it’s impressive. The il-lustrator also has a note in the book and makes



F i g u r e 4R e s e a r c h g u i d e

Names _________________________

_________________________

_________________________

_________________________

Research guide 1

Our country is ________________________________

Our number is __________

Possible ideas for the number Facts, details, and vocabulary for each idea

1.

2.

3.

reference to the research he conducted for the il-lustrations. By exploring how published authorsconduct deep research, students better understandthe broad nature of inquiry and the importance ofdelving deeply into any topic they write about.

In researching deeply, students search for in-formative details that would be interesting to areader. Teachers direct them to look in a variety ofsources (including other picture books and com-bined texts) and to collect more notes than theythink they will use. Teachers remind students ofthe many books and letters Rubin studied in herpreparation. Figure 5 is an example of a note-taking guide that can help students organize theirinvestigation at this stage. Bethany, Justin, and

Asia found the names of different breeds of sheep,information about what sheep contribute to theeconomy, the importance of sheep to the peopleof New Zealand, and even some history abouthow sheep were transported over 100 years ago.

Because the research may have taken stu-dents away from the model text for a while, stu-dents revisit the paragraphs from One Leaf Ridesthe Wind before they begin drafting to review thepurposes and tone of the paragraph that they hadnoted from their reading investigation. With theirnotes and this review, they are ready to beginwriting the paragraph. To start, students write abroad sentence, one that connects the topic andthe focus. Then they write their notes into



F i g u r e 5N o t e - t a k i n g g u i d e

Name ___________________________

Topic ___________________________

Number _________________________

Focus ___________________________

Sources:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Put the number of the source next to the notes you take from it in the categories below.

Facts about my focus:

Interesting details about my focus:

Vocabulary about my focus:

supporting sentences for the rest of the para-graph. Following this process, Bethany, Justin,and Asia produced the following first draft. Notethat they decided to leave out the information intheir notes about refrigerating sheep for shippingin the 1880s.

New Zealand raise lots of sheep. They raise so muchthat everyone in New Zealand could get 14 sheep.New Zealand is ranked one of the world’s most im-portant sheep producing country. The Corridalesheep, witch is a crossbrea, and the Romney sheep arevery populare in New Zealand. They provide newton,wool, and lamp. They use Romney sheep’s wool tomake their carpets.

Like many beginning writers (Bereiter &Scardamalia, 1987), these writers listed their ideasin random fashion, simply rewording their notesand producing a draft that could use reworking.

Revision: Filtering out the extraneous Revision strategies can help students understandwhat information is most interesting, how to or-ganize that information more effectively, and howbest to communicate what they find most inform-ative. Still, beginning writers need direction andhelp in considering revision as anything beyondsimply recopying. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987)noted that younger writers can improve revisionskills through practicing certain patterns of think-ing and acting. Having peer groups read the para-graphs and underline or highlight the ideas theyfind most interesting is one way to help youngwriters understand how to filter out extraneous oruninteresting material. Peer groups can also prac-tice reorganizing the ideas by cutting the sentencesapart and rearranging them in a variety of ways,suggesting changes they find effective. Practicingwith model sentences is another way students canlearn to structure sentences that employ effectivesyntax. Teachers can take one or two interestingsentence structures from the model book and putthem on the board for students to imitate. Afterpracticing some of these revision strategies, here isthe paragraph Bethany, Justin, and Asia turned in:

New Zealand is one of the world’s greatest sheep pro-ducing countries. They produce so many sheep theeveryone is New Zealand could have 14 sheep. NewZealand’s most common sheep are the Romney sheepand the Corriedate crossbred sheep. The sheep’s wool isused and makes carpet, Newton, wool, and lamp. [sic]

The students have combined ideas to avoid repeti-tion, creating a much more effective topic sen-tence. The sentence revision that involves the twobreeds of sheep is more fluent and syntacticallymature. Although typos and one confusing sen-tence are still present in the final version, the writ-ing itself is more effective from the revision efforts.

Poetry: Expressing informationcreativelyOnce students have their paragraphs completed,they are ready to draft the poem. Bethany, Justin,and Asia—and the rest of the groups in theirclass—used haiku poems as the combined-textmodel did. Other classes, however, substituteddifferent poetic forms that fit their topics better.In any case, students need to review their readinginvestigation to remind them of the content andpurpose of the poem in the context of this com-bined text. As Farnan and Dahl (2003) recog-nized, students’ “understandings of genre...aresupported by genre experiences” (p. 998).Students will need to be exposed to the poemsagain and again, and they will also need to inves-tigate the specific properties of haiku poetry.

In the back of One Leaf Rides the Wind, theauthor provides two short paragraphs that notonly tell about the syllable expectations (5–7–5)of a haiku, but that also briefly describe the over-all intent of this unique poetry: “Spare style andsnapshot-like images of nature stimulate thesenses and challenge the reader to make connec-tions between the natural world and the nature ofman.” Although the abstraction of connecting na-ture and humanity may be beyond some youngerstudents, this introduction combined withrereading some of the poems from the book helpsthem gain a sense of what haiku is and does. With




that background, students begin to draft, remem-bering that the poem connects the number to the focus of the page. Bethany’s group workedthrough some sentence starters and several draftsbefore they arrived at this haiku they placed ontheir finished page:

Fluffy and wooly

Shaving their wool for warm coats

Eight sheep pure as snow[.]

Qualley (1993), who advocated a questioningstrategy for connecting reading to writing, noted,“when students experience active reading in con-junction with their own writing, a transferencefrom one process to the other is more likely to oc-cur” (p. 114). This is evident as these studentsmove from the questioning stages of reading thehaiku poetry to their writing of the poems.

To prepare for publishing, students placetheir two texts and an illustration on a page ac-cording to the layout frame decided on by theclass so that the book’s pages have parallel for-matting. Figure 6 shows Bethany, Justin, andAsia’s published contribution to their class book.Each group also prepares a bibliography that theteacher combines into a single bibliography forthe entire book. The bibliography that accompa-nied Bethany, Justin, and Asia’s page includedthree kinds of sources: a book, New Zealand:Enchantment of the World (Fox, 1991), an onlinesite, CultureGrams (www.culturegrams.com),and an encyclopedia. Being responsible for re-porting their sources helps students becomeaware that they are accountable for the ideas theylearn from their research—and it helps them tobecome more aware of the kinds of research thatwriters do even to prepare what may appear to besimple texts.

Scaffolding instructionAs Harvey demonstrated, “nothing is more criti-cal to quality writing than reading” (1998, p. 168).We believe this is due to the symbiotic relation-ship that exists between reading and writing

processes (Farnan & Dahl, 2003; Flood & Lapp,1987; Tierney & Pearson, 1984), a relationshipthat “require[s] similar abilities, similar analysisand synthesis—comparing and contrasting, con-necting and reevaluating—the same weighingand judging of ideas” (Jensen, 1984, p. 4).Building on that relationship by introducing in-teresting and enjoyable material, in turn, encour-ages students to read and write more frequentlyand, often, at greater lengths. Students in theclasses with which we have worked reported thatthey liked this project; their teachers reportedthat students who sometimes didn’t participate inwriting were more willing to do so with this as-signment. Positive attitudes certainly contributeto positive learning outcomes.

However, even with an increase in positiveattitudes and participation, teachers want toknow if this type of instruction improves stu-



F i g u r e 6B e t h a n y , J u s t i n ,a n d A s i a ’ s p a g e

dents’ strategic abilities with reading and writing.Likewise, it is important for students to under-stand how to translate situated learning into fu-ture experiences. As Elbow noted, “Learning newintellectual practices is not just a matter of prac-ticing them; it is also a matter of thinking andtalking about one’s practice” (2002, p. 113). Onething that the teachers we worked with did notattempt in their practice that would strengthenstudent learning—and help teachers and studentsbe aware of what learning occurred—is to requirea reflective piece from students at the end of theunit. By responding to questions such as the fol-lowing, students can begin to translate their skillsinto strategic behaviors that can be used for fu-ture reading and writing activities; from the an-swers, teachers will be better able to direct furtherlearning experiences:

• What practices of reading and writing did you dowith this assignment that helped you in completingthe assignment with more success?

• Why were these helpful to you—or how do youthink they contributed to your success?

• Which of the practices that you used might be of useto you in future reading and writing situations?

• Why do you think they might be helpful? In what sit-uations can you anticipate them being useful?

Although students’ initial experience with reflec-tive response may not be particularly strong, wehave found that with repetition, students canmove their situated learning into conditionalknowledge, allowing them to respond effectivelyto a variety of situations.

In making an argument for more explicitteaching in genre, Fahnestock (1993) pointed outthat “the ‘intuition’ that presumably suddenly ap-pears in college-level writers...is instead likely tobe the product of much earlier tuition” (p. 270).This “tuition,” in the form of guided practice,provides the scaffolding that allows students todevelop sensitivity to different texts—what theydo and how they do it. Explicit instruction, dis-cussion, and guided practice with the combined-text picture book One Leaf Rides the Wind,

combined with reflective writing and talkingabout their experiences, enables students to takeimportant steps in their development as strategicreaders and writers.

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Re-envisioning Reading and Writing Through Combined-Text Picture Books