Literacy for the iGeneration

Tuesday’s class began with some announcements. On October 30 our class will be participating in a  Frankenstein symposium held during regular class time. This requires that we all become familiar with Frankenstein’s original story (look at wiki website under “assigned readings”) before the symposium. For those who would like, our professor is looking for volunteers to go to School Without Walls (High school) the week before the symposium to do some pre-teaching on Frankenstein for the students. This is so the students know the story of Frankenstein. Other students from Fisher will be there (Human Exceptionalities class) presenting how disability is represented in the novel. Who ever would like the volunteer will be making a 15 minute presentation. More details are available on the week 3 PowerPoint under the wiki website. This would be a great opportunity to see a new school (if you haven’t been there before) and those who present at School Without Walls will be excused from the blog postings the week before, during and after the Frankenstein symposium.

Next we reviewed some literacy strategies that we’ve thought about in class so far this semester. We discussed how a Anticipation Guide, Vocabulary Awareness, and Split Note-taking help with reading. For example, for the Anticipation guide, this helped us with reading because it makes you think about what you’re going to read, it provokes prior knowledge about the subject, you can focus on main points, and it opens you eyes to prejudgements you may have.

After reviewing the three literacy strategies, we discussed the Systems of meaning Making. These are strategies or skills that help us get meaning from what we read. These are put in four major categories: Semantic, Syntax, Pragmatic, and Graphophonics. Semantics has to do with words (i.e. Whole word recognition,Cognates). Syntax has to do with grammar (i.e. association), Pragmatic has to do with knowledge from the outside world (i.e. Prior knowledge, common phrases, story grammar), and finally Graphophonics (I like this word!) which has to do with letters and the sounds they make (i.e. Sounding out).

After some intense learning, we did a sort and organize activity. This involved going into groups and sorting out some word chips (cut out typed words ) and coming up with a category for each set of words. The group I was involved in made about 4 or 5 groups. Others made similar amount. This activity was fun and gave students a chance to interact with others.

A second activity that we did involved three bears. Well it was a comprehension activity which involved reading a story that was written in another dialect (I don’t think this would be considered another language, so that’s the best word I could come up with). This dialect was weird because some words you were able to figure out by the way the it sounded reading it and other were just funny sounding. With our prior knowledge of the English Language and information in general, our same groups from the sorting activity tried to figure out the story that was written. For example, the title was “Di Tri Berrese”…which meant “The Three Bears.” After picking and prodding at the words and letters of this story we were given the solution, which was actually a funny story. We then applied what we learned about Systems of Meaning Making and discussed what strategies helped us to be able to read the story and figure out what category that strategy belonged to.

Lastly, we stayed in our groups and took turns reading our literacy stories aloud to one another. This was fun because it gave us a chance to give positive and maybe not so positive feedback about our writing, which I definitely feel is important to get peer feedback. As each person read their piece, we were to tell them one thing we liked, words and phrases that stood out, things that confused us, and place we we’d like more information. Based on the information given, we are to make revisions. Which is exciting because next class we will be starting our Pod-casts, so everybody bring your revised copy of your literacy story to c lass and also practice reading it out-loud. Our professor showed us her podcast that she made about her literacy story. She introduced us to a program that she will be using to record our voices.

This is a review of what happened on Tuesday’s class, other details and notes you can get under wiki in “class notes and powerpoint presentations”

Due next week (9/25):

Take notes using sticky notes rather than writing in the margins & underlining. This is a simple tool you can teach students who use books they can’t write in.

1) Read Daniels & Zemelman chapter 3 & 6.

2) Read Tovani Chp 3.pdf 

3) Read a news article you think is interesting.

Writing

1) Use your personal blog to reflect on what you read. Refer to the assigned readings as well as the news article. Make connections as is appropriate.

2) Revise your nature of literacy piece. Rehearse reading it out loud. Bring it to class – do not upload it to your blog. You will be recording it during class time.