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This study attempted to inquire ways to integrate reading/writing in a second grade class by adopting action research method. The main questions were: 1. What were possible ways to teach writing from textbook reading? 2. What difficulties did the second graders encounter in writing? 3. What were the observed changes students showed after the instruction? 4. What did I learn as a teacher from this process?
There were ten students participating this study. Through three action cycles, I collected data including students’ writing, teaching transcripts, teacher’s reflective journals, student interviews, and feedback from other teachers to find the following results:
1. The emergent writing curriculum design of second graders from textbook reading required purposeful instruction on both reading and writing. It needed scaffolding during the translation stage, including scaffoldings on the knowledge of text/story structure, the strategies of applying factual description, imagination, action and dialogue, the usage of conjunctions, and the expansion of vocabulary.
2. Writing instruction integrated with textbook reading promoted students’ learning in many ways: wording, text structure, elaboration and comprehension monitoring. On the other hand, imitative writing enabled the students to use text/story structure, yet the level of challenge needed to increase gradually.
3. I as the teacher gained understandings on my own teaching. I used to be trapped by the details in teaching, and as I overcame this limitation, I was able to change the whole picture of the classroom learning. After analyzing the three different types of student writers, I was able to transform my teaching from copying others’ teaching models to flexibly scaffolding skills for diverse learners.
This research helped me to further change my assumptions toward students and teaching practices. A few suggestions were made for future research and instruction.
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