Learning to Read Deeply Enough To Gain Expertise

In Mosaic of Thought, Keene and Zimmerman give an example of students doing a research project. While working with one girl, it was evident that she had so much information that she didn't know what was truly important to include. She was a novice in her topic and needed an expert's help. James Gee also discuses the idea of a novice learning from an expert with the idea of enculturation. The article by Lea & Street explains the academic literacies model as being literate in a particular genre of expertise. In order to promote literacy development, students need the opportunity to practice what they are learning with experts. All of these examples tie in with Wilhelm's chapter on using the Mantle of the Expert enactment activity. Activities in this enactment group motivate students to read at a deeper and different level in order for them to gain the same knowledge that experts have. They start to see the real purpose behind the reading, instead of simply a school assignment. The information becomes real knowledge for themselves instead of class work to quickly be forgotten. Wilhelm writes, "the point of all reading, and of all learning activity, is to change our understanding and, as a result, our ways of thinking and being in the world" (p.98). Through his enactment of mantle of expert, he expects students to "become 'novice experts' who 'take on' the language and strategies of the expert" (p.98). The phrase mantle of the expert means that students will step into another's shoes.

While working with my gifted students, we had many different activities that asked them to "become" experts in any area of interest and create activities to complete while in that expert role. Using Wilhelm's enactments would have helped my unit to have so much more clarity and motivation.

Students from Wilhelm's class have the following to say about mantle of expert enactments (p.100):

"It really made me understand...I just didn't get it when I [heard or read] about it"

- Christine

"School is about facts - mostly boring facts - drama is about making facts exciting because you add the feelings...Drama takes facts and asks how they might have been different or how the facts might affect you or someone else and how all that would feel. That's why I like drama."

 - Mike 

Making the Connection: Enactments to Use Before Reading

Enactments can be used like any teaching method to tap into prior knowledge in order to help students make connections between new material and things they already know. To be literate for content area reading, students need background knowledge in the subject or a teacher willing to help them make the connections to any other prior knowledge they do have. With a newly developed secondary discourse in that content area or topic they can move towards fluency or mushfake to learn and understand.

According to Wilhelm's research, "the most important and powerful time to teach is before students read" (p. 33). I think that too often many teachers jump into an assignment just hoping that everyone will understand and do it perfectly, to only find a lot of confusion. The teacher then tries to teach in the midst of the reading. Therefore, when using enactments it is important for the teacher to clearly understand what they are trying to teach and what they want their students to learn. This is called framing. As Wilhelm writes, "framing simply means that the students understand how the work will proceed and what is expected of them" (p. 33). In the framing time, the teacher would make the situation and the roles clear, as well as, explain that the students will be required to find out, establish, or make something during the enactment. Thus, giving the whole process a purpose for learning.

While working with enactments, Wilhelm uses frontloading activities to build the prior knowledge. His book lists many unique ways for kids to interact with a story through frontloading. The ones I found most interesting were:

• Trigger Letters
• Mantle-of-Expert Writing
• Trigger Letter and Role Play
• Tableaux

When I taught 6th grade gifted seminar, we did a semester long unit on law which included mock trials. The entire unit involved preparing pieces of enactments and the culmination of the "trial" through role play. This book would have given me so many more strategies to use in my mock trials unit.