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.