Melanie's New Literacy

I used to think literacy was limited to the topic of Language Arts. I even further simplified this thought by thinking that literacy was merely the having the ability to read. After this course's readings, discussions, and projects, I've realized that literacy is actually hard to define. But, I really liked one literacy definition that I heard in class, which defined literacy as the ability to interpret signs and utilize these interpretations in everyday life. Yes, this definition is vague, but it's hard to define the notion of literacy after discovering its complexity. I think literacy in an umbrella term, and it's easier to define its subsets rather than the word itself. I now know that there is a multitude of literacies, and the more literacies one acquires, the easier it is to function in society. Accordingly, the technology that I explored (a comic creation site) informed my thinking of literacy when I initially struggled with its features. I struggled because I lacked literacy in this technology. I've never made a comic, so this unfamiliarity plus the new technology challenged me. However, once I explored it more and discovered its features, it was easier for me to understand the functions of this technology. I eventually became more literate in this particular technology.

 I think providing "effective literacy instruction" to diverse learners tasks teachers to be creative and diverse through their teaching strategies. This means that teachers have to be aware of their students' interests, abilities, and struggles. With this knowledge, teachers can teach in a manner that's beneficial to the individuals in his/her classroom. It's amazing to see the effects of knowing your students and accommodating their individual needs. My CT executes this in her classroom, and she definitely provides effective literacy instruction. She is aware of the abilities and difficulties of her students, and she has multiple resources and strategies for the students to enhance their individual learning experiences. 
When I explored GLCEs, I looked at the GLCE for second graders. If the students at this grade level were learning to use Comeeko, the comic-creating technology that I used, they would need to develop many capacities and commitments to be successful. For instance, they'd have to understand the sequencing aspect of reading because to create a comic, you have to organize your ideas in an appropriate sequence. They'd also have to have speaking literacy because there is speech in comics. However, they need be literate in writing because they'd have to be able to translate their dialogue into written form. Lastly, they'd have to have visual literacy to incorporate images that relate to the content in the comic. The selection of their images is crucial to enhance the story that they portray. The technology of Comeeko is actually a great way of incorporating all of this learning into the Language Arts curriculum. As I mentioned, this technology demands a lot of Language Arts features, and I think Comeeko would be a nice, subtle way to stimulate the literacies of reading, speaking, and visualization. Also, the GLCEs for second grade Language Arts expects 2nd grade cirriculum to include/reinforce these aspects. 

Learningi to use a technology fits with my current understanding of literacy and my ideas of effective literacy instruction because Comeeko is flexible. This technology stimulates many aspects (of all levels) of Language Arts, so it's fairly universal. Also, I'll generalize my definition as the interpretation of symbols, and Comeeko includes many direct and indirect symbols that require interpretation for proper use of the technology.

New Literacy

Literacy as I understood it at the beginning of this semester always dealt with reading and writing. Once class began I soon realized that literacy branched out to incorporate speaking, listening, and viewing. Through class discussions, activities, and reading I soon realized the importance of literacy in every day life. It was easy to see that literacy is important for all subjects, but I never really sat down to think about the variations of literacy. As I explored the multiple new literacies, environmental literacy really seemed to be the most appropriate option for me. I would like to be a science teacher, and it would be my responsibility to provide my students with as much information as possible. choosing environmental literacy really seemed to be my best bet for exploring multiple ways to present this information to my students. I really enjoy scrapbooking and some of the most appealing things about environmental literacy are the pictures. I really enjoyed creating the scrapblog because it was not only a fun way for me to provide the information but I learned more about polar bear conservation in the process.

I think one of the best way to teach students information is to make the learning fun. My CT stresses this fact to me every time I am at field. The New Literacies project showed me a new way tot make learning fun. A great way to teach my students would be for me to create one of these projects for them and give them access to the information. If I were a student I would love to navigate through some of these projects because they are so interesting. I also think students would love to make their own projects and share them with their classmates and families. I believe it would be a very rewarding experience for these students. This would take a lot of time and effort to explain how to use these  new technologies to the students, but it was so much fun that I think it is worth the time. It would most likely be helpful to start out with some of the easier technologies first, such as the power point. If the students really seem interested and into the project it would be really interesting to see how they would do with some of the more "advanced" technologies. 

Whenever I have had previous project I have always used poster boards or at most a power point when it comes to technology. These new forms of technology seem so much more appealing to me. In fact I loved the scrapblog so much I am starting to make new scrapblogs with my own pictures. Today, it is apparent how important technology is to people's every day life. Having the option of sharing information such as new literacies in a more "technological" way would be beneficial to students who are growing up in  technological based world. 

iMovie and I'm Learning

When I started this course, I already had a fairly broad concept of literacy and definitely took a critical literacy approach, but class discussions and the literacy exploration have helped me develop that further. My new concept of literacy is that it's an understanding of a system of symbols, whether those be marks on a page, use of color, human gestures, changes in the environment, or cultural comprehension. My iMovie project added to that understanding as I struggled to interpret what symbols I was including in my movie and how it would help the viewer experience the project. Effective literacy instruction, then, requires me to not only understand these symbolic systems, but to teach my students to decipher symbols in their lives.

Because students have different learning styles - some learn kinesthetically, some visually, some by listening, and many by a combination of methods - teaching needs to take diverse forms. The movie I made with iMovie would help visual learners most, but by adding a voice over I could have geared it toward students who need to hear, and by having students film the video, kinesthetic learners could meet their learning needs. Using a video also allows ELLs to view the content multiple times, something that isn't as available to them if I choose to teach the material to them in a traditional classroom format.

Part of what I needed for the project was digital literacy, mostly in awareness of how to use a "Help" button. Most of the directions I needed were available with the iMovie program as long as I could figure out how to accurately describe what I wanted to do. Using the "Help" function is a really valuable skill (one I'd like to teach my students), and I think it's one thing that separates digital immigrants from digital natives: natives expect there to be a help guide available to them and try to use it before they seek human help.

The pictures that I choose were meant to cue the viewer to think about what would appear on the slide so that they could process it more effectively, and I tried to use the zooming for the same effect. In order to use this technology, my students would have to develop a more refined sense about what a picture tells the person looking at it and how they can add information to it. I chose not to do a voice over for my project because I didn't know how to create one that would add information that my titles didn't, but for younger students, a voice over could be a flexible way to add information and practice fluency. Also, I found that better planning from the start would have created a significantly better product - I didn't know how to time my slides or how long transitions would take. I wish I had storyboarded my project with the text I was planning to use, something I would definitely have my students do, before I started cutting clips, applying titles, and adding transitions. These skills would require and develop a sense of story elements for my students. Overall, this project has made me excited to create new iMovie projects in the future, particularly in a collaborative setting.

New Literacy - Lindsey

My definition of literacy has definitely expanded since the beginning of this class, as well as the beginning of this project. I never thought much about how literacy affected functions not directly related to reading, writing, viewing, and understanding. This means that I never made the connections between literacy and technology, among other subjects. I also never explored the possibilities of teaching a new type of literacy (which now includes environmental, cultural, and technology literacies as well) through using a new technology (e.g. a scrapblog), as well as incorporating older technologies (e.g. an overhead projector).
When I started this project I planned on talking about an aspect of environmental literacy (more specifically wetlands) through a digital storybook with visual and audio cues. However, due to my lack of technological skill in finding an appropriate program that was compatible with my computer I switched to a website format, which I was equally unfamiliar with. The process of making a website was interesting and fun. I had a fantastic time playing with different features, changing fonts, themes, and styles, as well as different ways of presenting my information. I was not very good at any of it to begin with, and I had a hard time making a page look the way I wanted it to at first, but that made it more of a challenge. I love a good challenge, and I worked with the program until I understood it well enough to make a page that I would be happy with.
With regards to formats, I eventually decided that I liked the idea of lots of links that can connect to each other, with pictures that illustrate what that page is describing or that is appropriate for the information on that page. I hoped that the links would help whoever was navigating my site realize that it is hard to completely separate one aspect of wetlands from another, and that they are all inter-related. The pictures were used to make the pages look more interesting, and to help the more visual learners with the concepts being illustrated when pictures could be used to do that.
If students in my fifth grade class were to explore this technology, I am not sure how well that would work. Most of them are capable readers and are at approximately a fifth grade reading level, but when I have observed them in a computer lab situation they are not as self-sufficient. Many students have a hard time logging into the system properly, or working an already made website the way it was intended to be used. I think they would have fun with it once they knew what they were doing, but each student would need a large amount of individual work with someone who knows what they are doing, and monitoring so that they do not stray from what they are supposed to be doing. If this process was done in steps throughout the year, however, it could be fun to build a class website where each student is able to make a page that is about them or about a topic the class is studying and what they have learned. With this kind of work it would mostly require the comprehension of what they are supposed to be typing (the information from class or certain information specifics), and the ability to type. They would have the options of adding pictures and changing the background (along with other thematic alterations), which would expand their knowledge beyond just typing in Word.

Comprehension: Melanieti

When I read, I make what Miller calls "text-to self connections." I relate my readings to my personal experiences and knowledge, and draw inferences with those thoughts in mind. I've always had reading comprehension struggles, and I credit this to the limited connections that I make as I read. Miller mentions "text-to-text" and "text-to-world connections." If I acquire a natural ability to consider those connections as I read, I can gain a lot more from reading. I'll consider these in hopes of improving my reading comprehension skills.

My CT has a variety of activities that are related to comprehension processes and literacy instruction. I really appreciate her incorporation of visual literacy. Sometimes she has the students read a story in pairs, then they later retell the story to each other using the pictures only. She also has pictures (without text) that represent the story, and asks some students to place the images in the correct sequence. She has another visual literacy activity that I like, too. Before the students read a book, she'll have them look at its cover. The students write down what they see in the image and have a class discussion in which they predict the story's events. Lastly, they have done charts that contain a character list, setting, and problem. The students fill in these charts and write how these factors changed throughout the story. It's the CT's way of what Miller calls "thinking through the text together." I think my CT has a good variety of activities that perpetuates students' motivation and that meets the diverse needs of each student.

Comprehension-Lindsey

After reading the Tompins chapters, I have realized that when I read the most frequent comprehension strategies I utilize are monitoring and predicting. I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, and whenever I encounter a phrase or term that I am not familiar with, I realize it and take steps to fix it. I remember when I was about 10 years old, I read the book A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L’Engle, and she used the phrase, “thirteen going on thirty” to describe one of her characters. I was confused because fourteen logically followed thirteen, so I asked my mom what that meant because I felt it was important to understanding this character. After the phrase’s metaphorical meaning was explained to me, it made more sense and the character became more real for me. This precisely fits the meaning Tompkins provided when he wrote. “Readers supervise their reading experience, checking that they are comprehending and raking action if they become confused.” That was when I realized that understanding everything I read can be very meaningful. I also like to predict what will happen based on what I know from prior knowledge and/or events and information from the book. I like to make guesses and see whether I am right or wrong, and why. I love a book with a good plot twist precisely because I cannot predict what will happen. If I am kept on my toes, then I am much more likely to want to continue the book until its completion.
I have viewed similar processes occurring in my classroom. This past week I watched the class read aloud a chapter book for the first time. My CT was reading a Goosebumps book. She had the students use their connecting skills (text to text, world, and self) after she had completed several chapters, as they had just recently learned that comprehension strategy as a class and my CT wanted to have an informal review session. They also practiced predicting, especially at the end of chapters (usually a cliffhanger). At one point my CT wanted to stop, but the class insisted she read another chapter because they wanted to know if their predictions were right or wrong, and she conceded because it was a short chapter. She knew it would help encourage the students to read, and to enjoy it. It was a lot of fun to watch and to participate in because she was making reading enjoyable for the students and for us as teachers.

Reading Comprehension: Meghan

While I read I have noticed that I often predict what I think will happen in the text. Gibson explains that a good "during reading" strategy is the "pause and predict" method where the teacher stops as she is reading and asks the students questions such as, "What do you think is going to happen?" I often read books straight through because I get too caught up in what I think will happen so I force myself to finish the book right away. I also have noticed that when I go to the library or book store I often pick out the book with an intriguing title and guess what the book is about based off of its title. Gibson calls this, "predicting from Title or First Sentence" where the teacher writes the tile of the book or the first sentence on the board and the children predict what it will be about. Something I never really thought about until I read the Gibson chapter was the fact that I use surrounding words and text to predict the meaning of a word that I do not know. Gibson explains that this strategy is much more useful for students because getting a dictionary to look up every word they do not know disrupts their reading and sometimes gives the wrong definition for the word in that particular context. 

In the field I have noticed that many children predict what will happen in the reading based on pictures or the title of the book. They also rely on background knowledge and pictures to help with unfamiliar words. For example, one student was reading me a story about otters and as she read she learned that otters eat kelp. She looked at me funny when she got that word and said, "What is kelp? I thought otters ate seaweed, that is what the person at the zoo told me. Maybe kelp is seaweed." I asked her to keep reading expecting the book to explain to her what kelp was, but instead they showed her a picture and she realized that kelp and seaweed were actually the same thing. I was amazed that the student was able to use her knowledge of otters outside the classroom along with pictures to help her figure out the meaning of the word. This is a great strategy to use, and I'm glad my student was able to realize that she could figure out the meaning of the word on her own without any help.