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VELS Level 4 – Teaching Reading Using the Four Resources Model: Text Using

To become effective communicators, all learners need to be proficient in four interrelated and interdependent dimensions of language use. The Four Resources Model describes the resources students need to access to be literate: code breaking resources, text participating resources, text using resources and text analysing resources.

  • Code breaker: these practices have to do with breaking the code of the letters used in texts.
  • Meaning maker: meaning maker practices are to do with making literate and inferential meanings of texts.
  • Text user: the focus of text-user practices is the use of texts in real-life reading situations .
  • Text analyst: these practices involve readers in the critical analysis of texts in order to understand how texts work.

(Luke and Freebody 2002)

Text user

“What do I do with this text?”

Text users know and use social and cultural functions of reading and writing practices (Freebody, P., 2004 Text Next, PETA, NSW)

Key knowledge

  • understanding the shaping influence of social/cultural factors and contexts
  • recognition of different school and life purposes and audiences for texts and language
  • changes in text and language use from one social context to another.

Focus questions for teachers

  • What knowledge do students bring of the social purposes and uses of this kind of text?
  • What explicit teaching will support students in using this text for particular purposes?

Possible strategies to support students as text users

  • modelling and joint construction of texts
  • summarising a text
  • data charts
  • cognitive organisers
  • gathering grid
  • grids for extracting and organising information
  • note-making
  • text patterning

Literacy and Learning in the Middle Years: Major Report on the Middle Years Literacy Research Project, Deakin University, - Transforming Teaching and Learning p 74

Data charts

Data charts are a visual organisational note-taking tool that can be used by individuals, partners or groups of students to take notes. They are an effective way for students to organise information and help students generate meaningful questions on which to focus their reading.

Data charts:

  • provide students with clear areas of focus when reading
  • can be used with a wide range of text types
  • help to reorganise key points in students own words
  • are a useful strategy for recording the main facts
  • provide useful assessment information
  • encourage selection of appropriate information to confirm predictions
  • provide guided practice in synthesising and summarising information.

Procedure for using data charts

Following a pre-reading activity related to the text, students generate possible questions to consider in reference to the text.

  • Students select three or four of the questions generated to record on data charts.
  • Beneath each focus question students record what they think they already know, using the first row on a data chart.
  • Students skim and scan through the text, making notes under each of the focus questions on a data chart (t each students to read the first and last paragraph of sections for summaries of the content and the first and last sentences of paragraphs to gain an impression of the topic).
  • Students summarise information for each of the focus questions, deciding on main idea statements and organising pertinent information.

Students may wish to respond to additional questions that occur to them, which can be added to the new questions column on a data chart. For researching a topic, extra rows or grid boxes can be added to for entering information from a range of resources under focus headings or questions.

Four Resources Model – more detail

The four resources model provides a basis for discussion among teachers of the literacy teaching and learning strategies that can be used to develop the different literacy resources required for effective literacy and learning. This equips teachers with a shared language and a common conceptual framework for:

  • thinking about texts and textual practices
  • auditing their current practice and for
  • planning more systematically to engage and support students in developing independent literacy resources.

The four resources do not reflect a linear developmental sequence, and effective literacy strategies simultaneously address many if not all, of the four resources, nevertheless teachers may find they need to focus more on one aspect than others at different times according to the demands of the learning task, context or purpose.

Professional learning

Using a data chart for note making

Download the data chart for note making (PDF - 22Kb).

Download the article Learning 21st Century Style (PDF - 58Kb)

  • consider the questions on the topic learning 21st centurystyle
    1. How is literacy learning developing in the 21st century?
    2. How are schools evolving to facilitate new developments?
    3. How are teachers coping with new developments?
  • skim read the text and scan for information related to the research questions
  • highlight key information that will answer the research questions
  • record the key information into the data chart.

Select a text to demonstrate to your students the use of a data chart for note making.

Model the process for students to replicate independently. Discuss with the students the level of support the strategy provides, in identifying and recording key information.

Reference

Making a Difference , Professional Learning Package DEECD