Stages of Implementing Picture Books in Writing Narrative Text Instruction

children‟s literature, especially fiction and non fiction picture story books as a teaching tool to support writing instruction. The study was conducted in their school, Curtis Fundamental Elementary School in Clearwater, Florida, USA when they taught the kindergarten and the fourth-grade peer writing workshop. The method used in the study was classroom action research. In the study, they found important information that children‟s books could be a bridge for connecting the target skill with the reason for thinking, speaking, and writing like a writer. During conducting the study, they made a list of children‟s books which was matched to the target skills including brainstorming, focus, elaboration, organization, and convension necessary for developing effective writing. Then, in each meeting, they read aloud the children‟s books to their students. After reading aloud ended, both classes the kindergarten and the fourth-grade peer writing workshop discussed about the auth or‟s technique of focusing on an object through the use of specific details. Moreover, the result of the study showed that children‟s bookschildren‟s literature helped students to generate and develop their own writing topics. The other result also showed that children‟s literature facilitated the students to develop their writerly thinking and language which then they applied in their own writing. The other previous study came from Kelly Booker, Literacy and Numeracy Field Officer, ACT entitled “Using Picture Books to Empower and Inspire Readers and Writers in the Upper Primary Classroom”. This study used classroom action research methods and conducted at the beginning of Term 3, 2011. She took over a year 5 classes which had experienced a very disruptive start to the year including a series of relief and short term contract teachers. The objective of the study is to apply picture books to empower and inspire students to love reading and writing. The study appeared because Booker strongly believed that through the use of picture books, children are able to critically engage in author‟s message and consider what it will be meaningful for their own texts. Before she started teaching writing, she had engaged students first in guided reading program which involved reading aloud picture books and book talks. The guided reading had function to lead students in deep thinking about authorial details and persuade them to love reading. During doing guided reading program, Booker found that the students interested and began to love reading. The students always asked the new picture books in the first few weeks and Booker was successful in engaging them in reading. After the guided reading program succeeded, the next step Booker did was to try to support the students‟ enthusiasm for reading and transfer it to their writing. When she took the students to writing process, Booker used The Writing Process – a Ten Stage Plan that Works written by Frank as her guidance to engage the students in writing process. The writing process included the motivation, collecting impressions, organizing, the rough draft, author‟s review, sharing for response, editing and revising, the mechanics check, polishing, and presenting. In addition, the result of the study showed that through the use of picture books, the students could be interested in reading process, writing process and how reading and writing could be connected to create their piece of writing more meaningful and to provide them with literary experiences. More importantly, the study revealed that the notion of how the text and the illustration interact or against each other in picture books could challenge and focus the students‟ thinking. In other words, picture books led the students to read, explore, and connect the stories in picture books to their own experiences or interests which could help them to generate and develop ideas in their own writing. Based on the two previous relevant studies explained above, the researcher inspired to conduct a quasi experimental research using picture books as a tool or instructional media in teaching narrative writing because the two previous studies showed that there were positive effect of the use of picture books in students‟ achievement in writing skill. However, the researcher would not apply reading aloud picture books but silent reading due to the condition of the students‟ classroom and the larger sum of the students who became the sample of the research.

F. Conceptual Framework

There are two variables in this research, the independent variable of this study is picture book and students‟ skill in writing narrative text is as the dependent variable. This research is intended to know whether picture books can affect students‟ skill in writing narrative text and to know whether the students‟ narrative writing using picture books are better than the writing produced without using picture book or use classroom teacher explanation. For some students, to start writing probably become discouraging activity and spend more time. This is in line with Carol A. Binder and Susan Lopez Nerney who states “Getting started on a piece of writing can sometimes be a slow and frustrating process.” 24 This statement means that to begin to write a good piece of writing is not a fast process for some students because it needs understanding of topic which is going to write down. In this research, for instance, when the researcher asked students to write a story, she had to provide text example or model of a good narrative text. In other words, to help students familiar with what they are going to write, teacher should provide a model of a good writing for students. This suggestion is similar with Drs. Pardiyono who suggests that teacher should give students some examples of a narrative text to give them description of what narrative text looks like. 25 Similarly, to help students generating ideas in writing their own story, teacher should integrate writing instruction with reading activity since students need to read more to get ideas about a story they would like to write. As Luu Trong Tuan points out, 24 Carol A. Binder and Susan Lopez Nerney, Writing in Process Strategies for Organization and Development, Jurong: Prentice Hall, 2005, p. 5 25 Pardiyono, loc.cit., p. 99