Our Next Reading

In our PLC meeting today, it was agreed that we would endeavor to read chapters five and six by Monday, April 6th.

Read on.

Blog on.

I will learn to resize pictures so they are not obnoxiously large.

Soon.

Getting my Feet Wet

I started teaching critical literacy (in its official form) this week. (Obvs we've all been doing it in some form when we talk about point of view or when we regularly discuss the story and deepen comprehension, but yano...)

I used The Giving Tree to start. Interestingly, students didn't make the connection that the tree symbolized the mother, and I had to further nudge them to infer that having the mother and son as the only characters might have been because the author was trying to show that in some cases the mother's whole world is her kid/s (nudge as in I led them there, they still didn't make the leap, so I told them). I figure this is kind of their first exposure, so by me directly telling them is a way of doing a Think Aloud, or mental modeling. I'm expecting that with more and more examples, I will have to nudge less.

Today I showed them the movie trailers (Beth made one cd, so I've got it & you are welcome to it). The students LOVED that and it visually represented to them the concepts that I was talking about. I highly recommend doing this.

After the movie trailers I started reading The Wretched Stone. Before I even started reading, students picked up that the word "wretched" was preparing us for something bad. Also, there is a picture of a sailor on the front cover who looks like he is on the verge of falling off the boat. They picked up on that as also carrying a negative meaning.

I think it's going along great so far! I've got some more things planned, including using some other media as well as more texts. I'll comment more about how that goes later.

Also, I think that it is fortunate this critical literacy discussion is happening prior to the unit on persuasion. We're studying how authors subtley position the reader in our discussions on critical literacy and then students will use some of those characteristics as they think about swaying a specific audience.

Thoughts on "Challenging the Text"

One of the first things that struck me about this chapter was how critical literacy is completely tied to inquiry. This could be a great interdisciplinary link for our students, since inquiry is such a hot topic in science. I can see how infusing critical literacy into our English and reading classes may reach some of the students who haven't really latched on to reading, but like subjects more often linked with discovery.

The problem-posing questions on pages 64 and 65 will be a huge help as I start weaving critical literacy into my teaching. With my particular group of students, I think using a familiar text and starting with one or two questions will help them begin to make sense of what it means to challenge a text. Questions one and four would be most familiar for my students. Then, of course, questions two and three logically follow question one if I really want students to think critically. I'll likely tie these questions back to point of view. We all see the world through our own eyes and experiences. Authors do too. Helping students make that connection may empower them to challenge the text.

There were two activities in particular from this chapter that I'd like to incorporate into my classes. The first is on page 74, where Perez had her students make "posters of things that the Rainbow Fish could have said to the other fish when they asked him to share his scales" and then asked them to dramatize "an alternative to Rainbow Fish's encounter with other fish." The reason I latched onto this activity is because it's great for language learners. It not only incorporates reading, writing, and speaking; it also lends itself well to having students practice specific language structures (the conditional and responding to various types of questions). The other activity I really liked was the mind portrait Homeyer used with Number the Stars.

Planning Stages

Well, I think I'm going to jump head first into critical literacy. I'm going to start teaching it to my Reading singleton and see how it goes. I think for my first venture I'm pretty much going to try using the resources they suggested. I'll start with The Giving Tree, then go a little bit more in depth with the problem posing questions (there is a chart somewhere in the book that has specific points beneath each question asked), probably use the Harry Potter example (although that will require 30 pages of students being read to), and then ask students to try the strategy with a partner/small group using The Wretched Stone (by the way--Canto, can I borrow your copy?). Because I don't have our lit book in front of me, I'm not sure where it goes from there, but I think that might be a good start to a conversation that will hopefully last throughout the rest of the year.

Anecdote Time

All this talk of critical literacy and who or what is missing from a text reminds of a book discussion group I was in back in college. Our assigned text was "The Scarlet Letter", and the demographics of our group were four women and one man. 

We all got together one afternoon to have deep, edifying discussion about the book but soon found ourselves at loggerheads about the simplest of questions: Who is the protagonist? The women in the group all rolled our eyes and let out a collective, "Duh, Hester Prynne." 

"No, she's not," the lone man in our group opined. "It's Dimmesdale. He's the main character. The book's all about him."

We went back and forth for a good hour or so, both sides arguing how its character was so OBVIOUSLY the protagonist, and neither side willing to budge an inch. We called him a misogynist. He told us we were simplistic. It was one of the most frustrating conversations I've ever been in. 

Looking at it now, I see that, though I still INSIST that book's about Hester, taking a moment to consider his arguments for Dimmesdale as protagonist could have added to my understanding of the book. 

I had always looked at the Rev. Dimmesdale as a plot device - just someone needed to get Hester pregnant and set the story in motion. I hadn't really looked at the arc of his story or considered his motivations and the effects the events of the novel had on him. His is a compelling story, as is Hester's; making room to consider BOTH of them would broaden, not diminish, my understanding of the text. 

I guess the thing to remember is that, just as the author writes the text as him or herself, we read as ourselves. Our prejudices and perspectives influence where we chose to focus our attention. We benefit from another set of eyes to challenge us to look in the nooks and crannies of the text that we may tend to skim over.

Well, look who's on the cover ...

Chapter 4

I took a class in grad school about identity development though literature and this chapter brought me back. I wish it were a little more in-depth but this whole text is looking at critical literacy at a surface level anyway.

I do believe that literature has the potential to define one's identity and students can learn to analyze themselves and others by reading a text. I liked the Bearstone lesson because the teacher provided outside reading to fill in blanks students were bound to have on the subject. Without this additional information, they would have a hard time knowing the context for the characters and the history that determines how and why they're doing the things they're doing in the story. Often students' experience is limited, so we have to keep that in mind when asking them to interpret a character's actions, thoughts, feelings, etc.

I thought the concept of exploring identity from this chapter could be applied to a number of different fiction stories in the textbook. A nonfiction text might include "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall..." and I could certainly use the concepts when talking about the identities of Kenny and Byron in Watsons... before the character analysis paper. What I didn't like was that it really didn't get into understanding identity at all. While the activities were good starters, the authors really didn't give any meat to this aspect of identity.

I have a few texts that I am going to look at to see how we might do this better. There's a lot more to identity that what the book suggests and I need a different resource.

Chapter 3

I am thinking about creating laminated cards of problem-posing questions for students to use during small group discussions. These could be used for a number of texts in our textbook and/or the class novels and book clubs. I thought a jigsaw activity might be a good way to analyze a text and the different perspectives within. Students would use the cards with problem-posing questions when looking at the same text - one group focuses on who is in the text, another looks at who is missing, etc. Then the groups jigsaw and combine information.

I'd have to work on the concept of being marginalized and maybe find different terminology although I don't like the idea of watering down vocabulary when I can teach the higher vocab.

Critical Literacy and The Diary of Anne Frank

Chapter 1 states that, according to the Principles of Critical Literacy, part of the purpose of viewing literature through a critical lens is "disrupting a common situation...to gain perspective" (pg. 17).

Taking this philosophy into the context of The Diary of Anne Frank, one would have to consider MORE than just the perspective of Anne and teenagers. We've thought of doing lit. circles with excerpts of books or articles to explore the other points of view that existed/exist.

The survivor's perspective (perhaps an excerpt from Wiesel's Night?) will most definitely be incorporated, but what others do you think would be important to include? Groups off the top of my head are children, rescuers, Christians, and followers of the Nazi party.

Thoughts?

Recut trailers

Hello. I had a few minutes to search for those trailers I was talking about last week (while the stain on my dining room table was drying...) Anyway. ..There are a ton on youtube. Some are uncut ,though. The Shining one as a romantic comedy is good. I think we would have to find the original since the kids ( and Jenna probably, tee hee) are not familiar with the original movie and weren't scared witless like we were. I will try to copy them to a DVD, but they may be copyrighted. I will get back to y'all soon. I am going to put the polyurethane on my dining room table, I really know how to live, don't I?
Talk to you soon.Michelle M