Dr. Seuss, police reports, and lamb recipes: Examining text reformulation as a literacy strategy

Abstract

Engaging college students in purposeful academic tasks designed to foster both reading and writing competencies requires calculated decision-making regarding the goals and benefits of the literacy tasks used in college courses. Consequently, we explore text reformulation as a literacy strategy that aims to enrich students' reading and writing competencies. Text reformulation, taking one text and recreating it in a new form, can be used to provide opportunities for students to develop reading and writing competencies like analyzing story details and sequencing, using mentor texts, and considering audience awareness. Drawing on recorded small group and whole class conversations, student work samples, and student reflections, this study considers how preservice teachers created meaning of an existing short story and applied it to new modalities. Implications for implementing text reformulation in middle, secondary, and college programs are highlighted, including orienting students to the task, teaching text structures, and guiding students through issues of purpose, audience, and tone.