Litteraturarbetets möjligheter. En studie av barns läsning i årskurs F-3

This thesis investigates the reading of fiction by young pupils, and classroom work using reading as its starting point. The aim is to gather knowledge about the possibilities and limitations of some of the literary-pedagogical tools that are used in literature-based work in the years pre-school to third grade. The teaching aims to provide the conditions necessary for the pupils to build envisionments and for them to become participants in and co-creators of communities of readers with a focus on the reading of fiction. The study also endeavours to show how younger pupils read fiction in a classroom context. Research questions focus on how these pupils, individually and as a group, build communities of readers and envisionments, and which patterns can be distinguished * with regard to both choice of literature and the reading itself * in their individual reading. (11) In this study, the researcher is also the teacher of the class. The pupils were studied over a period of four years, in a class made up of 24 children. Seven of them were chosen for closer study and four of these are presented in the thesis. The empirical material consists of recordings of teaching, the pupils' texts, recorded discussions of literature and interviews from the class' work over the four year period. Four chapters are devoted to the study of the class' common reading, the pupils' reading logs for three works of fiction, discussions literature and the pupils' individual reading. (19) The study suggests that pupils are active during their reading and create understanding through the building of envisionments. They make use of various reading strategies in their development of understanding and express these not just through verbal language but also through play, gestures and movement and in pictures and other forms of aesthetic expression. The thesis brings forward and discusses how teaching, with the help of literary-pedagogical tools, various reading strategies and the pupils' own play/reading, works as scaffolding in creating meaning. Language-based activities are connected: discussion, listening, reading and writing work together when children investigate and respond to the contents of books