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.