How reading habits have changed

during the COVID-19 lockdown
October 6, 2020 2.45am AEDT
Authors

1. Abigail Boucher
Lecturer in English Literature, Aston University

2. Chloe Harrison
Lecturer in English Language and Literature, Aston University

3. Marcello Giovanelli
Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature, Aston University

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit
from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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People have sought more security and safety in their reading. Andrii Kobryn/Shutterstock
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During times of crisis, people find themselves faced with lifestyle changes. One
of the earliest and most noticeable changes seen during the COVID-19
lockdown was how we consume media — and especially how we read.
People tend to find comfort in certain books, and reading habits and genre
preferences can change during periods of stress. This helps to explain why
much genre fiction has roots in times of significant social, political or
economic upheaval. Gothic literature is, in part, a British Protestant response
to the French Revolution (1789-99).

Science fiction, which emerged as a genre around the fin de siècle, was

galvanised by both the industrial revolution and the theories of Charles
Darwin. The hard-boiled detective story, which appeared in the 1930s, takes
its cues from the privations of the great depression.
While it’s still relatively early to see the influence of the coronavirus and the
lockdown on creative industries, there were some striking patterns in media
consumption in the early part of the pandemic. Books about (literal and
metaphorical) isolation, like Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Gabriel García
Marquez’s novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of
Cholera were among those that saw a big rise in sales. (Beyond books, horror
flourished; in particular, films about global pandemics such as 28 Days
Later, Contagion, and Outbreak were among the highest rentals on streaming
services.)
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In view of these patterns of changing reading habits during times of upheaval
and signs that such changes were happening during COVID-19, our team
decided to research reading habits among the UK public. We were particularly
interested in the following questions about the effects of the pandemic:

1. How much people have been reading;

2. What type and genre of texts people have been reading;

3. To what extent people have been returning to previously read books.

As many as 860 participants took part in our online survey, which was
advertised through social media. Our findings show that the COVID-19
lockdown changed not only how people read during times of stress, but also
what people turn to for comfort or distraction.

Reading frequency
Respondents generally reported that they were reading more than usual. This
was largely due to having more free time (due to being furloughed, or not
having a commute, or the usual social obligations or leisure activities).

Those who were caring for children reported they spent more time reading with children.  rSnapshotPhotos/Shutterstock
This increased reading volume was complicated for those with caring
responsibilities. Many people with children reported that their reading time
had increased generally because of their shared reading with children, but had
less time than normal for personal reading.

Reading frequency was further complicated by a quality vs quantity snag.

People spent more time reading and seeking escape, but an inability to
concentrate meant they made less progress than usual. In short, people spent
more time reading but the volume they read was less.

Genre choice
Despite the early figures showing spikes in interest for content about
pandemics and isolation, it appears that people quickly tired of these topics.
Many respondents sought out subject matter that was at least predictable, if
not necessarily comforting. Many found solace in the “security” of more
formulaic genres (whodunnits and other types of thrillers were often cited).
Others found themselves significantly less picky about genre than they were
before the lockdown: they read more, and more widely.

Many found the lockdown to be a great opportunity to explore things they

didn’t normally have the time or desire to read (like hefty classics that seemed
too dull or heavy to bring on a commute) or to fill other gaps in knowledge
(the protests over police brutality and racism were cited frequently as the
catalyst for many readers seeking out more texts by non-white authors).

Re-reading
Much as with the choice of genre, readers generally fell into two camps: those
that read for exploration and those that re-read for safety. The re-readers
found solace in previously read books: familiar plots and known emotional
registers helped stressed-out readers avoid suspense and surprises.

Unsurprisingly, lockdown also made re-reading a physical necessity for some.

Some respondents noted how they were unable to visit the library or browse at
the bookshop for new books. Others reported that they simply wished to save
money. On the other hand, the participants who reported re-reading less than
normal during the lockdown period wanted to use their newfound time to seek
out new topics and genres.

The two groups also drew on different metaphors to describe their

experiences: some of the non-re-readers talked about time as a commodity
(for example, valuing reading something new), while the re-readers discussed
the ability to travel easily, and with little effort to familiar places, characters
and experiences.

Our research shows that the lockdown really did affect the reading habits of
those who took part in our survey. But what might be the longer term
implications of the lockdown on how and why we read? And what might
happen given the possibility of a second lockdown? It remains to be seen if
and how the pandemic might be responsible for continuing changes in our
relationship with books.
Digital literacy in the midst of an outbreak
Charu D. Rawat

Posted on Apr 22, 2020 in COVID-19  and TEACHING

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The COVID-19 crisis and the physical distancing measures to control it have

forced educators to connect with their students remotely. As a result, digital
tools have become a necessity, not just an accessory, in their pedagogical
toolkit. In this article, Charu Dogra Rawat, an educator at Ramjas College,
New Delhi, and a digital literacy champion provides an overview of some of
the online platforms and resources that can help educators engage with their
students in a bidirectional teaching-learning process, even remotely.

Engaging in the teaching-learning process digitally  (Photo: Pranjal Guptta)

I was recently reminiscing about the year 2015- the year when I became aware
of the importance of digital tools in teaching. An advanced week-long course
in digital literacy at Edinburgh College, Scotland introduced me to a variety of
digital tools that could be used in pedagogy. Thanks to the course, my digital
toolkit was no longer limited to just PowerPoint presentations. I strongly felt
the power of “anywhere, anytime” learning. On my return from Edinburgh,
I quickly organized “Digital Literacy Teacher Training” at Ramjas
College, University of Delhi. I wanted not only to disseminate the acquired
knowledge to my colleagues but also to infuse new energy into the customary
pedagogy. To my disappointment, few matched my enthusiasm. Many of the
participants found digital literacy intimidating as it appeared to threaten their
professional existence. 

Even now, 5 years later, the employment of digital aids in pedagogy is very

limited and faces many challenges. Apart from the not-so-receptive-to-change
mindset of the stakeholders, inclusion and the spread of digital tools in
pedagogy are hindered by ‘digital drought’- the scarcity of infrastructure and
resources for digital dissemination of knowledge. Joined with it is the low
digital literacy of both the students as well as teachers. Though they may be
well accustomed to technology, they have limited to no knowledge of how to
use it in learning. For some teachers, not being very tech-savvy adds another
layer of complexity. 

Today, however, we find ourselves in midst of a crisis — the global outbreak

of COVID-19, and a nationwide lockdown to contain its spread. This has
necessitated the teaching-learning process to run remotely. The only way for
teachers and students to interact is on digital platforms. The medium that was
once considered just an aid and accessory has suddenly become the only
option available. It’s a time of ‘digital awakening’ in education. 

Here, I list some free (with restrictive usage) and open-source digital
platforms and tools (most of them are tried and tested) that can help during
these challenging times to keep us connected with our students and ensure
uninterrupted bidirectional teaching and learning.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) — Many of the schools, colleges

and institutions have LMS in place. It is basically a virtual ecosystem of
academic staff, students, management, as well as the
institution’s IT department that supports the development, delivery,
assessment, and management of courses. For the ones who do not
have LMS platforms, Moodle or Canvas can be employed. Teachers can set up 
“Courses” – workspaces where they can add learning resources, enroll
students, disseminate information, assess learning (grading), communicate,
interact and co-create content. Activities such as populating a wiki, generation
of a glossary, development of information databases, discussion forums allow
students to attain higher-order thinking skills of analyzing, evaluating and
creating information.
Online Classroom — For simpler, day-to-day class activities, Google
Classroom comes very handy. The platform can be used for making
announcements, sharing resources, collecting assignments and grading. One
can sign in with a non-institutional google account, create a classroom, share
the classroom code with students who then join the class, and that’s it. You are
good to go. 

Live Class — Nothing can beat the face-to-face live interaction of

a classroom. This can be achieved virtually by video conferencing, for which
platforms such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are available. 

G Suite for Education and Office 365 run Google Meet and Microsoft Teams,
respectively, for free for schools/colleges through institution’s administration.
In case one wants to run a virtual class personally, Zoom comes handy which
offers to host a meeting of up to 100 participants with 40 min limit on group
meetings (for the time being, the 40 min time limit for educational institutes
has been lifted due to the COVID-19 crisis). During the live class, features
supported by these platforms such as “Share Screen” for making the slides
visible to the students, as well as “In-meeting Chat” for students to type-in
their questions/doubts can be used. 

While Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are safer to use when run by
institutions, there have been security issues with Zoom meetings. The Cyber
Coordination Centre (CyCord), under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs
(MHA), has issued an advisory on the secure use of the Zoom Meeting
Platform by private individuals, which should be followed.

Pre-recorded Video Lectures – If it’s not feasible to run live classes,

lectures can be pre-recorded and shared with students. High-quality lecture
videos are recorded in recording studios where proper lighting, good
microphones, better cameras, and technical experts are present. After
recording, the videos are edited and then made available on YouTube. Video
lectures can also be recorded personally with a mobile or camcorder (choosing
a quiet place, neat background, microphone close to the mouth and blocking
off all natural light). They can be edited using video editing tools (simplest
being the Windows Movie Maker) and uploaded on personal YouTube
channels, which can then be integrated in LMS, or shared on Google
Classroom. Indeed, one doesn’t have to record lectures but can also use/share
pre-recorded lectures available online under the Creative Commons(CC)
copyright licenses.

Online Courses/Live Lectures/Online Learning Resources — Major

enforcement of digitalization in the Indian education sector came in the
year 2017 when the Government of India
launched SWAYAM, SWAYAM Prabha and National Academic
Depository (NAD). Subsequently, the National Digital Library of
India (NDLI), which hosts 47,917,213 learning resources (as
on 21st April, 2020), was launched in the year 2018. The resources include
books, thesis, audio and video lectures, etc. 

SWAYAM is a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) initiative. Nine

national coordinators have been appointed to produce and deliver the courses.
I have been associated for the past 5 years with one of the Centers, Consortium
for Educational Communication (CEC), for undergraduate education. In
addition to the SWAYAM courses, CEC makes content for the Vyas Higher
Education Channel and manages 10SWAYAM Prabha DTH channels
for 24X7 learning. The live lectures broadcasted on the Vyas channel are
uploaded on YouTube for “anytime, anywhere” learning. Their nationwide
appeal can be estimated by the acknowledgment I got for one of my lectures
on YouTube (recorded in Delhi) from a student in Bhubaneshwar, when I went
there to attend a conference. 

According to a 2017study by Google and KPMG, India – one of the leading

providers of financial and business advisory among its various other roles –
online education in India is expected to grow from 0.25 billion USD (2016)
to 1.96 billion USD by 2021, with a 52% Compound Annual Growth Rate
(CAGR). The growth drivers of online education are its cost-effectiveness,
availability of quality education to potential students, increased internet
penetration, and growing smartphone user-base, to mention a few. Digital
literacy thus becomes an important skill to be acquired to harness the
potential of online education fully. 

The list of tools described here is not exhaustive and there is a plethora of such
platforms/tools that can be utilized in education. I shall write about more
digital tools in my next article. May we consider these challenging times as an
opportunity to digitally update pedagogy so that when we are re-installed after
the crisis is over, we come forth as technology-enabled, improved versions of
ourselves – Charu Dogra Rawat 2.0.
Reading during lockdown: Supporting
vulnerable learners
Jane Carter, University of the West of England  27 Nov 2020
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Learning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is
significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic
and academic success. A failure to learn to read comes at a great cost: to the economy,
to public health, to safety, and to democratic and community engagement (Castles,
Rastle, & Nation, 2018).

It is not surprising therefore, that when the Covid-19 virus struck, forcing schools to
close their doors and migrate learning online, there was a deep and real concern for
the most vulnerable learners: those who had already been identified by schools as
needing additional support and specialist intervention; and those with few books at
home or with parents and carers who did not have the confidence or resources to
support their child. In their research for the National Literacy Trust, Clark and Picton
(2020) found that while reading engagement and enjoyment increased for 8-to-18-
year-olds during lockdown, they also identified a growing gap between the genders.
Lucas, Nelson and Sims (2020), meanwhile, have highlighted the impact of social and
economic disadvantage on access to learning during lockdown. This highlights how
Stanovich’s (1986) ‘Matthew Effect’ can impact on the youngest readers – the more
you read the better you get; the better you get the more you read.

‘A failure to learn to read comes at a great cost: to the economy,

to public health, to safety, and to democratic and community
engagement.’
I have been awarded a small grant from the British Educational Research Association
to study the impact of school closures on the lowest-attaining readers in primary
schools. Part of the study focuses on schools with a reading specialist teacher (a
Reading Recovery teacher). The study also aims to highlight the innovations and
challenges experienced when trying to maintain one-to-one reading support online.

Six of the 28 schools taking part in the study managed to continue one-to-one reading
with the most vulnerable learners, but this was not an easy task. The following are just
some of the hurdles that the teachers have reported as part of the study.

1. Access to appropriate IT hardware – the children involved were six years

old, so few had access other than through a parent’s phone.
2. Safeguarding protocols, as both the child and the teacher were in their
private homes during the one-to-one tutoring.
3. Data protection (GDPR) concerns.
4. Sharing books online so both the teacher and the child were able to see the
text. The obvious solution might have been to use ebooks, but this
presented further issues with accessing external websites while in the
session and sharing screens.
5. Engaging young children online through a small screen. This challenge was
magnified as the children identified for support were those who were
already reluctant to read, found reading difficult or were often distracted
even when face to face.
Initial findings from the research show some of the innovations that teachers
developed during the lockdown period: developing banks of scanned books; involving
parents in the one-to-one reading sessions so that safeguarding concerns were
addressed along with the added benefit of parents developing their skills in supporting
their child’s reading; working with publishers around copyright; and adapting sessions
to address the engagement of each child. Further innovations involved increasing the
number of adults trained to deliver one-to-one reading interventions and so working
with local initial teacher education student volunteers. One parent participant in the
research study reported that the involvement of the student had been the first online
learning her child had engaged with during the whole of the lockdown period and, in
fact, the child was so excited about his reading session with the student that he had got
up early on the days of his online reading and changed into his school uniform ready
to impress the student teacher!

Clearly we are not yet out of the woods with Covid-19, so it is essential that we learn
the lessons from school closures in the summer term and from the teachers that were
able to adapt and develop one-to-one support online for the most vulnerable readers.

References
Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to
expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271
Clark, C., & Picton, I. (2020). Children and young people’s reading in 2020 before and during the COVID-19
lockdown. London: National Literacy Trust. Retrieved from https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-
services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-reading-in-2020-before-and-during-the-covid-19-
lockdown/
Lucas, M., Nelson, J., & Sims, D. (2020). Pupil engagement in remote learning. Slough: National Foundation
for Educational Research. Retrieved from https://www.nfer.ac.uk/schools-responses-to-covid-19-pupil-
engagement-in-remote-learning/
Stanovich, K. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the
acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 360–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022057409189001-
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Literacy in Lockdown: Learning and
Teaching During COVID‐19 School
Closures
Liz Chamberlain 
 
Jan Lacina 
 
William P. Bintz 
 
Jo Beth Jimerson 
 
Kim Payne 
 
Remy Zingale
First published: 22 November 2020
 
https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1961
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Abstract
Across the globe, students have been away from schools and their teachers, but literacy learning
has continued. In many countries, students’ literacy proficiency is often measured via high‐stakes
assessment tests. However, such tests do not make visible students’ literacy lives away from formal
learning settings, so students are positioned as task responders, rather than as agentive readers
and writers. The authors explore the fluidity and diversity of literacy events and practices for students
and their teachers observed during the recent period of COVID‐19 lockdown restrictions.

Across the globe, students have been away from schools and their teachers, but literacy learning
has continued, so during a time of lockdown, what happens to literacy events and practices for
students and their teachers when schooled writing is not an option?

In this piece for The Inside Track, we consider how schools in the United States have been
educating the very youngest students to how colleges of teacher education are grappling with a
transition to a new shelter in place at home and virtual teaching and learning during the global
pandemic. This contrasts to the emergence of public environmental literacy events observed in the
United Kingdom, specifically in the South of England. Over the course of the first six weeks of
lockdown, the affordances of the range of these events and the influence of the specific, local
cultures (Street, 1984) were documented, highlighting how the immediate physical and virtual
environments appear to have become more significant during the COVID‐19 pandemic.

As students and their teachers respond and react to new literacy experiences, we hope to expose
potential points of intersection where students, with encouragement from their teachers, crafted new
and hybrid literacy practices appropriated and recontextualized within new communicative space(s)
(Dyson, 2001). Writing instructional practices across the world vary to some extent; in the United
States, there are many similarities to what are considered best practices, despite each state holding
different standards for writing instruction (Lacina, 2018). Teachers in the United States focus much
more of their instructional time in the area of reading, instead of writing (Edwards, 2003; Puranik, Al
Otaiba, Sidler, and Greulich, 2014). However, much has been written about teacher planning and
instruction with process writing instruction, such as writers' workshop (Troia, Lin, Cohen, &
Monroe, 2011). Within a writers' workshop classroom, the teacher uses literature as a model for
writing (Lacina & Espinosa, 2010); the teacher teaches minilessons and scaffolds the teaching of
writing. Researchers also have noted the importance of teaching writing within the content areas
(Fisher & Frey, 2020) and the need to teach using the new literacies (Lacina & Block, 2012).
Researchers who study writing instructional practices have found that there is great variance
between teachers’ writing instructional practices (Cutler & Graham, 2008); with such variance, there
are also connections between teachers’ writing instructional practices and their beliefs about
teaching writing. Students out‐of‐school literacy lives often demonstrate a broader conceptualization
of writing than is displayed in their school writing (Chamberlain, 2019; Dyson, 2020). Current
definitions of literacy appear to mean reading, not writing. It is easier to test, measure, and compare
reading proficiency than writing accomplishments. However, writing is better positioned as
purposeful in the lives of students and reflected through sociocultural and situated identities where
writing is framed as a mode of social or personal action (Prior, 2006; Rowsell & Pahl, 2007). The
National Literacy Trust’s recent research based on over 4,000 questionnaire responses (Clark,
Picton, & Lant, 2020) of children and young people in the United Kingdom suggested that new and
positive writing habits have been developed during this time of lockdown. Educators have studied
students’ consumption and production of texts through a framework of multimodality in both in‐ and
out‐of‐school contexts (Lenters, 2016, 2018). Studying a framework of multimodality in the area of
literacy has helped educators rethink the way literacy is instructed in school spaces (Kendrick &
McKay, 2004; Kress, 1997; Lenters, 2018). However, rather than polarizing the literacies acquired in
different settings, those of school and away from school, which serves only to limit our
understanding of such encounters, the learnings from the examples in this piece aim to make visible
the unique nature of students' interactions with their writing (Reder & Davilla, 2005) when schooled
literacy (Cook‐Gumperz, 2006) is not an option.

Multimodal Learning and Literacy

The following two examples from the United States illustrate diverse learning environments and
examples of students and future teachers as they transitioned to virtual learning. First, we describe a
university laboratory school located at a private liberal arts university in Fort Worth, Texas. The
second example, from a teacher education program located at a large state institution in Ohio,
describes the transition to a virtual environment.

Starpoint School at Texas Christian University

Jan Lacina, Jo Beth Jimerson, Kim Payne, Remy Zingale

Starpoint School is a university laboratory school located at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort
Worth, Texas. Starpoint School provides students with learning disabilities, ages 6–11, with
specialized instruction taught by faculty with training in dyslexia and related reading disabilities, as
well as attention‐deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. The school also serves as an on‐campus site for
TCU College of Education teacher candidates as they receive guidance in teaching students with
learning disabilities.

As COVID‐19 impacted our university community, Starpoint School transitioned to a new online
environment, continuing with a focus on literacy learning. The entire staff at Starpoint School met
daily to thoughtfully plan instructional strategies, to discuss strategies for strengthening parent–
teacher communication, to ensure the provision of critical counseling services, and to continue to
build the overall school community culture. Led by Interim Director Jo Beth Jimerson and Assistant
Director Kim Payne, this work came together in a completely virtual school community.

Sustaining a Sense of Community

Already a close‐knit community, some of the aspects for developing community were transitioned to
a virtual environment. For example, the virtual conferencing platform Zoom was used to hold weekly
parent–teacher coffees, during which parents learned about supporting their children with disabilities
in remote learning contexts from TCU special education faculty. Recognizing that students sheltered
at home had increased need for social engagement with peers, and to support students’ social and
emotional needs, teachers organized Zoom lunches for their classes and between classes at
Starpoint and another TCU laboratory school, KinderFrogs (which serves young students with Down
syndrome). School leaders and staff considered areas in which they would like additional
professional development while teaching and working in a new virtual environment; sessions were
led by TCU faculty experts, on such topics as educational technology and writing instruction. Parent–
teacher conferences also occurred in the Zoom platform, as did class meetings as showcased in
Figure 1.

Figure 1
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
Zoom Class Session at Starpoint School
Jo Beth Jimerson, the interim director at Starpoint School and an associate professor of educational
leadership, explained the transition to virtual schooling during COVID‐19:
In some ways, learning during the time of COVID‐19 presented us with paradoxes. We had to
rethink how we supported students as learners and as human beings—to support the whole child.
Literacies seemed to be a doorway to learning and to easing anxieties. Students took turns creating
“morning announcement” videos and often put a creative spin on how they shared weather facts and
favorite quotes with their peers. As students listened to teachers read books and stories, they were
able to hear familiar, soothing voices while they built listening and comprehension skills. Students
wrote in virtual journals—sometimes with words on a page and sometimes by animating a drawing to
tell their stories for them—and their journals opened up avenues for reflecting on the highs and lows
of their weeks, academically, socially, and emotionally. Stories opened up safe avenues for students
to talk about emotions as they could talk about characters, and situate their own fears and hopes
within the context of a fictional narrative. Literacies in multiple formats helped us keep connected as
a community.
Teachers and students remained flexible and open to new ways of literacy learning during this time
period. Teachers and administrators maintained the importance of the whole child; not only the
academic aspect of literacy learning is essential, but also the social and emotional aspects of
learning cannot be forgotten.

Planning Instruction in a New Way

The third‐level class at Starpoint is similar to U.S. second/third grade in public schools in the age
range of the students and the content being learned. Literacy is a strong focus of this class both on
campus and now during the new virtual environment. Teachers thoughtfully planned instruction for
their students throughout the new online environment while using the platform SeeSaw with built‐in
annotation tools to capture what students knew and to demonstrate their learning in various writing
formats. Teachers sought for students to not only use SeeSaw to document their learning during a
novel study but also to document their learning and understanding through reenacting scenes from
the book, as depicted in Figure 2. SeesSaw also provided a way for students to respond to their
reading in a written format during the virtual schooling experience. In the example in Figure 3,
students used SeeSaw to illustrate their understanding of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.

Figure 2
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
Charlotte’s Web Display at Home
Figure 3
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
Characteristics of Charlotte
Teachers at Starpoint School understand the importance of fluency development, with students in
the primary levels and as they transition to the intermediate levels of the school. The strong relation
between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension during the primary grades has been well
documented through research (Sabatini, O'Reilly, Halderman, & Bruce, 2014) and is especially
important for students of all ages at Starpoint. Teachers plan oral reading fluency practice to help in
the building of decoding skills, which in turn supports prosody development and reading
comprehension (Breznitz, 2006). During a study of Charlotte’s Web, Mrs. Payne and Ms. Zingale
designed instruction to support literacy development. With the readers in their classroom, it was
important for students to hear fluent readers during a novel study as reading and writing instruction
now moved online. Mrs. Payne and Ms. Zingale implemented a Mystery Reader program to support
fluency development and prosody. A Mystery Reader is a parent, guardian, relative, sibling, close
friend, or teacher who shares a favorite or well‐liked children’s book with the class. The role of the
Mystery Reader is to remain anonymous until that person enters the classroom on the designated
reading day. In this case, the Mystery Reader remained anonymous until reading in the new virtual
environment. The graduate student who cotaught this class, Ms. Zingale, explained the benefits of
the Mystery Reader:
Mystery Reader helped the students feel a little bit of normalcy with getting a clue each day of the
week, then the reader coming on Friday to our Zoom, and then they ate lunch with us. They got to
guess who it was and talk to each other about who it might be, which kept them engaged with one
another. It was something that they loved, and it didn’t disappear like many things did due to the
online learning platform.
Just like the Mystery Reader program, writing instruction also continued in a new platform through a
virtual environment. Mrs. Payne, the classroom teacher, explained,
Multimodal learning was important in a virtual format. It allowed students to demonstrate their level
of understanding in a variety of ways. Daily journals, responses to our class novels, projects, and
voice recordings gave information not only about literacy but also of the individual child’s interests
and feelings during these uncertain times.

Multimodal texts communicate information not only through the linguistic mode but also through
visuals, photos, drawings, graphics, and even video. In the third‐level class at Starpoint, students
conveyed their understanding of Charlotte’s Web not only through the construction of text but also
though their verbal presentation and illustrations, which included video elements, as noted in the
following video clips created by the students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NL1kOX44H78&feature=youtu.be and https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=OpZKFbYTN4s&feature=youtu.be.

In closing this example, although instruction moved to a format that most teachers and staff did not
prefer, they came together to find strategies to support not only literacy learning but also
strengthening an already close community of learners and their families. Students proudly posted
their multimodal texts to culminate their novel book study, and this project documented their literacy
learning in new ways. Students were no longer restricted to just print technology; they had the
opportunity to document their learning through a linguistic mode, visual elements, drawings, and
video production.

As the school prepared this past summer for the possibility of resuming a shelter in place in the fall
and virtual schooling again, school leaders developed a COVID‐19 instructional and transition plan
to aim for a seamless transition from face‐to‐face instructional delivery to virtual learning at home for
Starpoint students. Although far from the ideal, the reality of our current global pandemic forces
teachers and schools to think and learn in new ways.

Transitioning to Online Literacy Teaching:

Challenges and Opportunities
William P. Bintz

On March 16, 2020, I was sitting in my university office preparing to teach my graduate literacy
course starting in 10 minutes. Suddenly, I received a university‐wide text notifying faculty that
starting immediately, all undergraduate and graduate courses were no longer to be conducted face‐
to‐face. I knew students were already in the classroom; however, I had no choice but to pack my
computer bag and go home.

The next morning, there was a whirlwind of information communicated electronically by university
administration about next steps for faculty and students. Opportunities, consideration, and flexibility
were major themes, especially in the context of virtual teaching, course expectations, course
evaluations, and alternative grading options. Faculty were encouraged to revise syllabi and offer
asynchronous and synchronous options for students (student communication via email, open forms,
chat rooms, discussion boards, audio and video conferencing applications, collaborative team/group
work, simulations, and Q&A sessions) and offer students alternative grading options, such as,
pass/fail instead of traditional letter grades. To help do this, a variety of online workshops were
quickly developed and offered to faculty and graduate teaching assistants, such as “Remote
Instruction: Student Engagement” and “Remote Instruction: Course Delivery and Design
Workshops.”

Once I caught my breath, I realized that moving from face‐to‐face to 100% online raised important
questions and challenges: Did my students have enough devices at home? Did they have internet at
home? What about students who lived in rural areas without internet? If they had internet, did they
have videotelephony and online chat software platforms sponsored by the university, such as Skype
and Zoom? If not, could online instruction be provided through other internet platforms, such as
Amazon fire sticks and gaming systems? I had very little experience with teaching online, but
fortunately, my university provided much information and technical assistance for professors to not
only teach online but also teach online in efficient and creative ways.

For example, I always require my graduate students to read and respond to self‐selected
professional literature, primarily peer‐reviewed articles, on literacy topics relevant to the course. At
times, I bring a collection of articles to the class and invite students in pairs to browse the articles
and then select two or three to read and discuss with the whole class at the next class session. At
other times, I invite them to self‐select articles by accessing the databases on campus at the main
library. Unfortunately, the main library was closed indefinitely because of COVID‐19. Therefore, I
adjusted the syllabus to now include directions for how students can access the main library
databases from off campus.

Another example is that I always require my students to familiarize themselves with major literature
awards and award‐winning literature. I do this because, over the years, when I ask students to
identify a major literature award, they mostly name the Caldecott Medal or the Newbery Medal.
Furthermore, although they can identify these awards, they know very little, if anything, about the
history and purpose of them. Therefore, I bring to class an extensive collection of award‐winning
literature from my own professional library and share it with the whole class. I invite students to take
note of all of the awards these books have won and to select one award to study in depth and report
back to the class. In the spring semester, I had to transition this in‐class literature award study to
online. Specifically, I invited students to do the following:

 Access the American Library Association online (http://www.ala.org/). Click Awards, Grants &
Scholarships. Then, click ALA Book, Print & Media Awards. On that page, you will find an
alphabetical list of award names; for example, under the letter B is the Mildred L. Batchelder
Award. Many of these are awards for outstanding pieces of literature. Take some time and
review these major literature awards. Select one award that attracts your attention. Review
the award to gain some expertise about it.
 Post your new expertise online about your selected award for others to learn and comment.
Your post should include, but not be limited to, the following: What is the history of the
award? What are the criteria for winning the award? What are some books that have won the
award?
 Read one of the books from your selected award and post online why you think the book
deserved to win the award. Because physical access to libraries are not permitted during
COVID‐19 lockdown, here are a few websites that can be used to borrow books identified as
winners of a particular award: The Ohio Digital Library (http://ohdbks.overdrive.com), Internet
Archive (http://archive.org), International Children’s Digital Library
(http://en.childrenslibrary.org), and National Emergency Library
(http://blog.archive.org/national‐emergency‐library), as well as many state, local, and
regional library websites, including the Kent Free Library (http://kentfreelibrary.org),
Cuyahoga County Public Library (http://cuyahogalibrary.org), Kent State University Libraries
(https://www.library.kent.edu), and Cleveland Public Library (http://cpl.org). Students can, of
course, use their own personal collections of books and borrow books from students,
teachers, and others to find books that have won a particular award.
 Read and respond to two different student online submissions that provided expertise about
an award that was different from yours.

Still another example is that I always require my graduate students to conduct meaningful and
thoughtful interviews of self‐selected students in a grade or grade band in which the graduate
students wish to eventually teach. In particular, they gain much knowledge from using interview
instruments such as the Burke Reading Interview and a variety of literacy‐based instructional
strategies with students enrolled in the Curriculum and Instruction reading clinic. These instruments
and strategies are usually conducted face‐to‐face; however, now they needed to be conducted
online. To do this, I collaborated with the Early Childhood Program director to provide my graduate
students with a list of parents who expressed interest in gaining additional literacy experiences for
their children. The graduate students used this list as a resource to work with children online.

Most of my graduate students are practicing teachers. Like me, they also experienced challenges in
moving from face‐to‐face to online instruction. For them, the content remained the same, but delivery
of instruction changed extensively, especially in the area of writing. One high school English
language arts teacher stated,
I met with students via Zoom twice per week and adapted my course calendar for scheduled
meetings and an individual to‐do list. Going from five days per week of class to two, I had to choose
and plan class time more carefully, balancing what instruction to deliver and what
resources/activities to go under the independent portion. The most difficult part for me and my
students was the lack of feedback I was able to give them as they worked. Typically, I meet with
each student every week to confer or catch things to comment on just by walking around the room.
As a writing teacher, this is a critical part of instruction. As my students finished their final writing
project for the course, I did a mandatory conference over the course of a week with each student
where they shared their screen and walked me through what they had so far. With 50 students, and
using Zoom, this was EXHAUSTING and so time‐consuming. Discussions were also a challenge via
Zoom. You can’t read the body language (or even see everyone), so people hesitate to throw out
their opinions the same way they do in person.
Similarly, one elementary teacher stated,
Ordinarily, my students would read and reread a picture book, listen to an audiobook of it, work
through new and interesting vocabulary words, complete pre‐ and post‐reading activities, ask and
answer lots of questions, and most importantly, have really cool discussions around a text. When
instruction transitioned to online, I was challenged to figure out how to implement all of those things.
In the meantime, I’ve been using a combination of online learning platforms. I try to find a video that
will introduce and model a comprehension strategy, or I record myself introducing and modeling a
comprehension strategy. Then, I assign a reading passage that has questions attached to it, for the
students to practice the strategy on their own. My teaching has changed dramatically. It’s hard for
me to believe that what I am currently doing is even remotely engaging. But I’m not sure how to
facilitate natural conversation around a text with students with special needs over the computer. It’s
challenging because I know that conversation and connections with a text are integral to learning.

Away From Schooled Writing

Liz Chamberlain

In addition to dramatic changes in teaching for educators and their students, students' interactions
with literacy also appear to have been affected by the at‐home nature of lockdown. When schooled
writing is not an option, what types of multimodal practices do students choose to engage with, and
how do they make these literacy events available to the wider public? In the weeks that followed
lockdown, towns, cities, and villages across the United Kingdom began to take on a more colorful
identity. Children and their families began to share their at‐home literacy practices by posting in
windows, on pavements, in gardens, in trees, and in local parks. At the start, the multimodal nature
of these practices included words, pictures, numbers, posters, and chalked games in public spaces,
but as weeks passed, writing events began to be presented through the rainbow lens with heartfelt
messages of thanks to key workers punctuating the previously private into public writing examples.
The examples shared in this piece form a small sample of a larger research project that aimed, over
the first six‐week period of lockdown, to document the range of public literacy practices and events
created for others to see, either intentionally or as an afterthought.

Over the initial weeks of lockdown, the streets were quiet, but as March moved into April, writing and
artwork began to emerge out of houses and spill over into gardens, on walls, and into public spaces.
On daily walks and cycle rides on a six‐mile radius of where I live, I began to document the found
writing by photographing it in situ. I made a conscious decision to collect only writing that was
obviously intended for a public audience. There were examples of writing posted in windows and in
the trees of front gardens, but these artifacts were included only if it was possible to ask for verbal
permission—often in the form of the universal mimed sign for “do you mind if I take a
photograph?”—through kitchen or lounge room windows. Information about the wider literacy project
that these figures form a part of will be shared when restrictions allow; only examples with explicit
permission are included in this piece.

The definition of writing underpinning this project uses what Heath and Street (2008) called “those
events and practices in which the written mode is still salient, yet embedded in other modes” (pp.
21–22). However, the project also takes a broader literacy lens, by including events related more
broadly to reading and multimodality, such as Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and
displayed responses to festivals or celebrations, such as the Christian festival of Easter that fell
during data collection.

Across six weeks, over 60 unique writing artifacts were photographed, with the greatest number
documented on April 10 and April 11 and again at a later date in May. In the beginning, the purpose
of the writing appeared to be to entertain or communicate with the passing audience. There were
chalked pavement games, teddy bears in windows or sitting in the front seat of cars going nowhere,
painted stones and messages on paper‐chain Easter eggs hung from trees, and children’s names
also featured. One family created a different daily scene in their front garden featuring an oversize
teddy bear: One day he was in bed, and another day, he was climbing out of a window. In another
village, a local teacher shared an idea she had read about and created a wildlife park in her front
garden. Over the following week, other children took the same idea and made it their own: Different
animals were chosen and researched, and informational posters were displayed, posing questions
for passing visitors (see Figure 4). Parents reported younger siblings adapting the ideas for their own
level, whereas older children appeared to be using school‐learned literacy practices, as they set out
their posters in the appropriate and familiar text‐type format.

Figure 4
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
Giraffe Information Poster

The obvious argument about these observed events is that the identity of the author remains
unknown. An assumption had to be made about the potential age of the artifact’s creator, but in
some cases, there were parallel examples. For example, a pavement game in a local park was
adult‐initiated (see Figure 5), as a comment on Facebook revealed its author. A young child
responded to the stimulus but did not copy her dad’s writing; instead, she used the same medium of
chalk to create her own picture of the Disney character Moana on a boat.
Figure 5
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
Dad’s Pavement Games

This crossover of adult/child text creation also appeared to evolve as the weeks passed. The shift
from entertainment as the key purpose of the writing began to move into writing refracted through
the specific nature of the pandemic. From the end of April, the majority of writing featured a rainbow,
either explicitly (see Figure 6), or through the selection of rainbow font colors, or in direct messages
to passersby. The rainbow symbol was adopted early in the United Kingdom as a sign of support for
key workers, including those working for the National Health Service.
Figure 6
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
National Health Service Rainbow Poster in House Window

Children’s absorption of health messages also appears in artifacts photographed during later weeks
(see Figure 7), with Valerie’s earnest appeal to passersby to respect the lockdown restrictions. Her
writing pours out from the driveway of her house onto the pavement, and the reader has a sense of
her impassioned plea that we, as her community, should abide by her request. The specific nature of
lockdown led to an increase in public writing events marking a visible shift from the sub‐rosa writing
practices that children often engage with at home (Chamberlain, 2019). Within lockdown, there was
an opportunity for children to engage in multimodal creative expression and to exercise agency over
their writing, potentially a positive outcome of this unprecedented time. However, as is the nature of
the English weather, two heavy downpours of rain washed the chalk writing away, cardboard posters
became a sodden mess, and all that remained were brief reminders and remnants of those situated
and meaningful writing practices.
Figure 7
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
10‐Year‐Old Valerie's Message to Her Community

Transitioning Back Into Formal Literacy

It was not just the rain that led to shifts in public literacy events as lockdown continued. In Fort
Worth, Texas, we witnessed the beautiful drawings and out‐of‐school writing authored by children.
We noticed a fairy garden, which included messages from fairies (children) to anyone who walked
down the park path. Chalk drawings and messages filled driveways, and children walked the Texas
neighborhood counting red hearts taped to each windowsill. For many children across the globe,
home literacy practices soon transitioned to schooling online, including teacher education programs.
At Starpoint School in Fort Worth, depending on the age of the student, the home‐schooling day
varied in time and seatwork at the computer. Staff thrived in finding the instruction to best meet the
unique needs of their learners, and this practice moved to a virtual environment with success.

Conclusion
What has been learned about these new literacy practices from young writers, or as teaching and
learning left classrooms and lecture theaters and transitioned from face‐to‐face to online instruction?
By learning from the ways in which children chose to make visible their agentive writing lives during
the time of lockdown, one positive outcome is to inform practitioners and policymakers as to the
potential of students' writing repertoires when away from school. For the teacher educator, perhaps
the most important lesson was best expressed in an email by one graduate student: “Hi, Dr. Bintz:
On behalf of the class, I write to say that we miss you and each other.” These students remind us
that literacy is not a spectator sport but a social engagement. Online instruction is a valuable tool but
cannot substitute, much less replace, a teacher. Teachers at Starpoint also recognized the value of
social engagement, but despite the mode of delivery, they kept students at the heart of their
instruction. A graduate student who cotaught the level 3 class at Starpoint School in Fort Worth
summarized her learning as a teacher:
Virtual learning taught me various platforms to use to keep children engaged in learning and ways to
teach virtually. I learned how students can show me how they are learning math concepts or reading
strategies in various ways. I also learned the importance of being in person with students beyond
just learning. Many of my students struggled heavily emotionally through the weeks, and I started
personally Zooming children to help out. This experience really helped me value in‐person learning
and the value it brings!

As we prepared for the fall semester, instruction continued to evolve with our unpredictable situation.
For example, students at Starpoint School are required to wear a mask each day at school, as are
their teachers. Wearing a mask poses new challenges to communication and interpretation of
messages; we will continue to learn and adapt to this situation to best serve the students we teach.
These new learnings make a valuable contribution to the anticipated shifts as to what primary
education and its curriculum should look like for students and their educators in the post‐COVID‐19
world.

Biographies
 Liz Chamberlain is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language
Studies and a codirector of the Children's Research Centre at the Open University, Milton
Keynes, UK; email liz.chamberlain@open.ac.uk.
 Jan Lacina is a professor and the associate dean for graduate studies in the College of
Education at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, USA; email j.lacina@tcu.edu.
 William P. Bintz is a professor in the School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies
at Kent State University, OH, USA; e mail wbintz@kent.edu.
 Jo Beth Jimerson is an associate professor in the Educational Leadership Program and the
interim director of the Starpoint and KinderFrogs Schools at Texas Christian University, Fort
Worth, USA; e mail j.jimerson@tcu.edu.
 Kim Payne is the assistant director of and a teacher at Starpoint School at Texas Christian
University, Fort Worth, USA; email k.payne@tcu.edu.
 Remy Zingale was a graduate student and an associate at Starpoint School at Texas
Christian University, Fort Worth, USA.