We started off by doing a little writer’s workshop. I wanted the students to share their learning from writing the essay and to identify elements of what makes a good essay. Interestingly, the students identified the issues that I found were the potholes students struck in their writing. That was reassuring. I’m working from memory here. The elements identified were transitions, clear thesis, authorial voice, and appropriate/professional language. The thing I want to stress, and I didn’t talk about it last night, is that these issues of form are integral to content. It’s impossible to separate form from content. Gaining control of these elements also helps one gain control of the content. By using transitions, one is showing the connection between ideas, by using professional language appropriately, one is demonstrating an understanding of that language. And of course, being to write a clear thesis demonstrates an understanding of how all the multiple pieces in an essay are linked together. It’s what makes a piece of writing cohesive. In an academic piece of writing, the thesis is explicit whereas in a literary piece it may very well be implicit. So understanding the genre is part of the picture as well. The thing that really strikes me is that by writing the essay, the students are also engaging in the theory as explicated by Olson.

We also spent some time talking about the texts. I gave some guiding questions, but I’m not sure they were effective. The discussions I listened in on weren’t as deep as previous discussions. The whole group discussion however was quite interesting. I admit, I kind of took over, but as I explained to the class this is a topic I feel passionately about.

I find it interesting how introducing critical literacy brings up the concern of “fitting it into the curriculum” even though we’ve just spent 8 weeks talking about the role of oral language in literacy acquisition and the difference between acquisition and learning, and sociocultural theory and how learning is through participation. Yet, when we come to critical literacy, resistance and fear and mandates appear. It shows me that even though  theories can be talked about, it’s not integrated into the ways of thinking yet. But it’s developmental. At least the ideas and questions and struggles are out there. I was really serious when I said, baby steps. It takes time to be the kind of teacher we want to be and there are so many forces pushing back at us. I get those pressures too. But rather than giving in to the pressures, critical literacy gives us a way to respond to and push back. It’s a way to subvert the system.

Again, I didn’t talk about it last night (I can only say so much), but as a former English teacher, I believe that any text can and should be taught critically. So even though I’m no fan of the western canon of literature, if I were “forced” to teach it, I would do so critically. The question I would ask is, why do we read these pieces of literature? Whose voices and experiences are represented in this literature? What perspectives on life do these pieces of literature lead us to? What responses can we give to these pieces of literature? These types of questions all support the ELA standards and by engaging in these questions the students would be well prepared for the ELA exam – yet we would be engaging in important questions. Heck, we could even analyze the ELA exam critically as part of test prep. Hmmm, maybe it would be fun to get back into English education.

Granted, critical theory is scary. It may bring up things that people don’t necessarily like to talk about. It forces us to uncover our own assumptions and believes let alone what the text says (or doesn’t say). The same with media literacy. Frankly, the term media literacy bugs me. I didn’t talk about that either. It’s a dated term. If we have an expanded definition of literacy, then “media” or multimodalities is automatically part of that. It’s something to think about in terms of updating the syllabus.

We spent the last half of class on the literacy artifact review. I gave an overview of what the institutional (read NCATE) requirements are for the assignment, but then let the students go. My intent is for the students to begin to build an understanding of the new literacies and critical literacy through engagement in the literacies. It goes back to the acquisition versus learning thing. We can talk and read about it, but to really understand it and know it, you have to experience it. I know it makes a lot of the students concerned/scared/confused because there aren’t strict guidelines and directions. But that’s the thing with the new literacies – the rules are being formed and the rules are being formed by social interaction. It’s Jenkins and Lankshear & Knobel and…

I’ve got midsemesteritis too. I’m discouraged and frustrated by the institution of school. I love teaching and learning, but I hate the institutionalization of those processes. We’ve lost the joy and the excitment of discovery. I want it back. I’m hoping some of that will be found as students create their literacy artifact review.

We started out by wrapping up our overview of the history of literacy research by doing the museum walk.  Everybody pretty much included the same thing on their posters. Next time I’ll have them hang them on different walls though to encourage more moving around. I did quite a bit of leading conversation around the histories trying to pull out what patterns the students saw in the histories and making the links to the theories. I felt as if I was leading a bit too much. I should have asked the question before the students went to view the posters. But, I think in general the activity served its purpose. Based on the wiki postings, the students do have the gist of how reading research developed over 50 years and how it informs our current understandings of literacy acquisition and learning.

We then moved into a word sort activity. I’ve done the word sort before but differently. In the past, each small group was given a stack of words and asked to categorize. Then we’d compare what the different groups had. I didn’t want to do that since we had already done a similar thing with the museum walk. Last week Kathy had talked about doing a time line silently with cards, so I adapted that idea to the word sort. Each student was given two cards and asked to place them on the wall. They could move other cards if they needed to. They easily placed the cards related to Halliday’s functions of language (which I think we need to talk about more). The systems of language identified by Kucer were also placed easily. A few cards were troublesome though (such as deep structure and surface structure). So I talked about that a bit. Again, I felt a bit leading, but there are things I wanted to bring out. What I liked about the activity though is that it did reveal places where student understanding was still a bit shaky. What I was uncomfortable with is that at times I felt I put students on the spot. But they responded well – and honestly – so I appreciated that.

I think the class is coming together well as a community. I see a growing level of trust and comfort among the students. I’m hoping they’re feeling comfortable taking risks with their thinking.

I then gave the students 20 minutes to start their literacy artifact review project. We arranged the groups (after a few false starts) and I randomly assigned eras based on Alexander & Fox’s article. I just had them brainstorm a list of in school texts that would have been in use during that era and then apply Halliday’s functions of language and Freebody & Luke’s reader roles (just text user & text participant) to those texts. The activity was intended to just get them started. We’ll be spending more time between now and the actual date of the presentations (which Kathy Broikou and I moved back in the syllabus).

I intentionally didn’t spend any time on writing workshop this week. The annotations are developing well. It’ll be interesting to see what the batch with Olson’s article looks like. As one of the authors pointed out, when faced with a cognitively difficult task, the last skill learned is the first one lost. So, I’m wondering if the quality of the annotations will be less strong given the difficulty of the Olson text.

Which brings me to the next thing we did in class. We spent an hour discussing the readings – Olson & Kucer in particular.  I had originally planned a more structured activity for the discussion, but after Kathy and I talked, I decided to back off on that and just give one guiding question along with the suggestion to use the chart handed out at the beginning of the semester to hold their thinking.

The conversation was good. The Olson reading was difficult, so I had I to do a little bit of clarification. But for the most part the students did get the gist of it. In the future, I’m going to remove the Dyson & Bloome articles and just have them read Olson & Gee. At first I wondered if the Olson article was redundant of the Kucer chapter, but after discussing it with several of the groups, I realized it’s not. They are complementary. The Olson article operates at a more abstract level and the Kucer chapter gets into the nitty-gritty. What I think will help in the future though is if I instruct the students to read the Kucer chapter first, then read the Olson article. And maybe even accompany the Olson article with a “comprehension constructor.

We prepared for next week by doing an anticipation guide. Kathy and I removed the Goodman article from next week’s assignment and moved it to October 27th. There was some confusion about when the annotation for Goodman was due. I hope I clarified that the draft annotation should be brought to class on the 27th. Same as always.

Class ended with the students writing a theoretical understanding they were gaining from this class and the connection to practice they were making on sticky notes and posting them as they left. I’m going to type those out and hand them out next week. The connections being made are great.

In overview, I was pleased with last night’s class. It was good to slow down and dig in.