Emergence all around

Hi ladies.  I am with you in the "emergent" phase.  I'm not sure I will ever leave it, to some extent. It seems like as I continue to read and teach, I continue to come across new ideas, practices, and technologies that are "new" to me.  So, I guess the question I have is:  Do we remain emergent as long as we do not "know" something. Or, is emergence more an idea of positioning toward something, say, technology.  If it is more of a position toward something, than I a moving beyond emergence because I have made the effort to learn and I have added pieces of technology into my course presentations and assignments.  I also continue to wonder about the struggles and inequalities facing our students in many rural and urban schools.  Do they have the same opportunities to move out of digital emergence as those in other more technologically connected schools do?  What about teachers?  Can you teach something you don't have access to? Maybe teachers need to actively advocate for technology... hm.... I wonder if that makes you uncomfortable?  It seems like we ask teachers to do an awful lot.

Digital Immigration

According to the digital natives quiz, I am a digital immigrant. Like Jackie, I was only able to identify three out of the six terms (blog, wiki, and IM -- and wiki is a very new term for me). I am not surprised by this classification as a digital immigrant, particularly after the time we spent in class exploring new technologies. I found myself overwhelmed and unsure of podcasting, digital storytelling, bubbleply, and other new technologies. I actually wondered if I would ever be able to master these technologies enough to have my students use them, and they seemed like more work than they were worth. I know this thinking is probably wrong, and I know that new technologies have a lot to offer, I am just very intimidated by them. That said, I am hoping this new literacies project will help me to overcome my fear of these technologies.

I think that what Tompkins says in chapter 3 about emergent literacy certainly applies to my own emergent digital literacy. Tompkins mentions the beginning phases of literacy, in which children are leaning concepts about print, concepts about words, and concepts about the alphabet (pages 86-89). These are the building blocks of learning to read, write, and become literate. I feel that I am in a similar stage in my digital literacy -- I am developing the basic concepts and building blocks about new literacies and technologies so that I can in turn apply those concepts to actually use them. Soon I will be learning to use these new technologies, which is much like the emergent reading and writing that Tompkins describes on pages 89-92. Hopefully, toward the end of this class and as I continue on my journey of digital immigration, I will move through beginning digital literacy and toward fluent digital literacy.

Emergent Digital Literacy

After taking the digital natives quiz, I would have to classify myself as a digital immigrant. I was only able to identify the entire meaning of three of the terms; I also feel as though they are the most common and well known ideas of technology that were included in the quiz (Blog, Wiki, and IM). Before this semester, I thought that I had a pretty solid understanding of technology. However, now that I am being exposed to more and more ideas through our course, I’ve come to the conclusion that I still have a lot to learn. Thompson thinks of “emergent” as the first stage that young children encounter when learning to read and write. When it comes to my digital literacy that I will be completing my project on (cultural literacy), I feel that it is safe to categorize myself under the emergent category as well. Thompson explains the emergent stage as when “young children gain an understanding of the communicative purpose or print and develop an interest in reading and writing”; it is also expressed as the stage where children develop concepts and notice aspects of literacy in the environment or world around them.
Although the emergent stage within Thompson’s text is referring to the ‘emergent’ stage of reading and writing, I can very much see myself falling under this category when it comes to learning and teaching myself about cultural literacy. I know so little about that topic now, that I am at the stage where I am attempting to gain a beginning understanding and develop some concrete examples of what cultural literacy entails. I will begin to put together aspects of this idea and form my understanding, similar to how children use phonemic awareness and decoding to learn their words. As we discussed in class, students have many tools at their assistance during the emergent stage. An example of this is seen with the vowel rules, or fluency rules. I plan on replacing those methods used by younger students with research on cultural literacy in order to complete our digital literacy project.

Response-Centered Talk and My Field Placement

In my field placement, I do not see a lot of response-centered talk. Most of the talk about literature occurs in the form of recitations, often following the I-R-E model that Weinstein describes in Ch. 10. For example, if Mrs. T does a read-aloud, she asks a few questions before beginning the story, such as "Based on the cover and the title, what do you think this book might be about?" She then reads the story, pointing out some of the features of the text and illustrations and sometimes asking students to summarize what has happened in the story so far. Then, at the end of the story she asks one child to summarize the story and then calls on a few more children to fill in some details. This is understandable because lately they have been working on their summarizing skills -- they summarize what they read both verbally and in writing. Sometimes she will ask them to recall certain events, characters, or facts from their reading,which fits with what Almasi refers to as "traditional discussion" --
"The questions asked during these interactions generally require students to recall what they already know about the literature they have read," (Almasi, 4). I think students would definitely need some scaffolding for response-centered talk to take place, because I don't know that they have ever taken part in the type of discussion we have been reading about and discussing in class. As our readings said and as we talked about in class on Wednesday, this type of talk is not natural -- students must learn the "rules" of discussion, including what kind of behavior and language is appropriate (i.e. "I agree, and I would like to add..." or "I disagree, because..."). Students in my class would need scaffolding to learn how discussions work and how to participate in them, as well as guidance in terms of asking probing questions and making connections to each other, which are things that a teacher could facilitate. It would certainly take time and scaffolding, but I think my students have a lot of great ideas about what they read, and they just need a chance to develop those ideas in a social context like a discussion.

Response Centered Talk in the Classroom

I am fortunate enough to witness a lot of literacy activities and interactions at my field placement. A specific time is set aside for individual reading, research using informational texts or the internet, journal entries, group reading as a whole, and smaller group reading work with my CT. Various discussion techniques are seen throughout a normal week in this third grade classroom, but once I completed last week’s readings on talk within the classroom, I realized that not much of the interaction is “Response-Centered”. While it is obvious that my CT is interested in what they have to say in regards to a text, and often asks for their predictions throughout a story, it does not seem to me that the students pick the agenda for their discussions. The McGee article stated that response centered talk arises from children’s reasoning and problem solving and that it involves letting “just the students talk to each-other”. In order for successful response-centered talk to take place in my classroom, this would be the area where the most work would be required. Very few, if any, discussions that occur in my classroom allow the students to discuss literature amongst themselves. It is rather seen with one on one questions posed from their teacher, with a few students replying to each. (A positive point to address, however, is that almost every student will participate at least once or twice throughout at lesson.)
I am not trying to imply that all of the literature discussion that takes place within their classroom is negative. As we had discussed in class last week, sometimes regular discussion benefits certain students as well. For example, there are certain children in my classroom that seem very comfortable with their routine of discussion, and enjoy participating to the group as a whole. Almasi states that “students involved in discussions not only learn how to interact socially and develop communicative competence, but they learn to take responsibility for their own learning”. I agree with this idea; although I feel that response centered discussion is one of the most positive ways to address talk within a classroom, I feel that through whole group discussion students are still able to act as tutors to each other when interpreting. I often see this in my field placement. My class works very well together and is a very close knit community; therefore, when someone has an idea about a text or is making a prediction, they all seem to focus and actually take in and process what is being said.

Defining Literacy

I accidentally posted this on my other blog last week instead of here. :-/ I noticed when I was reading to comment on others. Sorry.

Prior to my vast experiences as MSU, I would have likely said that literacy was the ability to read and write. I think that the common phrase used for education “reading, writing, and arithmetic” may have had an influence on my initial definition. When I started at MSU, I believed that literacy was having the ability to read, write and communicate through these means. When my concepts of communication changed to encompass communications not related to the printed word such as sign language, I realized that my other definitions may change as well. I began to allow my concepts of important words like “literacy” to be fluid and open to change.

The words I jotted during our quick write were: success, connections, meaningful, messages, far-reaching, exciting, scary, natural, life-long, development, knowledge, and understanding. It surprised me that I did not write books, pencils, reading, talking, computers, phones, and so on. I seemed to have thought more about the deeper implications of literacy that just the utensils needed or developed from being literate. Though it had crossed my mind, I had never thought to define literacy primarily as a “tool” rather than a subject area to be learned. I believe that literacy is something that begins at birth and continues throughout life in every facet possible. I think that some of the words used to define literacy should also be redefined. For example, the word read should be redefined as viewing and comprehending printed text, visual images, body language, vocal and musical quality, color composition and so on. For today, I will define literacy as the ability to understand, create, and effectively use messages in ample contexts through various means and tools to participate fully, efficiently, and positively in the ever changing multicultural global community.

My ideal literacy learning environment would not be contained in just one room. I would like to see the literacy learning to happen everywhere the students are and have them share this learning with their classmates and myself. Obviously, the grade level and school I work in would have an impact on our literacy environment. I think that the wants, needs, and strengths of the students would also impact and change my literacy learning environment from year to year. Regardless of all variables, I would like to provide an environment where literacy learning can occur without it being a tedious process for the students. I would like the learning to feel natural and be a part of our unwritten classroom routine. I would like the students to desire to become literate in numerous aspects because of the real-world connections and uses and simply the excitement of learning. I will have a large library filled with books from every genre and from as many different authors as I possibly can. I will also hopefully have a variety of technology present in the classroom for the students to explore such as a computer, voice or tape recorder, and cameras. The ideal environment would also contain multiple outlets for expressing literacy such as small group conversation, large group conversation, individual presentations, written and typed documents, artistic creations, non-verbal communications such as pantomime and sign language, and digital communications such as blogs, email, podcasts, and wikis. Ideally, the environment will be colorful, fun, all encompassing, and ultimately very flexible.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you...

Taking into consideration the fact that I will have a diverse group of students in my classroom, I will initiate multiple and varied methods to get to know my students. I believe, like my colleagues, that every student is important and special and deserves the same amount of effort and appreciation. The best way to have a classroom that meets the needs and wants of the students is to know what they are and to do this I must know my students as learners and people and allow them to know me as well. I plan to not ask my students to do something that I wouldn't do or share with them myself.

The first way in which I would like to get to know my students is to get to know their parents and families. I believe that home visits would be a great way to do this. Discussions about home visits have been briefly present in previous TE courses, but I observed fully the power of these visits in true stories turned into movies like The Ron Clark Story and Freedom Writers. Through these movies, I saw the importance of knowing your students and their home lives regardless of what age the students were.

I realize that time and resources may hinder my making home visits, so another way in which to get to know the students at home was talked about in class. This was the idea about sending home a camera and a stuffed buddy with a student to take pictures of their home life. I totally understand using a disposable camera, but I think I would be more likely to use a digital camera with the students. It would be more applicable to the technological needs of the students and could provide another level of excitement for the students to instantly see the image. The digital image would also be easily placed into a classroom website or visual collage. I know that the age of the students might be a factor in which camera to use, but I think that if the idea of responsibility is instilled the students would be very likely to take extra good care of the equipment sent home with them.

Another way in which I would get to know my students is by drawing on their creative talents and conversational skills. I have done the following activity with my night receptionist staff so that I can get to know each of them as well as them getting to know each other. Working in partners, each student would spend about 5 minutes interviewing the other person to find out likes, dislikes, name, and so on. After each student has collected their desired information, they are to draw an image of their partner incorporating all of the things they just learned. After the portraits are complete, each student must introduce their partner and display the image they created. I kept these images and have them displayed for staff and others to see. In the classroom, we could make a portrait gallery. Another way to do this would be to give the students specific questions to ask each other.

Other great ideas that I have used in classrooms and with staffs are surveys of many kinds, spotlights or person of the week/month/pay period, rock the boat choice activities, one on one conversations over food or board games, and hidden facts games. Hidden facts games could include “two truths and a lie” as well as a guessing game in which each participant secretly writes three facts about themselves and places them into a bowl with everyone else's. Taking turns each person would select a fact from the bowl and have to guess who it belonged to. I also love the idea of “about me” or “where I'm from” poems because students would be able to do these at any age. I think that acrostic poems using each student's name would be a great incorporation of the topic of adjectives and personality traits. In the sixth grade classroom I am working in, they have all clearly taken the “what type of learner are you?” quiz and each made a graph depicting their rankings for each category. These graphs are displayed in the classroom under the title “How Smart Are You?” I can't say that I fully agree with the title, but I appreciate the reasoning.

Two other ideas I have for getting to know my diverse students also involve the students getting to know each other and appreciate their diversity. The first is a plan that I created as part of CEP 416 – Education and Technology. It is a lengthy project that involves many different technologies. Since it is a great deal to write out, here is the link to the plan, samples of student work, and other resources. The second idea happens within this plan, but could stand alone. It is the idea of having like a newscast of interviews with the students. The students could interview each other and record it on camera or on a voice recorder and these could be presented or posted for the class to see. I think this would be a great way to incorporate Erin's use of Newsday Tuesday as well.

Although knowing, understanding, and using the students' backgrounds and prior knowledge is very important in developing a positive classroom culture, I also think that sharing common experiences is important as well. For example, when we read “Martin's Big Words” in class, we were all able to discuss ideas based on the book itself even though our backgrounds surely influenced the conversation. When encouraging connections, the common experience is indispensable.

A challenge I face this semester which is different than my classmates is that I am in a completely new placement and so know little about the students and their backgrounds. Through my observations and conversations with the mentor teachers I am forming ideas about the students, but it is not as deep as I would like it to be at this point. I am not sure what effect this will have on my literacy lessons with the students this semester. I plan to ask my cooperating teachers if I could conduct a getting to know you activity with the students even though it may not be as rich as it would be at the very beginning of the year.

Ultimately, I want to use every resource I can to get to know my students so that I can create an understanding, sensitive, supportive, and challenging classroom environment. Honestly, I can totally see myself playing the song "Getting to know you" by Oscar Hammerstein to the students and sharing directly with them the importance of our mutual learning environment.

Diversity in the Classroom

I have always thought that knowing your students was an important part of every classroom community and teaching. However, after the readings from last week and our class discussions, I’ve come away with an understanding that it is much more significant than I had thought. When we had time to brainstorm in class about what we thought “classroom context” meant, I had explained that I thought it was the people that make up your classroom, not only physically, but their personalities and their methods of learning as well. As we said, I think that it is important to adjust our attitudes as teachers and adapt our lessons and approaches to our student’s needs. I feel that by putting in an extra effort to know our students’ previous experiences with literacy and information about their personal lives, it will help to create a comfortable and inviting atmosphere. One positive way of doing this that I liked was the ‘student of the week’ bulletin board, or the interest surveys for parents and students. Both of these would be resourceful in discovering your student’s backgrounds and extra pieces of information that you may not get verbally, or directly, from your students.
When you are interacting with students during literacy, I feel that this can be an opportunity to learn about the diversity in your classroom as well. As Ladson-Billings stated in chapter six, teaching should be thought of as an art. By doing so, we are pushing our students to dig deeper and come up with more meaningful responses. The real life examples and answers that your students come up with will be able to tell you a lot about where they came from, what they believe in, and hopefully what they want to learn.
Another really important aspect I think teachers need to have in order to become aware and comfortable with the diversity aspects of their classroom is equality. In order to reach out to your class and get to know them all individually, there needs to be an understanding that each child deserves your interest and attention. I really enjoyed how the teacher Ann Lewis from the readings considered one of her underachieving students as “strong and beautiful but fragile”; she knew that he would need extra help, but that didn’t discourage her from giving him 110%. In the end, there are many different ways that you can learn about the diversity in a classroom. I don’t feel that it is as important which method you chose, as long as you do so as early as possible.