Week 12 Reading and writing in different contexts: sociocultural factors

This week we turn to the sociocultural dimension of literacy--what in our social and cultural lives impacts the way we interact with literacy and how we interpret texts, or even believe how texts should be interpreted. Before you read further in the blog, I'd like you to do the following activity (this is a preview of what you will read).  Think about the last 10 significant interactions with print that you had.  They should be significant to you and not dependent on the amount of time that they took.  Write them down.  Then beside each one, write the purpose of the interaction and how it is related to a particular social group membership. You might want to take a look at Tables 9.1 and 9.2 to help with purpose and group membership. I will do the same  for my top 5 below:

1. reading Kucer chapters and writing notes, plan my blog, occupation (professor)
2. navigating the Delta website, book a ticket, occupation and organization membership
3. Reading e-mails, communication, occupation and family
4. Reading a book on my Nook, entertainment, SES and culture
5. Read the newspaper, find out the news, SES and family and culture

Analyze what you wrote down.In your response to my blog, respond to these questions: What were the dominant purposes in your list?  Why do you think they were dominant? What group memberships came out as important? Why?  For me, most of my interactions with print are either work or educational and these 2 overlap quite a bit (logical since I work in education).  I also use literacy for entertainment and information. And they represent my occupational group, my participation in organizations, and my socioeconomic status as an upper middle class educated professional.  I'll be interested in what each of you write.

As you read, look for the following terms: literacy event, literacy practice, literacy performance, identity, intersectionality, social group, multiple literacies, discourse/Discourse, funds of knowledge, cultural modeling, literacy as development, literacy as practice, cultural capital, social constructionism, gendered writing, critical literacy, critical response. I don't want you to define them this week, but I do want you to use them in your discussions.

Chapter 9 will introduce you to the importance of understanding what a reader/writer's social and cultural background is and how it impacts not only literacy use but also language use and meanings that are constructed.  Be sure to think about what that means for you as a teacher in terms of your own literacy but also in terms of what you value in your classroom and what that means for your students, especially for those students who are socially and culturally different than you.  Chapter 10 will introduce you to different ways of looking at what counts as knowledge and hence, what counts in interpreting a text (whether written or oral, on paper or digital).  Think about what that means for choosing texts and understanding the meanings that readers make as they read or messages writers are sending when they write.  Tie this chapter to the V&H chapters that you read for last week and the week before.

Remember that we are meeting at 6 pm on Adobe Connect on Monday, March 30. Let me know if you need the link resent.  We will have some group discussions as well as time for questions, feedback, sharing.  If you have something you would like to discuss you a either include it in your response to this blog or send me an e-mail and I'll incorporate it. See you then!

Week 10 Spring Break and Week 11 New Literacies, Disciplinary Literacies

Happy Spring Break!  Here's hoping the weather is lovely.  I'll be downloading and reading your exploration projects over the break.  I'll e-mail feedback and the rubric to you as I complete them.

The topic for your reading is two fold: New Literacies and disciplinary literacies. You are interacting and using new literacies in this and any other hybrid/blended class you are a part of.  Think about how you use literacy in those classes.  Think also of your literacy use that includes information and communication technologies or media.  These uses all have the potential to be new literacies.  Disciplinary literacies involve how literacy is used in a discipline.  You use literacy in the discipline of reading/literacy education or mathematics or social studies or science or early childhood or English language arts.  Often the uses of literacy in the discipline are specialized.  For this blog, think about the new literacy practices you participate in and describe them.  How are they different from "old" literacies? How are they similar or different to disciplinary literacy? What do you expect to be reading about in the chapters for Week 11?

You will reading about new literacies, media, multimodal communicaiotn, digital text, producers adn interpreters of text, electroninc media, affordances.  You will also read more about critical literacy, so think about how it is related to either new literacies or disciplinary literacies.

Everyone in the group should read B&M 5, V&F (not V&S) 8, and the digital story telling article.  (A note: the digital storytelling piece uses 5th grade as an example, but you all really need to think about how this could be applied to PreK-grade 3 when you discuss it).  Everyone should read 1 of the other V&F chapters and be thinking about how it is related to disciplinary literacy (I think the new literacies piece will be evident).  Finally split up the S&H 8 and B&M 6 chapters--look for similarities and overlaps, and for the relationship to critical literacy.

Finally, You need to do a small group meeting to do a peer review of Assessment Task 2 early in teh week.  Let me know if you need an Adobe Connect meeting) as it is due by March 28.  Please also complete the Virtual Check in by Monday March 22.

Have a good break!

Week 9: Teaching comprehension, fluency, writing, critical literacy

For the last 2 weeks you have delved into theory related to perception, reading and writing processes, and comprehension.  Your definitions of key terms have demonstrated your understanding of the ideas that underlie what a young child is learning and developing as they understand that the whole purpose of reading and writing are meaning making. I hope you have realized that, while word recognition (including developing sight vocabulary and phonics skills) are important to learning to read and write, they are all in the service of meaning making.  Across all 3 blogs, I have seen applications of the theory to your own practice. Remember to keep thinking about how this knowledge your are constructing applies to younger children, even though it also is important to older ones as well.

This week the focus shifts to teaching reading and writing processes--the best practices. You will be focusing on principles for teaching comprehension, supporting writing form preschool through third grades, fluency instruction, and critical thinking.  Before you begin reading, respond to these questions:  What do you think is the relationship of fluency and comprehension? How do you think young young children become writers?  What is critical literacy and how is it related to critical thinking and comprehension?

Here are some terms to define/think about/use in your own blogs: critical literacy, text design, text redesign, text production, sources of confusion in misinterpretation of pictures, motivation and engagement, deeper levels of comprehension, automaticity, accuracy, prosody, writing profiles, text variety, high levels discussions.

There are 3 chapters in B&M, 1 chapter in V&F, and 3 articles to read for this week. Everyone should read V&F chapter and the chapter in B&M about fluency.  Each person in your group can then read one other reading--you need to divide them up within your group.  That means that your group leader will set up a discussion on the common readings and each of you will need to blog about your separate reading.  I'd like to to discuss important ideas that you wish you would have known as a novice teacher and that you would like to share with the novices in your group and my preservice teachers. Also make a list of teaching strategies (or explain to each other the teaching strategies in your individual chapter).

Let me know if you want a small group meeting set up on Adobe Connect to peer review your exploration projects (I know 1 group is meeting on March 8).  They are due at the end of the week, but I"ll take them whenever you finish them.  I'll post the blog for week 11 on March 13 to do at your leisure but won't check it until March 22.