Cross age tutoring: alternatives to the reading resource room for struggling adolescent readers

Journal of Instructional Psychology, Dec, 2001 by Douglas Fisher

In addition to the evidence found in writing journals, tutors were often provided an opportunity to create words for wordless books. For the book Time Flies (Rohmann, 1994), Shallen created words for each page. She used large Post-It[R] notes to write her words and stick them to the appropriate page. Shallen re-drafted her writing several times to get it just the way she wanted for her sharing with the second graders. For example, on one of the pages, she wrote, "The beautiful little bird is eaten by the big mean dinosaur." On the following page, Shallen wrote, "Our bird friend is not dead. She is flying inside the dinosaur. What's that? Watch out for those teeth! Our beautiful bird friend thinks that she will go explore the dinosaur's throat." Other students created words for Why (Popov, 1996), Moonlight (Ormerod, 1982), Window (Baker, 1991), and The Snowman (Briggs, 1978).

Implications for Middle School Reading Classes

Several factors are most likely related to the successes experienced by these struggling middle school readers. While the structure of the Strategic Reading class was likely key to students' successes and tutoring was the foundation of the class, causal relationships are difficult to establish. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to suggest that cross age tutoring can benefit struggling middle school students for at least three reasons, including an authentic reason for literacy, regular feedback and modeling, and the integration of writing into the reading curriculum.

First, the students in the strategic reading class were provided with authentic reasons for engaging in class activities. They wanted to understand the words of the books that they would have to read to younger students. They also wanted to write words for the wordless books that would capture their listener's interest. This essentially made the use of picture books "okay" for middle school readers. The models of text provided in these picture books probably provided a scaffold for students as they became less fluent. The fact that they were going to read these books to first and second graders reduced the stigma and social pressures that many adolescents associate with "baby" books. Other teachers and researchers have found the use of picture books and wordless books useful with adolescent readers, including Mundy and Hadaway (1999), Robb (1998), Cassady (1998), and Mitchell and Pullum (1998).

Second, the students in the strategic reading class received regular feedback about their reading and writing, mostly from younger readers and writers who they tutored. These middle school students knew what it was like to be bored in school and certainly did not want to create this situation for the students they tutored. In effect, this feedback loop reinforced their desire to become increasingly literate. Further, the students in the strategic reading class regularly heard books read to them by their teacher and by their peers. This is consistent with previously published research, including the work of Ouellette, Dagostino, and Carifio (1999) which indicated that read alouds were an effective strategy for improving the comprehension of less fluent readers. Thus the feedback, modeling, and accountability created within the strategic reading class seemed to increase both motivation and skill while previous student-level accountability systems (e.g, failing grades, retention) did not.