Developing Socially Aware Students
Reader as Text Analyst - readers question how texts position themselves - interrogtate texts, question author motives - ask whose voice is missing - what is the power structure - how are minorites portrayed?
Classroom Practice - read critically ----> Take action - reading/writing connection
Showing posts with label RTL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RTL. Show all posts
Saturday, January 26, 2008
RTL: Reading for a Purpose" Text User
Different texts for different Life Activities - help kids find books that satisfy their life purposes (pg 124)- isn't that the push of young adult lit? To help kids process life things like divorce, racism, suicide, etc... to find themselves in the books - or to help them find empathy for those in situations unknown to the reader?
Genre Teaching - be careful not to stifle creativity by requiring strict adherence to genre form when writing...
Reader Purpose vs Author purpose - (and teacher purposes!) - all transactional - once the writer wrote it - hey let go - things are going to happen in the transaction!!!
Children and Magazines - target children's interest! Use what they are reading already!
Levelled reading books - be careful -- sends message that value is place on moving up thru the levels not reading for meaning - choose books with good stories, interesting characters, compelling twists - with something to generate real discussion!
Integrated Curriculum - like ESL - if students see learning English as something they only need to think about during ESl class, then it loses its power and potency - integrate it across curriculum and students can make the connections
Genre Teaching - be careful not to stifle creativity by requiring strict adherence to genre form when writing...
Reader Purpose vs Author purpose - (and teacher purposes!) - all transactional - once the writer wrote it - hey let go - things are going to happen in the transaction!!!
Children and Magazines - target children's interest! Use what they are reading already!
Levelled reading books - be careful -- sends message that value is place on moving up thru the levels not reading for meaning - choose books with good stories, interesting characters, compelling twists - with something to generate real discussion!
Integrated Curriculum - like ESL - if students see learning English as something they only need to think about during ESl class, then it loses its power and potency - integrate it across curriculum and students can make the connections
Sunday, January 20, 2008
RTL: Phonemic awareness, phonics, phonetics
Chapter three is on code breaking - entering the text - One thing that stands out - any of the steps in isolation becomes less meaningful - integrated approach is best...
One of my assumptions about phonics became clear - but is it right?
I have always thought that phonics had value because I believed that our vocabularies inside our heads - the words we have heard over and over but may not have read - are much larger than our read vocabularies (as kids) and so - if kids could sound out a word - then they might be able to connect it to a word they know from having heard it... Is this in error?
One of my assumptions about phonics became clear - but is it right?
I have always thought that phonics had value because I believed that our vocabularies inside our heads - the words we have heard over and over but may not have read - are much larger than our read vocabularies (as kids) and so - if kids could sound out a word - then they might be able to connect it to a word they know from having heard it... Is this in error?
Friday, January 18, 2008
RTL: Reading begins at birth
I never thought about reading beginning at birth before - it really changes the way you think about reading then doesn't it? Means we are interpreting and making meaning out of everything we encounter - we see something, make a connection in the brain to what it is - thus making meaning - so reading a text is just another way to make meaning out of our environment... (preface)
Friday, January 11, 2008
RTL: Chapter One Lessons Learned
OK, finished Chapter One and I'm starting to see a picture of a "Reading to Live " classroom - one where I would like to be a student... yet...
I can still hear the poor teachers' voices saying how pulled they are between what is and what it should be - what a terrible position to be in - and how tough it is to not have a say/voice and have to follow prescribed reading programs that may be very different from the one described here...
I can still hear the poor teachers' voices saying how pulled they are between what is and what it should be - what a terrible position to be in - and how tough it is to not have a say/voice and have to follow prescribed reading programs that may be very different from the one described here...
RTL: 4 Resources Model
Luke and Freebody (1999) - Four Resources Model
4 possible sets of reader practices:
Does your program/course/classroom...
Literacy program aims to have reading as:
4 possible sets of reader practices:
- Code breaker - outside text, suing strategies to get in
- Text Participant - inside text
- Text User - reading with a purpose - reads to understand, participate, and make use of text
- Text Analyst - steps back to analyze through social critical literacy lens - what's author's motives for writing - how did they try to shape the reader?
Does your program/course/classroom...
- provide readers with decoding skills?
- make readers strong in their self-perception as meaning-makers
- empower them to use a wide variety of texts in their daily lives
- enable them to analyze texts critically
- give them the reading practices needed to participate fully in society
Literacy program aims to have reading as:
- social practice
- to build identities
- to build understanding of communities and cultures
- dynamic, purposeful, alive
- children feel valued
RTL: Language as Social Practice/Purpose
OK, this just turned everything I knew on its head...
language is now being described as social practice rather than as communication (transmitter - receiver - OK - every communication course I've had goes out the window, too - ha!!)
Language is learned interactively as individuals engage in social contexts... OK, this jibes with the idea of negotiation of meaning in ESL lingo...
BUT what if someone is just sitting there reading to learn quietly alone... does this mean the social context is now between the reader and the author? OK, that makes sense.
Reading Involves Purpose
When we read, we always read with a purpose...so when reading is evaluated, the purpose (of text and reader) should be taken into consideration - e.g purpose for reading a poem and reading a medicine bottle... would success be gauged in the same way?
*** Make sure that classroom reading serves authentic purposes - link to children's lives
language is now being described as social practice rather than as communication (transmitter - receiver - OK - every communication course I've had goes out the window, too - ha!!)
Language is learned interactively as individuals engage in social contexts... OK, this jibes with the idea of negotiation of meaning in ESL lingo...
BUT what if someone is just sitting there reading to learn quietly alone... does this mean the social context is now between the reader and the author? OK, that makes sense.
Reading Involves Purpose
When we read, we always read with a purpose...so when reading is evaluated, the purpose (of text and reader) should be taken into consideration - e.g purpose for reading a poem and reading a medicine bottle... would success be gauged in the same way?
*** Make sure that classroom reading serves authentic purposes - link to children's lives
RTL: Miscues
pg. 4 Goodman (1969) used the term miscue to replace error when describing someone's oral reading. This ushers in a change in perspective - no longer are readers making errors, rather they are negotiating and constructing meaning as they work through the text.
Looking at miscues (such as omitting words, substituting words, or self-correcting) then provided a positive way to analyze the meaning-making process of readers.
Example - miscues during a reading of a poem on T-shirts - indicated that the reader had a very good handle on the meaning of the poem - so the miscues were inconsequential - Fluent readers often make changes to text.
On the other hand, HS students who were poor readers, often read slowly, with great accuracy, yet had little understanding of the meaning. In fact, the more they paid attention to getting things right at the word level, the less likely they were to comprehend the passage - an inverse relationship occurred!!!
Looking at miscues (such as omitting words, substituting words, or self-correcting) then provided a positive way to analyze the meaning-making process of readers.
Example - miscues during a reading of a poem on T-shirts - indicated that the reader had a very good handle on the meaning of the poem - so the miscues were inconsequential - Fluent readers often make changes to text.
On the other hand, HS students who were poor readers, often read slowly, with great accuracy, yet had little understanding of the meaning. In fact, the more they paid attention to getting things right at the word level, the less likely they were to comprehend the passage - an inverse relationship occurred!!!
RTL: Word naming versus understanding
pg. 2 - LW's comparison of 2 reading examples was powerful -
1) Angela's Ashes - the emotional connection to the story and characters - the interaction with the text - understanding it!
versus
2) the modem manual - she could recognize the words, say them correctly and read the entire thing fluently - but she hadn't actually read anything because it had no meaning for her.
Reminds me of reading a second language - you may know the rules of pronunciation, but that doesn't mean you know what the words and text mean... I could "say" German fluently, but that doesn't mean I knew what it meant!
pg. 3 Kenneth Goodman's - 1969 - description of reading process:
Interpretation of the text is always situated then with the reader + text - what the reader knows, what they understand about the world - so no 2 people will interpret text the same way - so no "right" answers only plausible ones...
1) Angela's Ashes - the emotional connection to the story and characters - the interaction with the text - understanding it!
versus
2) the modem manual - she could recognize the words, say them correctly and read the entire thing fluently - but she hadn't actually read anything because it had no meaning for her.
Reminds me of reading a second language - you may know the rules of pronunciation, but that doesn't mean you know what the words and text mean... I could "say" German fluently, but that doesn't mean I knew what it meant!
pg. 3 Kenneth Goodman's - 1969 - description of reading process:
- graphophonic (letters and sounds) - visual cue
- syntactic (sentence structure or syntax) - brain cues
- semantic (using experiential knowledge on life meanings) - brain cues
Interpretation of the text is always situated then with the reader + text - what the reader knows, what they understand about the world - so no 2 people will interpret text the same way - so no "right" answers only plausible ones...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Reading to Live: Lorraine Wilson
I've started the Lorraine Wilson text by reading the preface by P. David Pearson who co-wrote our opening article on Learning About Literacy - a 30 Year Journey... and I was excited reading his words - eagerly anticipating this read - and at the same time, I felt strangely comforted (after the anxiety I felt over feeling that I don't know anything and that everything feels so chaotic!)
This line in the Preface struck me particularly and I'm sad I can't start reading right now...
"...reading and writing are tools for communication, learning, enjoyment, and personal insight, the means to help us live our lives more productively, more honestly, more graciously, and with greater personal satisfaction....Food may be the fuel for our bodies, but reading - and the ideas, emotions, and insights we encounter in the process - is the fuel for our hearts, souls, and minds.
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