‘Today we spend more time on reading the texts together’. The fifth grade team reflects on subject literacy teaching

The project Encounter with texts in fifth grade explores the transition from Norwegian primary school (grades 1 to 4) to middle school (grades 5 to 7). From 5^th grade on, school subjects get more specialized, the amount of text increases, and the vocabulary turns more academic. National tests in reading document an achievement gap between students with immigrant family background and students with majority language background. In the project we explore what kind of texts and literacy practices the students encounter in class, how students respond to the challenges of meaning making in the context of the mainstream classroom, and how teachers work on facilitating learning in different subjects. Our data are texts used in class, classroom observation and interviews with teachers and students. In this presentation, we focus on teacher beliefs and practices. The fifth grade team shares reflections on how they work on improving learning outcome in the different subject areas. One of their concerns is how to increase the activity and engagement of the second language learners. Other studies of Norwegian classrooms, confirm that this is an important issue to address. Grimstad & Myklebust (2012) found that second language learners in mainstream classrooms more often than other students worked individually on exercises, and that they more often were inactive. We discuss the teachers’ reflections in light of our observations of their classroom teaching. One example is the use of learning partners, which represents a change in classroom practices taken by the teachers to improve the learning. In our analyses, we lean on Fives and Buhl’s (2012) model on the functions of teacher beliefs: serving as filters, frames or guides. According to the theory, only when the beliefs function as guides, a direct effect on action can be observed.