Reach Out and Read This site promotes early literacy in children by giving them new books and giving parents advice. It was shown on NBC News and can be seen in the video or read in the article Pediatricians promote Literacy. Maybe next semester we can have a book drive and donate some books ourselves!!!
Technology Fear Factor in Education
Is technology a new literacy students must learn? Should they be forced to learn new technologies? Watch this video Technology Fear Factor in Education and respond.
Literacy and Sound Learning
Check out this article relating to learning literacy. Literacies and Sound Learning
The site discusses ways teachers can get their students to read for purpose and not just to get the work done. This is a great article! There are even sample lessons and step by step instructions on how to complete the tasks. Some of the examples were even talked about in Teaching Literacy this year.
Metacognition & Schema
Two important issues when learning or teaching literacy are metacognition and schema. Metacognition is an awareness and understanding of one’s thinking and cognitive process. In other words metacognition is thinking about thinking. Using metacognition for example one would ask themselves what did I do wrong? Metacognition contains three parts consisting of creating a plan, supervising the plan, and assessing the plan. Students need to ask themselves such questions when reading.
Schema in Greek means plan. It is a hypothesis for representation or a diagram or model. When using schema one develops a mental picture of general concepts. Schema is background knowledge a person acquires that becomes the basis of their comprehension.
Schema is important to teach because general concepts are essential in learning. Teaching relates to metacognition because students must always be ready to improve. By evaluating a student’s work prior to a preliminary assessment, the student gains more information for the matter at hand. With more acquired information the student can then better prepare themselves for their representation of schema.
Good Article for Teachers
“Think Before you Write” by Joanna Hawkins was both informative and interesting. I especially enjoyed reading of how Hawkins and her colleague recognized students’ lack of understanding in the subject matter and developed ways to help them comprehend. I definitely agree when Hawkins states “Students need to know about what they write.” This makes more sense than students writing about what they already know. Students will learn much more by researching and actually understanding a topic before writing about it. The writing for understanding process seems to be a great process to use. Children will actually comprehend what they read and write about instead of just “sort of” getting it as Hawkins says. Instead of barely getting by students will enjoy learning because they will know what is going on in the classroom.
A couple of the classes I am now enrolled in are stating that children need to read text more than once to actually understand the material. Hawkins agrees with this and adds that teachers must “have materials at appropriate reading levels available, but also providing opportunities in class for students to read, discuss, and reread; analyze text structure; and summarize (Snow, 2002)” (3). I find when I read sometimes I am left wondering what I have just read. Therefore I go back and reread the text, sometimes up to three times until I understand what has happened. I also try to understand the meaning of words I do not know based on the vocabulary which surrounds it, and then I check a dictionary to be sure. I feel as though when I use this method of reading I am learning more, therefore I agree the more students review and analyze text the more they will understand the lesson. Lastly, I enjoyed how Hawkins told of how she felt when she realized she helped one of her previous students. I was reminded of why I am becoming a teacher.
Freedom Writers May 6, 2008
Freedom Writers starring Hilary Swank and Patrick Dempsey is a very inspirational movie. One teacher was able to change the lives of a classroom full of students. At the beginning of the movie, all of the students stayed with others of their own race and none of them were educated. None of the students even knew what the Holocaust was. The teacher first had to make the students feel comfortable with one another and help them to recognize similarities between one another. To do this she had them play a line game. Step on the line if this happened to you, step on the line if you like this, etc. Another way to create a comfortable learning environment is to do a cultural sharing as some of us have done in TLC I and II. For those of you who have not done this , a couple students each week bring in materials that described themselves and what is important to them, kind of like a show and tell. Anyway, after creating a comfortable learning environment for the students the teacher began to teach. Eventually the students learned their literacy skills so well they were able to read The Diary of Anne Frank. They also were able to write letters to the woman who hid Anne Frank from the Nazis. The students became extremely interested in learning and even raised enough money to bring this elderly woman to their school. These students told their stories in journals, which they eventually typed up. I believe if these unfortunate students were able to become literate, anyone can. These students went from killing each other to caring about one another and seeing classmates as family. Educators need to take enough time to actually see their students. They need to break down barriers and get to know their students so they can help them. A comfortable learning environment will help students learn because they feel OK participating and sharing their ideas and views with one another. Below is the link to see the Freedom Writers trailer on you tube.
Napster:The good, the bad and the ugly
When you think Napster, you think music. When I found out that we had the ability to do some extra credit about a music site, I was ecstatic. I use sites like Napster all the time to download and share all types of music and sometimes, even videos. Digital copy-write laws for these types of files seem almost non-existent. I thought that it was interesting to discover the impact this type of file sharing has on the written word.
It never really crossed my mind that sites such as Napster or Limewire can have such a huge impact on the copy writing of written works such as books, novels, and magazine articles. The article states that these file sharing sites were the jumpstart of a type of “online plagiarism” and copy-write infringement. If students think that it is ok to “steal” music, where do we draw the line? Will people eventually stop buying books at a bookstore because they can download them online for free? These questions cannot be answered right now, but I can tell you one thing: authors and copywriters are doing everything in their power to keep this from happening.
Not to long ago, TV was pretty much shut down. Writers were going on strike, why; Because of this issue!
The Internet is forever changing the face of writing. You can share your thoughts and ideas simply by posting a blog or a video on a website. While I am one of the millions of culprits taking advantage of free downloads over the Internet, I can understand why writers want to change the laws revolving their products. Napster was just the start of the whole fiasco, and it will continue to grow as long as the Internet grows. This class has shown me that all the possibilities, file sharing networks, informational ecologies, even social bookmarking sites. What does this say about the future? Only time can tell.
Teaching Literacy to the Illiterate
I knew I wanted to be a teacher since I started school. I want to help and inspire my students to be the best that they can be. When I first came to college I started out as a health and exercise science teacher. I know that being healthy while you are young can have a great impact on you as an adult, and I thought that this was what I wanted to do. It was not until I was enrolled in TLC and Literacy in Today’s World that I changed my mind. It baffled me that so many people in the world cannot read. The ability to read seems like it is second nature. I never really thought about people going through life with out this ability. I never realized how important reading was until I took this class. It was then that I had a new career goal: to build literacy not only in America, but around the world. Reading opens up new doors. Being able to read allows you to explore different cultures, backgrounds, and events in history. By building literacy I will be able to make the world a more tolerant place, one child at a time. By helping my students become literate, I will in turn give them the tools that they need to become successful in the world we live in. I have recently decided to try to achieve my reading certification at Rowan. With my reading certificate I hope to open up a reading center after school hours, not only for the students in the schools, but for their parents as well. I believe that you cannot truly over come illiteracy on your own. I want to help entire communities by educating not only my students but their families as well. If students’ parents are literate, they can help to pass this on to their children. This is one of my goals as an educator, not only to inspire my class, but also to inspire the community in which I teach. I want to become a teacher because I want to help; I want to motivate my students and their families, but most of all I want to excite them about learning. I realize that illiteracy occurs all over the world and I am doing my best to help fight that .I recently made a donation to an organization that is fighting illiteracy on the Ivory Coast in Africa. I urged my family to participate in this because it really means a lot to me. I am planning on trying to get certified to visit the Ivory Coast and become one of those educators. While I cannot and will not urge anyone to participate in this, all I ask is that you watch this you tube video. It shows the daily struggles that these people endure. I know that teaching reading in this country and around the world alike will make this world a better and more tolerate place to live, and I am proud to say that I will have a part (even if it’s a small one) in making that happen.
The Vocabulary of Comics by Scott McCloud
Throughout this semester the author Scott McCloud has been used to teach us about writing and reading. He has by far been my favorite author to read. Is articles are writing in for form of a comic book, making it fun to read while still being informative. What I find most interesting about him is that you often don’t think of comics as a reliable source of information, but McCloud proves us all wrong. His article “The Vocabulary of Comics” was probably the most interesting thing I have read all semester. I love reading things that make you thin of the world around you. He speaks about symbols and icons, he makes you realize that when you see a picture of drawing, they represent what is real. He says, “The fact that your mind is capable of taking a circle, two dots and a line and turning them into a face is nothing short of incredible. But still more incredible is the fact that you cannot avoid seeing a face here…” After I read this passage I was amazing at myself. The fact that things so simple can represent something that is so important is amazing. Symbols have a great impact on people, but they are nothing more than simple drawings. The fact that a drawing can represent so much more that itself baffles me. Wars have started over symbols; people have lived, died, fought for and defended them. Before reading McCloud’s article, this concept never crossed my mind. He really made me start to think more critically about the world around me.
Learning Literacy 