Incorporating New Literacies

Chapter 2: Learning with New Literacies

As we become more and more reliant on the internet, it only makes more and more sense to incorporate it into the classroom.  "New literacies" refer to all of the different resources on the internet and its different information mediums: email, images, videos, Google, Wikipedia, tweets, blogs, etc.  There are thousands of great resources that will enrich learning, and it is the modern teacher's duty to figure out how these new mediums translate to the classroom, and is also their responsibility to make sure that students are literate in these "new literacies."

Learning using new literacies not only prepares students for a life inevitably infused with the internet, but allows for many additional learning opportunities that support multiple learning styles.  Chapter 2 of Content Area Reading give examples of ways teachers can use the internet for comprehensive and educational lessons.  Using a blog (like this one!) is a way to make reading and writing assignments more interactive.  Internet workshops give students time to explore the internet to do research, do an assignment, or explore interests.  Internet inquiries give an opportunity to try learning by inquiry: students create their own question/hypothesis and do internet research to discover the answers.

I have created a list of new literacies that could be beneficial in the classroom:

• Wordle: Students create a "word cloud" that helps synthesize or illustrate what a text is about.
• Google Docs: Students can work together online on a collaborative document and even chat while they are doing it.  This is a great way to have students work in groups outside of the classroom because it does not require a great deal of transportation or planning.
• Twitter: Students can create a twitter account that focuses on your content area.  You can have them explore what other people are tweeting about the topic and have them make their own short tweets about their thoughts or in response to others.
• BlackBoard: BlackBoard creates a space for teachers to post electronic texts, class syllabi and documents, and grades.  There is also a discussion board space where the teacher can enter a prompt or discussion question, then students can reply to it or each other.
• YouTube: Have students create a video for an assignment!  They will most likely enjoy the change of pace and the opportunity to freely express themselves.
• Pinterest: This can be used as almost a sort of electronic poster board.  Students can share theirs with each other.
• Quizlet: Teachers or students can create online flashcards to learn concepts or vocabulary.  Not only does this keep them organized, but they can also do quizzes and play "games" to help learn/remember them.
• Blogger: Think outside the box!  Sure, you could have students each create a blog, but what if you as a teacher create a personal blog?  Include a little about yourself, and a lot about interesting things you find or you think would be useful to the current lesson or unit.  Students will enjoy your dedication and getting to know you.

Supporting Literacy and Writing in Lessons and Assessments

Chapter 5: Planning Instruction for Content Literacy and Chapter 10: Writing for Tests and Assessments

No matter what your content area is, you will need to create strong lessons.  A good lesson that supports literacy will increase knowledge, literacy skills, and will help students develop skills and strategies for later in their life and academic career.  Using writing as an alternate form of assessment not only teaches students writing skills, but gives an opportunity to think in a new way and allows creates a more inclusive classroom by addressing different learning styles.

Chapter 5 of Content Area Reading gives a multitude of strategies and examples for planning lessons and units that surround texts.  It is important when planning a lesson or unit that uses texts to provide plenty of support to the students - that means making sure texts are scaffolded before, explored during, and analyzed after.  If this sounds familiar, it is because this is the framework for B-D-A instruction, which I went in to more detail about in an earlier posting (click here for a refresher).  B-D-A instruction is a comprehensive way to approach a text during a unit; it allows students to become interested in the text, be well-supported throughout the reading, and extract more knowledge overall.  Along with using a B-D-A framework to make sure your lesson is well-rounded; setting clear objectives, picking excellent texts, and providing resources will greatly increase the lesson or unit is effective.

In addition to all those strategies, providing opportunities for collaborative learning will also increase success.  Cooperative learning "foster[s] collaboration in a classroom context, develop[s] students' self-esteem in the process of learning, encourage[s] development of positive group relationships, and enhance[s] academic achievement" (Mraz, Vacca & Vacca, 2011, p. 152).  This is important because it allows to develop social and group skills, as well as gives them the opportunity to negotiate and try out ideas in a smaller, lower risk environment.  This is great in an English classroom because some of the intricacies of literature can only be discovered and fleshed out through discussion.  I would like to use this as much as possible so students can develop ideas, both as a group and independently, and learn to support them.

Chapter 10 of Content-Area Writing discusses the use of writing as a mode of assessment - a topic that is essential to my language arts content area, since I really want to focus on my students' writing.  When using writing as an assessment, it is important to make sure students are given clear expectations and plenty of time and support.  It is helpful to use writing assessments as a "double" learning opportunity: the students learn from writing the paper (or whatever the assignment), then students self- or peer-critique the writing to discover what his or her strengths are and what he or she could do better next time - perhaps even another writing assignment reflecting on the first one.  Providing plenty of encouragement and support should make students (more or less) want to write, rather than check-out because they are not confident in their writing skills.  While assigning writing, teachers must ask themselves if they are valuing syntax or if what really matters is the content they touch on in their writing.  Assigning more "casual" writing assignments gives students a chance to practice the act of writing and explore content without having to worry so much about little writing rules.

Teaching Vocabulary and Concepts

Chapter 8: Developing Vocabulary and Concepts

All teachers know the importance of vocabulary to their specific content area.  What many teachers fail to realize is how much vocabulary students are expected to remember as well as the difficulty of forming connections between the term and its meaning.  Chapter 8 of Content Area Reading lists a variety of comprehensive ways to increase retention and understanding of vocabulary for your content area.

Chapter 8 talks about the practice of dividing content vocabulary by order of importance.  Words that are going to be used a lot and are foundational words that other vocabulary is built off of should be learned first and should have the most comprehensive practice.  Without building strong vocabulary foundations, students cannot build upon them to grasp more complex concepts.

Using graphic organizers to connect concepts is a great way to help students understand relationships between vocabulary and concepts.  Being able to organize concepts helps students realize hierarchies in vocabulary and gives them a visual representation of the inter-workings of a content area - something that most teachers take for granted.  Scaffolding this activity is essential.  In order to gain the benefits that arise out of vocabulary activities (such as comprehension and memorization), teacher must first capture the students' interest.

A good way to do this is by discovering what students already know about vocabulary and concepts.  Having the students participate in word exploration, which is a write-to-learn activity that allows students to gather their thoughts about the word or concept and relate it to prior knowledge.  Similar ways to activate prior knowledge is by brainstorming, listing, and categorizing.  An important vocabulary skill that requires the application of prior knowledge is the strategy of defining a word based on its context.  As an English teacher, this skill is especially important since students will constantly be discovering words they do not know - even more so than in content areas such as science where most difficult words are explained by the textbook or teacher.  This strategy requires that students use the context and words around it to discover what a word means.  This is a very important reading lifeskill as well.

Once a vocabulary word or concept is introduced and prior knowledge is explored, teachers must do more exercises to make sure a student is reinforcing their new knowledge so they can truly understand it and remember it.  Reinforced knowledge allows teachers to extend the concept to build upon other concepts, using it as a scaffold to expand knowledge and increase learning.  Great ways to reinforce vocabulary and scaffold concepts is by using graphic organizers.  Many different kinds of graphic organizers and visual examples of them begin on page 259 of Content Area Reading.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Personal Goal for All Future Educators

Chapter 3: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Diverse Classrooms

My personal teaching passion (aside from language arts) is culturally responsive education.  So many people (yes, that includes what we would consider "qualified" teachers) are ignorant of the unique challenges faced by people that do not identify with the majority's culture.  It is likely that many teaching are a member of the privileged community - those privileges include being white, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, financially stable, and most importantly to this context, educated, English-speaking, and American.  Being some or all of these things can make it difficult to understand the issues that arise for those that are not so privileged.  Teachers (all people, really) need to be educated to understand how those privileges affect their lives and teaching, and to learn ways to think about them critically in order to overcome privilege barriers and help those that are behind them.  I believe that every teacher needs to make it a significant personal priority to make sure they are using culturally relevant teaching in their classroom - this means connecting to all students and their backgrounds in the materials used, using a variety of teaching styles, and fostering a culture of inclusivity and one that celebrates diversity.  

Teachers must go beyond just incorporating small units and a book or something featuring a character of a different culture now and then to completely change their curriculum so every unit can be relatable to all students.  In order for this to land well in a classroom, teachers need to develop a classroom that values and celebrates diversity and all the wonderful learning opportunities it can provide.  This means having students share their life, culture, and personality with the class, as well as having plenty of discussions about why each student is special and important.  This has an added benefit for teachers: they are allowed a glimpse into the personal lives of their students.  Teachers also need to make an effort to find out extra information about unfamiliar cultures, including more about the students' parents.
To discover and explore texts that cater to diverse and multicultural students, visit: http://www.leeandlow.com/

Assessment and expectations of students from different cultures must also be renegotiated.  American education values things like individual industry, memorization, attentive listening, etc.  Other cultures may not share any of those values and do not promote their children/students to behave in such a way.  For example, many cultures value collaborative learning and discourage students working alone.  Having students work individually all the time and assessing them on their individual work could be confusing to a student with a different culture, and may not properly assess their actual knowledge.  For a teacher, this means taking the extra time to think of more inclusive ways to assess, thinking critically about multiculturalism, and being flexible and willing to change lesson plans when they are not working right.

When working with students that are learning English, or that English is not the primary language spoken at home, a teacher must negotiate the importance between language and content.  For a history teacher, it may not be so important that everything written and said by an ELL student is perfect English, but that accurate knowledge of the content is expressed.  If a teacher spends too much time correcting a ELL student's English, the student may become discouraged and not want to speak in class because they feel dumb.  Praise content knowledge and achievement instead of criticizing less-than-perfect language.  For me, as an language arts teacher, this line is much finer because my content area focuses on making sure they have a grasp on concepts as well as the language itself.  I will need to ask myself before every activity what is more important, the language or the concepts.  Also, I could correct students in a non-threatening way (i.e., not in front of the class) to make sure they are catching their mistakes, without deducting significant points so they get a lower score if I know they are understanding the concept.

Content Area Resource Collection: The Blues in African-American Literature

Content Area Resource Collection and Review 

Danae Ross 

EDUC 355 

Central Theme/Unit: African-American Literature: a Focus on the Blues
Grade: 11th and 12th grade
Content Area: Secondary Language Arts

Chapter Book: RL’s Dream – Walter Mosley (1995)

What: This novel centers two unlikely characters, Kiki and Soupspoon – a young white woman and an elderly black man. The novel explores the suffering faced by both characters throughout their life and the bond that grows out of their destitution. This intense novel explores themes such as love, discrimination, oppression, suffering, human connections, and impermanence – viewing them alongside the blues.
So What: RL’s Dream is important because it gives a very new perspective on the blues. In other readings, we see the blues figure as a young, black male trying to find his place in a White world, however in this book the reader sees how the life of a blues figure ends and is allowed to explore the idea of suffering/the blues in the lives of those that are not African-American. It is a great piece of literature that causes the reader to question his or her worldview and what we know about race. This novel also underscores the important concept of differentiating the blues as a condition, as artistic expression, and as an attitude or philosophical orientation.
Now What: It is important that the classroom is established as a safe space long before reading this novel. It is very intense and enthralling, and students will need a lot of support to grapple with the explicit and challenging situations. This book is best read individually with intense section-by-section class and partner discussions. The essential step to making this a successful reading is by creating an open dialogue to express all feelings and questions.

Mosley, W. (1995). RL’s Dream. New York: W.W. Norton.

Political Cartoon:

What: The first cartoon is recent and shows Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) singing a “blues” song about all the different issues that arose while he was in office, e.g., “Teacher Trashin’,” “Budget Fudgin’.” The second shows an African-American blues artist with a big grin on his face, singing “Woke up this mornin’ sold a couple thousand records.”
So What: These two cartoons allow students to see the complexities of what being oppressed is; in other words, they ask students “who can have the blues?” The first one shows a privileged white male who is elected to office and millions of people have to listen to his thoughts and obey his decisions – clearly not a man who can have the blues. The second one challenges our idea of who can have the blues: he is making a lot of money, but does that make him unable to experience the blues? Is there more to feeling the blues than being economically oppressed. 

Now What: Students will see the two cartoons displayed on a PowerPoint, given a chance to write down some thoughts, then directed to a full-class discussion. The goal is that the students will be able to understand who fundamentally cannot have the blues (those with power), and to debate on whether or not a wealthy African-American can have the blues; they will discuss whether the blues is restricted to an African-American in a socioeconomic state reflective of slaves and the post-emancipated, or if it is deeper and applies to all those who are not white.

Enos, R. (2011). Scott Walker’s Michael Moorish blues [Cartoon]. The Cagle Post. Retrieved from http://theweek.com/section/nfcartoon/212920/scott-walkers-michael-moorish-blues

Sam Samotnaf Fantomas. (2013, Jan 2). Some musical notes: “blues cartoon2” [Cartoon]. Retrieved from http://dialectical-delinquents.com/?attachment_id=182

Picture Book:  Blues Journey – Walter Dean Myers (2007)

What: This is an illustrated book of poetry that creates a timeline of the blues from the end of slavery to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, trailing the lives of individuals and their stories that inspired the blues. It not only attempts to inform on the history, but also on the culture associated with the blues.
So What: This book will allow the students to understand how the blues and its culture developed out of slavery. The poems and illustrations give students a fresh look at the blues and its intricacies and depth. They are given an inside view of what it was like living in these time periods, while developing their poetry skills and appreciation.
Now What: This would be read to student early on in the unit, either as first day introductory material or as a second day supplement. This must be taught early on because it shares important background information on the blues and its history, and will give students a taste of what is to come in terms of blues literature. This would be read out loud to the class, and perhaps after they would be given a write-to-learn activity of either a short response or creating their own poem.

Meyers, W. D. (2003). Blues Journey (C. Meyers, Illustrator). New York: Holiday House.

Film or Video: Warming by the Devil’s Fire – Charles Burnett (2003) http://www.pbs.org/theblues/

What: This is one episode in a PBS series on the blues. Warming by the Devil’s Fire follows a young boy growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s, and his exploration of blues music and culture. The main focus of the film is to highlight the dissonance between the older gospel and the younger blues cultures, all while exploring themes of race, religion, and overviewing blues figures and history.
So What: This film provides an stimulating new way to understand the blues. They will be introduced to famous blues musicians, which will allow them to become much more familiar and personal with blues singers in various texts. Along with the musicians they will meet, they will get to hear blues music and all of its characteristics – a very important part of understanding how blues literary elements are created – while still learning about blues culture and African-American history. Exploring the dissonance between the gospel and blues cultures will begin a conversation on the secularity of the blues, how gospel and blues intersect and diverge, and why there is a tension between them.
Now What: Either the full movie or clips will be shown (depending on time constraints), preferably near the beginning of the unit. During the movie, students should take notes on important details about the blues to refer back to either during a write-to-learn activity, a class discussion, or a formal essay later on. Prompts for this film should involve the exploration of differences between gospel and blues, and how they relate to spirituality and secularity.

Burnett, C. (Writer & Director). (2003). Warming by the devil’s fire [Television series episode]. In M. Bodde & A. Gibney (Producers), The Blues. Seattle, WA: Vulcan Productions.

Article: “The Blues: A Secular Spiritual” – James H. Cone
What: This academic essay is a dynamic look at all different parts of the blues and how it is a secular creation. It attempts to teach about the conditions that gave rise to the blues and synthesize a definition from that. The essay covers essential topics that help establish the blues as a complex creation: such as the blues and black suffering, the blues and sex (secularity), the blues and social protest, and the blues and hope.
So What: This essay contains some of the most profound and important ideas that help us understand all of the different facets of the blues and how it relates to African-American history and literature. It is a good opportunity to see how different blues lyrics relate to these important themes while also exploring an academic essay format.
Now What: Because this is such an important text to read in this unit, adequate time must be given. That means, assigning this and only this as reading for a night so students can focus on the various aspects. Students should take notes while reading, perhaps specific ones that the teacher has scaffold. At the minimum, a write-to-learn must be done – perhaps a response paper or a concept map. I would definitely require students to refer to Cone’s essay and use textual evidence in their own blues essay.

Cone, J. H. (1999). The blues: A secular spiritual. In S. C. Tracy (Ed.), Write me a few of your lines: A blues reader (pp. 231-251). Amherst: University of Massachusetts.

Poems: “Too Blue” – Langston Hughes and “Queen of the Blues” – Gwendolyn Brooks
What: These are two different blues poems that are created from two different blues aspects. The first one by Hughes is narrated by a man that talks about how he is so sad, that maybe he should just kill himself, then woes that his head is probably too thick anyway. The second poem, talks about a blues woman dancing with no one around to stop her because they have all either left her or perished.
So What: These poems are a shorter way to touch on significant blues themes while also exploring blues in poetry and how blues characteristics translate into poetic form. The first poem allows us to see true suffering; you want it to be over, but even that is an impossible feat for someone in your position. The second poem synthesizes the affliction of African-American women, and how they were constantly being abandoned and oppressed, and explores how the blues is used as an outlet. Both of the poems do an excellent job of capturing the main point of this unit, understanding the different dimensions of blues: the blues as a condition, as artistic expression, and as an attitude or philosophical orientation.
Now What: Because of the poems’ short length, these could easily be read out loud in class either in a group or in partners. In a partner setting, the students could read to one another, searching for different poetic elements. Either they would be allowed to discuss freely, or they could be given a few discussion questions asking them to explore major themes and connect different aspects of the poems to the other texts they have been reading.

Brooks, G. (2003). Queen of the blues. In K. Young (Ed.), Blues poems (pp. 57-60). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Hughes, L. (2003). Too blue. In K. Young (Ed.), Blues poems (p. 25). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Professional Organization: PBS: http://www.pbs.org/theblues/

What: PBS has created a rich website on the blues with dozens of different resources for exploring blues poetry; the creation of the blues and its stylistic qualities; playing the blues and its lyrics; blues and its effect on men, women, identity, oppression, folk tradition; as well as plenty of historical content.
So What: The ability to access different types of media has obvious benefits for students with different learning styles: they are able to gather information that they find the most interesting and in the format they find most beneficial.
Now What: This website could be given to students as a place to look if they would like or need more information on any of the blues topics covered in class. There could also be a class assignment where the students would need to explore some of the resources given and do a write-to-learn about a few resources they found interesting or helpful. 

Web Site:  Pandora (or any other internet radio site) http://www.pandora.com/music/blues/blues-
What: Websites like Pandora play music for free online. There is a multitude of stations that are available that play exclusively blues music. Google “listen to blues music online” and there will be dozens of options to choose from.
So What: It is very important that students actually listen to blues music while studying blues literature. Just because a language arts class typically does not include music or music theory, does not mean that there are not great benefits to listening to it. Hearing blues form in action will provide great insight into how different elements of form work together and how they translate into poetry and novels.
Now What: Students will be assigned to listen to the music on their free time, writing down a few songs they listened to and why they liked it or what elements of form were present in the song; or this same thing could be done in a whole class setting during class time. Also, the students could be assigned to do research on a different blues artist, then listen to an internet radio channel featuring just that artist.