After thoughts…. October 29, 2009

I really appreciated our discussion on critical literacy today. After our discussion on children’s books, I began to wonder how much teacher can involve in children’s critical questioning. While I was talking with my group, I thought that it might be somewhat attempting to lead the conversation toward what I would notice from the book instead of what children would see.  As Toni suggested, modeling can be beneficial for children to get familiar with critical questions. As Michelle pointed out,  I agree that it really can help them internalize how to pose questions. In addition to that, maybe valuing children’s questions about issues around their life and inviting them  to talk about those issues might be another way to open critical literacy in class. 

I really love thinking about critical literacy. Today’s discussion really made me become interested in doing critical literacy practices with my students in Korean school. However, it is challenging for me to think about doing critical literacy practices in several ways. One of the reasons, I think, is that this class is almost considered as a foreign language class becuase students who are in my class have just started to learn Korean. Thinking of my class really made me wonder whehter critical literacy can be possible in a foreign language classroom.  Hmmm … Then, how can I address critical literacy to my class??

Critical Literacy October 29, 2009

Luke and Freebody revisited the model that they had suggested in 1991 in order to critique and reformulate. Here are the points that they highlighted.

• Teaching literacy could not be simply dependent on “scientific” methods, but moral, political, and cultural decisions should be considered.
• Experiences in literacy practices can influence learners’ (people’s ) formation of agency over cultural, semiotic resources.
• The three dimensions of literacy capabilities include: 1) “the breadth of an individual’s or community’s repertoire of literate practices; the depth and degree of control exercised by an individual or community in any given literacy activity; and the extent of hybridity, novelty, and redesign at work.”
• Four  resources of model: 1) Code Breaking is recognizing and handling fundamental features of text; 2) Meaning making can be achieved through participating in reading and writing through different modes in order to create meanings; 3) Using texts encompasses understanding cultural and social functions of different texts, which affect structure, tone, degree of formality, and components: 4)By critically analyzing texts can show how power relations affect design, structure, and inclusion of particular contents. 

I really enjoy “Critical literacy in reading workshop.”  I appreciate the way the author (teacher/researcher) addressed critical awareness to young children by asking to think about disconnections between their lived life and life in Henry and Mudge and what they wanted to modify in the story. I was smiling when Sarah was mimicking her teachers’ questions about changes that they wanted to make. Even though the conversation went a bit awry, I thought it was really nice that Sarah was thinking about the questions from the teacher. In the meantime, I was wondering how critical literacy practices could influence these girls’ life and their literacy practices in later years.  Were these girls able to take what they had thought about with their teacher in order to think about other issues that they encountered in their readings or in their life?

The girls in this article reminded me of the students in Dr. Martinez’s study: The children did code-switching butdid not realize it until Dr. Martinez asked about. I was wondering whether lingusitic awareness can also be part of critical literacy pedagogy. It seems that there are several aspects that bilingual/multilingual children could talk about their language use in terms of language ideologies in schools, society, and their communities, linguistic differences, social contexts and language use, and even power relations regarding language use.

Popular cultural pedagogy October 14, 2009

 

Reading this article reminded me of my world history teacher in high school. FYI, teaching and learning at school in Korea are so much bound to the required curriculum. In Korea, students at the same grade level learn the same contents through similar textbooks or same textbooks regardless of regions or teachers. In a way, there is very little room for teachers to use various reading materials that motivate students. However, my world history teacher in high school used stories from movies, comic books or fiction in order to engage us in understanding historical events that were unfamiliar with or even far from us.  He also encouraged us to read comic books based on the world history and to watch movies based on the historical events that we were learning. In fact, most of the students at my grade level were excited about learning world history while this particular teacher was teaching us. Without the connection he made between particular popular cultural texts and the historical events that we were learning, reading the popular cultural texts might have been only for our enjoyment. In addition, we might not have noticed that the popular cultural texts that we were engaging in were meaningful.

Duncan-Andrade and Morrell indicate that “it is the task of the teacher to persuade students that this knowledge (tacit knowledge derived from the cultural resources that students already possess) contributes to helping them learn what they need to know (p. 290).” It seems to me that my world history teacher was trying to help us know that popular cultural texts could support our understanding of content knowledge of world history. In addition, teacher’s use of popular cultural texts could empower students to become aware that their ability to use texts is not very different from the academic ability curriculum requires them to have. Even in some cases, by using popular cultural texts, teachers may be able to engage students to analyze, criticize, and challege the texts – those skills that are supposedly acquired through academic literacy practices.

I also like the idea of incorporating popular cultural texts that students are familiar in order to engage students in questioning and pondering upon power relations, the dominant ideologies and a variety of social issues that might be related to their lives. I think this could be the core of the curriculum using popular cultural texts. Celebrating students’ engagement with popular culture can motivate students to learn school sanctioned knowledge. However, students may gain critical thinking skills from becoming aware of and critical about social issues around themselves.

I agree that incorporating popular cultural texts is one of the culturally responsive ways of teaching. However, while I was reading the article on one teacher’s experience with using popular cultural texts in her classroom, I started to wonder how teachers would make a choice of popular cultural texts teachers can integrate into their curriculum. The way in which Alexander-Smith chose the type of popular cultural texts sounded so simple, but it might not be that easy before the teacher knows and understands her students’ life. I also wonder how we can address diversity issues in relation to popular cultural texts. My concern is that using one type of popular cultural texts over others might exclude studetns who are not consumers of that particular popular culture. Then, what do teachers need to consider when their students are from culturally diverse backgrounds and might experince different types of popular cultural texts?

RTI October 6, 2009

It is interesting to read this week’s articles on RTI because I felt that RTI seems to concern carefully how to approach struggling reader and it seems helpful for both teachers and struggling readers. Based on the descriptions in both articles (Gersten & Dimino, 2006; Mesmer & Mesmer, 2008), RTI seems a very systematic and data-driven approach to discern problems that students have and to provide them with appropriate intervention before it is too late for them to improve their reading skills. It also can provide framework for assessing students and collect data for instructional decision making.  I can appreciate the fact that there are several responsive steps of measuring students’ reading and monitoring their progresses and responses. As Gersten and Dimino imply, this model seems a quite sound way of identifying students with reading difficulties and their areas of growth.

The basic assumption of this model is that “if students become proficient readers by the end of first grade, then they will remain good readers (Gersten & Dimino, 2006, p. 101).” Despite the soundness of RTI, this assumption actually makes me wonder what RTI means by proficiency or proficient readers. According to Gersten and Dimino imply, it seems that the areas RTI focuses include decoding skills such as accuracy and fluency. Given the fact that RTI is a kind of assessment model of identifying students with reading disabilities, this assumption might be understandable. However, as Gersten and Dimino concern,  it is somewhat questionable that students in the intervention implemented via RTI would develop comprehension skills and vocabulary.

I really wonder how this program would contribute to children’s reading motivation, self-efficacy and development over time as they engage in the intervention that is implemented based on their needs  and how students, teachers and parents would respond to the results that this model would bring to students’ reading.   

I wonder how this model would approach ELL readers who are often placed in special education because they do not speak either English or their home language at school. I wonder how researchers who develop RTI address this issue.