Currents in Literacy

Scaffolding for Risk-taking in the Writing Class

By Sue Haynes and Steve Johnson

Introduction: Sue

As a whole language practitioner, I am devoted to encouraging learning empowerment in my students. As a special educator and literacy tutor, I am aware that there are students who struggle to learn, even in an environment which supports personal meaning and interest. These students, particularly, need individualized teacher scaffolding to enable them to progress. The teacher needs to be able to observe their current developmental level and working within their "zone of proximal development" (Vygotsky's term), provide assistance to move them to the next level. This past year, to enhance both my observational and scaffolding skills, I have been observing Reading Recovery sessions and learning to administer and evaluate Marie Clay's "Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement." While my skills for scaffolding young readers have become more refined, I keep harkening back to my primary focus when working with my students: the encouragement of their personally relevant learning agendas.

My special needs students are often reluctant risk-takers. Their willingness to take the kinds of risks which can fuel their progress is enhanced by a learning environment which is both developmentally appropriate and personally meaningful. Learning empowerment, I feel, needs both kinds of scaffolding: scaffolding of skills and scaffolding of personal intention. I have written about my approach, which I term, "the valuing process," in the chapters of two whole language books (Haynes, 1989 and1991). In these chapters I focused on the importance of inspiring and supporting learners' agendas: "As a whole language practitioner, my first and all succeeding phases in program planning are grounded in a goal of learning empowerment, the growing orientation of the learner toward self-direction, followed by self-determination in relation to chosen personal purpose." (Haynes, 1991)

Through the excitement of fulfilling their personal visions and connecting to personally relevant material, my learners have broken through obstacles which previously intimidated them, as I shared the skills they needed to meet their goals. "Nicholas's Nirvana," the emergence of a five year old kindergarten writer, is an example of "the valuing process" in action, including teaching scaffolding of both skills and a learner's intention towards powerful risk-taking. Nicholas's story recently resurfaced in my life after residing in my file cabinet for a number of years. A literacy colleague had asked about experiences I might have had with Vygotsian scaffolding of emergent literacy learners. Immediately, I remembered Steve Johnson's story about Nicholas's struggle to become a writer. Steve, then a remedial reading teacher who helped to assist my students during our kindergarten writing period, wrote the story from transcribed sessions with Nicholas. Nicholas's story has particular significance for me today as I attempt to refine my scaffolding skills within a context of supporting my learners' personal learning agendas. Nicholas's story is also the story of a teacher who supports both a learner's developing skills as well as honoring and celebrating his intentions. It is a delightful description of scaffolding for risk-taking.

Nicholas's Nirvana: Steve

Although my preservice training had emphasized the power of authorship, it took a particular experience I had my first year of teaching to make me acutely aware of the tremendous force that language can have on the growth of youngsters as they explore the world of words around them and make those words work for them.

As a second-year Chapter One teacher in a 280-student, K-8 school in rural Maine, I was pleased when I saw that my schedule had been broadened one semester to include two half-hour periods daily to work with students of all ability levels and not just the high-risk ones. In one classroom where I worked, the time was called "Be a Reader, Be a Writer" where students chose to be engaged in some reading activity with an adult or other student, or to work on some writing project. The kindergarten teacher in whose room I worked, Sue Haynes, had created an incredibly print-rich environment for her students in which she encouraged them to explore language arts in ways that made sense for them.

I usually worked at a table with four or five kindergartners, supporting them as they added print to their pictures. Some students worked on books crammed full of invented spelling, books which their teacher lovingly stitched and bound into cardboard/wallpaper covers personally selected by the young authors. Other students, still in the pre-writing stage, busied themselves with drawing fantasy castles, complete with maidens and fire-breathing dragons to which they would add text when they were ready to write.

I wouldn't have noticed Nicholas if Sue hadn't asked me one day, "What have you been able to tease out of Nicholas during the time he has been sitting near your table?" I had to admit, that with all that was going on about me, I hadn't taken the time to draw out this small, very young, and shy kindergartner. Nicholas was only four years old when he entered kindergarten. Far from being a risk-taker, he preferred to sit on the periphery and observe the world going on around him. He didn't doodle on his papers; he scribbled his name under duress and he never wanted to practice his letters. To my knowledge, Nicholas had never allowed himself to experiment with print. He did know his letters and could make sight-sound connections, but he seemed stymied at writing time, unable to explore and share with others for fear of making a mistake.

One of the exciting things I had seen Sue do was to identify the obstacles that interfered with a child's learning and then to work very hard to entice him/her out from behind the barriers. For a good month, Nicholas just drew small, rigid pictures, adding no text, watching longingly while many of his classmates rammed full speed ahead. A number of students had one, if not two, books published and put on the shelf with the Story Box and other predictable books. I was new; I didn't know which way to go with Nicholas, but somehow I felt he would let me know when he was ready.

He bided his time, and then, suddenly, it happened. This youngster had seen the unmitigated joy experienced by the published authors in his class. On October 19, five days after his fifth birthday, Nicholas decided that he, too, wanted to revel in that euphoria. What follows are the verbatims which I entered on my laptop following each class in which we worked together.

October 19

Nicholas looked up at me. "I want to write."

"Super. Do you have something you want to write about?"

He nodded his head affirmatively.

"Would you be willing to share with me what you want to write about?"

Nicholas pulled six drawings from his writing folder, most of them were large, smiling faces.

"OK, which one do you want to start writing about?" Shyly he pointed to one.

"What's going on in this picture?" I asked.

"That is me smiling."

"Sure looks like a happy kid to me." I said.

He nodded solemnly with a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

"What would you like to say?"

"This is for my Mommy."

"That's what you want to write at the bottom of this page?"

His head nodded again.

"O.K., the first word is 'This.' What sound do you hear?"

He pointed to the "T" on the letter strip, but did not pronounce it.

"Fine; put the 'T' wherever you think it should go."

"I can't do that."

"Ah, excuse me?"

"I don't know how to write."

"No problem. Would you like to learn?"

Nicholas nodded his head animatedly.

"Would you like me to help you learn?" More nodding.

"O.K., let's go. Take your pencil and draw a straight line up or down the page."

"I can't do that."

"How come you can't do that?"

"Just can't."

"If I dot the letter in, do you think you could try it?" Hesitation for a moment, then a tentative nod of the head.

I dotted the "T" which he then filled in without a hitch. Repeating the exercise, I dotted another "T" which he completed with more confidence. The third time I repeated the exercise I made the dots extremely faint, so faint that Nicholas squinted to see them.

"I can't do it."

"How come?"

"Can't see the dots."

"Can you see the good 'T's you have already made?" Nicholas nodded.

"How about copying one of them, just as if you could really see the dots?" Big hesitation before he launched into it.

October 26

Nicholas had been writing his stories on the backs of his pictures, but never with the words on the corresponding picture. I showed him how it might be less confusing to write the words on the other side of the appropriate picture than it would be to go fishing through a pile of papers that had no order to it. He said he would think about it.

"What story do you want to write today, Nicholas?"

He pointed to another picture.

"What do you want to write at the bottom?"

"This is for my Mommy."

With pencil in hand he hesitatingly marked, with no help from me, ZSZFMME.

November 9

Nicholas has been studying his pictures and today completed page 3 of his book. He decided to go with the text with which he is comfortable and which he has used before, "This is for my Mommy."

November 12

"Today I think I would like to continue with page 4 and page 5 if I can. Let's see, here is picture #1, #2, #3 and where is the writing for these pictures? Oh this is confusing, isn't it? There, now I have it. Yes, this will be page 4. I want to say, 'This is for my Mommy'." Nicholas proceeded to duplicate the writing he had used in #3, but without referring to it. He was consistent in his letter recognition.

"Now I would like to write the words for page 5."

"O.K., Nicholas, what do you want to say? What is this picture all about?"

"I would like to say, 'This book is all for my Mommy.'"

"Great. Where do you want to put the first letter?"

He went right up to the upper left-hand corner and marked out his "S" sound, sort of a stretched out "Z" and then said, "And the next letter is 'B' and I can't write it."

"How come, Nicholas?"

"Because I don't write 'B's."

"Have you ever tried?" I queried. Solemn negative nod of the head.

"Would it be OK if you did try?"

With pursed lips and a scrunched-up forehead, he nodded affirmatively. "You're the author. You put it where you want it," I invited.

After a slow downstroke, he suddenly attached two half-circles to it and formed a beautiful "B." It was smooth sailing from there as he created the following piece. But that wasn't all. Nicholas was on a roll and once he finished with the above, he announced, "I'm ready to do page 6 now, please."

"Fine, have you decided what you want to say?"

"Yes, I would like to say, 'This book, every single page, is for my Mommy'." Then he started to work. "'This', I think is first." Quickly he spread his 'S' on the page. After a struggle with the 'B' he informed me, matter-of-factly, "I just made a mistake. I think I'll use a pencil." And so he did. The rest of what he wrote today was all in pencil.

We were in the process of finishing it up when time ran out and the kids scattered to get washed up for lunch. Nicholas announced, "I prefer to stop right here and finish it later. I don't like to be rushed. Well, I would say I got a lot done today. That's good."

November 15

Nicholas is really cranked now! He still writes a variation on his "This is for my mommy" theme, as if he were afraid to burst the language bubble with which he is so entranced. Today he completed pages 7 and 8 of his book and told me his book was done. He can't wait to conference with Sue, his teacher and his publisher, for now he is ready to publish! What a milestone.

November 23

Today Nicholas sat in the author chair at morning meeting time and read "To My Mommy" to his classmates. His grin extended from one ear to another when, at the conclusion of the story, several of the students clamored to be the first to take the book down from the rack to read it.

Following the publication of his book, Nicholas took some time off from writing. I watched him choose to be a reader for two weeks during which time he never came back to the writing table. I rather suspect that by taking time for himself in the reading corner, Nicholas not only came to grips with the reality of his having had fun while writing, but that he also reveled in watching his peers take his published book off the rack and share turns reading it to one another.

One day, early in December, Nicholas decided it was time to once again "Be A Writer" and he returned to the table where I was working. He began almost immediately to draw a series of extremely happy, oversized faces set on child-sized torsos which, in turn, were supported by little tiny balls for feet. By the time he had finished his drawings two class periods later, I was hard pressed to wait to learn the subject of his next book. I didn't have to wait long.

December 9

Nicholas announced this morning, "I believe I am ready to write again."

"Great, Nicholas. Have you some pictures to which you want to add some text?"

With a big smile, Nicholas purposefully pointed to his five pictures. "Wow!" I said. "It looks to me as if you have quite a lot to say. Where do you want to start?"

"I believe this should be the first one," he said, selecting an armless Charlie Brown-type character whose red and green eyes with large orange pupils spoke so eloquently about the extent to which Nicholas's own eyes had been opened in the past month.

"This is me and I am happy because I am in school," he stated proudly to me.

"Is that what you want to write under this picture?"

"Yes, but this time I believe I want to put the writing on the back of the picture it goes with. Last time it was rather confusing trying to find the words when they were on so many different sheets."

"O.K., Nicholas. You're the boss. Where do you want to begin?"

"Let's see.. .this is me smiling." he mused. "Right here, that is where the 'I' goes." With strong strokes reinforced by firm resolve, Nicholas crafted IMHPBCIWNCL ("I am happy because I am in school").

Even with the inverted "M" the text was quite readable. When he had finished writing "B" (his spelling of "because") he paused a moment to look up at me and proudly asked, "How do you like my 'B'?"

Recalling that only one month previously this same fellow had told me, "I don't make 'B's," I was suddenly blown away by the growth spurt he had enjoyed once he decided to risk and revel.

"That's a great 'B,' Nicholas!" I marveled.

"Now, that's done. Don't you think it looks good? I think I will do another one now." Nicholas selected another picture, on the back of which he wrote IMCMLING ("I am smiling."). Oh, when they get on a roll, there is very little that can stop them.

December 13

Today Nicholas gave himself an early Christmas present. Having received so many accolades from his peers for his first book, he knew he was on to something. He was having so much fun playing with words that he just burst. The result was the third page, IMMLIGBCZIHVFR. ("I am smiling because I have friends.") His euphoria spilled over into the Christmas season with his fourth page IMHPIBCTLMCTC CMS. ("I am happy because it is almost Christmas.") However, he saved the best until last when, with great presence and pride, he wrote, IMCMIBCIZICWT. ("I am smiling because I can write.") It was a joyful moment for both of us.

Epilogue

Intention to write is not enough to make a student put marking tools to paper. S/he has to weigh the price of risk-taking against the possible outcomes of that risktaking. By providing a non-threatening environment full of peer and professional support, a teacher lowers that price and creates teachable moments which will occur more often than might be imagined. We have to be alert to their presence. Nicholas showed me that. He not only revels in language and literacy now, he wallows in it, smiling all the while because now he can write. Thank you, Nicholas, for sharing with me the joy of actualizing latent intention. That was a special gift.

Sue's Summary

As Steve shared Nicholas's growth in risk-taking after each session described in "Nicholas's Nirvana," I increasingly appreciated how teacher scaffolding can give critical support to the manifestation of a learner's intention, despite enormous obstacles. Steve's facilitation of Nicholas's writing illustrates numerous conditions of the kind of scaffolding that not only provides needed skills, but also supports the learner's courage to push through barriers of fear and resistance.

When the teachable moment arrived and Nicholas said, "I want to write," Steve intuitively surrounded his fragile proposal with the cushioning he needed to take risk safely. Responding to, "I can't do that," (make the letter T), Steve invited, "Would you like me to help you learn?" He never put Nicholas on the spot. Steve followed with, "If I dot the letter in, do you think you could try it?" Again, he lowered the risk enabling Nicholas to try and move towards independence (following Steve's encouragement, "Can you see the good T's you have already made?"). Later on, when Nicholas stated, "...I don't write B's," Steve responded with, "Would it be okay if you tried?" followed by the honoring statement, "You're the author. You put it where you want."

Steve's invitational language and honoring support consistently provided a framework within which Nicholas pushed through barriers to growth. When Steve suggested that it might be less confusing for Nicholas to write the words on the other side of the corresponding picture, he respected Nicholas's need to "think about it." I suspect that Nicholas needed to keep his focus on his newly discovered transcribing ability. Steve's honoring of Nicholas's repetitive motif, "This is for my Mommy," supported this emerging ability as well.

Nicholas took over increasing control of his composing process as he was ready to manage it, and Steve graciously backed off, celebrating each initiative:

"'This' I think is first," as he wrote 's' on the page (following Steve's modeling of, "OK, the first word is 'This.'")

"I just made a mistake. I think I'll use a pencil."

"I prefer to stop right here and finish it later. I don't like to be rushed. Well, I would say I got a lot done today. That's good."

Responding to Steve's statement as Nicholas began his second book, "Wow! It looks to me as if you have quite a lot to say. Where do you want to start?" Nicholas said, "Yes, but this time I believe I want to put the writing on the back of the picture it goes with. Last time it was rather confusing trying to find the words when they were on so many different sheets."

Steve's scaffolding for risk-taking in his work with Nicholas shows profound respect for a learner's intentions, the obstacles to manifesting these intentions and the learner's own sense of inner readiness. He never questioned Nicholas's hiatus between books when he took a break to be a reader and came back to writing with renewed ability and vigor. Steve's prompts modeled the skills Nicholas needed to take over the process and he withdrew these as Nicholas showed readiness for independence. And finally he encouraged Nicholas's empowerment with ongoing "cheer-leading" of his emerging texts. Nicholas was celebrated as an author from the very start as Steve joined him in his glorious vision of a published book.

References

Haynes, Susan W. (1989). "Special Education and Whole Language: From an Evaluator's Viewpoint," in Goodman, K., Goodman, Y., Hood, W., eds. The Whole Language Evaluation Book. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Haynes, Susan W. (1991). "Organizing for Empowerment: Clarifying a Focus to Plan Programs for Troubled Learners," in Goodman, K., Goodman, Y., Hood, W., eds. Organizing for Whole Language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Steve Johnson is a Technology Facilitator in a rural Maine elementary school, assisting teachers in integrating technology and the power of language into the curriculum.

Sue Haynes is a whole language Literacy Specialist and Special Education Teacher who works with all ages of students from preschool through adults. She is a part time Special Education Teacher on two outer islands off the coast of Maine and a private literacy tutor.