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.