Lemoy Petit-Hunte
Exploring Viewing Literacy
Thoughts of literacy often immediately conjure ideas of standards-based levels of competency regarding reading and writing skills. Many primary school educators spend what seems like endless hours employing pre, during and after reading strategies, with the objective of teaching subject content through active student engagement in reading, writing, speaking, listening and critical thinking. All of this is fine but I feel the need to bring to the forum, a type of literacy that I believe is not given the degree of recognition\value that it should receive or is worth, if adequately harnessed. For the past three months, I have been interacting with a nine year old female whom, I shall refer to as Liz (not the pupil’s real name). This pupil’s present Instructional Reading Level is Year Two. Liz had been profiled by her teachers as a slow learner, characteristically demonstrating a lack of interest in reading ,and consistently underachieving in academic areas across the curriculum. In assessing this potentially brilliant pupil’s interests, I discovered her love of cartoons. This became my available tool of motivation and that is what I harnessed.
I engaged Liz in a series of lessons where the primary teaching resource was a dvd of Phineas and Ferb ( Liz’s favourite cartoon). I used each viewing to treat with issues of, for example, vocabulary development, determining themes, comparing and contrasting characters ,evaluating messages\morals and behaviors, and other critical thinking skills. Through the use of probing questions I was able to create the context whereby Liz perceived inferences and explored her thinking so that she could not only make vital connections and verbalize those ideas but ,later on, express those same ideas in writing .She has been demonstrating a willingness to participate as she, for example, describes Dr. Doofenshmirtz’ s behavior , the relationship he shares with Perry ,the Platypus and ponders possible reasons why Dr. Doofenshmirtz’ daughter is not like her father. I am noting gradual progress. I reiterate the value of determining where our students’ situated literacies lie and advocate the use of such as springboards to begin moving them from where they are to where we want them to be.
