Abstract of

The Flight of Reading: Shifts in Instruction, Orchestration, and Attitudes Through Classroom Theatre

Shelby A. Wolf

This study follows an ethnically diverse, third- and fourth-grade urban classroom of school-labeled remedial readers as they moved from their daily instruction in round robin reading to the construction of a classroom theatre in which they interpreted and performed literary text. Unlike most studies of drama in the classroom, here I focus more on the shifts in decoding and comprehension than on literary interpretation, arguing that this is an aspect of dramatic work rarely researched. Through participant observation, audio and video recording, artifacts, and interviews, I analyzed the patterns of children's reading over time. In this piece, reading is metaphorically compared to flight, emphasizing that shifts in the sense of what it means to be literate are often limited to those who have positive and repeated access to text with ample opportunities for expressing their understandings through multiple symbolic systems. These shifts are enhanced or limited by at least three components: teachers' instructional strategies, children's orchestration of reading resources, and children's and teachers' attitudes toward reading. In this study, the children experienced the flight of reading—an experience that broadened instruction and available resources as well as changed attitudes from doubt to belief, if only for a short time. In their flight, the children achieved linguistic and physical wingspread as interpretations expanded to include negotiated and extended discussion enfolding personal experience, art, voice, and gesture. Most important, the children learned to shift perspectives not only to see themselves as characters or as actors, but to see themselves as readers.

Abstract from Wolf, S.A. (1998). The Flight of Reading: Shifts in Instruction, Orchestration, and Attitudes Through Classroom Theatre. Reading Research Quarterly, 33(4), 382–415. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.33.4.3