Week 12

Teaching about Language, Power and Text: A Review of Classroom Practices that Support Critical Literacy-

Language is a huge part of literacy and it is something that I get to experience in my classroom everyday! With teaching Pre-K students, oral language is something that I need to establish with my students. Some students that I have are just learning English because English is not the primary language spoken at home. I had to quickly adjust to incorporating an oral language time into our day. I cannot even begin to tell everyone how many times I have heard, “does he/she speak in class? He/she speaks (insert language here) at home, not English.” However, it excites me to say that I have seen such a difference in the ELL's since the first day of school; they participate when we sing and most of them I can have a conversation with. It is such a difference being in school for just over two months!

Becoming Critical Consumers and Producers of Text: Teaching Literacy with Web 1.0 and Web 2.0-

Upon walking into my classroom, you would notice that there are no computers. The most technology I have in my room is a TV with not a DVD player but a VHS player. With what our school has and the idea that students at my level should be using their imaginations, computers and the internet are not a part of our day. It did not really bother me at first because I already have a short amount of time to teach my students that adding a computer or technology aspect would take even more time from my day but with advances such as digital storytelling and the idea of going to youtube and finding a video that adds to your lesson seems like heaven. I truly think that my students would love the idea of listening to someone else read a story to then rather than hear my voice all day long. There is also so much that they can get out of a digital story or appropriate youtube video. It was also recently observed that parents will give their children their cell phone to play a game or explore in order to keep them distracted and quiet. It is funny to me that in some cases children are teaching their parents about how to use technology and computers. It is very interesting to see how Web 2.0 has expanded in not only schools but in life as well.

Weeks 10 & 11

Expanding the New Literacies Conversation

“The Internet is no more a technology than is a book; its functional affordances define it more than its technological affordances.” (p.3) This quote is very interesting to me. People always look at the internet as a technology, I think because it is constantly changing, but to look at it more as a book in function really makes sense. Books are used to read and discover more information; it's this what we are doing with the internet? The article then goes on to discuss framing the Internet into content areas rather than just in its own standards. Personal I feel that it should be included in all areas but how often does it/can it happen in schools? I think a big issue is that teachers are afdraid of spending too much time on teaching how to use the tools of the Internet rather than teaching the materials of the unit.

Research on Instruction and Assessment in the New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension

Right off the bat, this article mentioned that those who are proficient offline readers are not always proficient online readers. The first thoughts upon reading this I had where: why? Is it because there is a difference between the print of a text and the print on a computer screen? With the popularity of new technology on the rise, how long will it be before being a proficient online reader is the norm? This got me thinking about iPads and other similar devices being used in classrooms. Not only can a student read a text book on an iPad but he can also look up a word he doesn't know immediately. Would incorporating technology like this benefit our students in the long run? What do others think?

Exploring the Online Reading Comprehension Strategies Used by Sixth-Grade Skilled Readers to Search for and Locate Information on the Internet

The few education websites I have viewed over the years do seem to take comprehension into account when creating reading sites for kids. The one that pops immediately into my head is razkids. Razkids is a website that a teacher creates for students to read books on that monitors students progress. The little girl I babysit is in second grade and uses this website all the time. She needs to read so many books in her current level and then needs to complete a quiz on what she read. I believe she has only three chances to get a certain score on the quizzes. This is where the website has created a tool for her understanding. It also provides information to the teacher about where she is needing help with her comprehension skills. It is a great website that I feel is not always used in schools.

November 3, 2011

The second scenario in the beginning of the article Becoming Literate in the Technology Age: New Responsibilities and tools for Teachers was the main focus of the article but the first thing that I read that caught my attention. I teach in a school where there are several groups of students that are from other countries and speak languages other than English. In my own classroom for example, I have students who speak English or are just learning to speak English. One student in particular speaks Vietnamese at home and this is her first real setting in which Vietnamese is not the primary language. I am told that she speaks Vietnamese at home and is very talkative but at school she usually only repeats our songs and does not understand things like “sit on the rug.” I am always modeling to her how to sit on the rug properly and even then she does not understand. The way in which Ms. Doyle laid out her unit with her students would be a great project for our older students. They love to share about their culture and families and it would be a great way to get them involved with other literacies. It also gets them involved with their community, which is usually like an extended family for most people. Our students do have a technology time scheduled into their week and I feel that the technology teacher does a very nice job of providing that literacy to the students. Visual literacy is something that I feel the art teacher would cover in her class but I am not sure how much or if at all this happens. Information literacy is something that I feel our school does constantly. This happens a lot when kids are comparing their backgrounds. Students in the school are very open and interested in where others come from and how they are similar and different from each other. Our students truly love to learn and teach others about themselves.