Why use Literature in the Primary Years?

The mind is a narrative device: we run on stories. Stories unite all worlds. It is the compelling nature of stories and their telling that impacts on how we relate to each other, how we define who we are, and how and what we learn. Stories are an entry point for meaning-making - a place where learning and life merge. Stories contribute to our development as whole, coherent, human beings. Lowe, 2002, p.7

Create authentic literacy contexts:

As the DET Learning and Development (2009) document states, engagement with literature provides opportunities for students to access a source of pleasure and personally enrich their lives and literacy through cultural and social interaction (p. 6). Literature provides authentic and real opportunities for students to explore, reflect and challenge varied social and cultural values and the nature of language as art (Christie, 2005, p.203). The use of literature is advocated as it provides meaningful and rich contexts within which students can apply and transfer their literacy and learning to enhance meaning and connections (p. 22).

Provide explicit teaching of relationships between text, context, language, purpose & audience:

Literature provides a contextualised and rich space in which to develop students awareness of the individual features and their interrelationships when teaching about context, purpose and audience when engaging and exploring texts.

Nurture opportunities for differentiation and dynamic reading: critical, creative & inquiry reading:

A class of learners encompasses individuals who bring with them a broad range of knowledge, skills, interests and abilities. The effective selection and balance of literature related to individual students' needs will enhance a love of reading in all students and when carefully programmed, provide rich guided learning around the selection and exploration of texts to support and extend decoding and comprehension.
Ensure your reading program includes opportunities for student to engage with texts that are:
- critical: texts from the persuasive genre which provide multiple viewpoints on poignant and thought provoking topics (critical literacy)
- creative: texts from the literary genre which take students on journeys into different worlds, author's craft, language and characterisation 
- inquiry: texts that support the development of factual and content based knowledge around areas of specific interest or purpose
Satchell, A. (2011)

Enhance the Four Resources Model through modelled, guided and independent literacy practices:

This model ensures a balanced, explicit and systematic way of ensuring students develop the depth and breadth of resources required to be literate and engage in the many kinds of texts that students interact with in learning and life. That is those resources of code-breaking, meaning making, text-using and text-analysing. The opportunities that literature provides to enhance these literacy resources will enrich both the learning to and learning through elements of literacy and English learning. (DET, 2009, p.15).
Note: see links menu for direct resource

Support innovation from quality text models: writing and representing:

There is a strong reciprocity between the reading and writing development of students (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006). It is important for teachers to recognise the opportunities inherent in the shared, guided and independent exposure and exploration of literature to provide models from which students can deconstruct, develop and practice the skills required to effectively use and modify language structures and features for a wide variety of purposes. Innovating from a text involves students deconstructing and analysing the structural or language features of a quality text model at either text, sentence or word level and then applying these effective models to develop and practice their own skills. This explicit teaching and learning process makes clear links between the reciprocal development of reading and writing. Whether innovating from a text is focused on the structural organisation of an effective narrative such as Shaun Tan's 'The Lost Thing' or focused on the engaging imagery conjured by the complex sentence structures from 'The Black Book of Colours' (Menena Cottin), processes such as text patterning through modelled, guided and independent learning activities support students to enhance and recognise the effectiveness of the structures and features of their use of language in texts.
Note: see multimodalities menu for ideas to support text innovations in the representing mode

Laetitia Cross (K-6 Deputy Principal) and Sue Morton (primary teacher/librarian)