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.