#wohlwend

[rmr5255-blog]

Wohlwend-Chapter 4

Toys as text

toys represent a special kind of child-oriented text specifically designed to enable children to easily recognize the ways they can be used in play

Disney Princess toys inspire children to replay remembered plots and recite memorized scripts, providing canned narratives that shape children's play

Disney Princess dolls=damsels in distress

hourglass figure

common set of feminine beauty norms

Femininities

princess pretense exemplifies they ways that children consume gendered identity texts and take up feminine cultural norms as they play and write fairy tales

during princess play, girls focused on achieving beauty ideals and rejected play scenarios that stretched stereotypical male/female roles

girls as objects of display and boys as subjects with power

dolls, action figures, and stuffed animals are particularly meaning-laden texts that invite identity transformation as children animate the materials and project play identities through them

approximating print to write represents the range of ways in which children can negotiate the tension between their personal inventions and cultural conventions for language

when children play together, they assign, negotiate, and maintain pretended meanings for objects that are consistent with the imagined setting

play actions that are consistent with children's agreed upon text/context sustain players' shared meanings, whereas play actions that are incongruous with imagined characters or contexts challenge or alter the direction of play

children frequently talked while writing to advise each other and to impose their individual recollections and interpretations of the familiar princess storylines

children's writing enhanced writing and writing enhanced play

plays provided opportunities for actors to challenge animator's direction

when a play group valued a particular object, it became prized in peer culture so that an ordinary toy, book, or storyboard was transformed into material cultural capital with potential for changing power relations

play allows children to "makeover" what they don't like

permeable curricula heighten the need for critical readings of gender messages in children's identity texts across forms, whether commercially manufactured texts in media toys, embodied texts in play roles, or written texts published through writing workshop

This chapter talked a lot about how children see Disney Princesses and how they might incorporate it into the school. I thought it was interesting that when children are playing they "makeover" what they don't like. For example, if they don't like a certain personality trait they can act differently. This shows that the children are able to alter literary characters. Incorporating plays will also be beneficial. Plays allow the students to work together to act out certain scenes and characters. There is usually a clear leader, but it is more structured than most play. Lastly, I thought it was really interesting that children are able to recognize the gender roles in Disney Princess stories. The children revolved their writing and play around the damsels in distress and the strong men who were going to save them. Gender roles and stereotypes exist everywhere, and the children in this chapter weren't afraid to change them.

[jsouthmayd-blog]

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)

[rmr5255-blog]

Wohlwend-Chapter 3

"boy problem"= boys interests are incompatible with school, need popular media to hold their interests

through play, any object can be transformed to create a new sign (example: marker=light saber)

motivated sign-a sign designed to exploit the physical properties and cultural meanings of materials to further the sign-maker's social interest

students can construct artifacts by:

separating and cutting

arranging and layering

combining and affixing

rolling and folding

mulitmodality makes the playing/designing nexus an action-intensive space, dense with modes of production and a prime site for meaning and identity transformation

"Marshall's play with scissors and tape enabled exploration and the discovery of new uses for tools that he could use to impress his peers."

just for practice suggests an aimlessness that protects children's living space by deflecting instructional attempts to infuse print literacy into play activity

rethinking children's designed artifacts as texts with sedimented modes, practices, and identities recognizes the meanings communicated through drawings, crafts, and art projects--even those just for practice

group cohesion

I really liked how Wohlwend talked about using materials for play. Children can take any object and find another use or meaning for it when they are playing. This is definitely something teachers should keep in mind, especially those who lack toys in their classroom. This really shows how children can use their imagination for everything. They can be more creative than we would think.

[katieverbitsky]

Chapter 3: 

"The Boy Problem is a persistent issue that constructs boys' interests and activity as incompatible with school." 

"Their pretense imagined out-of-school events into school space, replaced teacher mediation with peer mediation, and maintained hierarchical mentoring relationships in a boys-only space."

"Recontextualizing space expanded meanings and participation opportunities by bringing present and non-present worlds together." 

Designing to play- "Abbie helped the boys transduct their play enactments of sports fans into modes and forms of valued school literacy practices, encouraging them to write and draw books of recent sports events; label diagrams of baseball diamonds, football fields, scoreboards, and team uniforms; and write scripts for football iMovies...the boys mediated actions reveal transformative effects of play on the meanings in their designs." 

Playing to design- "...as he explored its adhesive properties and created a SpongeBob practice puppet just for fun." 

"Providing play opportunities is clearly not enough to ensure equitable learning. Teachers need to be critical readers of children's play so that we can engage groups effectively...we can recognize play as a powerful literacy that creates social spaces rich with opportunities and rife with pitfalls." 

I think the stories within this chapter are so intertesting. The group of boys bring a lot of prior knowledge and pop culture into the classroom. They use their every interests to inspire their learning and creativity within the classroom. During reading and writing workshops the boys regularly draw pictures, construct toys, and use their imagination.  The boys often created drawing and artifacts, but only after they had time to collaborate as a group. They used everyday materials in non-everyday ways. They used markers as light sabers. The children were able to use all sorts of materials in unorthodox ways. But isn't that what being creative and imaginative is all about? Creating art work and artifacts brought the children's learning to life within the classroom. 

[jsouthmayd-blog]

Doake & Wohlwend 2.5.13

Why read to kids?

Increase literacy skills

Show enjoyment

Build connection

Increase attention span

Relate stories to experiences

Stimulates their imagination

Children can begin to learn to read as soon as they are ready to

Reading readiness does not exist

Actively involved with the process of learning how to read

Children need to want to be involved

4 Stages for Children's Reading

Mumble reading

Cooperative reading

Completion reading

Echo reading

As a teacher:

Children need to engage in reading-like behaviors

No such thing as "reading readiness"

Home experience with books

Bring shared book experiences into your classroom

Shared reading experiences:

Role of teacher: demonstrate the experience

Role of student: copy and live out the experience

Encounter the text

Playing/Reading Nexus (Wohlwend)

Create moments, rich with ways to read, to do school, and to belong

When children read while playing school, they take what they've learned about literacy in school and classroom materials to be a "real teacher" and assist an uncooperative peer. 

Mediated encounters with print: handling the book, turning pages, looking over illustrations, inventing phrases to fit illustrations

Situated in third space: the overlap of school and peers; school=reading is prime concern; peer=play is prime concern; when kids read while they played, they find the third space

Reading through Approximating a Text: Inventing stories from illustrations, reading with audio-recordings, framing words, retelling with props, reading own writing

[daniellelonglled-blog]

Response to Wohlwend

This excerpt from Chapter 2 displays one of my biggest fears of becoming a teacher. I know what I want to teach. I know I want children to explore literacy through various modalities. I know that I want to treat children with an unbiased respect. I know that I want to cater my teaching to the learning styles of my students. I fear that with the governmental and administrative pressures, that I will not be able to do all of these awesome things, that to me, make teaching worthwhile and meaningful. In early literacy classrooms, I guess this will be something to explore further, as laws change and adapt, and as I enter into student teaching and first year teaching.

[daniellelonglled-blog]

Ironically, at a time when educational researchers are reconceptualizing and expanding what counts as literacy to include multimodal ways of knowing, governmental policies rely on constricted definitions of literacy and achievement (Siegel, 2006). Rather than recognizing the imaginative power of children’s play as literacy that expands meanings and encourages collaboration, recent accountability measures (e.g., No Child Left Behind in the United States) challenge kindergarten and primary teachers to justify play activities within an increasingly academic curriculum.

Wohlwend, pg. 44

[stephduthie-blog]

Playing School and Learning to Read by Wohlwend

Abbie Howard's Family Circle; "blurred the line between home and school [...]; read alouds and shared reading

Children pretended to be Abbie during playtime; playing to read= when children who played teacher taught reading strategies to other children 

"In the malleable world on pretend play, cildren to work together to make, negotiate, and sustain shared meaning-interpretations of events or texts that are discussed and collaboratively accepted-as they talk and enact scenes." (p.21)

Early literacy apprenticeship

The Playing/Reading Nexus- "When children combined playing and reading practices, they create moments dense with ways to read, to do school, and to belong." (p.28)

Adapted activity model 

Teacher/student power relations

"Rather than recognizing the imaginative power of children's play as a literacy that expands meanings and encourages collaboration, recent accountability measures (e.g. No Child Left Behind) challenge kindergarten and primary teachers to justify play activities within an increasingly academic curriculum." (p.44) 

"Play-based literacy curriculum"