MC: Compassion, Action, And Change

Marie Cowhey warns us while teaching:

• not to reinforce stereotypes (example of feeding the poor)
• not to oversimplify complex problems and their solutions
• we shouldn't fail to teach for understanding about the underlying causes of problems and to see the local efforts to improve things
• not to further stigmatize people with the problem who may be in the school community

Reminds me of the Ralph Nader documentary - he describes the scene at the breakfast table and his father reading the paper - he would see a problem and give homework - by dinner they had to come back tot he table with a solution...

They collected and volunteered not out of pity, but out of understanding and empathy - learned to transform their compassion into action...

Black Ants & Buddhists: MC

The story of the black ants - to kill or not to kill - reminds me of the scene in 7 Years in Tibet where Brad Pitt is trying to build the movie theater for The Dalai Lama - but construction stops because of the earthworms that the monks find in the way... Everything stops while the monks painstakingly sift all the earth to remove the worms from harms way... amazing scene!!

OK - point is - finally an illustration of a WL classroom - a critical literacy classroom - sooo helpful to "see" what it is like...
Cowhey mentions a few strategies of interest...

• EVERY DAY she reads aloud to children - using a variety of texts types
  
• Helping to build comprehension using a variety of strategies
• HElping students make connection - text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world
• a second read aloud - focusing on a philosophical question - on-going - emphasis on listening skills and oral language development.

Each chapter in the book looks at questions that teachers ask about teaching critically...How do you...

• keep teaching age-appropriate
• keep it authentic and relevant so kids care
• do it all yourself?
• handle it if families react negatively
• know if kids are getting it

GWB Reading Strategies

The reading process...

What does what I'm reading mean to me - transaction
Reader uses complex plans or strategies to make meaning from text:

Reading Strategies

• sampling
• inferring
  
• predicting

based on knowledge and background experiences - cyclical and integral processes

• confirming
• integrating

Constructing meaning:

• Your purpose for reading
• The relat'p of what you're reading to your view of the world

Cueing systems

1. graphophonic - relat'p between oral and written language
   
2. syntactic - relat'p between words, sentences, and paragraphs - word order, tense, number, gender, grammar - Ability to ask, "Does this sound right?"
   
3. semantic - relat'p between language and meaning
   
4. pragmatic

I remember very clearly someone asking me - well, how do you know its' right? And I said, I just sounds right - and I remember as a kid, when doing grammar exercises - just instinctively knowing what was right, because it just sounded right - and i wondered why it didn't just sound right for other kids - why did I have that and they didn't was it reading that gave me that knowledge? Is there a carry over to ESL and language acquisition?

Experienced readers balance the use of strategies and systems - Beginning readers need help in integrating both in their reading processes.

GWB: 4 assumptions

4 assumptions about language, thinking, & learners (pg. 20)

1. reading is an active process
2. reading is a language process
3. Readers have knowledge about language
4. authors have knowledge about language

Both reader and author are active in constructing meaning - transactional

Language cueing systems are the sources of information that readers use in their transactions with text as they seek to understand (25)

• graphophonic - sounds & written form
  
• syntactic - the way human organize the sentences of a language in relation to other sentences - whether for purposes of reading, writing, speaking, listening - is its syntax
  
• semantic - meaning - therefore influenced by culture & beliefs
• pragmatic - context
  

All of these cueing systems work within the socio-cultural context of reader/author - pragmatic system - language occurs in a context - how we use it or interpret it, depends on context

Reading Strategies

• initiating & sampling strategies - look at title - sample some text and pictures
  
• predicting strategies - inferencing - guess based on previous knowledge
  
• confirming strategies - was guess right or wrong - leads to self-correcting
  

sampling happens in all perceptual processes - listening for eg - allows senses not to be overwhelmed

seems like many of the strategies are happening without reader consciously attending to them - automatic?

cyclical processes