Explicit Instruction in a Second Grade Picturebook Author Study

Using the Learning by Design multiliteracies framework, writing workshop was transformed into composing workshop. The researcher worked with a team of four second grade teachers in an urban public elementary school to redesign their Kevin Henkes author study to equally value art and design, guiding their students in creating their own narrative picturebooks. The researcher addresses the following two research questions: 1. What explicit instructional practices did the teachers enact? 2. What influence did these explicit instructional practices have on the second graders' composing work? The researcher applied cross-case analysis, first to create an inventory of explicit instructional practices, and second, to identify illustrative cases and representative samples of explicit practices. The researcher documents the teachers' explicit instruction, harnessing social cognition of the learning community, that resulted in students' application of an expanded semiotic landscape to express their own narrative understandings. Students demonstrated knowledge transformation and development of metalinguistic understandings. The reflexive nature of implementing Learning by Design pedagogy means that curriculum design is always a work in progress, always in need of redesign to be responsive and supportive of the children in front of us.