Early in the school year at Van Ness Elementary in Washington, D.C., the after-school donut sale was in its second day of operation. Long lines of students waited patiently while the harried teachers' aides attempted to serve customers. Standing nearby, a 3rd grader who was with her mother noticed that one cashier was having difficulty making change. "I can help with that," the student said as she eased into a seat next to the cashier and rapidly began computing totals, requesting money, and returning the correct change to students.
The girl's mother, who was quite surprised, said, "I didn't know you knew how to do that." The girl replied confidently, "This is just like the store we had in Ms. Needels's class last year," a reference to the All-Stars General Store, one of several organizations that make up the TRALE community.
Creating TRALEs for Young Urban Learners
An ongoing priority for education in the United States is the systemic reform of our nation's urban schools to better meet the needs of an increasingly underserved student population. Policymakers recommend that school reform efforts target the early education of children through effective, responsive curriculum and instruction. A new instructional program, developed through the Mid-Atlantic Region's Laboratory for Student Success, addresses this need. The program, Technology-Rich Authentic Learning Environments (known as TRALE and pronounced trail), develops a responsive instructional package for young, urban learners in which technology-based tools play an integral role in developing all kinds of literacies.
TRALE's Research Base
TRALE's approach to teaching reading, writing, and mathematics is rooted in cognitive science. According to cognitive scientists, academic skills, like all cognitive activities, are essentially problem solving in nature and are best acquired in problem-based learning environments (Anderson, 1995). People develop expertise in reading, writing, and math in the same way that they master other complex cognitive skills (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991). Similarly, just as experts rely on both automated and conscious skill components, expert readers, writers, and mathematicians automate some skills and retain other parts as conscious strategies.
At the same time, sociocognitive and sociocultural factors have a great impact on the organization and content of a person's knowledge (Langer, 1987; Vygotsky, 1987). The social contexts that house experiences directly shape the nature of a person's cognitions. One instructional framework that develops expertise through providing experiences in a social context is the cognitive apprenticeship (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Cognitive apprenticeships are authentic instructional environments in which one or more student apprentices study with a skilled mentor to develop expertise in a discipline or profession. We believe that young children can benefit from a cognitive apprenticeship. TRALE represents our attempt at translating the theoretical concepts underlying cognitive apprenticeships into instructional practice.
What Is TRALE?
In essence, TRALE is a framework for designing meaningful literacy instruction for children in the early childhood grades (K–3). Teachers create meaningful instruction through authentic, problem-based learning activities and, when appropriate, through the use of technology. For example, children learn to alphabetize by creating an inventory list for their classroom store and a computerized spreadsheet for inventory and accounting purposes.
Our idea of meaningful and authentic apprenticeships entails the creation of classroom environments in which the opportunities for acquiring literacy skills simulate those situations that make sense in the everyday personal worlds of children. In practice, TRALE is a community of classrooms organized as businesses, service organizations, and special-interest groups. Each classroom assumes a unique role, such as a store, a newspaper, a theater group, or a museum, and together the classrooms form a community that exchanges goods and services.
During the 1997–98 school year, TRALE operated in eight early childhood classrooms at Van Ness Elementary School, an urban public school in the District of Columbia. The classroom roles were as follows:
African Heritage Museum (kindergarten). Throughout the year, the classroom set literacy activities in the context of life in Africa (such as the Masai people and their culture or African animals). The children produced stories, artwork, and other artifacts, which they publicly displayed as museum exhibits.
Sandmeier Theater (kindergarten). This class staged three productions ("The ABCs," "The Rainbow People," and "Parts of the Body") for parents and other classrooms in the TRALE community. The students were scriptwriters, set designers, actors, ushers, and other theater professionals. The scripts gave students practice in reading, writing, and speaking.
"D" Art Gallery (kindergarten). The kindergartners in this class drew, painted, and cut out pictures; created clay sculptures; wrote compositions; and took digital photographs. When the gallery opened for business, the children were greeters, cashiers, guides, and salespeople, and they autographed the works for buyers.
B&G Video Store (1st grade). This class simulated a real video store, offering a wide selection of children's videos for overnight rental. The store was open once a week, and the children served in all capacities of the operation.
Kidstown Post Office (1st grade). The postal workers were responsible for the weekly mail service within the TRALE community. Each TRALE class had a mailbox outside the classroom door so that the mail person could collect and deliver mail. The post office itself occupied a corner of the participating classroom.
All-Stars General Store (2nd grade). This class operated a variety store that was open twice a week. Students tracked the store's inventory and advertised in flyers. When the store opened, the 2nd graders became security guards, cashiers, sales people, and inventory trackers. "Tally people" noted each purchase on a tally sheet and then updated the general store's computerized inventory after the store closed for the day. They sold donated items such as pencils, calendars, small toys, and books.
NewsRoom (3rd grade). This class published the school's newspaper, the Van Ness News. The children acted as writers, reporters, editors, layout specialists, graphics specialists, and paper deliverers. The class had the paper produced on actual newsprint on the presses of the Washington Post in Washington, D.C. Because of the size and complexity of each edition, they printed only two editions during the year.
Renaissance Writers' Club (3rd grade). In this classroom, the children were authors. The group's primary activities included writing stories and poems and performing their works to audiences within the community.
Linked to Standards
- an understanding of the purpose and function of writing;
- an awareness of story structure;
- creative writing;
- letter-sound skills; and
- vocabulary.
Each TRALE classroom had a particular goal or function, each had a number of problem-based activities to foster literacy development through the language arts standards, and each used technology for authentic purposes to accomplish its community role. As children progressed from kindergarten through 3rd grade, the expressions of literacy became more standardized because the children gradually required more traditional forms of reading and writing.
Because some classrooms were set up as businesses, they needed an economy. Each classroom established its own system for paying students. Typically, salaries linked to jobs in the classroom and to other factors, such as attendance and punctuality. Generally, students were paid every two weeks and had at least one opportunity each week to spend their earnings. Project teachers agreed on the scale for earnings so that all contributing members received approximately equal salaries.
The TRALE community functioned at two levels, within the classroom and across classrooms. Across classrooms, the TRALE students exchanged goods and services. For instance, the actors, artists, and reporters checked out videos and shopped at the store. Similarly, store clerks received and read copies of the Van Ness News and attended the exhibits at the African Heritage Museum. The interactions among classrooms also required students to apply literacy skills. Newsroom reporters wrote reviews of exhibits and productions and published them in the Van Ness News. Similarly, the K–3 students wrote stories about shopping experiences, visits to museums, and other activities.
A Cognitive Model
The cognitive apprenticeship features formed the core of our instructional model. We stressed problem-based activities in which (1) students interacted in various ways with classmates and teachers; (2) scaffolding helped students understand the structure and the strategies to solve problems; (3) the learning environment reflected the children's increasingly sophisticated processing capabilities; and (4) the children understood the nature and purpose of the group endeavor and why they were doing the things they did.
Students worked individually, in pairs, and in groups of various sizes. Sometimes they were self-regulated, as when kindergartners shopped at the store and when news reporters roamed the school building doing research for their stories. Different kinds of collaborative learning were the norm. Students helped one another become more competent and productive members of the TRALE community. Teachers often used direct instruction in the form of mini-lessons, but the nature of the overall activities made the students more active and inquisitive as they worked because they could see the connection between daily activities and the overall classroom goal.
TRALE's Essential Dimensions
- Goal-directedness. Human thoughts and actions are purposive; therefore, it is sound instructional practice to make the goal of learning explicit.
- Authentic, or contextualized, learning. Students have meaningful knowledge prior to TRALEs that helps them understand new concepts and solve new problems. Simulating a store in a classroom is meaningful because of students' personal knowledge and experiences with neighborhood stores. In the store context, learning to alphabetize becomes real because keeping an inventory of stock is necessary. Thus, alphabetizing has an authentic purpose.
- Shared responsibility. The social nature of the learning enterprise is key. Shared responsibility provides a motivation for learning.
- Multiple modes of expression and representation. We must allow literate expression to take many forms, such as in creating art or acting. Similarly, instruction should provide multisensory opportunities for acquiring literacy skills so that children will develop enriched representations of their world.
- Use of technology. Not only is multimedia technology an efficient delivery system for multisensory input, but it also engages students for long periods of time. Further, with the increasing importance of computer literacy in today's workplace, young children should have as much access as possible to the tools that they will be expected to master.
Program Effects
- When teachers implement TRALE effectively and continually, children's achievement (as measured by standardized tests) is greater than in comparable, nonproject classrooms, particularly in 2nd and 3rd grades. This indicates that personalized learning and the drive for uniform standards can peacefully coexist.
- Successful TRALE classrooms become child centered rather than teacher centered.
- Teachers report increased collaboration among students and spontaneous collaboration when solving problems.
- Teachers have been surprised at the level of competence that the students exhibit and at their ability to work independently.
- Technology motivates children and is a medium that engages them for extended, productive periods of time.
- Students want to be legitimate, participating members of a community and will alter their behaviors in positive ways to participate.
We are enthusiastic about the potential impact of the TRALE approach on early childhood education. We acknowledge that TRALE is both time- and labor-intensive: It requires continued commitment on the part of teachers, administrators, university partners, and the TRALE Program Coordinator. This spring, we will offer a graduate level course for Van Ness teachers titled "Technology Use and Authentic Learning Environments."
However, the rewards are plentiful. The students are learning and the teachers are committed. Principal George Moore recently expanded TRALE to include the upper elementary grades. Now TRALE is a whole-school reform effort known as the Township of Van Ness. The inauguration to celebrate the Township took place on March 2, 1999, nearly four years after TRALE's inception.
