Education Book Review/Writing About Reading

Angelillo, Janet (2003) Writing About Reading: From Book Talk to Literary Essays, Grades 3-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Writing About Reading grew out of the author’s classroom experiences teaching students in the upper grades. Angelillo one day came to the realization that her students were suffering from what she calls a “middle-school malaise.” She notes that her “...students rarely if ever read each other’s writing about books, and they rarely wrote with a sense of authority or had something original to say about a text” (p. 1). These observations are consistent with some of the research findings we have obtained about writing from sources in upper grade classrooms in Texas and Canada (Horowitz & Olson, in press).

By introducing a conceptual shift that included consideration of real world, authentic writing activities; book reviews; book clubs; online chat rooms; and real genres of writing about reading for many people beyond the classroom teacher, Angelillo found that students could produce writing about reading that enhanced thinking and was related to the goals of much reading instruction. This approach, writing about reading to develop thinking about reading, is also related to student talking and conversations about books. Angelillo contends that teachers should project a seriousness about writing about reading so that students learn to respond powerfully to books and that this is “...one of the great truths they will learn in school” (p. 4).

The book shows teachers how to get started with writing about reading instruction and lessons. Angelillo offers a year-long schedule and timetables, provides guidelines for writing to be shared among students, reading aloud to model types of thinking, and student class partnerships. Response to literature has been given attention in educational research and practice, due to the work of Louise Rosenblatt. The present book is timely in that it specifies unique, new ways teachers can ask students to write, think, and talk about books that will ultimately enhance their reading and writing. The author shows prospective classroom teachers how to schedule units of study and mini-lessons, and provides teaching points and samples of lessons, short-term and yearlong, plus assessment approaches that are doable.

The author is persuasive because she is reality-based. She conveys the hurdles students in grades 3-8 may experience as they face what are multi-task writing requirements, usually to please the teacher. She says, “Watching children, you can see how hard it is for many of them to write. First they have to find their adhesive notes, then they have to sharpen their pencils, and finally, they must work hard to use their best penmanship so the teacher can read it. By the time they start to write, they’ve forgotten the smart things they wanted to say: they’ve muddled it with worrying about how to begin, how to spell it right, or how to say it in full sentences. By the time they start to write, they have nothing left to say” (p. 23). How true! But she doesn’t stop there. The pages go on to clarify what the teacher can do to model short, quick and efficient note taking-- a unique first step in writing. She suggests creating student partnerships, one student serves as the scribe and the other as the one who dictates the text. With time, students are writing about and producing their own literary essays or book-length manuscripts.

This short, swift volume, readable by the expert in one sitting, will be a valuable approach to reading instruction for students. Writing about and after reading becomes a vehicle for teacher scaffolding of new subjects and ideas to write about, development of student stances, and text structures and designs.

The author covers new ground in several ways. First, Angelillo’s book follows work published by Linda Flower and others on Writing-to-Read. Writing researchers have looked often at writing before reading as a means to stimulate and nurture reading. Instead, Angelillo’s book provides knowledge and insights for teachers on writing after and about reading beyond the short-response of fill-in the blanks. The writing proposed, progressing from "jots of information," to tracking information on adhesive notes, to more extended note taking, to journaling, to reviews and finally to essays represents a new approach to elementary school writing.

Second, Angelillo’s book is new in that it considers the forms writing will take about texts characterized as content genres. Angelillo considers how to use information for fresh, original thinking that would fit in with Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter’s notions of knowledge building in schools. Students can gain practice producing book reviews, author profiles, editorials, commentaries, and literary essays or position papers.

Third, this book offers suggestions for assessing writing about reading in ways not sufficiently addressed in the theoretical or applied instruction-based research. Writing about reading interestingly enough may result in students repeating the structures and styles that they read. While this copying of writing styles may sound undesirable, it is actually a child’s first step in learning about writing forms and how to compose them.

The book would be strengthened by some references to research studies to support the claims and approaches advocated. Some cases are incorporated – but they are incomplete portraits. Although not addressed in Angelillo’s book, two studies are pertinent and do provide research evidence for writing as a follow-up to the structures found in reading. Barbara Eckhoff (1983) reports how reading affects children’s writing, showing that children mimic the forms of writing that they are exposed to after they read. Almost ten years later, Peter Smagorinsky (1992) discussed how reading model essays affects writers, speaking to older students, and advocated the benefits of model essays.

Some other limitations are in order. The book does not speak to use of the computer or other media for writing about reading. Nor does it address the range of writers, from different locations in the world, with diverse first languages, and different knowledge or book backgrounds. Finally, the author calls for changing the lives of students “forever,” at the closing of the volume. More needs to be said about how to do this through assignments that are provocative as they stimulate writing about reading.

I do recommend the book for undergraduate reading and writing courses, particularly for courses housed in reading departments. In fact, it appears that many reading educators may be searching for a book like Angelillo’s to meet the needs of their new attention to writing to help reading and thinking. The book may even be useful in diagnosis classes that highlight writing for reading.

Angelillo accomplishes the goals she has in mind at the onset of the volume. Her book is a clearly presented source of information on writing following reading, is organized, and utterly useable. The author has used as a base for her thinking work by Lucy McCormick Calkins, having worked with her, and now as an affiliate of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. In addition, Angelillo also draws from Wayne Booth, Thomas Newkirk, Barbara Rogoff, Louise Rosenblatt, William Zinsser, and other respected writing experts. Janet Angelillo is also the author of A Fresh Approach to Teaching Punctuation, a book that I hope to read.

Libraries serving teacher education programs should purchase this book.

References

Angelillo, Janet & Calkins, Lucy McCormick (2002). A fresh approach to teaching punctuation: helping young writers use conventions with precision and purpose. New York : Scholastic Professional Books.

Eckhoff, Barbara. (1983, May). How reading affects children’s writing. Language Arts,60(5) 607-616.

Horowitz, Rosalind & Olson, David R. (in press). Texts that talk: The special and peculiar nature of classroom discourse and the crediting of sources. In R. Horowitz (Editor).Talking texts. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

Smagorinsky, Peter (1992). How reading model essays affects writers. In J. Irwin & M. Doyle (Eds.). Reading/Writing connections: Learning from research. (pp. 145-59). Newark, Delaware: International Reading Association.

Pages: 160 Price: $18.00 ISBN: 0-325-00578-8

Reviewed by Rosalind Horowitz, Professor, Discourse & Literacy Studies, at The University of Texas--San Antonio. Horowitz is recipient of The Gordon M.A. Mork Award, a distinguished alumni award, from The University of Minnesota for outstanding international contributions to literacy research.

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