Inquiry Project final report
Sherry Fiaux,
Rhode Island Family Literacy Initiative
photo: Kristen McKenna
| Family Literacy
Inquiry Project final report Sherry Fiaux, photo: Kristen McKenna |
|
Introduction
I have been teaching English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) for the past nine years, four of which have been at the Providence Public Library. Among the many community services offered by the library are intergenerational ESOL classes, which are part of a family literacy program that is offered in 5 library systems throughout the state of Rhode Island, under the name of the Rhode Island Family Literacy Initiative (RIFLI).
Our program encompasses three areas of learning: adult education, child education, and computer technology education, which take place simultaneously during class time. Each class has 3 staff members: a Lead ESOL Teacher, a Childrenšs Teacher and a Computer Teacher. The Childrenšs Teacher is responsible for creating age appropriate lessons and activities for children that tie into themes the adult students are studying, as well as assisting the ESOL teacher with phone calls, class registration, etc. The Computer teacher is responsible for researching and creating computer lessons for the students that also tie into themes and grammar the students have been studying. In short, we try to connect all three areas of learning in hopes that each component helps develop learning through repetition and extension of material taught by the teachers.
My responsibilities as Lead ESOL Teacher include teaching adult learners, providing family literacy activities, and coordinating the children's and computer components of the program. I teach in three different library branches: Olneyville, Smith Hill, and Knight Memorial. Classes in each of the library branches are held twice a week for 2 hours, totaling 4 hours a week.
The program at each of these library branches is unique. The number of adults and children and their ages play a significant role in the dynamics of the class and the lessons I prepare. For example, children in the morning classes are pre-school aged and as a result the family activities reflect that age. In contrast, the evening classes have children from the ages of 3 to 15, and therefore the interaction between adults and children is quite different from morning programs.
Our classes run in two cycles: September to December and January to May. The majority of students continue classes in the second cycle, although like most adult education programs, there is a small amount of turnover with each cycle.
A critical incident
When the 2002 academic year began, the class at the Smith Hill branch was the most challenging simply because it was the largest group. There were about 20 adults and 15 children who attended regularly. Of these 20 adults, approximately 12 had children in the program. The age range of all students was 3-60 years of age.
When the classes began in September, I planned an icebreaker activity designed to acquaint adults and children with one another. The adults were seated in a program room of the library, which is also used for childrenšs programs and which has a lot of stimuli like a colorful ABC rug and toys. When the children entered this room, the pre-school aged children immediately began darting around the room, jumping on the ABC carpet, and playing with any toy they could get their hands on. The older children stood at the side of their parents and participated in the activity for about 10 minutes, and then they joined the younger children in exploring the toys. I continued the activity with minimum participation from the children, but I felt as though the class was out of control: the children were playing, and the adults were speaking with one another, but the interaction between adults and children was not happening. At the end of class my thought was: how am I going to engage the learners at so many different levels? This question led me to a broader question, which I will elaborate on below. In light of this incident, I decided to focus my research and findings on this site. This longitudinal study ran from approximately October 2002 to May 2003.The Story of the Question
The topic of family literacy activities resurfaces at most of our staff meetings simply because creating lessons that incorporate learners of all ages has proved to be a challenge for most of the teachers in our program, including myself. These challenges include: engaging all students, including preschoolers, finding activities that tie into the theme we are working on at the moment, finding space in the library that is conducive to a large group, integrating a participatory approach, maintaining continuity of lesson content as well as the learning atmosphere, and helping adults, especially those without children, see the usefulness in family literacy activities.
In a program that meets only 4 hours a week, I was particularly mindful of making the best possible use of these four hours. Keeping in mind that we must teach computing skills in these four hours as well, I felt as though we couldn't afford to waste time doing activities that were not allowing all students to either practice or produce language in some way because adults, generally speaking, come to class expecting to learn English, and I didnšt want to disappoint them. I kept asking myself: What should I expect from these activities? What has to happen for learning to take place? What are students learning?
Prior to the start of classes in September, I had brainstormed with other teachers, borrowed and implemented ideas from other teachers, and experimented with my own ideas, yet I continued to feel unsettled about the goals and outcomes of these activities. In addition, I was faced with increasing pressure from administrators to hold true to the definition of our program, and therefore, to increase time spent in the classroom doing family activities. The notion of increasing time spent on lessons that I had already deemed somewhat unproductive was the impetus for change in my attitude towards teaching and in my practice. I decided to address this problem by taking it on as an action research project. By spending 9 months thinking about the challenges, collecting data that would help me analyze what was going on in the classroom, and by experimenting with solutions, I hoped to gain a different perspective, and as a result, feel more comfortable implementing whole group activities, knowing that they were fostering learning in some way. I therefore framed my research question to reflect my uncertainty about the nature and goals of family literacy activities as they pertain to our program. The question I began with was: What happens when children and adults are joined together to learn in a family literacy program?
Examining my own Assumptions
Part of the excavation process in this research has been examining my own assumptions, testing their validity, and figuring out how they might inform my teaching practice. Some of the assumptions I began with were:I kept these assumptions in mind throughout the process of collecting data and I will return to them in the conclusion of this report.
Defining Family Literacy
In the realm of adult education, I have read many different definitions of family literacy. Having worked in a family literacy program for 4 years, I assumed I understood the objectives of family literacy in general, and also how these objectives are specific to our program; however, when I was asked to articulate the meaning of family literacy, instead of coming up with an answer I came up with more questions: What are we (RIFLI) hoping to accomplish? How do our program directors define family literacy? How does family literacy enhance learning? What is the theory behind these goals?
After reading what other practitioners have said regarding family literacy, it is clear that program staff define family literacy in relation to the mission of that program; therefore, I offer below the definitions of family literacy as defined by our program Directors:
"When parents and children can learn together, it helps solidify the relationship of families. When parents and children work on the same theme, it is our hope that new language and understanding walk out the door with that family into the home. Their learning gives a foothold to power to the family first, to the parents who are the models for the children. I cannot separate social change from what we do." Denise DiMarzio, Literacy Coordinator
"Parent and child activities in a family literacy program lead to a unified concept of lifelong learning. Parents and children go to class together and see each other learning and come to understand each other as co-learners." Kristen McKenna, Assistant Literacy Coordinator
"(B)y seeing a parent struggling to learn something, whether learning to read, to speak another language...or to communicate with a teacher or doctor, a child learns the value of the hard work and effort involved in the learning process. Learning together, side-by-side, the child sees his parent modeling how to learn, and then has the opportunity to practice the behavior of the learning process on his own, with the support and encouragement of his learning 'partner,' his parent." Louise Moulton, Coordinator of Community Services
With these three definitions in mind, I will move forward with the notion that family literacy:These goals cannot be measured quantifiably by standardized measures such as the Best Test or the Casas Test so how would I know if the family activities I create help to achieve these objectives to any extent? The data I collected in the process of this research did not fully answer this question, but it gave me enough information to guide me in planning lessons and their expected outcomes.
Collecting Data
The process of evaluation took a closer look at what was going on in the classroom. I used several methods to collect data: naturalistic observation, interviews, questionnaires, and my own reflections written in a journal.
I began by stating that I often felt as though family activities that I had created were not productive. I define productiveš in this context as an activity that enables learners to either practice or produce reading, writing, speaking, or listening in English because students join our program to learn English. That is to say that I think there is a lot to be said about furthering literacy skills in onešs native language, but that is not the focus of our program. This leads to the question of how I evaluated an activity.
There were several factors that I took into consideration in evaluating activities. The first was looking at which learners were engaged in the activity and which were not. I assessed this through observation. Were they participating by speaking, listening, reading, or writing? Or were they simply sitting back and letting others do the work? Were the expressions on their faces that of boredom or did they appear to be engaged? Were they laughing?
Observations:
The observations came in two forms: I intentionally observed the class during lessons and made notes in my teacheršs journal. I also videotaped a class in an effort to gain a more objective perspective of what was happening in the classroom. In observing class activities, I looked at who was engaged, their ages, and noted the activity. At the same time, I noted the names and ages of students who were not engaged and wrote down what they were doing and my own opinion as to why they were not interested in the activity.Interviews:
The second factor I took into consideration was how useful students found the activity. I asked them formally through interviews and questionnaires, and informally in casual conversation at the end of class what they thought of the activities we had done. I had to carefully filter their responses because students often responded courteously, "Everything is good. I like everything. You're a good teacher." These answers did not give me constructive feedback.
Before I interviewed students, I experimented for several months trying out different activities and noting my observations. I then interviewed children and adults with and without children in the program at two intervals about 3 months apart. I used information from the first interview to plan and implement activities and then I interviewed different students 3 months later and asked them the same questions. The questions I asked were as follows:
1. Why do you think we join adults with children for activities?
2. What do you think about these activities?
3. Do you like doing activities with the children and adults together? Why or Why not?
4. Are these activities helpful? How?
5. Any suggestions on how we can include younger children?
6. How often would you like to do activities with your children/parents/adults?
7. Have these activities been too hard? Too easy?
8. What have you learned from doing family or whole group activities?
9. What kinds of language games or activities, like reading, speaking, etc. do you do at
home as a family?
Other interviews I did were in the form of casual conversations with students before, after, or during classes. I either asked them one or more of the same questions as above or I asked them a question directly related to the activity we were doing or had done.
Questionnaires: Twice throughout a teaching cycle, we ask students to fill out a questionnaire, once at mid-term and again at the end of the cycle. Children and adults receive different questionnaires, both of which capture information that is more general to our program. These questionnaires were useful because they were given to all students rather than a small sample of students and many of these questions addressed family literacy as well. Here are some of the questions we asked children only:
1. Do you like coming to the literacy class? Why?
2. What is your favorite book/activity/part of coming to the class?
3. When the class does group activities with your parents and/or other adults, what part do you like the most? What suggestions do you have to make the family activities more fun?
4. Do you have any new ideas about this class?
Below is a list of a few of the questions we ask adults who have children in the program. I have included only those questions that might have given me an insight into family literacy:
1. Does your child read more now than before?
2. Does your child borrow books to read at home?
3. Does your child do better in school now?
4. What can we do to make things better for the children?
5. Does your child ask to be read to at home?
6. Have you and/or your children attended any of the libraryšs special programs for children since the beginning of this program?
7. What can we do to make things better for the children?
In summary, I wanted children and adults to enjoy whole group activities and feel as though their time was not wasted because they were using English in a way that they could see the usefulness of the activity and how it pertains to their lives outside of the classroom.
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