Blog Post #2

Blog Post 1/26/13

Blog Topic: Describe how literature is included in the literacy curriculum in your classroom. Based on today’s readings and your own ideas, what thoughts do you have about additional ways to incorporate literature into the curriculum?

Literacy curriculum in my classroom:

            My first grade classroom uses the “Treasures” by Macmillan/McGraw-Hill curriculum. Literature is seen in this curriculum when the teacher reads the students a story from the “big book”. This book is a large picture book that all the students can see and follow along as the teacher reads. The curriculum gives the teachers strategies to use while reading the literature. For example, it might instruct the teacher to discuss what “summarize” means. After, the students have an assignment that goes along with the story that was read. For example, they might be asked to write the order of events that happened, and then also draw pictures to go a long with what they write. They all have journals that they use to write and draw their answers in. Additionally, the students all have their own textbook filled with different stories they can read individually, and follow along during group read. 

Readings:

Langer, “Understanding Literature”

            While reading this article, I thought Langer’s idea of “thought tappers” provided good tips for teaching literature. The guidelines listed as “thought tappers” can be used to help push students to explore literature in greater depth by asking open-ended questions. I think this would be good to incorporate into any literacy curriculum in order to get students to fully understand the literature in many ways.

Hassett and Curwood, “Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education: The Instructional Dynamics of Picture Books and Primary Classrooms”

            This article discusses how a text, a piece of literature, may have “multimodal characteristics”, meaning things within the text that convey different meanings. For example, these may include; the design, font, images, the way it is narrated, and different perspectives. This can be incorporated into literacy curriculum by keeping in mind the “multimodal characteristics” when choosing literature for the classroom. If a text has different colored font, or multiple perspectives it is important to keep that in mind because it will change the meaning of the literature for students.

Almasi, “A New View of Discussion”

            Almasi discusses her view of what a discussion should look like, “a forum for collaboratively constructing meaning and for sharing responses.” A discussion should allow for ideas to be shared in order to reach new understandings. This is important for teachers to keep in mind when they have discussions after reading literature. Students should have the opportunity to discuss their ideas, instead of the teacher just telling them what the text was about. When incorporating literature into the literacy curriculum, I think it is important to keep in mind that discussions must be had in order for students to get meaning out of the literature. The discussions will allow for students to work off of each other’s ideas in order to reach new meanings.

First post

Notes on the Readings:

Tompkins Ch.1

Reading and writing are both dynamic, strategic and goal-oriented.

Behaviorism is teacher-centered.

Constructivism, Sociolinguistics, Cognitive/Information Processing are student-centered.

Internet has drastically changed literature. They are nonlinear, multimodal, intertextual, and interactive.

Schema is what knowledge is organized into.

Language and social interaction are important for learning.

     Helps with organization of thought, scaffolding and zone of proximal development

Four Cueing systems:

    Phonological

    Syntactic

    Semantic

    Pragmatic

Characteristics of a classroom community

responsibility, opportunities, engagement, demonstration, instruction, risk-taking, response, choice, time, assessment

Take the first two weeks to create environment in classroom, get students used to it

Make sure to balance the approaches used to teach literacy

 and include- reading, phonics, strategies for reading/writing, vocabulary, comprehension, literature, content-area study, oral language, writing, spelling

Scaffolding is an important strategy for teachers to use with reading and writing development.

Basal Reading, Literature focus units, Literature circles, reading and writing workshop

Create a partnership with parents. Respect differences

Gibbons Ch.1

Language has two contexts: situation and culture

Academic language can become very abstract, complex and specific to the subject

Need knowledge of appropriate language to use for each.

Context-embedded and context-reduced: conversational english and academic language

Conversational language develops quickly in 1 to 2 years for SLLs whereas academic language may take 5-7 to reach level of native speaker of the same-age

SLLs will have had less exposure to use English in different contexts outside of the classroom

Lessons from JP article

Teachers should offer many opportunities for students to engage in reading and succeed.

Provide reading materials that students are interested in and at varying reading levels

Opportunities for scaffolding reading, such as partner reading

Teach students why reading is important and equip them with different reading strategies

Don't let students disengage from the class because they are struggling readers, make sure they still are fully participating in the classroom community

Tapping Students' Cultural Funds of Knowledge

Cultural Modeling- designing instruction to make connections between content/literacy and students' prior knowledge and experiences

Respect for differences and capitalizing on these differences for teaching and learning resources

Preparing to teach: identify content, figure out what requires higher-level thinking, pick language arts skills and strategies for students to learn, identify students' prior knowledge and language experiences outside of class, choose texts that reflect these.

Teaching: begin with texts that build upon students' prior knowledge and experiences, engage students in reading and writing activities about content

Goals for Learning:

I would like to learn more about how to incorporate literacy into other content areas.

Strategies to prepare for reading in front of class and teaching.

Work on ways to engage all students and create a positive learning environment in the classroom

Effective classroom management techniques

More Notes:

I would like to teach middle school in an ESL classroom.

I would like to learn how to incorporate each student's background knowledge and culture and academic content into my lessons

The articles I read provided some valuable strategies for incorporating students knowledge and culture and showing me how important it is to listen to the students' concerns and provide engaging literacy instruction based on their needs.