Jenni Southmayd

Reflections and notes from assigned readings in the LLED Block, Spring 2013.

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At Last, Diversity: Dyson

"Conflicting definitions of 'handful' seem implicit too in dominant educational approaches to linguistic, cultural, and social diversity among school children; and this is particularly so for approaches to 'diverse' children who can be glossed as 'low income', 'minority', and thus 'at risk' for school failure" (210). 

"Such children, the manuals explain, may have 'weak language skills' and 'poor preparation for school'; in other words, they are a handful, in the barely manageable sense" (211)

"This brings us to the central educational paradox of our times: On the one hand, children are attending school in a time of curricular standardization, enacted through a discourse of 'the basics'; on the other hand, they are growing up in a world that is not standardized, so to speak--they are growing up amid cultural and linguistic diversity and in a time of rapidly changing communicative practices" (211)

"Thus, re-imagined basics will have to include situating those valued by school within the multiple dimensions of symbolic and, more particularly, graphic systems and the diverse communicative channels and practices of children's everyday worlds" (214). 

"In these newly re-imagined basics, the diverse communicative repertoires that comprise a 'handful' in a standardized curriculum can be viewed as providing resources for teachers and children in constructing more socioculturally inclusive, more sociolinguistically sophisticated curricula" (214). 

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Art and Literacy with Bilingual Children

"I hoped to use the art of picture storybooks and responsive art experiences as opportunities for thinking aesthetically and communicating authentically rather than as extension activities or appendages to the 'standard' curriculum I wondered how bilingual children would respond when art was at the core of a literacy experience; when art was not seen simply as a frill but rather as a means of self-expression, a way of understanding, and a path toward meaning-making. (284)

-Art allows bilingual children (and all children) to construct meaning in a variety of ways; Amada wrote a letter, others drew an illustration, etc. 

-Read texts with bilingual texts or with the native language intertwined. 

-Read multicultural texts that represent diverse characters of different racial, religious, or languages. 

-Give choices for responses: oral discussions, dialogue journals, and art experiences through drawing, painting, and molding clay

-Role of art in cultivating imagination: "cognitive capacity that is too often ignored in educational talk, and yet, is so fundamental to learning, to being in the world" (286)

-Greene said the arts were a way to "release the voices and overcome the silences of diverse young people"; "energizing and enlarging possibilities with artistic experiences" (286)

-Dewey Dewey: Art is "a way of seeing and feeling things as an integral whole" (286)

-"Lechner described picture books as 'portable art galleries' and Stewig referred to them as 'a visual and verbal experience'

-"For Gallas, linking art to literacy activities offered more than disembodied lessons on technique, media, or art history" (286)

"Art as a 'creative process to offer children broad avenues for expression and understanding" (286)

"Art held the potential to be a vehicle not only for self-expression and imagination but also for the expression of knowledge" (287)

-"Art helped these bilingual/bicultural children to name their worlds and to grasp their unique personal backgrounds"

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Routman Chapter 8

Writing Workshop

Keys to Teaching Writing: 

Establish a genuine purpose and audience for all writing. 

Start by demonstrating

Gradually release responsibility to students

Celebrate, respond, evaluate, teach, and move forward

"You do, if you value it; if you don't have time, you're valuing something else more" (176). 

*Choice within structure*--children need to know something about the topic in order to write about it. 

Free Writing: writing for 5-10 minutes without concern for grammar and structure. It's a great way to build endurance, confidence, and writing fluency. 

Demonstration Writing: 

Writing aloud; shared writing; sharing examples; conducting scaffolded conversations before writing...

*Teach first, label later*

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Viewing Writing as Play

The fundamental question was what students and teachers do with language. Britton and his colleagues argued that learning grows out of individuals' experiences and expressions, and that curriculum and pedagogy must therefore emerge from the children's interests and their lives rather than predetermined content." (10). 

English v. American view on education:

English: "The goal was the growth  of intellectually, emotioinally, and socially healthy citizens"

American: "the making of an educated and productive citizenry through teaching established literacy skills, core knowledge, and virtues that shaped the abilities and personal characteristics of the students, as well as civilizing them through a shared national culture" (10)

Winnicott: "Play, he argued, provides children the potential to bring fantasies and desires into consciousness and language, and to construct a link between their inner experiences and understandings and external objects and realities" (12). 

"In play, we abandon claims of credibility and are not concerned with the likelihood of fulfillment"(13). 

Spectator Role: frees the writer from the demand to act and to make immediate decisions; no obligation to adjust his uses of writing to the conventions of exterior reality; use writing to first please ourselves. 

Participant Writing: writing whose purpose is informing, instructing, persuading, aruging, explaining, planning, setting forth pros and cons, coming to a conclusion. 

Britton: "I see school as the development of difference in language use: a continuation and refinement on the one hand of language in the role of spectator, preserving the delight in utterance, providing for the contemplation of things in all their concrete particularity; and on the other hand the development by gradual evolution of language in the role of participant--the language to get things done, of recipes, business and intellectual transactions." (13). 

"This central aspect of language and learning is often lost sigt of in the rush and greed of a consumer-oriented world, often sacrificed when resources of time and money are insufficient, and when the purposes of education are read off in terms of a market economy" (14). 

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The Magic in Video Games

"When technologies of meaning are changing so rapidly, there cannot be one set of standards or skills that constitutes the ends of literacy learning, however taught." (New London Group, 2000, p. 6)

"Prepared with some knowledge of video game narrative style and a willingness to learn from students with specialized knowledge, teachers can offer meaningful writing suggestions to their students who write stories and work with images informed by video games." (23). 

"Allowing students to write about video games or other popular cultural interests is a way of making the writing curriculum more "permeable" so that school-valued and home- and community-valued narratives might intermingle" (24). 

Mark Finn: Games usually have definite beginning and end points, but what happens between these points seems...dramatically different... films and television programs are self-propelling entities...Games on the other hand, are designed for extended and often repeated playing, and as such necessarily resist narrative closure, and therefore have to provide pleasure for the player in other ways.

"Video games are interactive texts, indicating the users' "ability to directly intervene and change the images and texts that they access" Interactive, immersive texts, like video games, arguably leave more control over the narrative in the hands of the player or reader than do traditional texts."

"Video games are commonly blamed for encouraging violence...Buckingham (1996) has found, however, that youth are particularly keen about separating fact from fiction in popular media, noting that these fears may be displaced: a case of looking for a scapegoat in a violent society with complex causes for its violence." (31)

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Collaborative Inquiry

"We initially believed that "kid watching" was at the heart of responsive teaching. When deconstructing critical incidents or powerful learning moments, however, we came to realize that talk was at the heart of truly responsive teaching" (169). 

"It is through capturing and interpreting children's talk that teachers gain the power to better understand children's thinking" (169). 

"This profound moment in time reflects what is possible when teachers engage children in collaborative inquiries. All learners, tall and small, left this conversation knowing more about the reading process, their friends, the classroom teacher, and themselves as readers" (171). 

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"Sounding Out"

"Sounding out draws our attention to reading accuracy through a reliance on letter-sound associations" (442)

"I find that when beginning readers attempt to "Sound out words" they often produce each sound in isolation rather than blending the sounds together" (444) 

Sounding out: 

sounding out words sequentially letter-by-letter

finding two or more chunks within the word that they recognize and putting these chunks together. 

Re: Pronouncing words--"As Michael Stubbs reminds us, 'We hear language through a powerful filter of social values and stereotypes" (449). 

"We must help parents to understand the limitations of "sounding out words" without degrading their genuine efforts to help their children; and we must help them to develop additional strategies for supporting their children with reading" (450). 

Years from now, if we are successful, our former students will become parents who help their children to develop flexible and efficient word-solving strategies, and when they or their children enter undergraduate and graduate programs, they will bring expanded notions of word solving." (451). 

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Miscue Analysis

Error: negative connotation

Miscue/ Unexpected Response: unexpected by an interested listener; reveal reader's knowledge, experience, and intellectual processes, and the proficiency with which they use those processes. 

Language Cueing Systems include: 

graphonic system: the relationships between oral and written language (phonics)

syntactic system: the relationship among linguistic units such as prefixes, suffixes, words, phrases, and clauses (grammar)

semantic system: the organization for the meaning system of language. 

pragmatic system: the knowledge readers have about the ways in which language is understood by others in their culture. 

Process: 

Piece has beginning, middle and end; language and content should be familiar; long and challenging enough to produce sufficient numbers of miscues for patterns to appear

Teacher marks miscues, regressions, oral asides, any other behaviors on the transcript. 

hesitation for 30 seconds--reminded to guess. 

Student is asked to retell after reading. 

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY OF MISCUES. 

Quality is measured by how much the miscue disrupts or enhances the meaning of the text. 

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Miller: Schema & Digging Deeper

Tips: 

Proper planning prevents poor performance

Authenticity matters

Use precise language

"eye to eye; knee to knee"

Anchor charts

Before joining a conversation, children should ask themselves:

Does what I have to say connect to the conversation or topic?

Can I connect what I have to say to what someone else has said?

Can I support what I have to say?

Has someone else already said it?

If I am speaking to disagree, can I state what the other person said and explain why my thinking is different?

Does what I have to say take the conversation deeper?

Options for response: Sticky notes, notebook entries, two-column notes, venn diagrams, webs, story maps

Re: Work Activity Time

"It's the perfect time for children to synthesize and apply their learning in new contexts, either independently or with their peers; it's the time when children can put into practice what they've learned during other parts of the day" (103)

"If I want to challenge children's imagination, promote their love of learning and inquiry, and encourage them to become independent learners and thinkers, they need to be the ones deciding where they'll go and what they'll do." (104)

 "Once children begin to integrate their learning into their play, the materials are no longer an end unto themselves; they've become another means for creating understanding and constructing meaning. They've become a means for living and learning." (104)

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Crafton: Inquiry and the Iditarod

Before reading, consider:

One topic you would like to learn more about

What resources you would need to enable you to learn?

What conditions would best facilitate your learning?

What topics the children in your classroom have a passion for.

To begin inquiry: brainstorm a list of questions; form a perspective list.

Discuss which perspectives were easy to generate questions and which were difficult. 

Meet in perspective groups to organize and research

Too few texts; too many readers (solution): Draw numbers for who would get each book and when

Reading Strategies:

Read aloud from the on-line copy each day while students follow along on their individual sheets. 

Highlight important sections

Pair readers with more experienced readers or older children

Reader-selected miscues: record difficult words or sections and discuss them later 

Scanning strategy: find key words and specific information

Reflective journals allow students to record their strategies each day and think about how they learned. 

3 Important foci: 

Process

Attitude

Sharing Knowledge

Role of the teacher during inquiry: share materials with specific groups, roaming the room for troubleshooting, and making anecdotal notes for one targeted group. 

What the learning experience must entail (Marcia's POV)

Must be child-centered taking into account the students interests, questions, and curiosities

Time for reading, writing, interaction, and reflection

Assume multiple roles to make learning work: teaching directly, gathering resources, watching closely to be able to support, etc...

"As educators we should be seeking diversity not proficient mediocracy" (Crafton, 92)

"She wanted to encourage multiple perspectives on the topic: she wanted a wide range of resources to answer their questions; she wanted them to explor ideas collaboratively through reading, writing, and talk, and she wanted them to be responsible for sharing their information" (Crafton, 92)

"Whole learning experiences cannot be planned in detail before students get involved. Learners must be integral contributors to the decision-making process not passive sideliners waiting to implement someone else's best-laid plans" (Crafton, 92). 

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Organizing Mini-Lessons

Topics for mini lessons: 

Procedures for the workshop time: how to read with a partner, how to access materials

Aspects of the reading process: how to choose a book, previewing a text

Elements of literature: plot, character traits, sequence, problem-solution

What good readers do: ask questions while reading, make inferences

Objective: what is it you want your students to do as a result of this lesson? **Avoid terms like "understand" or "know how to" because they are difficult to observe**

Demonstration: Describe how you will explicitly show student sthe strategy that you want them to add to their toolbox. Done through a read aloud or with shared reading. Be explicit about the materials you will need (book titles, anchor charts, post it notes, highlighters)

Guided Practice: For children to "have a go" they need an opportunity to try out the strategy first. Guided practice provides a safe and supportive environment where children might first begin to approximate the specific strategy from the mini-lesson

Usually look like: Think-pair-share; partner discussions; slates; turn and talk

Independent Practice: When routines are in place and students know about expectations for the workshop time, they read and keep records of their reading independently. Explain what you and the students will be doing during this independent time. 

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Wohlwend

"A prevailing view interprets [some activities] as evidence of 'the boy problem' a persistent issue that constructs boys' interests and activity as incompatible with school." (p. 47)

"Their shared practices developed group cohesion through four peer culture concerns: constructing a gendered identity, resisting adult culture, exercising power through status within the group, and developing group inclusion through the protection of interactive space." (p. 67)

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12 Writing Essentials

Write for a specific reader and a meaningful purpose. 

Determine and appropriate topic; plan the writing

Present ideas lclearly, with a logical, well-organized flow; stay on topic

Elaborate on ideas; explain, support, create and develop characters

Embrace language: "fool with words"

Create engaging leads; attract the reader

Compose satisfying endings; make it original

Craft authentic voice: write with personality

Reread, rethink, and revise while composing

Apply correct conventions and form; make it legible with focus on grammar and formal rules of the genre

Read wisely and deeply--and with a writer's perspective; take note of what other authors and illustrators do 

Take responsibility for producing effective writing

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Short Term Goals

Long Term Goals: writing in a variety of genres; deepening the connection between reading and writing; learning the writing process; mastering the conventions of print. 

Short Term Goals: 

Getting students to love writing time

Establishing a safe environment so that kids can take risks in their writing

Setting up workable management system to handle the flow of paper, folders, and so forth. 

"Choice leads to voice" (23) sense of ownership in their writing leads to feelings when they write. Invite children to have choice in length, audience, and the pace with which they write. 

Fostering a safe environment: 

give specific praise

Let primary children draw

read aloud "from the heart" pieces of writing

use a writer's notebook

write with your students

The use of a box or bin eliminates "batches" of writing and allows children to work at their own pace. 

In-Progress writing folder

Finished writing folder

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Reading & Writing Workshop

"Students are not involved in doing workbooks or worksheets, but are immersed in reading and writing for real purposes based on their interests and individual abilities." (1)--learner-centered and involve collaboration with teacher and peers. 

"Instruction is an important part of reading and writing workshop and takes a variety of forms, including mini-lessons, demonstrations, and shared and guided reading and writing." (1) --Instruction should be shaped by students' needs, teacher's knowledge of what would be helpful, teacher's knowledge of literacy development, and the curriculum for that grade level. 

Status of the Class: way of recording what each student does during the workshop time. Teacher calls each name and records the student's plan for the day. 

Teacher's role in workshop: hold conferences with students, help to find resources, respond to journals, or write observations about student progress. 

Time: frequent, regular basis (45 min, three times per week). 

Predictable Structure and Routines: allow children to begin work without confusion and develop greater independence and responsibility for their learning. 

Ownership and Choice: respect children as decision-makers; allow to choose books, topics, share ideas, help shape curriculum units.

**Choose; Predict; Interact**

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Fletcher and Portalupi: Writing Workshop

Chapter 1: 

"It takes years to gain control and mastery over written language. But students who learn to write well truly have one of the most powerful tools imaginable. And it is something that nobody can take away from them" (p. 1)

"Psychologist Csikszentmihalyi has described "flow" as the optimal learning condition for human beings. In this state, the learner finds a match between his or her ability and the demands of the task at hand"  (p. 3) 

"We should expect plenty of failure--false starts, blank pages, misspellings, and so on. Failure is an integral part of how people learn. But we also need to build on their strengths--take notice of and celebrate a great word, sudden twist, surprising image--as they shakily get their balance, ease down the mountain, and start making their tracks in the snow" (p. 5) 

Chapter 2: 

Time

Plan to schedule a minimum of three days a week for an hour a day; 4-5 days is better

Minilessons: "short, focused, direct"; Should fall into a category (procedural, writer's process, qualities of good writing, editing skills); it's a time to introduce an important skill 

"The writing workshop is fueled by the unique and boundless energy of your students. Time and space contour the container that will harness that energy" (p. 18)

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Samway: ESL Writer's Workshop

Allow children to write in the language they are most comfortable and then read a translation to other students in the class. 

Pair children who have limited English abilities with students who speak and read more fluently in English. 

ESL students develop as writers in idiosyncratic ways in that some are more fluent speakers and some are more proficient writers. Often, writing comes before reading because of exposure to environmental print.