Week 2 Reading Assignment ~ NCTE Policy Briefs

Explain how the Multigenre & Mulitmodal assignment related to each of the readings.

Each of the following articles describes how literacy goes beyond the ability to read and write.  It includes interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, the ability to adapt to reading/writing genres proficiently and effectively, as well as to present ideas using various means and formats.

• Adolescent Literacy ~ Literacy involves more than just reading and writing.  It includes social and intellectual practices as well as new media (non-digitized multimedia, digitized multimedia, hypertext, etc).  To expand literacy skills, students must be permitted to draw from various discourse communities and be given real-world opportunities in which they can use their knowledge.  In other words, students must be exposed to all kinds of text (books, blogs, podcasts, websites, texting, social media sites, etc.) and be able to utilize these tools as they demonstrate their literacy abilities.

• Literacy Learning in the 21^st Century ~ Today’s workplace requires workers to be proficient in increasingly complex literary activities. Workers must be able create, critique, analyze, and evaluate literary text of various formats (e-mail, texts, digital media presentations, etc.). 

• Reading and Writing Differently ~ The ability to multitask has become a required skill in school and the workplace.  Literacy rarely occurs as an independent activity.  Even traditional reading is often completed while watching T.V., emailing, or web surfing.  Teachers must bridge connections between school and extracurricular reading and writing genres for students to become competent evaluators and producers of multimodal texts.

• Writing Now ~ The writing skills students have today require students to present information in multimodal formats.  Technological advances have changed workplace expectations and, thus, are changing the way we approach literacy instruction in the classroom.  Different writing tasks require different writing techniques and grammar standards.  Students need to be aware of the genre they are working with and format their writing accordingly. 

• Writing Outside of School ~ Writing papers are only one type of writing format.  Students build writing skills when they post on Twitter, text a friend, or write a movie review.  By knowing what types of writing students participate in outside of school, teachers can help their students build on the writing skills they already have and, as a result, better help students transition into more formal types of writing.  Teachers may also be able to better assess students’ abilities and increase student motivation by allowing students to perform tasks on online and digital media.

Describe three ways the readings changed or reinforced your thinking about the role of digital technologies/media in teaching children adolescents to read and write.

1. Students must be provided oppotunities to experience and practice the sharing of information using multiple formats including digital media.
2. In order for students to become competent, reflective, and critical literacy consumers, digital media instruction must be explicit and scaffolded to each student’s ability.
3. Using digital technology in the classroom increases student motivation and performance. (In my own classroom, reluctant students BEG me to write book summaries and conduct research if I allow them to use slideshows, graphics, or video media to present their information).

Find an example (i.e lesson plan or students work sample) of how other teachers are using digital technologies/media to support reading and writing in a content area like Math, Science, Social studies, Art, Music, Health, Family and Consumer Science

My example is a link to the video "Hula to High Tech: Hawaiian Students Re-Create History."  Within this 7 minute video, several teachers use digital technologies/media to support reading and writing in the classoom.

1. Kindergarten through sixth grade students use computers, audio, video editing programs, digital cameras, and word processing programs to create broadcasts for their school news channel (multisubject areas).
2. Computers are used to track the whereabouts of an adopted sea turtle (science).
3. Fourth grade students create a mutlimedia version of their family history (social studies).

Hula to High Tech: Hawaiian Students Re-Create History:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkIYArDbuCg&feature=share&list=EC1A80AFF51CE8015F

 

Resources:

National Council of Teachers of English. (2007).  Adolescent literacy.  Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEfiles/Resources/Magazine/Chron0907AdLitBrief.pdf

National Council of Teachers of English. (2009).  Literacy leaning in the 21^st century.  Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Magazine/CC0183_Brief_Literacy.pdf

National Council of Teachers of English. (2008).  Reading and writing differently.  Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CC/0182-nov08/CC0182Reading.pdf

 

National Council of Teachers of English. (2008).  Writing now.  Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Magazine/Chron0908Policy_Writing_Now.pdf

National Council of Teachers of English. (2009).  Writing outside of school.  Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CC/0191-sep09/Chron0191BriefWriting.pdf