Chapter 6-10 in Literacy Moves On

In chapter 6, Evans is discussing how Beanie Babies created a whole new culture for marketing, advertisement, the youth market, and so many different things. Beanie Babies fit the consumer market perfectly at the time, and hit the right target market. The lessons in this chapter allowed for children to see that they have control over the market, and that they are societies future consumers. The class also discussed how the Ty market of beanie babies had such great marketing techniques, and money making tactics. This lesson helps children see how they can discuss and respond to important issues that are actually happening. In chapter 7, Evans mentions how there is not one specific way to "do" critical literacy. It is a combination of discussing experiences, problems, languages and history. Through critical literacy, children need to learn how to make the texts that they produce have the desired effects in and on the world. When children are experts of their topic, they are much more efficient in the discussions and tasks at hand. One way to do this is to create "place-based" activities in the literacy curriculum, and this can deal with issues going on around them. Similar activities are discussed in Chapter 8, through Curiosity Kits, which were designed to motivate readers and to encourage wider participation in reading at home. I think this is a great idea, and would be effective in any school system. Parents are always wanting to be involved, and this would be a great way to bring home and school life together. These help them explore meanings in their own individual way. Chapter 9 discussed the role of reading fantasies in the classroom. This gives students freedom to map out their own stories and use their creativity to do whatever they want. Fantasies have many different qualities than other genres, and analyzing fantasies could help develop the readers and writers in your classroom. As teachers, we need to create a exciting environment to welcome our students to reading.

Literacy Moves On Chapters 1-5

There was a lot of material that was covered in these chapters, but the main idea of this text is that there are popular culture, new technologies and critical literacy that we can incorporate into the classroom. Helping our students read critically beyond the images, as well as reading in between the lines, demands the development of vocabulary that students can evaluate the meaning of these ideas. A first step that the teacher needs to take is to investigate things that interest students outside of school, and bring them into the lessons. It is important to discover what children know about the texts they encounter inside and outside school and the many ways they might represent their ideas. It is interesting how literacy can change as technology develops the ways in which we communicate with one another. I learned while reading that media education is vitally important in this society because children have grown up with new technologies every day. As future teachers, we cannot ignore this new switch because it will help us be more effective with the lessons we are trying to teach. If we are incorporating film, editing, music into the classroom, we are also introducing them to careers that are in the future. Use the children's experiences and knowledge as a starting point. Mackey looks at how video games could potentially be beneficial to the students and classroom as a whole. When looking closer at computer games, you notice that the child has to "orchestrate many complex reactions in order to navigate the story." (51) Learning how to make progress in a video game is a form of literacy. I would have never thought of this being beneficial as a teacher, but research shows that video games have no fewer than 36 education principles related to literacy. That just seems incredible to me. I think all in all, teachers need to remember the "power of talk." We are able to facilitate great discussions that can guide students to different views to their original ideas.

Overall, I can clearly see that teachers need to incorporate activities into the classroom that are interesting to students. We need to make school fun, and with new technologies being introduced in the home, we need to update our styles of teaching in the classroom.

MGRP

This project was extremely helpful for a future teacher.  I learned how much work goes into building your units, and figuring out what YOU as a teacher wants to teach.  I think the steps we did this paper in worked well for me, because in order to create genres you had to look at your research, and figure out what you wanted you reader to see.  I would definitely recommend this project to any college student, as well as someone going into education. 

MGRP Chapter 5 & 7

In chapter 5, Allen is discussing how to help students bring subjects alive. One cool idea i thought of was "creating a class character." The teacher had the class answer questions such as, what is the characters age or what does he look like, and when the class comes to a consensus, they have created a class character after answering 34 questions. This helps students realize how much effort goes in to creating a character and their likes and dislikes. This also makes the students experts on their topics, which is what a Multigenre research paper is intended to do.

In chapter 7, Allen is trying to "explore the arts--expanding students thinking." One way she tries to help kids achieve art is to encourage kids to "sketch, paint, and draw to enhance their papers." Artwork is also another way for students to make choices and take risks with their paper. Art is just trying to help us express our emotion towards the topic we have already written about. As a teacher, you cannot grade the students based on their actual artistic ability, but if it makes their paper more meaningful.

Van Sluys Chapter on Invitations

Invitations help students "raise and pursue questions that are important to them and the world, and they need a supportive learning environment in which they are encouraged to ask about and respond to critical issues." (25) As teachers, we need to make time for invitations in our classroom. Through an invitation, the teacher gives students time to challenge ideas and meanings. Invitations will also help develop your students as literate people. Invitations have 4 common features: an initiating experience, a formally presented invitation, possible questions to pursue, and related resources. This is a great activity for your classroom because the investigation that these students are doing is based on their lives, and experiences. One item we need to remember is to make time for reflections. These reflections should be brief, but they give students a chance to write about their thoughts and reactions. I believe that invitations should definitely be apart of your classroom.

MGRP: Chapter 4 Poetry

This reading opened my eyes to using poetry in my classroom. As a child, I was never introduced to poetry, and this is probably why I was unaware that I could use this in my future classroom. Poetry evokes emotions quickly, and this could benefit you're classroom as a whole. As a teacher, one of your main goals is to create a community in the classroom. When you are introducing poetry, ask your students to share their favorite pieces of poetry. This helps the students sharing their ideas, and emotions to their classmates. This helps students start listening and appreciating others ideas. Most students write with experience, so poetry allows the teacher to have an insight of the experiences or ideas that are going on inside the child's head.

Overall, this reading helped me realize that you can use poetry when writing these large papers, and it helps build a community in your classroom.

The Donut House: Real World Literacy in an Urban Kindergarten Classroom

This journal was very interesting to me, and actually relates to my MGRP topic. This journal was inspiring to me because the teacher did not give up on her students just because of the area they were from. She took the notion of empowerment, and created a community in her classroom. "By combining children's natural world of play with real world events, we were able to embed a number of authentic reading and writing experiences in the literacy instructional program." (250) This project of the Donut house did just that. It helped students realize they are apart of their community, and can actually make a difference. Students were able to use language (verbal or writing) to interact with their classmates and also members of the community. At the end of the project, the students felt a sense of accomplishment.