NLP Post

*Hey guys! Just a note, I didnt realize until just now that we were supposed to post these here so I just e-mailed my post to Marjorie. Sorry its late!

Anytime that one is exploring something new and doing so in a new way, one is likely to encounter difficulties, surprises, and unexpected turn-of-events. Participating in this project was no different. One of the aspects that surprised me the most about this project was the ease at which my group was able to work together. Deciding on meeting times, presentation methods, topics etc. was surprisingly easy to do and as I have learned, this is not always the case. When we decided to further examine emotional literacy (one we have all had experiences with in the past and one that we think specifically relevant to our students), I did not expect to meet many problems. One aspect that was more difficult than expected was the many different ways that the resources we consulted addressed emotional literacy. What I mean by this is that many of the websites, videos etc. that we studied to learn more about emotional literacy described very different ways to address the topic in the classroom. Some mentioned using a gentle, back-handed approach and others suggested tackling this topic in a more direct way. After really considering the methods provided, we decided to describe both because we felt that different classrooms with different students will require different techniques for discussing emotional literacy.

 Alison suggested presenting the information in a website format. I really liked this idea because I believe that working/presenting information online allows easy access for the reader as well as for the presenter. In addition to this, using a website (when organized correctly) can provide an easy-to-read, understandable, exciting exhibit of the information that the presenters wish to present. This aside, working on a website was more difficult than expected. When we chose this design, part of its appeal was the ease at which each of us would be able to access the page without having to be together to work on it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. For whatever reason, we discovered that only one person in the group was able to access the website which meant that we would have to meet more in person that originally planned.

I would love to use this type of literacy to help the students explore their own ideas. What I mean by that is that I would select a theme (perhaps animals) and then allow them to select a category in that theme (cats, dolphins, etc.) and allow them to create a website (rather than a research paper) that displays all of the information they have gathered on the subject. Following its creation, the students would present their website to the class using either paper print out of the pages or an overhead/smart board if one is available. My objective would include that students will learn how to create a website and will use the website to display the research and information they gathered while learning about their designated topic. When considering what the students in my placement classroom would need in order to engage in this type of new literacy (websites) in a lesson plan, the first thing that comes to mind would be a lot of human technical support. Because of the attention that many of my students need when tackling any task, focusing on one that they are likely less familiar with would probably require even more assistance. In addition to this, the students would also need equipments (such as computers) that they don’t already have. It is possible that this is something that could be worked on in a computer lab due to the high quantity of computers that would be necessary for the students to work on this at the same time. I would examine the website upon completion and would be looking for creativity, completion, thoroughness of research, and the enthusiasm and skill displayed while presenting the website. This would allow them to learn the content and display it in a unique, fun, and interesting way.

Through working on this project, I have learned a lot about emotional literacy and designing websites. Regarding emotional literacy, one thing that I didn’t consider before working on this project was the special consideration that girls are given over boys when dealing with emotion. Boys tend to be told that they have to be tough and they are often given the impression that this means that you are not allowed to show emotion like girls can. This is an area that I had not considered deeply but one that I think we all need to as teachers. I believe that many of our male students are not taught how to best handle their emotions and perhaps this is why we see more physical fighting amongst boys than girls. This is not to say that girls do not have similar problems but a lot of the focus was on the male student population in these articles because of how much worse it can sometimes be for them. Many of the websites and videos that we explored also discussed the importance of addressing emotional literacy at as young an age as possible in order for students to become comfortable addressing the matter when they are older. Studies show that the older a student gets, the less comfortable they will feel with dealing with their emotions in a healthy way if they have not been given the opportunities to learn how to do so.

I have also learned a great deal about working on websites. For example, one thing I encountered is the importance (and sometimes difficulty) in filling the space of a website. We found that we had (what we thought was) a ton of information and yet, when we put the information on the website, it did not look as full as we wanted it to. Over all, I have learned a great deal about working with new literacies and I will continue to explore said literacies and new ways to teach in order to improve the literacy of my students and myself.

NLP POST

1) YOUR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING: 
When I first began my exploration of the new literacies, I definitely looked at each one and felt as though I was pretty comfortable and familiar with each of them. Although, I found all of the links extremely interesting and they sent me to things I’ve never seen before and showed me different perspectives. I naturally gravitated to cultural literacy because it’s something that I, personally, have a passion for – especially because I feel as though many – not all - Americans are so unaware of other cultures. I want my future classrooms to be a part of the global community. Then, I was thinking about how I could teach my students to be culturally literate through a technology. After we were shown that website of different technologies, my eye immediately shot to comics. What is more fun than reading a comic? They’re short and sweet.

After I knew I was set on both of those things, I still was not satisfied. As I continued my exploration of literacies, I was drawn in by political literacy. Eventually, it all clicked and I knew I had come up with an amazing idea (I was pretty excited about it) – political comics dealing with cultural issues. As I said, comics are short and sweet, but these types of comics also hold strong messages within, simply, pictures and some text.

I decided to read all about political cartoons/comics because it may look easy, but creating one is extremely difficult. I had a few ideas and I finally made a final product. I thought that after my research of political comics and developing my ideas, I was past the hard part. I forget how difficult technology can be. I found a website that could help me create my comics easily, but that website got on my nerves quickly. It was taking forever to load and upload, I didn’t know whether it saved my work, I had to start all of multiple times. It took me hours to make three comics. Therefore, I decided to search other comic creating websites, but I soon found them to be way too complicated or I had to upgrade and pay a fee. I liked the original website I was using the best – even though it certainly can be better. It was the simplest one to use and with some “re-freshing” and learning from my mistakes with the website, I became more comfortable with it and creating my comics.
2) EFFECTIVE LITERACY INSTRUCTION:
My political cartoons are simple to read, not including the text written in different languages, but being able to read them is not enough to understand them. Background knowledge, the ability to be able to see things from different perspectives, and experience are absolutely necessary to understand them. I am in a kindergarten class and so I feel that a political comic would not be an appropriate tool to use with such young students. I am sure they could get onto paint, draw something, and type in some words with some help, but the picture and message would be literal. This technology would be more appropriate to use in older grades.

First, the kindergarten students need time to develop their brains and be able to see things from a perspective other than their own. In kindergarten, they are only just beginning to learn how to read, so they need to develop their reading, as well as, comprehension skills. Also, my students need more experiences within discussions; for example, predicting what is going on in an illustration in a picture book. They need that experience to practice articulating their thoughts and developing vocabulary. They would also need to know how to navigate the internet and webpage, how to upload and save files, etc. There’s just too much that goes into what I did with my project that a kindergarten class could handle. Knowing my students, they would be major guidance and scaffolding.

Nevertheless, if I keep it simple, I can model more simple cultural ideas through comics. I found a simple comic-making website for younger children, that I found too simple and limiting for my needs when doing this project, but here it is -http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/index.html. Something for limited and structured would be a better option for kindergarteners to start learning and practicing on.

The way in which I could integrate teaching cultural literacy and learning through comics is to show the students various, simple comics that deal with cultural ideas or issues. I can find some on the internet or I can create a few of my own simple comics. I could focus the lesson upon one specific element of culture like language.

3) LESSON PLAN: 

• Target area and rationale: A few of the students are in the classroom are ESL students and they all speak different languages. They also learn Chinese for a half hour every day. Therefore, after talking about various languages spoken in the classroom I can show the students how they can present the fact that they can be a part of many cultures, by knowing different languages, through comics would be a fun way to learn and teach each other about cultural literacy.
• Objective(s) – I want the students to understand that they can be members of more than one cultural group – specifically, by being able to speak various languages.  I would like for them to represent this through comics because I think it would be a fun activity that connects their ideas and understanding about culture and language.
• Materials and supplies needed – A few simple comics showing how different languages make up the world and various cultures of the world and the classroom they are sitting in – Smartboard, to model for the students how they can make a comic through this simple website http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/index.html - Also, paper and pencil to get them to brainstorm ideas before they get to work on creating a comic.
• Outline of key events :

1. We would begin with a discussion of the various languages the students in the classroom speak and the language they are all learning.
2. Interchangeably, I can show them a couple of comics I have created to show how they can be a part of various cultures based on what languages they speak.
3. On the Smartboard I can go to the comic creating website I’ve posted and show them, step-by-step, how they can make a comic.
4. The students will be put into small groups, so they can brainstorm together on paper and pencil – I realize lots of guidance would be necessary so I will walk around and help.
5. Because there are no laptops or computers available for each child to use – also, I believe they are too young to be responsible for working computers – I will have the class come back as a whole and we will take an idea from one of the groups and create the comic together.
6. Closing summary – I will have the students explain to me the importance of language in culture and everything we talked about during the lesson.
7. Ongoing assessment - I hope that everything we went over would lead to some interesting discussion because kindergartener’s perceptions of culture and definitely much different from an adult’s.

NL Project Reflection

I feel like my understanding of what literacy is has expanded a lot since the beginning of this class. While learning about all of these new literacy’s, I have gained a much broader understanding of literacy. Literacy has so many components and it is unfair to confine it to the traditional definition of “reading and writing”. I think that it is so important for students to be exposed to these new forms of literacy. All of the different types of new literacy were so interesting and I can see how students would benefit from being introduced to each of them. Additionally, using a new technology to learn about these new types of literacy has made the process even more enlightening. Being able to see the many different ways that my classmates used new technology to present the different types of new literacy amazed me. There is so much technology out there that is easily adaptable to be used in the classroom. When I think of a literacy lesson, I no longer think about just having students read and write. There is SO much more to literacy than this, and there is so much more that students can do with literacy than just reading and writing. I hope that when I am a teacher, I will always be looking for new literacy’s and new technologies to be using with my students.
If I were to do a project like this with my students, there are several things that they would need to be successful. In my classroom, there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students. I would put them in groups with students of all different grades. This way the older students would be able to help the younger students. In order to do a project like this, they would need to be able to fully understand the new literacy that they were researching. I think that this would mean that the teacher would have to engage them in the type of literacy beforehand, so they had some experience with it. If they were using something like a scrapblog, they would need to be familiar with the website and how it works. Once again, this probably means that the teacher would have had to do some exploring with them, showing them the basics of the site and how to make a scrapblog. It might be a little challenging at first, but I think that my students could work with making a scrapblog about emotional literacy. They could take the information that they have learned about emotional literacy and present it in the unique form of a scrapblog. This way they would be presenting what they learned about the new literacy and would be showcasing the new type of technology that they learned to use at the same time.
Lesson Plan
•Target Area and Rationale
oHaving just read the book Freedom Summer, my students will be using a slideshow to explore ideas of emotional literacy. They will be using the illustrations in the book to describe the different emotions that the characters are experiencing throughout the book.
•Objectives
oI would like my students to be successful at making a slideshow of the illustrations. I also would like them to successfully identify the different emotions that are shown through the illustrations in the story.
•Materials and Supplies
oFreedom Summer by Deborah Wiles
oComputer with PowerPoint software
oscanner
•Key Events
oStudents will go through the book and scan the illustrations that are expressing the character’s emotions
oStudents will compile the images in a PowerPoint presentation
oIn the presentation, students will describe the emotion that the character is experiencing in the illustration and why they are experiencing this emotion
oStudents will share their PowerPoint with the class
•Closing Summary
oStudents will be able to see how different groups interpreted emotions differently. This will lead to a discussion about what the characters were really feeling in the book and will expand the students’ understanding of emotional literacy.
•Ongoing Assessment
oIf I see that the students were successful at identifying the different emotions expressed in the book, I will know that they are emotionally literate.
oIf the students were able to make a PowerPoint, I will know that they have mastered this new technology.