Reading together

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Time photoOur course invites you to work with data collection and analysis, readings, and discussion around the field of literacy studies

Author: sevans29

All About Moje

All About Moje

What I really like about Moje is her acceptance of individuality.  She isn’t trying to create a mega plan for curriculum brainwashing (sort of like our current plan) with the teacher lecturing to a classroom of uninterested kids.  In fact, she is actually trying to make individual kids more interested in their education.  “We focus on the motivating (and demotivating) features of the texts” along with “relationships between print and nonprint forms.” That seems pretty powerful when approaching literacy.

It seems as if Moje is verbalizing everything we have been talking about.  Ideas such as “teachers of content areas need to provide young people with opportunities to examine the discourses of the subject-area texts in relation to the discourses of everyday life” and  focuses on positive notes such as “many young people are able to read across a variety of symbol systems, including print.”

I like the idea of educational models in such a positive light– starting with what kids do know, rather than stressing about what they don’t.  It gives a basis for forward motion: “we need to look more closely at the texts offered to young people in school, and at the ways texts are offered (i.e., how texts are assigned, discussed, and used in classrooms), rather than simply ascribing low motivation to youth when it comes to reading this type of material.”  This is basically the text vs. textbook model I researched in my article group focusing on adolescent identity.

The super fun parts of this particular article concern what I call ‘terribly wrong associations of literacy.’ For example, Moje states that “race and gender were not significant predictors of achievement in this model, nor was youths’ home language. We also tested the relationship between school achievement and weekly online access (reading e-mails and websites and writing e- mails, chats, shout-outs, and blogs outside of school at least once a week or more), and found no relationship.”

Another interesting part of the article are the results of her studies, focusing on what interests adolescents.  More students were focused on literacy that reflected their interests.  Either these adolescents are just like adults (shocking,) or I am still an adolescent because I feel exactly the same way.  If we incorporate these interests into school curriculum, we may see interest levels rise and knowledge increase.  Essentially, Moje is “referring to engineering new types of classroom texts, ones that recognize the need to situate reading and writing within social networks and invite young readers into a relationship with the text and the work of the discipline.”  I think education is all about relationships, whether it is between teachers and students or students and texts.  This relationship, (sponsorship, access, agency) is what will foster success.

Post-Article Group Ideas

Post-Article Group Ideas

Group: Adolescent Identity and Literacy

Objective/part/focus: Identity

Learned: Lotsa stuff.

I really enjoyed this project, mainly because as a future teacher I found it not only relevant but interesting.  I focused on identity of adolescents and tried to keep that focused on literacy.  Honestly, not always successful.  I may have bitten off more than I could chew, but it was still fun.  There are lots of studies and fun articles and projects to browse, and I spent quite a few hours just reading different things about identity.  Lots of this was more psychological, but it is still helpful and relevant to my overall topic.

I found Alverman and Moje to be the most helpful/relevant to my topic in terms of literacy and identity through reading.  Alverman had more of a cultural and societal aspect whereas Moje focused more on classroom application.  Moje’s text vs. textbook concept sort of caught my fancy and I admit, I played around with it awhile and discussed it with the teacher at my site.  I could go on and on about identity because I think it plays a huge role in the classroom and I enjoyed actually reading data and sources to back up my thoughts and sort of play in new directions.

As far as the overall group goes, it was nice to have a bigger group within which to delegate different issues.  Everyone sort of had different ideas, so sometimes meeting in the middle was a tad interesting.  Adolescent identity can be a dividing topic; the concept of AR and ability groups were obviously passionate topics for some more than others.  There can be arguments made either way, and I hope we used enough research to let that dictate our thoughts rather than using our opinions to influence what we see in a source.  Both were interesting topics to explore.  As a kid, I never liked AR (mainly because in its earlier stages, there weren’t enough good books in the system.) But to be honest, now I have less of a problem with it.  I can see that it is attempting to provide a service by providing a consistent form of regulating reading in the classroom.  Regulation may or may not be necessary, but that is a topic I do not want to delve into.  Just because kids don’t love it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad system.  It is flawed like any other.  I think instead of blaming said system, we should change how we use it and formulate it to fit our classroom.  For example, use overall word count (which my mother swears every sane teacher should and does do, which remains unconfirmed by me) rather than points system.  A multiple choice test may not be the best way of evaluating student comprehension, but I must argue the fact that these same kids are dubbed the “scantron generation” at my site and multiple choice tests aren’t necessarily out of the norm for them.

Now, ability groups are something that was also a hot topic within our overall theme.  It is difficult to gauge based on one or two experiences (mine was great; Aly’s was not.)  Again, I would accept the fact that these are used in the classroom, and as I am not a teacher (yet), I shall not say whether it is right or wrong.  It is a system.  I think to be utilized correctly, I would apply a lot of Moje’s ideas and try and make it work for the kids.  Instead of labeling them (don’t negatively impact their struggling identities,) I would use it in the same way as we use our groups in this class.  Our article groups comprised of six girls with different backgrounds, literacy ‘levels’, and goals.  Yet we all managed to collaborate and create our tumblr page.  I think reading and writing and working in groups is important for kids to understand and be able to apply in life.  It sort of goes back to way earlier ideas of learning through real-world application and more of Moje’s ideas.

Gotta say, I am looking forward to reading more Moje next week. Heavy, but interesting ideas!

“The Failure of an Online Program”??

“The Failure of an Online Program”??

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Failure_of_an_Online_Program.html

This post was particularly interesting to me because of the digital aspect of the concept of literacy.  The post is about a professor teaching an online English class for students.  The students who enrolled in this class were not there by choice, but because they failed a test- presumably some sort of English placement test.  The author is diving into the mire of making writing fun for students not writing by choice.

“I had long believed that online learning didn’t understand itself.”  That line seems to jump right out of our discussions of literacy.  Doing does not always mean understanding.  ‘Knowing’ and ‘applying’ skills are two different things.  The author seems to be struggling with the concept of what exactly was the point of online learning, and how students related to it.  It is obvious that the online classes were not successful from the authors point of view; instead, author Sarah Michael Morris advocated for a change to “begin playfully outside the borders of how we’ve always taught and how we relate to the machines that can help us teach.”  Obviously the current MOOCS did not suite her fancy.

It was interesting to hear a negative view of online classes from a professor’s point of view.  There seems to be a struggle (that I was previously unaware of) of how to teach this “hybrid pedagogy.”  The uncharted territory without specific methods or rules of teaching literacy seems to be an issue.  In order to instruct others, there seems to be a call for instruction in instruction (talk about a headache.)

I think the development of technology integrated in teaching or learning about literacy should not focus on the technology, but rather the information.  Different information should and could be taught and learned in different ways and cross reference each other.  A few of the studies we read in class mentioned the disconnect between school and the outside world, a bridge that students struggle to cross.  The benefit of utilizing technology is to help push them across that bridge.  By the sound of the article, it sounds like students aren’t the only ones that struggle with that divide.

Adolescent Identity and Literacy

Adolescent Identity and Literacy

Group adolescent identity and literacy is a challenge.  While our topic is most interesting, the sheer broadness of it is also a challenge.  As a future teacher, I feel that it is important for us to research this topic and have some sort of understanding of how adolescents relate to literacy before we try and teach literacy.

My little sub-part of this topic focuses on identity.  I think identity plays a major role in how kids relate to literacy, different genres, and books in general.  Jane Kroger’s Identity Development during Adolescence was a great resource in the basic psychology of development (http://academic.udayton.edu/jackbauer/Readings%20595/Kroger.pdf) but it doesn’t necessarily have a great tie to literacy development.  For that, I turned to Bronwyn Williams and Elizabeth Moje.  Williams focuses more about the influence of social culture in identity and Moje has some great stuff about literacy in itself.

Some of the things I find really interesting is how social media plays into all of these ideas. Williams has a lot to say about different media tools and how they represent the individual, sometimes in a misleading way.  But it is definitely interesting to study since such widespread use of technology is a new thing that is affecting adolescents in a way not seen before.

Another part of our group project stems around our hatred of AR reading.  We have a few articles about why it is bad, not used properly, etc.  My fourteen year old brother thinks it exists just to torture him, and he may not be that far off.  I myself went through AR reading with a strong distaste for a system that allowed me to read Gone With The Wind in fourth grade and still required me to read books aimed for younger audiences for the next four years.  However, not all agree that AR is such a bad thing.  My mother, a special education teacher for K-3, loves AR and thinks it the best thing ever.  She uses it as a motivational tool and judges kids on words read rather than points, which I think is probably the best way to directly apply AR in the classroom.

Overall, our topic is vast and interesting and I have spent quite a few hours lost researching tangents and reading studies and making my brain work overtime.  But as a future teacher, it is important to learn the perspectives of our students in order to actually teach them things instead of talking to a blank wall.

WORDS

WORDS

Words at Work and Play is definitely worth a read!  I have to say, it was not at all what I was expecting.  This book follows generations of people and studies their literary practices.  It is monumental to see different families from different backgrounds and with different opportunities.  If I had to pick one overall theme of the book, it would have to be sponsorship.

Each person in this book had their literary development tracked through the recording tapes taken at different points in their lives.  Writing samples entered into that as well, but the tapes were the main focus of the book.  The people that excelled and outgrew the literacy level of their parents or guardians were the ones with some significant level of sponsorship.

The biggest example of self-sponsorship is Jerome.  This kid was a foster kid, jumping from home to home with no idea of the whereabouts of his mother for most of his life.  After finding a permanent foster mom, he enrolled in a theater group that helped him get some focus in school and life.  This kid was also affected by Shirley Brice Heath’s study, as he took her literacy challenges seriously and used them to give his life direction.  Jerome eventually became a teacher after graduating from college, a path not easily taken.

Jerome’s story of self sponsorship is incredible.  One of the stories I enjoyed the most in Words at Work and Play was part of his role in their “script team.”  Kids came in and worked with Heath concerning their actual literary practices.  The part that got me thinking was their word use.  heath describes the kids as generally only using words in the present, rarely in the past tense, and hardly ever in the future.  The kids didn’t see a problem with that because they saw only the need for the present.  What need did they have for the past or the future? Things like planning ahead for college was not common, thought about, or encouraged.  It does mention a bit about college being hard; all the kids were exposed to was failure.  Successful college graduates never came back: one either makes it out, or they are stuck there.  So these kids were not exposed to any sort of “success” and never even really knew what it was.

I liked the literary work that had the kids thinking about their tense use.  Having a chart showing what terms they use was a good visual for the kids; after discussions about it, they started thinking about the future and how little it plays into their lives.  I think that was a major turn-around for Jerome as well as a few others.

I am honestly excited to read the rest of the book.  Our ignite talk will focus on the first half, as there are ample themes to discuss.  But this book should be a required read for all teachers!