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.
The various points you discussed are very true. Primary School teachers do spend endless time using pre,during and after reading strategies. It seems like an endless task.
ReplyDeleteI have actually implemented a similar strategy that you talked about. It involves all the students in my class. In that I have told the boys to bring to school what ever they want to read for silent reading period. As such they have been bringing various types of books, the most popular being comics. At first a lot of parents seem not to embrace the whole idea and some have resisted thinking that the comics would be a distraction rather that an asset to their school work. I am pleased to say that almost all the boys actually look forward to the silent reading period and are very enthused to read for the class. The students fluency level have also increased as well.
I agree a hundred percent with your tool of motivation and how you went about harnessing it to encouraging her to learn. It is sad though that parents don't see the value of children reading books that they like. In fact most school administrators like a class being equipped with a library but most times don't offer any help to stock them. Primarily due to the cost of books being prohibitive....
Hi Sheldon,
ReplyDeleteYou said at first a lot of the parents did not embrace the idea. Have they changed their attitudes since then? I remember helping a teacher who was experiencing a similar challenge with the parents of students in her class. We got together and discussed why it was necessary to get the parents 'on board' with our literacy programmes and how we were going to begin to accomplish that task.One of the things we did was to put together an attractive brochure that provided the parents with simple tips on what they can do at home to help their students develop reading, thinking, writing and listening skills. I helped her organize and chair a parents conference. It was very interactive as we did demonstrations and provided these important stakeholders with opportunities to themselves learn and understand not only what was taking place in the classroom but why and how it would be helpful. Sheldon, a lot of questions were asked and the teacher understood beforehand thatit would be beneficial if she demonstrated a proactive attitude towards the parents.She understood that they would have doubts and questions and that she could either win them over or turn them away through her choice of attitude. Sheldon, at the end of the conferencing my colleague had gained the cooperation of many more of those parents.
Lee