...Academic Literacy in the Classroom Vincent Bordi Grand Canyon University: SED 535 February 6, 2013 Abstract Presented in this paper is a class and student profile concerning literacy traits as observed in a 9th grade health class at Lathrop High School. From classroom observations and personal research the class as a whole was analyzed on how they were able to read and write while also observing the strategies the teacher used to promote these literacy skills. To better understand literacy skills used by the teacher in the classroom there was a meeting between him and I where we discussed different strategies that he incorporates into his lessons. Attached are the observation summaries along with a Venn diagram that is based off one student that was individually observed. Introduction What do you need to know to become an educator for adolescents? It is obviously a requirement to master the content being taught and having the ability to manage a classroom; however educators are sometimes oblivious to one trait and that is teaching literacy. Most information in the secondary classroom is extracted from text and a common misconception is that it is not the responsibility of content instructors to teach literacy. It is often thought teaching how to read and write is up to English teachers while a content educator only needs to focus on their content. Observed Classroom as Whole From the little time spent observing the classroom a lot of information was...
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...Constructing Meaning through Critical Literacy Keona Shorter Grand Canyon University: EED-475 Curriculum, Methods, and Assessment: Reading April 17, 2016 The Poem I, Too, by Langston Hughes, is a literary classic. It illustrates the societal struggles America has been through and reflects a common perception about a class of people in that day. Students can use this poem to learn about social issues and societal norms of 1925 while also developing an opinion about how to treat other people in everyday life. Middle school students have the mental capacity to understand conflicts and racial indiscretion. These activities can help the students to create a resolution in common problems they may face in life as well. Langston Hughes, "I Too" is a Common Core reading from Appendix B. “Hughes, Langston. “I, Too, Sing America.” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Knopf, 1994. (1925)” (Common Core, 2016). —From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 46. Platform Strategy | Activity | Reading Supplementary Texts"Practitioners can use lyrics from popular music as supplementary texts to engage students in a discussion about race, gender, religion, politics, etc." (UNC- Chapel Hill School of Education, 2016). Using accessible supplementary materials will help to open the understanding of the students and provide then with a more analytical perspective of the poem. The song is essentially a...
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...Larry Howard Donna Ginn Eng-112 25 January 2014 Critically Literacy I believe anyone can be literate, but being critically literally brings your ability to another level. It defines your comprehension to fully understand what you read and being able to interpret the point the author is intending to make. A good critical response relies on how well the reader is able to analyze the text presented to them. A well rounded critically literate being questions or challenges material instead of simply accepting it is true. The hermeneutics of suspicion says “Suspend belief/judgment until we prove whether or not something is true or false” (Marxist Theory). It comes from various influences in seeing things beyond the surface and not being easily fooled by everything you see. Our response to media and how we handle we handle it plays a role in critical literacy in a two main ways, which are commercials and cyber security. Critically literacy helps us question advertising such as sports drinks commercials on television .Gatorade uses celebrity athletes to promote their products as if using their product will make you as “Great” as the celebrity. An illiterate being would easily believe the story the company is trying to tell and hard work and dedication wouldn’t simply be enough to produce the same results without their brand, or with the competitors. Companies spend much time and money finding to ways to make their advertisements seem as if using their product is common sense...
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...And so, my multimedia literacy narrative project dives into the feelings and moods that my photographs provoke from me, and how these connect to a single year in time through the specificities of the pictures. A year for everyone is a complete unit of time that encompasses every season, every month, and every day. I chose to tell my narrative in this fashion because I believe it truly encompasses how I view time and the world. Each month means something different to me and it is tied to different memories. To share these feelings, there is no better way that photography. Every set of photographs holds specific hues, saturation, depth, and concentration that I feel when I think of that time of year. This chronological path embodies the power...
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...Combining the old age tradition of storytelling with the latest technology lead to compelling tool that motivates students to read more and write better. The approach is called digital storytelling. It is a good way to engage students in both traditional and innovative way of telling a story. It is emerging as a way to shape narrative and facilitates efforts to capture classroom moments for learners to reflect upon and revise practice, as well as to develop teaching consciousness. Digital stories revolve around a chosen theme and often contain a particular viewpoint. They are typically just a few minutes long and have a variety of uses, including telling of personal tales, recounting of historical events, or as a means to inform or instruct...
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...In this Short Story Critical Essay on “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself”, Frederick Douglass tells a story of himself as an educated African-American going through a harsh experience with his slave owner Mr.Covey. In the Critical essay, Doreen Piano argues that Douglass describe his experience of being a slave in vivid detail from an insight of a slave/master brutal relationship with one another. He support this interpretation by Douglass ability to use literary devices, little knowledge on how to protect themselves, denied basic concepts or identities of themselves by treating them as animals. First, Douglass was able to incorporate a number of literary devices such as imagery to describe...
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...Frederick Douglass wrote several autobiographies during his lifetime, none continues to have the lasting literary impact of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. From its publication in 1845 to its present status in the American literary canon, the Narrative has become one of the most highly acclaimed American autobiographies ever written. Published seven years after Douglass' escape from his life as a slave in Maryland, the Narrative put into print circulation a critique of slavery that Douglass had been lecturing on around the country for many years. Yet while the Narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of being a slave, it also reveals his psychological insights into the slave/master relationship. What Douglass realizes that day is that literacy is equated with not only individual consciousness but also freedom. From that day, Douglass makes it his goal to learn as much as he can, eventually learning how to write, a skill that would provide him with his passport to freedom. What gives the book its complexity is Douglass' ability to incorporate a number of sophisticated literary devices...
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...It was the Researched Critical Analysis Essay. This essay required a broad range of sources (both statistics and opinions) to enhance my claim with regards to the topic. Although finding studies and credible sources were quite challenging, structuring the essay in the correct and desired order was the harder aspect of it. Throughout my draft, I was unable to structure the paper into a coherent one, hence, succumbing to organize it. Even though, the research essay seemed to me as the most challenging of all three, writing about a current and highly unstable issue such as the Kashmir conflict gave me this opportunity to climb up the ladder (in terms of writing). Not only, it provided me with an insight of my motherland’s history, it also ignited the sense of patriotism in me, in the same way, as it would engage an audience (particularly, the ones from India and Pakistan) on a wider spectrum. This benefitted me since I was able to understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences. Lastly, it helped me compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. Both pros and cons are two sides of the same coin. If a particular research paper seemed challenging, it needed to be...
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...segregation. In addition, the style and genre, and the structure of this literary work make significant contributions towards its thematic development, which focus on resistance to racism, the significance of the family, self-identity and definition and independence. Walker (95) argues that I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings is characterized by thematic unity, which is achieved using the structure adopted in the text that takes more of a thematic form rather than a chronological form. In addition, Angelou managed to emphasize on the universal ideas in her literary work irrespective of its periodic quality. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou used the major characters of the book to facilitate its thematic development identity, racism and literacy throughout the text. Basing on this assertion, this essay uses evidence from the book to affirm the role that the major characters played in the development of the major themes in the book. The first major theme in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is identity. In the course of the text, Maya is depicted as symbolic character representing every African American girl growing in America. Maya is depicted as...
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...An Experiential Study of Elementary Teachers with the Storytelling Process: Interdisciplinary Benefits Associated with Teacher Training and Classroom Integration Journal article by Robin D. Groce; Reading Improvement, Vol. 41, 2004 | | | | | |An Experiential Study of Elementary Teachers with the Storytelling Process: Interdisciplinary Benefits Associated with Teacher Training | | | |and Classroom Integration. | | | | | | | |by Robin D. Groce | | | |The purpose of this manuscript is to describe how elementary teachers used their experiences in a storytelling inservice training to teach| | | |lessons in language arts, science, social studies, and bilingual education. Qualitative research methods were used in simultaneously | | | |collecting and analyzing data. Storytelling was found to be a valuable tool for motivating students to listen and engage in content area | | | |lessons, improve reading skills in the content areas, and as a springboard for beginning units and...
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...Graduate Teaching Assistant: Ronda Taylor Place Kimbel Library 201 rataylor@g.coastal.edu Time Tue & Thur 10:00-12:00 Course Information COURSE DESCRIPTION, INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES and STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES: In ENGL 101, students focus on the writing process, paying special attention to prewriting, writing, and revising strategies. The course also introduces elements of academic writing as well as the research process. This class prompts students to hone their critical reading and writing skills as they consider the rhetorical situations that shape all writing tasks. As a hybrid course, ENGL 101 includes a parallel online component, Coastal Composition Commons, which provides uniform and digitally delivered content reinforcing a common set of student learning outcomes. This course also follows the description, objectives, and outcomes, and provides the requisites explained in the Coastal Writers’ Reference (CWR), pages 2-6. GRADING: Your grade for the course is broken down as follows: Literacy Narrative: 15% Profile: 15% Analysis: 15% Position Paper: 15% Digital Badges (6 @ 3% each)*: 18% Writing Community Membership: 17% Final Portfolio 5% You must complete all major assignments, including the final exam, in order to pass the class. *Digital Badges/COASTAL COMPOSITION COMMONS Coastal Composition Commons is a digital badge initiative that stresses the student learning outcomes central to ENGL 101 and 102. Each digital badge provides...
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...I read it but I don’t get it[1] The title of my article is a title of a book by Cris Tovani but more of that later! I want to explore why I feel that Ken Rowe’s literacy report misses the complexity of literacy development in young people– at least from my secondary perspective. Of course he covers some bases and on the surface suggests a balanced approach. He is also right that teachers need to be better educated about reading practices. However, the emphasis on phonics which has been widely reported in the media appears disproportionate to its usefulness. Some students can manage to read and spell without phonics so why do we need to occupy their brains with phonemes or phonic practices. Others need them. The informed primary teacher differentiates accordingly. What Ken Rowe does not focus on is the literacy needs of young people in secondary schools where decoding is less of a problem than comprehension. For many students reading is meaningless – particularly fiction. The Four Resource Model of Allan Luke and Peter Freebody[2] outlines what students need to do as they read: Effective literacy draws on a repertoire of practices that allow learners, as they engage in reading and writing activities, to: • break the code of texts: recognising and using the fundamental features and architecture of written texts including: alphabet, sounds in words, spelling, conventions and patterns of sentence structure and text • participate in the meanings...
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...Term Paper Psyc 400, Spring, 2015 Title of Paper: Factors Contributing to Literacy Skills in Children from Low-Income Families In American society, education is considered by many to be an equalizing force for people from all walks of life. It allows the nation’s best and brightest to distinguish themselves from their peers through intellectual merit - at least in theory. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation does not live up to the ideal, especially for children from low income families. Children who are already growing up with the disadvantages of poverty are further hindered by underfunded and ineffectual primary schooling, setting them even further behind middle and upper class children. Before beginning a discussion of the factors or strategies contributing to early literacy, it is important to first establish that there is in fact a discrepancy between low-income children and their more affluent peers in the first place. A review of the research literature is required to lay certain inaccurate stereotypes to rest, such as the notion that poor children are simply lazier students, and do not face additional difficulties with the acquisition of literacy skills. A comprehensive empirical study by Babuder et al (2014) explores the relationship between poverty and reading skills in children, with the results being unanimously negative. The study goes beyond assessing the reading skills of the children, and measures the basic phonological and semantic skills needed...
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...period of time, researchers have been studying the correlation between early language intervention and literacy skills in children of that age group. (Silke et al., 2013) Learning to read is known to be effective in positively impacting oral language skills. To become more literate as a child, children must be able to have the ability to decode print fluently and how to comprehend not only what they read but to be able to broaden their language skills which a required for having the best ability in understanding reading comprehension skills. (Siegler, R. S., DeLoache, J. S., & Eisenberg, N. (2006). How children develop.) There are countless language and literacy skills that need to be targeted in order for a child to be school ready. One of the language skills that needs to be targeted in an early intervention program is the alphabet knowledge. (Silke et al., 2013) Apart of the fundamentals of alphabet knowledge, it is important that students know individual letter sounds and be able to progress to more complex and advanced combinations of letters and sounds as they move to a different grade level each year. This is called phoneme awareness. (Siegler, R. S., DeLoache, J. S., & Eisenberg, N. (2006). How children develop.) Children who lack alphabetical knowledge understanding simply cannot understand words or text. Not being able to receive an opportunity to learn language and literacy skills in a formal manner before entering school age can be an immediate set back for a child. Throughout...
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...F rederick douglass was born into slavery sometime in 1817 or 1818. Like many slaves, he is unsure of his exact date of birth. Douglass is separated from his mother, Harriet Bailey, soon after he is born. His father is most likely their white master, Captain Anthony. Captain Anthony is the clerk of a rich man named Colonel Lloyd. Lloyd owns hundreds of slaves, who call his large, central plantation the “Great House Farm.” Life on any of Lloyd’s plantations, like that on many Southern plantations, is brutal. Slaves are overworked and exhausted, receive little food, few articles of clothing, and no beds. Those who break rules—and even those who do not—are beaten or whipped, and sometimes even shot by the plantation overseers, the cruelest of which are Mr. Severe and Mr. Austin Gore. Douglass’s life on this plantation is not as hard as that of most of the other slaves. Being a child, he serves in the household instead of in the fields. At the age of seven, he is given to Captain Anthony’s son‑in‑law’s brother, Hugh Auld, who lives in Baltimore. In Baltimore, Douglass enjoys a relatively freer life. In general, city slave-owners are more conscious of appearing cruel or neglectful toward their slaves in front of their non‑slaveowning neighbors. Sophia Auld, Hugh’s wife, has never had slaves before, and therefore she is surprisingly kind to Douglass at first. She even begins to teach Douglass to read, until her husband orders her to stop, saying that education makes slaves unmanageable...
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