I know that incorporating literature into a classroom is crucial in developing students' literacy. I have heard this time and time again, through many of my MSU classes, but also from personal experience. I took a liking to reading from an early age, and throughout elementary and middle school, it was rare to find me without a book. I would pick reading over almost any other past time; I would even get in trouble for reading through teachers' other lessons in school. I believe that because of my high exposure to literature from an early age, my literacy skills became strong. To this day, my reading, writing, and other literacy skills are the strongest skills that I have. To be able to foster this same development in my students, I want to motivate them to make literature to be a big part of their lives, and provide opportunities to do this.
In my Mentor Teacher's classroom, however, I think literature is lacking. My MT has a small bookcase as a classroom library, but I rarely see the students checking out any books. I know they have a library time, but I never see them with their library books in the classroom. My teacher uses textbooks whenever available, meaning that students have a math textbook, a social studies textbook, and a literacy textbook. This is where all of the lessons in that subject come out of. In literacy lessons, they are always teacher focused and are always focused on just the content of the reading out of the textbook. When students finish assignments early or have some down time, they are not encouraged to pull out books, they either cause a disturbance or bother the teacher.
Tompkins brings up another important idea of preparing students in the field of literacy - the new literacy of the Internet. Print sources are not the only important forms of literacy, but online documents are, as well. Tompkins explains that these online sources have a different structure to them and require different strategies for literacy, as well. I believe that preparing students for online literacy also has a place in the classroom. In my placement, my students have computer time in the library and they spend time playing literacy games online, reading online books, and writing e-mails and blog posts. I like that my MT sees the importance of giving her students time to work in this medium.
Hassett and Curwood also stress the importance of making literacy instruction relevant to our culture today. Realizing that our culture is highly connected to technology in all aspects and that literacy is "multimodal" is important for incorporation in the teaching curriculum. "Multimodal" means that writing is no longer the only form of literacy today, that our culture sees it as only one form of communication, next to other visual communication such as graphics, images, gestures, facial expressions, or sounds, oral language, etc. Instead of just looking at a certain literacy piece, Hassett and Curwood stress teaching about context and how social relationships affect meaning. They stress that interaction with the text is important, and that teachers should foster that. My MT doesn't talk about design of a piece or how the kids might be reacting to what they are reading at all; she just asks them comprehension questions. Being more aligned with Hassett and Curwood is how I want to teach literacy in my classroom.
Langer really challenges our teachers today to re-think what literacy means, because it hasn't been re-thought in many decades. She believes that literacy instruction is more about the students' development than we traditionally put weight on. She also think that teachers have to re-think the idea of what "success" in literacy means - does it mean getting all the comprehension questions correct, or something deeper? I agree with Langer that we should focus more on how the reader is interacting with the text, rather than what is the perceived "correct" answer to the question. I think that teachers should get students to read for different purposes, including informative, making connections, expanding perceptions, etc. I think these ideas can go across subjects, as well. Rather than just using literature for "literacy time," I think that literature can be used across disciplines for a variety of purposes, and that this helps students see how important literature is to their world.
Another important factor to think about is literature in terms of bilingual students. Martinez-Roldan displays a picture of Hispanic bilingual students engaged in inquiry-based learning about a piece of literature. The kids are allowed to communicate their thoughts freely, and in whatever language they choose. Codeswitching is a norm. While this may not necessarily be relevant to all classrooms, the idea of inquiry and unrestricted communication can be. These students are allowed to engage with the text without things that may hold them back, like a list of comprehension questions they have to complete or what language they have to speak in. This is very relevant in my classroom, as I am in a Spanish immersion classroom. The kids, save one, all understand both Spanish and English. While it is important that they are developing in both languages, it doesn't seem inappropriate to have some time to speak Spanish, English, Spanglish, or whatever they choose so that they are able to focus more on content than restrictions.
I like the idea that a teacher is more of a facilitator of a lesson than the center of it. The kids in the Martinez-Roldan article sustained discussion with each other for almost an hour, and the teacher was nowhere near the focus. I like that they were able to talk about real issues like gender within a piece of literature. This made the book relevant to their lives and engaging. Re-thinking what literacy looks like in the classroom is a good idea. I want to be doing that throughout my teaching career.
My literacy experience growing up was quite different. Throughout elementary and middle school I was a struggling reader and didn't enjoy reading outside of the classroom. I didn't find joy in reading because decoding and interpreting texts was such a difficult task for me. As a teacher I want to do everything I can to support my students in developing a positive view of literature. As mentioned in the Langer article success in literacy should not be just defined as black and white. This view is similar to the Jigsaw article I read by Triplett and Buchanan about using book discussion to support struggling reader’s comprehension of text. This article defines a grey area, which is the level at which these students understand the text. This comprehension can’t be accessed through questions which require a black and white answer. They don’t see the answers as simply black and white which is one of the main reasons they struggle in mainstream literacy lessons, where teachers ask comprehensive questions that have one “right answer”. Book discussions are a much more effective way to connect with students lives and allow students to expand upon elements of the book that were most interesting and relatable to them. This goes along with having more a student centered lesson, where the teachers serves as a facilitator.
ReplyDeleteMy mentor teacher’s classroom has a strong literacy environment. My mentor teacher reads to her kindergartners every day. This includes a book in the mornings during their literacy lessons and in the afternoons during group time. My teacher has book bins all around the room and encourages students to bring a book bin back to their table if they finish an assignment early. The kindergartners in my classroom are very excited to read the books, even the emergent readers who are only able to “read” the story by looking at the pictures. I think that the way a teacher models, facilitates, and structures literacy in the classroom is a major factor that effects students individual attitudes towards reading.
As a child, my parents would read to me all the time, and I was reading myself by age four. Throughout elementary school and even middle school, when I would get in trouble, my punishment would be having my books taken away! Like Sam, reading and writing are also my strongest skills, and because I love both, I definitely see the importance of promoting literature not only in the classroom, but encouraging it in students’ home life as well.
ReplyDeleteIn my placement classroom, my mentor teacher is a big promoter of literature. The students have many opportunities to read books of their choice, and in many different ways. Sometimes the kids have reading as an option for when they finish work early, and other times my mentor teacher specifically plans in into the day. Although some of the students read below grade level, my mentor teacher is very encouraging, and the class as a whole looks forward to when they have extra time to read, and most of them are very eager to read to me when they have the chance. I have not really seen my teacher give the kids strategies for reading, but they have talked about different genres, and the students have had even more practice with writing. For writing, my mentor teacher has given them strategies, had them practice different styles, and has given them much feedback and workshop time. He tries to make writing something exciting, and the kids really look forward to it, and are often anxious to take it home to work on when they run out of time during class.
In the Hassett and Curwood article, the term multimodal is essentially used to talk about different ways in which meaning is made in a text. This is not something that I have really given much thought before, and I don’t think a lot of other people do either. When thinking about books, it seems a lot of people assume that the text must tell it all. But it is true that illustrations, text size, and even text font and text color can play a huge role in getting a point across. There are many different ways that meaning can be created in a text and I think that this is something that is definitely worth teaching kids, because it will help them to discover meaning as well. It could actually be turned into a fun lesson, to find the “hidden meaning” in a particular book – by looking at more than just the words of couse.
I was not very good at reading and writing growing up. I did not read outside of school so I think that put me behind a little bit. I also struggled with writing. It still takes me a long time to write a paper to be able to organize my thoughts to make things coherent.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the strategies that Sam mentioned from the readings can be correlated with the topic Lealand wrote about in the jigsaw article that I read. Lealand says that there are many benefits to exposing young children (even children just learning to read) to more controversial books. She calls this critical literacy. Some benefits this brought to students is that they were better able to read between the lines, their writing improved, and had an increased awareness of social issues.
I think critical literacy could be implemented to be used online. There are a lot of social issue articles out there that can be found and read. Students could also set up a Facebook page that makes people aware of a social issue.
I also think that the teacher does not need to be the center facilitator for critical literacy. If children get inspired by a social issue read about they can will be more than willing to discuss it among themselves. The Lealand article states that children were able to connect better to critical literacy than "fluff books." This statement makes me even more confident that children would be able to take the reins on discussing critical literature with only some teacher guidance. (More independence the older the students).
I think my MT has a good literacy program. The Kindergarten students are being read to everyday and are encouraged to grab a book from the bookshelf when they are done with their work. The students also take part in backpack reader and writers workshop. Backpack reader is a program where students read books at their own pace. The teacher sends a book home with them, the student practices it, and then read it to the teacher the next day. In writers workshop, children draw pictures and write sentences explaining their picture.
While I think the literacy program my MT brings is good, there are always room for improvements. For example, I think she could bring in more controversial topics to expose the children to important social issues. She also does not use any form of technology. I believe implementing these strategies and more would greatly benefit the students!