Article Review: TEXTMASTERS

In her article, "Textmasters: Bringing Literature Circles to Textbook Reading Across the Curriculum," Linda Wilfong discusses the development of what she has termed the "Textmasters Strategy," a method of using literature circles not only in an English classroom, but in any other content classroom as well. I will discuss her article in answer to the following four questions:

1. How/why did the Textmaster's strategy develop?
2. What distinguishes the Textmasters strategy from a traditional literature circle?
3. How was the strategy's effectiveness tested by Wilfong and her colleagues?
4. What are the benefits of the Textmasters strategy?

How did Wilfong come up with the idea of bringing literature circles into all content areas through the Textmaster Strategy?

• Wilfong's masters students, who were also teachers, told Wilfong about the frustration that stemmed from wanting to engage students through the use of additional trade books and literature circles, but being denied requested books because of schools' limited resources.
• Wilfong and one of her students, a science teacher, thought that perhaps they could work collaboratively to figure out a way to use the textbook to spur class discussions and further engage students in this way.
• The professor and student began to devise a model that would better allow for literature circles to be used in discussing textbook texts.

 So what makes the Textmasters strategy more effective with textbooks? Why not just use the typical roles used in a traditional literature circle (e.g. a discussion leader and a summarizer)?

• The two researches realized that discussing a textbook presents added difficulties, such as difficult vocabulary or the presentation of many abstract concepts. They decided to add two roles in addition to that of the discussion leader and the summarizer, resulting in four roles to be used by a small group in discussing a section from the text:
• Discussion leader: guides and facilitates the conversation
• Summarizer: writes a short summary of the assigned text
• Vocabulary Enricher: copies down and defines new/difficult vocab
• Webmaster: creates visual aids to help articulate difficult concepts
• What really makes the strategy unique is that for a student to be considered a "Textmaster" of a certain text, they must be proficient in each of the four roles, not just one of them.

How did Wilfong and her research-partner test their strategy?

• Wilfong and her colleague decided to test the strategy on the colleague's science class. After the first month of science class, which was taught using traditional methodology, the researchers administered a content test to 73 science students, who scored an 86% average.
• At the beginning of the second month/unit of science, Wilfong visited the classroom to teach and model the Textmaster strategy for small literature circles of four students. 
• The rest of the month, the students used this strategy to complete learning the content of their second unit.
• At the end of the unit, Wilfong returned to check the students' progress. They were administered the unit 2 test, and their average score was an 89%, indicating that the strategy had been successful.

 What are some main benefits of the Textmaster's strategy?

• While the students' scores were raised by 3%, the more considerable benefits of the program implementation were found in the student and teacher's feedback about their experiences.
• The students reported that they understood the content better, had a lot of fun, and learned how to stay on task/ focus on a text
• The teacher reported that the students became more and more self-sufficient as time went on, becoming independent learners and collaborators. Students also stayed on task and were better behaved, feeling as if they had a responsibility to their small group to behave well and complete their tasks. The teacher commented one of her favorite elements of the project was that the students' creativity emerged in a way that was unprecedented in her previous classrooms.