Feedback on Article Groups

Catchy title, huh? I know.

Also, I figured since the meme thing was my thing, I ought to make one, ha! (ha?)

I’m always leery of group projects and activities and whathaveyou, but I’ve really enjoyed what the other groups have had us do so far. As a future teacher, I tend to see everything through a pedagogical lens. These activities have thankfully lent themselves pretty easily to that, but beyond that the groups have offered me more resources that I can use later for myself, my kids, or my students.

/what everyone else has said

(I’m going to do a lot of summary. It seems to help me process and remember.)

Hip Hop and Literacy: I’d never heard of wix before, and so this was a revelation. Great site. BEAUTIFUL. I can’t wait to use it. I almost chose this group because it’s not something I’m entirely knowledgeable about but what information I have has really piqued my interest. Their site is really helpful. I’ve bookmarked it and plan to look back at it often. As to the activity, the compare/contrast of lyrics/poetry was a lot of fun–enlightening. I’d never looked at a rap song and compared it to a poem of a totally different genre (but similar themes). It was a really important lesson and one I totally intend to use one day.

21st Century Lit: I’m in Professor Kittle’s class, so some of the apps we worked with were familiar, but others weren’t. While I don’t consider myself totally inept or unaware, I’m constantly reminded of just how much I do not know. There’s so much out there. And the thing is, my students will know about apps and whatnot that I don’t. They can teach me, the class. I wonder what kind of activities they’d have their classmates do?

Gaming: Oh good gravy, I thought this would be Video Games and Literacy all over again, but their activity really surprised me. Like, I went to the video game station first because I figured I’d been in that book club so I’d know my stuff, right? Wrong. Anyway, each station had a trivia game of sorts, and you win that station’s sentence unit per correct answer. At the end you create your own sentence from what you have. THIS could be a cool activity, perhaps, for English learners, or modified for other skill sets. It was a fantastic example of gaming as a way to engage students with a reminder that it doesn’t always have to be electronic.

OH. And what I really, really liked about this activity was that it really called for actual group work. By that I mean that it’d be really hard for one kid to get stuck with doing everything. Everyone in the group has their strengths–their literacies–that they can play to. One might know everything about video games, but nothing about geography so THANK GOD their geography nerd group mate can take that one. And, in the end, they really get a better idea of what grammatical units go where in a sentence as well as what the hell they are.

“This sentence makes no sense.”

“Dude, you need a verb. Here, I got a million of them.”

That kind of thing. That was awesome.