Read article and Write about the:
the concept of the “Book Club” model
how the “Book Club” model differs from traditional theories of literacy development
if you would consider using the “Book Club” model in your classroom
what are the advantages of the model
what are the disadvantages of the model

Book Club Plus: A Conceptual Framework to Organize Literacy Instruction

Taffy E. Raphael, Oakland University
Susan Florio-Ruane, Michigan State University
MariAnne George, Rochester Community Schools
Book Club Plus: A Conceptual Framework to Organize Literacy Instruction

Sit in any teachers’ lounge in the United States and it’s likely you’ll hear teachers talking about the urgent needs of their students and

the ever-increasing demands of the curriculum. Teaching today seems far more complex than in the past, and this is particularly noticeable

in the area of literacy instruction. According to the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress (Donahue, Voekl, Campbell, &Mazzeo,

1999), we have many students who are not reading at a proficient level, where proficiency indicates solid academic performance. Only 31%

of fourth-graders meet the standard for proficiency. Two-thirds meet only the standard for “basic” literacy (a partial mastery of the

knowledge and skills considered to be fundamental for proficient work at each grade level). Clearly, we have much to do before we can feel

satisfied that our educational system helps all students master the literacy skills and practices expected of adults in our society.
From public debates to legislative sessions in state and federal congresses, from school board meetings to news articles, and from

parent-teacher meetings to conversations in the teachers’ lounge, recommendations abound for the question: “How can we teach all children

to read?” Experts from many quarters offer teachers a veritable bazaar of solutions–guided reading, early intervention, literature-based

instruction, integrated language arts, phonics first… the list goes on and on. More than any other stakeholders in education, teachers

know that no one answer, no single approach, no simple solution will lead all students to success as readers and writers. Yet they also

recognize that eclectic, patchwork approaches will not provide youngsters’ (and their teachers) with a coherent, shared experience of

literacy as a cultural tool for thought and communication.
Effective literacy instruction is complex, and its conditions are variable. Practice must be planned yet adaptable, responsive to

learners’ diversity and changing needs, integrative across the curriculum, and accountable to many–sometimes competing–goals. Given this

view of practice, teacher development (in the form of skills training and information updates), while useful, is insufficient. These

approaches do not afford practitioners the opportunity to learn as flexible, inventive problem-solvers (Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, &

Anderson, 1988). Teachers and teacher educators need to make sense of a dizzying array of problems and solutions. To do this they need

principled conceptual frameworks that will guide their thought and action. Neither prescriptions nor road maps, these frameworks are more

like invitations to thinking, schemata that help teachers plan, act, manage complexity, and make moment-to-moment decisions and

assessments. Our paper describes one such framework designed by a practitioner inquiry network called the Teachers’ Learning Collaborative

(TLC). The framework, Book Club Plus, addresses the multiple, competing responsibilities of the classroom teacher.
Working Together to Design Book Club Plus

To learn to read well, all students need to read thought-provoking, age-appropriate books. They also need to respond thoughtfully to these

books in discussion, writing, and as they read other texts. Insuring these opportunities was the aim of the original Book Club program

designed by Raphael and her colleagues (see Raphael, Pardo, Highfield, & McMahon, 1997). That framework illustrated ways to organize

curriculum and peer-led discussion and writing about text. Yet, important as this learning is, independent, self-regulated readers also

must learn and practice a myriad of skills and strategies at the instructional level.
We know that there is wide variation in classrooms, with students reading below, at, or beyond grade level. We also know that struggling

readers in particular need intensive instructional support. One dilemma facing teachers is how to engage their diverse readers in

meaningful activities around age-appropriate text, while also providing instruction appropriate to each student’s individual needs. Our

goal in designing the Book Club Plus framework was to manage this dilemma (Lampert, 1985) so that all youngsters would learn to read with

teacher support at their instructional level, and could practice comprehension skills and strategies in conversation and writing in

response to age-appropriate literature.
Developing the Book Club Plus framework was a also an experiment in professional development (Florio-Ruane& Raphael, in press). Teachers

and teacher educators in our state volunteered to design the framework.See Members of the Teachers’ Learning Collaborative whose efforts

are reflected in this paper include (in alphabetical order) Dara Bacher, Jennifer Berne, Karen Eisele, Susan Florio-Ruane, MariAnne

George, Kristin Grattan, Nina Hasty, Amy Heitman, Kathy Highfield, Jacquelyn Jones-Frederick, Marcella Kehus, Taffy Raphael, Molly Reed,

Earlene Richardson, Jennifer Schlacta, Andy Topper, Jo Trumble, LaToya Wilson.. For three years and across social, economic, geographic,

and grade level borders, we worked together to design and field-test a user-friendly literacy curriculum framework meeting three criteria:

(1) it guides rather than prescribes; (2) it addresses a common problem but is open to local adaptation; and (3) it reflects current

theory and research on the teaching and learning of literacy. In the process, we learned about the nature and power of teacher development

that is–like good literacy–sustained, dialogic, and inter-textual. In what follows, three members of TLC describe the organizational

framework for Book Club Plus–its conceptual background as well as its implementation in one 3rd grade classroom.
Conceptual Foundations of Book Club Plus

One of TLC’s premises is that complex learning takes time and involves multiple kinds of interaction with text. A second is that skills

and strategies are learned in communities of practice, where more experienced others (both teachers and peers) support and sustain one’s

individual development. Yet, as experienced practitioners know, creating these conditions for learning in classrooms is easier said than

done. Classrooms are embedded in bureaucratic organizations. Their interactions are historically characterized in terms of “crowds,

praise, and power” (Jackson, 1968). Large groups, limited time, a crowded curriculum, and the press for accountability all truncate

experiences, harden subject matter boundaries, isolate students by ability, and in general combine to make meaningful literacy education

for all students difficult to achieve.
Within these constraints, collaborative research offers some useful examples of teachers reframing their classroom practices to create new

spaces for learning (Lampert, 1992; Short & Armstrong, 1993; Englert&Mariage, 1996). In literacy, Raphael and her colleagues’ research on

book clubs demonstrated that ambitious goals for comprehension instruction could be manageably achieved inside the classroom (McMahon &

Raphael, 1997). Their Book Club Program (Raphael et al., 1997) offers an instructional framework stressing cooperative learning, access to

age-appropriate literature for all students, talk about text, and integration of reading, writing, and oral language.
The Book Club programSee We use the convention of capitalizing Book Club when we refer to the overall program. We use lower case book club

to refer to the small, student-led literature discussion groups for which the program was named..grew out of two key understandings from

educational theory. The first is that language use is fundamental to thinking–that what is learned by an individual begins in the social

interactions in which he or she engages (Gavelek& Raphael, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978, Wells, 1999). Thus, in Book Club it is important to

provide multiple contexts in which students engage in the language practices that support their literacy work. In some teacher-led

contexts, the teacher engages in explicit instruction, modeling, and scaffolding. In others, the teachers’ role is as facilitator or

participant (Au & Raphael, 1998). Some contexts involve students working in student-led groups, from dyads and project teams to book club

discussion groups. Some require students to work independently. By means of students’ interactions with their teachers, their thinking

again “goes public,” and they have the opportunity to hear the language of literacy and learning. In these interactions learners use

language to achieve collective and personal goals.
The second understanding is the need to increase the role of literature in reading instruction. Used here, the term “literature” includes

written text genres of literary quality as well as well as expository genres such as textbooks and brochures and transactional ones such

as Internet documents. Scholars advocate using authentic text to teach a broad repertoire of reading abilities (Galda, 1998; Short, 1998).

With this recommendation comes the proviso that we avoid “basalizing” texts, honoring their forms and functions rather than simply

treating them as vehicles for instruction. A literature-based curriculum must take seriously instruction in the skills and strategies

associated with literacy learning, as well as instruction in literary elements and opportunity for response to the literature being read.
Using literature certainly invites instruction in literary response and literary elements. Perhaps less obvious, using literature also

provides a vehicle for exploring our culture and society, for literature is the accumulated understandings of humanity. The content of

literature directly relates to a third understanding less central to the original Book Club Program, but foundational to the design of

Book Club Plus: namely, that school-based literacy education should prepare students to live and work in a diverse, democratic society

(Hiebert, 1991). Studies of culture and its social, historical, personal, and political dimensions tend to be slighted in the texts and

contexts of both teacher education and classroom learning (Florio-Ruane with deTar, in press). Literature study in the company of others

potentially offers both a mirror reflecting our own lives and a window on other people, places, times, and cultures that readers might

never have the chance to experience directly (Galda, 1998). As such, literature can become a powerful tool for critical thinking, helping

both students and teachers to understand their own perspectives as cultural and therefore limited phenomena, relative, and in many ways

different from experiences of people in other times, places, and groups (Dasenbrock, 1992).
Some of the members of TLC had opportunities to experience this kind of learning about culture and identity for themselves, as

participants in graduate courses and autobiography book clubs sponsored by Raphael and Florio-Ruane (Raphael, Florio-Ruane, Kehus, George,

Hasty, &Highfield, 2000). As the next section of this paper illustrates, these experiences are reflected in a fourth fundamental

understanding of Book Club Plus–that narrative plays a central role in understanding and in sharing our understandings with others.

Adapting the Book Club program to teachers’ learning, for example, Florio-Ruane found that responses to text in book club discussions

often took narrative form. Rather than evidencing a lack of rigorous reading or deep comprehension of text, this narrative response to

text can be seen as a powerful form of reading, in which difficult ideas like culture are explored by way of the literary imagination

(Florio-Ruane with deTar, in press). Thus, as Bruner (1999) suggests, narrative (which characterizes so much of written literature)

“expresses the very form of thinking that human beings use for representing human happenings in the intersubjective world characteristic

of human cultural adaptation… Narrative is the shape of being human, fragile though it may be” (1999, p. 4). By studying narrative–both

as an end in its own right and as a vehicle for becoming literate–we increase our understanding of cultural histories and how they

individually connect to the cultural histories of others in our diverse society and world.
A Look At Book Club Plus

Based on these four understandings from research and theory, we wanted Book Club Plus to promote all students’ learning, and to

incorporate the skills and strategies associated with reading acquisition and the critical thinking required for living in and

contributing to a democratic society. Its structure and thematic content were designed to build from an understanding of self to

understanding of others, and to promote engagement through compelling and personally meaningful texts and activities. As the examples

below illustrate, both organizational structure and thematic content help weave a meaningful fabric out of diverse activities, texts, and

youngsters. The framework helps teachers make literacy learning more coherent for an individual student across different instructional

contexts and activities and for all students, across different instructional levels in a class.
Reflecting the diversity of the TLC network, the framework was designed to be used and adapted in a variety of classroom settings.

Variables included grade level (participants in our teacher network piloted the framework in grades from 1st through 8th); school

community (participants teach in affluent and middle-income suburbs, lower-income rural areas, and high-poverty city neighborhoods); and

students’ ethnic, linguistic, social, and religious background (Raphael, et al, 2000). We explored the framework’s use within different

district and school-wide conditions. In some cases, a textbook series for reading/language arts was mandated. In others, teachers had more

choice. Some schools had ample materials, books, and supplies. Others did not. Some classes had more than thirty students, while others

had fewer than twenty. While ways and means differed from place to place, in all cases teachers needed to take into account state and

local standards for literacy learning and–given the nature of our theme–social studies learning as well. TLC took these local and shared

constraints as opportunities to identify the framework’s essential features and assess its usefulness to diverse teachers and students.

Below we describe features of the framework that applied across settings and illustrate their local adaptation with examples from Marianne

George’s 3rd grade classroom.
Organizing the Year

Teachers organized Book Club Plus instruction within three literacy units, each of which could last from three to eight weeks. The

overarching, year-long theme, “Our Storied Lives,” built from Unit 1 (“Stories of Self”) to Unit 2 (“Family Stories”) to Unit 3 (“Stories

of Culture”).
Stories of Self. In Unit 1,”Stories of Self,” students begin by studying autobiography, the varying ways in which authors have presented

and “re-presented” their lives, and the ways in which artifacts are used to prompt reflection and illustrate or represent life events.

This study takes place through individual and shared reading, as well as teacher read-alouds. In Marianne’s classroom individual students

read autobiographies such as Tarantula in my purse (J. C. George, 1996) and biographical stories such as Curtis’ (1998) Tell me again

about the night I was born. Books heard during the unit included autobiographies such as Dahl’s (1984) Boy: Tales of a childhood,

dePaolo’s (2000) 26 Fairmont Avenue, and Paulsen’s (1999) My life in dog years. Shared readings took place using books such as Joyce’s

(1997) The world of William Joyce scrapbook. In addition, students take part in a variety of writing activities responsive to the theme

and literature. MariAnne’s students, for example, made timelines of their lives, identifying critical events for each year. Each student

also wrote a personal narrative about a critical event in his or her life and a “snapshot” autobiography of their current life (based on

their current school photo). In social studies, students studied their roles and those of their families within their communities.
Family Stories. Autobiography provides a conceptual base for Unit 2, “Family Stories.” The idea that an individual’s identity is embedded

in family narrative was the starting point in MariAnne’s classroom for an author study. Patricia Polacco is a prolific author with roots

in Michigan. Her books are anthologized in reading series, are widely available as inexpensive trade books, and are written at a range of

reading levels. Polacco’s stories are based in her family’s experiences and history. She provides many facts about her family in the

illustrations and text, book jackets, and dedications. Her art and writing are also featured in a video interview appropriate for

elementary students, in which she describes the process of creating her books. As they studied Polacco’s literature, MariAnne’s class

created their own texts. For example, students interviewed a family member from or about their grandparents’ generation. From this

interview they learned a family story to share with peers. Each student also made an oral presentation based on an artifact from or about

the person interviewed.
Stories of Culture. Family stories are embedded within the narrative of our cultural heritage, so the segue to Unit 3, “Stories of

Culture,” is also quite natural. Within this unit, students read and hear literature of immigrant experience. In MariAnne’s class, for

example, students read and discussed Molly’s Pilgrim (Cohen, 1983) in their book clubs; From Miss Ida’s porch (Belton, 1993) during shared

reading; and Grandmother’s latkes (Drucker, 1992), Masai and I (Kroll, 1992), Pueblo Storyteller, (Hoyt-Goldsmith, 1991), and A birthday

basket for Tia (Mora, 1992) during guided reading. They also heard books such as Bierman’s (1998) Journey to Ellis Island: How my

grandfather came to America during teacher read-alouds. These books helped students compare and contrast their own family stories to those

they had read and heard. Writing activities similarly extended their family stories into cultural narratives as students continued to

interview family members about their ethnic, linguistic, and social heritage. These interviews culminated in children creating quilt

squares representing their heritage and writing essays about their own family’s journey to America.
Organizing the Week and Day

During the three units, students participate in two conceptually-linked contexts for learning: Book Club and Literacy Block. In Book Club

Plus, the two contexts occur in two- or three-day cycles within a given week. As Figure One illustrates, these thematically-linked

contexts provide opportunities for teaching the full range of language and literacy skills students need in order to become literacy

users, critical thinkers, and citizens in a democratic society. Each context is described briefly below.
Figure 1. Getting organized for the week and the day

Book Club. Within Book Club, four components–community share, reading, writing, and book club–interweave to support students’ learning

to read, respond to, and discuss literature in student-led discussion groups. As Figure One shows, Book Club is typically comprised of

four episodes, with the length of time for each being flexible and dependent upon student needs and teacher goals. In general, however,

the framework provides for an extended period of engagement with literature as follows: opening community share (5-15 minutes); reading

(10-20 minutes); writing in response logs (10-15 minutes), student book clubs (3-20 minutes), and closing community share (5-20 minutes).
Opening “community share” is a teacher-led, whole-group activity introducing students to elements of literature discussion, and previewing

specific skills, strategies, and knowledge that will be useful as students read, write, and talk about their book club’s book. When used

to close the Book Club session, community share brings small groups back together to share ideas and issues that emerged in their book

clubs’ discussions. The “reading” component involves students’ gaining access to the book to be discussed. Their reading can be

independent, but it can also be supported by adults, buddies, audiotapes, or other resources. What is most important is that all class

members, regardless of reading level, have access to the literature to be discussed in the book club, and that each student participates

in written response to that book and discussion of it in a mixed-ability small group.See Prior to third grade, Book Club activities are

centered on the teacher read-aloud, since most books that these children could read independently would not have enough substance to

warrant extended discussion. In the Book Club Plus framework, all children have access to a variety of other thematically-linked books,

including some at their instructional level. The more books that students read related to the Book Club theme, the greater their

opportunities to make intertextual connections, and connections between their reading and their own lives.. The “writing” component

involves daily response in students’ reading logs to help prepare for upcoming discussions, and sustained writing that occurs when process

writing activities are connected thematically (e.g., by similar genre, theme, content, author craft) to the books that students are

reading and discussing in their clubs.
“Book Club” is the student-led discussion group for which the program was named. The class is divided into small groups of four to five

students, heterogeneously grouped for reading level, gender, classroom status, verbal ability, and so forth. Students remain in these

groups, or “book clubs,” throughout a unit. On some occasions, all book clubs read and discuss the same book. On others, the clubs read

different books encircling the shared theme. In all cases, the books are theme- and age-appropriate and sufficiently complex to warrant

and support in-depth discussion and a range of response types. Within book clubs, students discuss ideas that emerged from their reading

and log responses, airing their questions, confusions, and related personal experiences. Students are also taught norms for appropriate

behavior in book club discussion, such as listening with respect, building on others’ ideas, debating and critiquing ideas, assuming

leadership, and following another’s lead. Thus the process of learning to read, write, and talk in book club embodies democratic processes

and learning within a community.
Literacy Block. As Figure One illustrates, Literacy Block is the second key part of the Book Club Plus framework. The focus here is

instruction and the practice of skills and strategies. This practice occurs during guided reading in small ability groups

(Fountas&Pinnell, 1996) and during independent work designed for practicing skills and honing strategies as students tackle extended

writing and inquiry activities related to the Book Club unit theme. In guided reading, students are placed at one of three levels–at,

above, or below grade–and read thematically linked literature at their instructional level with extensive instructional support. These

groupings are flexible, so that students can move among them as they grow and learn.
When they are not working with the teacher, students work independently or in the ability groups to practice subskills of reading and

writing (e.g., spelling practice, grammar practice, handwriting) and work on theme-related writing assignments. Some classrooms organize

these different activities using “centers.” Students move from center to center over the course of Literacy Block, when they are not with

the teacher (Au, Carroll, & Scheu, 1997). Some classrooms have an area for guided reading; other students remain at their seats, going to

areas of the room to pick up needed materials, but working at their desks. Some classrooms use a combination of approaches. In short, the

framework provides structure within which improvisation can occur. In the remainder of this paper we illustrate this point by taking a

closer look at the Book Club Plus framework as it was used by MariAnne to organize literacy instruction during the “Family Stories” unit.

We close with thumbnail sketches of three of her students learning within Book Club Plus.
Book Club Plus in One Third Grade Classroom

MariAnne organized the week to include a daily read-aloud, three Book Club days, and two Literacy Block days. She used the writers

workshop for students to focus on writing a family story. Defined as “unit work,” students developed their family story over the course of

the unit. This involved preparing for and interviewing a family member from their grandparents’ generation (or, if not available,

interviewing one who had stories from that generation); identifying from the interview a family story to share in class; writing notes,

then developing an oral presentation of the story; rehearsing, then presenting the family story to their peers. The home connection thus

involved parents in sharing family stories, facilitating connections to family members, and helping to identify or–if needed–create the

artifact around which the story was based. In addition to the language arts contexts, MariAnne used the social studies curriculum time to

further develop the connections among history, family, and their community.
The Book Club phase of the week centered on Chicken Sunday. Mini-lessons during opening community share over the three-day period included

dialogue use as a beginning focus on authors’ craft, vocabulary concepts related to family and sensory words, and how to search the World

Wide Web for information on authors and illustrators (using Patricia Polacco’s website for the example). On Book Club days, students read

independently or in one of the support contexts, wrote individual reading log entries, and met to discuss the book. During the book clubs,

MariAnne observed one group at a time, keeping notes on students’ individual and group progress. She audiotaped groups that she could not

directly observe, in order to assess them later, frequently in the car on her way home. MariAnne ended the Book Club events each day with

closing community share. She followed a pattern of first asking students to share substantive ideas that had come out during their book

clubs. Students discussed Polacco’s craft (e.g., the way the author used illustrations to tell part of her story, the way she built

suspense in her stories) as well as the content of her stories (e.g., the stories she told from the two sides of her family–Russian

immigrants and Michigan farmers). Following discussion of the books, MariAnne always asked students what they thought went well in their

book clubs and what had been hard for them that day. In this way, attention was devoted to the oral response and group process, focusing

first on strengths (e.g., we asked good questions, had a good “seed idea” that led to a long discussion), and then on problems to be

solved (e.g., no one listened to me today, we interrupted each other too much).
On both Book Club and Literacy Block days, MariAnne read aloud from Polacco books that she thought the students would enjoy, but wouldn’t

have the opportunity to read on their own. In addition, on Literacy Block days she spent approximately 15 minutes with each of the three

guided reading groups, using a Polacco book written at, above, or below third grade level, depending on the level of the readers in the

group. She focused on areas of reading instruction from her district’s reading/language arts curriculum guide and from the Scholastic

scope and sequence chart, which was the district-adopted commercial reading program. While MariAnne met with the guided reading groups,

students worked at their desks on a variety of tasks: (a) handwriting practice sheet, (b) spelling, (c) journal entries, (d) dictionary

skill–using guide words, (e) writers’ workshop and family story preparation, and (f) Internet searches related to authors and

illustrators
Over five days and under the umbrella of the Family Stories, all students engaged in meaningful work with age-appropriate literature and

had opportunities to learn and practice skills with text at their instructional level. Visiting the classroom, an observer would be hard-

pressed to find the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Each student met twice in a guided reading group, engaged with peers in

three book clubs, participated in whole-class instruction at least three times, read independently daily, engaged in whole-class book

discussion daily, engaged in a variety of writing daily, and practiced skills daily–some related directly to reading and discussing

books; others to reading, writing, spelling, and grammar subskills. And every student used literate practices to learn and communicate

about the theme of family.
In Conclusion: Learning in Book Club Plus

To illustrate how Book Club Plus supported diverse students’ learning, we close with thumbnail sketches of our assessments of three

students in MariAnne’s class: Rikki, Ted, and Nami. Rikki and Ted represent two kinds of struggling readers, both poorly served by a diet

of drill and practice or by a laissez-faire approach that slights instruction. Rikki is reading below grade level. The teacher’s challenge

is to find ways to design a learning experience for Rikki which is rich in both skill instruction and opportunities to use literacy in

meaningful practice. Ted, on the other hand, while able to read grade-level materials, is disengaged. He has not enjoyed reading during

his first few years in school. Re-engaging him in written language is an essential problem to be solved if he is to progress at his grade

level. Nami is a very high achieving student who is exceeding grade level goals and is functionally bilingual in English and Japanese. She

challenges the teacher to support and extend her literacy development within the context of a multi-ability classroom and a grade-level

curriculum
Rikki: A Struggling Reader Succeeds

Rikki, the youngest student in MariAnne’s third grade class, entered third grade reading on a beginning 2/2 level (using the Scholastic

Placement Test, which accompanies the district-adopted basal reading program). Labeled as a “transitional reader,” she had worked with the

school’s learning consultant since first grade. She received summer tutoring between both first and second, and second and third grades.

By the end of third grade, Rikki scored 80% on the Expanding Level Scholastic test (70% is passing), thus leaving third grade reading on

grade level. Her writing showed similar growth, though–as writing samples will reveal–she still struggles with language conventions such

as spelling and punctuation.
To see what she was learning in Book Club Plus, we analyzed several samples of Rikki’s writing. The first of these was written in response

to the prompt, “Tell Me About Yourself.” We looked at Rikki’s written responses to this prompt at the beginning and again at the end of

the academic year. We selected these samples because the prompt invited students to draw upon their knowledge of autobiography, personal

and family stories, and cultural heritage and thus was sensitive to their learning within the Book Club Plus framework. Rikki’s pretest

was typical–a relatively short list of facts, with little voice underlying the information conveyed. Her posttest has a stronger sense of

voice, and shows growth on a number of conventional measures. Two figures illustrate the growth we saw. The bar graph in Figure 2 shows

the increase from her first to her second written response in (1) total words; (2) number of unique (i.e., each word used is counted only

once) words; (3) the number of words spelled conventionally; (4) the number of temporary spellings using conventional phoneme-grapheme

correspondence; (5) total number of sentences; and (6) sentences reflecting some complexity.
Figure 2. Writing Sample Analysis: Pretest–Posttest Writing Prompt
Rikki’s written texts, both unedited drafts, are displayed in Figure 3. They give us insight into Rikki’s learning of thematic content

based on her reading, writing about, and discussion of text.
Figure 3. Pretest–posttest writing prompts
Pretest: August, 1998    Posttest