This project has taught me a lot about the different types of literacy’s that are out there for students to learn about. I pictured literacy as merely the foundation for reading, writing, and learning from what we read and write. I now know that there a multiple forms of literacy that can come from emotion to politics and everything in-between. The literacy’s project has made me become more aware about the opportunities for learning from everyday items; for instance, you can ask students to express how they feel using emotional descriptive words. I think the single biggest area of growth that I experienced from doing this project was opening my mind to the thousands of opportunities you can have trough out the day to educated your students in the different literacy’s.
In order to have effective literacy instruction I believe you need to have the children experience the literacy’s in their natural environment and than place the label of the literacy to the experience. As a teacher you have to be committed to the idea that you want to teach about the literacy’s and reinforce the students when the display knowledge of a literacy. For instance if a student notices something culturally different between him/her and another individual you should ask the students what kind of literacy that would be and than further discuss the differences and how the apply to class/society. I believe that as a teacher you need to design your lesson around the GLECS that you want to cover but the manner in which you do that is where you can incorporate the different literacy and the different technologies.
In order for the students to have an effective time using technology you need to have commitments form the students that they will do the task involved because it is virtually impossible to monitor computer work if it is being done at home. I have found that the students really enjoy learning about new technology and they enjoy getting out of the typical classroom environment. The students would have to be familiar with a computer or the teacher will have to create a lesson about getting familiar with a computer which in and of itself might not be a bad idea because for some students a computer could be a new technology.
In the end I really enjoyed making a website and using all different forms of environmental literacy for this project. I really enjoy using technology and it often comes really easy to me so I can see myself using a lot of technology inside of my classroom next year.
3 comments:
Tim, I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I liked when you said, “I now know that there a multiple forms of literacy that can come from emotion to politics and everything in-between.” I liked how you worded that because literacy instruction is everything in-between. From this project I learned how you can incorporate literacy in so many different ways into the classroom through all these new technologies we have experienced doing our project. I can also relate with you when you said, “I think the single biggest area of growth that I experienced from doing this project was opening my mind to the thousands of opportunities you can have through out the day to educated your students in the different literacy’s. I believe that as a teacher you do not have to stick directly to the book, you can incorporate so much into a lesson to keep your students engaged and active participates in the lesson. The more work a teacher puts into a lesson the more the students will learn!
You also talked about in your blog that children should experience literacy’s in their natural environment. I definitely agree with that, but I also think it is important for students to have experience outside their environment. Teachers need be able to diversify their literacy instruction to allow them to gain multiple culture knowledge.
Finally you said, “I believe that as a teacher you need to design your lesson around the GLECS that you want to cover but the manner in which you do that is where you can incorporate the different literacy and the different technologies.” I hope teachers today are incorporating more technology into the classroom since in today’s world we are all about the internet and assistive technologies. Students love hands on activities and that is what technology offers. I love how MSU has provided me with so many ideas on how I can bring technology into my classroom one day!
Tim I had a similar experience with my growth in understanding literacy. It was very narrow and skill-based but now it has broadened in ways I had never even thought it could. I like how you talk about implementing these different literacies constantly throughout the day. It made me stop and remember that not every lesson that you teach your students is planned and the best ones usually form from the students’ own thinking and interactions, so it is important to be flexible.
“In order to have effective literacy instruction I believe you need to have the children experience the literacy in their natural environment and then place the label of the literacy to the experience”—I thought this was really insightful. Usually we’re always teaching a concept and then having students come up with examples to fit that concept. However, by having students give examples of their experiences and then fitting a label to them, we may be able to introduce even more ideas of literacy, they may not have been mentioned because they did not fit the mold we provided.
Finally, I think it’s great that you see yourself incorporating technology a lot into your classroom. I feel the same way. However, I’d be curious to hear your take on what you would do in a school that did not provide many technological opportunities for their students. What ways do we work around this? Because technology is an ever-growing and vital part of society today.
I think the most important idea that I got from reading your blog post was that it may be more beneficial to teach literacy through reinforcing a student for displaying literacy knowledge. This really stood out to me because as I learned more about the different literacies, I thought about ways to build lessons around them. However, I never considered how powerful it may be to turn a student's everyday experience into a valuable teaching moment. As Katie said in her blog, literacy is everywhere and learning literacy doesn't just happen in the classroom. I think you did a great job of touching on that too, and your post helped me to think about how I could teach my students about literacy in other ways than a formal lesson. We should take every opportunity we can to promote the learning of these literacies, and it may be most effective to have students realize that they are using different types of literacy every single day.
I also appreciate how you bring up the point that to some students, the computer itself may be a new literacy. I agree that it will be very important to have a lesson about how to use a computer before expecting our students to use any of the new technologies we explored. Depending on the grade level and other things, students may not have a lot of experience using computers, and going over basic computer skills will be essential to making sure everyone is on the same page.
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