2) What are the "consequences" of literacy as you teach/taught it?
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
The way I approach literacy instruction has many consequences, both intended and unintended. My main goal, especially for students who are just beginning to learn English, is to encourage them to express their thoughts and ideas in any way they can – through pointing, drawing, acting out, and a mixture of oral and written languages. My intent is to lower their affective filter, to make more ‘space’ for learning to happen. An unintended consequence of this approach is that I sometimes become a ‘language crutch’ for those students who are rebelling against learning English/being in the US.
Literacy as I teach it continues to be a double-edged sword. Because so many of my special needs students still struggle with decoding text, unfamiliar vocabulary, and basic comprehension, I frequently feel as though the consequences of my instruction (in what is a relatively short amount of time given their needs) amount to little more than "tracking" my students for the world of blue collar work and maintaining something of the functional literacy which seems to be the status quo of the community in which I work. However, I do make a conscious effort to infuse components of critical literacy and higher order thinking into my classroom - always telling my students that I want them to be able to think through a situation for themselves just as much as I want them to read and write. In specific, for someone who embarked on this journey wanting to be a reading teacher, I stress writing in my classroom. I constantly ask students to write, to explain themselves, to make sure they express their ideas clearly, and I frequently pose questions for students' writing which I expect them to struggle with not as students but as people. I want them to have the experience of examining what they think and believe and trying to articulate that not only for others but for themselves.
2 comments:
The way I approach literacy instruction has many consequences, both intended and unintended. My main goal, especially for students who are just beginning to learn English, is to encourage them to express their thoughts and ideas in any way they can – through pointing, drawing, acting out, and a mixture of oral and written languages. My intent is to lower their affective filter, to make more ‘space’ for learning to happen. An unintended consequence of this approach is that I sometimes become a ‘language crutch’ for those students who are rebelling against learning English/being in the US.
Literacy as I teach it continues to be a double-edged sword. Because so many of my special needs students still struggle with decoding text, unfamiliar vocabulary, and basic comprehension, I frequently feel as though the consequences of my instruction (in what is a relatively short amount of time given their needs) amount to little more than "tracking" my students for the world of blue collar work and maintaining something of the functional literacy which seems to be the status quo of the community in which I work. However, I do make a conscious effort to infuse components of critical literacy and higher order thinking into my classroom - always telling my students that I want them to be able to think through a situation for themselves just as much as I want them to read and write. In specific, for someone who embarked on this journey wanting to be a reading teacher, I stress writing in my classroom. I constantly ask students to write, to explain themselves, to make sure they express their ideas clearly, and I frequently pose questions for students' writing which I expect them to struggle with not as students but as people. I want them to have the experience of examining what they think and believe and trying to articulate that not only for others but for themselves.
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