LitEVO's Blog
Research and response to trends in teaching language and literature.Archive for October, 2009
NaNoWriMo
My savvy sister sent me this link. I’ve got a few more hours to consider joining. I’ve had a book idea for a while now, and the National November Writing Month program could just be my push.
“National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
They also have a supportive young writer’s version for those who might want to invite their students.
http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/
The Power of Disconnections
In Ch. 10 of Girls, Social Class, and Literacy, Stephanie Jones discusses and gives examples of using Critical Literacy within a Reading Workshop. Jones’ transcript of a small group classroom discussion gave me a concrete model of what Critical Literacy can look like in the classroom beyond having culturally relevant discussions. She showed what Critical Literacy is in terms of being a “text critic.” (pulling from Allan Luke and Peter Freebody’s idea of the four “roles” of a postmodern reader: code breaker, meaning maker, text user, and text critic).
What struck me was Jones’ use of connections and disconnections to literature. Like Jones, I have definitely fallen into the “multicultural trap” of simply avoiding texts that didn’t pertain to my students, taking the Henry and Mudge out of my classroom library instead of engaging students in conversations that question and analyze these types of text for the power relations and stereotypes. “Making connections” is always one of the first, and easiest in my mind, to teach. However, I purposefully give students texts that I they can “connect” with naturally and deeply. I’d never thought of using a disconnect to begin a conversation around “perspective, power, and positioning.” I’m thinking that the avenue of textual connections and disconnections might be a good one to address some racial comments that flow freely from my students on a daily basis.
Reading the Word and Reading the World
Freire’s quote in my blog title is cited in Jewitt’s piece, “Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms” and somewhat captures the essence of this complex text. Jewitt makes good use of the image of a “porous” classroom, one that “traverses institutional boundaries” between school and home, making a classroom curriculum “permeable” to the outside world. Jewitt discusses approaches to new literacies and links these to studies of classroom practices.
Multiliteracies–
- A response to changes in cultural and linguistic diversity and complexity of texts including nonlinguistic, “multimodal” forms of representation and communication
- A political and social theory for redesigning curriculum that aims to “stretch” literacy beyond traditional constraints of “official” standard forms of written and spoken language.
- Based on “critical literacy” pedagogy, a culturally responsive curriculum that seeks to “redesign the social futures of young people across the boundaries of difference.”
- Jewitt makes the point that the Multiliteracies approach still focuses mostly on written lettered representation.
Multimodality–
- like Multiliteracies, is an approach to pedagogy that has roots in Critical Literacy
- no one mode stands alone in the process of meaning-making, “modes” being image, gesture, gaze, body posture, sound, writing, music, speech, etc.
- draws on Halliday’s social semiotic theory of communication, not based on on linguistic foundations of “print literacy” but instead on anthropological and sociological theories
- new modes are created and existing modes transformed as societies change
One pedagogical example of multimodal teaching from Johannesburg included a literacy project where students were assessed on narratives of culture through drawings, 3D figures, interviews, play, and performance. To me this sounds like a layered curriculum where students are able to choose their own “mode” of representing their knowledge. I’ve used this method of teaching successfully with 7th and 9th graders (thank you E-Pal!), but logistically it’s very difficult. To adequately assess students on given objectives, you really need rubrics for each “mode.” However, I wonder if you could assess in a very general way to accommodate the multiple modalities?
RaP
I have an awkward 45 minute class at the end of the day called RaP (Reading and Planning). I’m supposed to do reading interventions during this time, and I do in a way, but I have a particularly rowdy group that I can’t seem to motivate even with differentiated choice assignments, snacks, and ghost stories. My new idea is to turn this time into a writing workshop. We don’t build enough writing time into our language arts block, so I want to start a workshop that is focused on but not limited to poetry. I’m also trying to educate myself on pop culture-type resources relating to contemporary poetry. So far I’ve got, The Spoken Word Revolution (slam, hip hop & poetry of a new generation), Hip Hop Poetry and the Classics (Thank you Alina!), some cool you tube videos of Talib Kweli, Mos Def, and Saul Williams, youthspeaks.org, Writer’s Corps and their teen poetry compilation book, Paint Me Like I Am and Betsy Franco’s compilations, You Hear Me and Things I Have to Tell You. We’ll see how these go over.
Get Wit’ It: Pop Culture in the Classroom
This week’s reading, ” Turn Up That Radio, Teacher: Popular Cultural Pedagogy in New Century Urban Schools” was so relevant for me. I have only just begun to aspire to be this type of “postmodern, critical educational leader,” which the article challenges us to be. And unfortunately, the student that inspired me to be more Pomo sat in ISS today because I finally wrote him up for constant disruptive and obstinate behavior. Although I always try to make my class engaging, I’m clearly not reaching all of my students.
This article describes pop culture as a type of powerful, but underutilized intervention and a way to “reconnect with the otherwise disenfranchised.” However, it also addresses the challenge of existing curricula, “taught under a guise of standards and rigor, that lacks immediate relevance to students’ lives.” I definitely feel this with our looming “interim” taks-style test, which takes place every six weeks. Additionally, I worry that I’m out of touch and frankly disinterested in pop culture. And I’m only 27! I’ve never really been in touch with pop culture per say, yet now I need to purposefully embed myself in the “mass culture” in order to please my students. If I weren’t so desperate for my students to be productive and successful in my classroom, I might give up now. But of course, it isn’t really about me. Not really. And, I do like hip-hop even if I’m not well versed. And, The teacher from “Feeling the Rhythm of the Critically Conscience Mind” quoted the ol’ “If you can’t beat them join them.” In this case I have to agree.
I love the point “Turn Up that Radio” makes that “There is a need for educators who continue to practice with vision, wit, creativity, courage, and imagination, in an era of standardized tests and “teacher-proof” curricula.” To me, if a teacher is not at least trying to practice in this manner, he/she should not be teaching. And equally if not more importantly, all the yahoos involved in the tests and curricula need to to reevaluate their use of novelty as well.
RTI is “Hot”
The article, “Response to Intervention (RTI): What Teachers of Reading Need to Know” (Mesmer & Mesmer 2008), claimed that 75% of literacy researchers thought RTI was “very hot” or should be “hot.” While the article gave me a good background of the RTI process and concrete examples of how this can work in a classroom, it did leave me wanting to know more. I had heard of the program, but I don’t think it is very popular at the middle school level or even upper elementary grades although it could be. Actually, after reading Alice’s blog and the comments, RTI seems to be focused only on the very early grades. I wonder why it’s not being used more in higher grades if it is in fact so hot.
To me, the basic process is quite simple: assessing, trying specific interventions, monitoring progress, assessing again, and then applying further interventions. The difficult part would be to decide on the right interventions for a particular student as well as pulling together the necessary “team.” In the anecdote given about “Mark,” there were four main professionals involved: a 2nd grade teacher, a reading teacher, a special educator, and a school psychologist. It was interesting that the classroom teacher was frustrated with all the questions and demand that the others asked of her. The school psychologist found teachers’ general responses to be defensive. Teachers definitely aren’t used to discussing every aspect of their class (what exactly they are teaching, how often, and the results), but perhaps this type of conversation should be more commonplace.
I like the idea of RTI because it is more individualized than a program like Read 180. RTI is also part of a student’s regular Language Arts block whereas Read 180 is a separate class. Although I would be using this process on my own, I think I could easily follow the RTI model, and it seems that middle schools need more of this type of support for below level readers. In fact, reading interventions seem to become less and less common as students grow older, not that the need declines that much. Shouldn’t a struggling student at any age receive interventions to help him or her be successful? Shouldn’t a classroom teacher be part of this process?
