Information, Ideas & Innovations for school libraries
Jo-Anne White's Discussions
Questions, questions, and more questions.
8 Replies
Started this discussion. Last reply by DEMacIsaac Jun. 5, 2008.
"You Won't Be Needing Your Laptops Today: Wired Bodies in the Wireless Classroom
9 Replies
Started this discussion. Last reply by Marlene Asselin Jun. 3, 2008.
Jo-Anne White's Page
Profile Information
- Hometown:
- Oakville, Ontario
- About Me:
- Teacher-Librarian, Mom, friend, daughter, Canadian. Although not originally from PEI I have lived here for twenty years. It has been a great place to raise my four children (all young adults now). Two currently live in Vancouver, one is in university in Ontario and one lives in town and attends Holland College.
- School Name & Location
- Birchwood Intermediate
Charlottetown
- Teaching Assignment
- Library, two grade nine L.A. classes, one grade eight L.A. class
- Favorite Authors/Illustrators
- Among my favorite authors: Peter Robinson, Marianne Williamson, Cathy Kelly, Kathy Reichs
- Best Things about our School Library
- It is a bright, open, warm and inviting space.
- My Hopes & Dreams for our School Library
- I hope that we continue to develop our collection and that the library program becomes stronger and stronger in engaging students and staff.
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I'll comment on your teaching idea for The Outsiders this time. This is an effective way to begin extending your teaching to include new literacies == by beginning with something you know is strong and that you are deeply connected to. I love how you take the issues from the book into the real lives of today's young people, and give your students responsibility for mastering one of those issues in terms of available resources then go in role as advisor to a book character. This provides a meaningful context for instruction of new literacies. I like your quote from Don Leu - he is really talking about expanding notions of information literacy. You have some excellent resources already for both teachers and students. This is really set to go -- just need a few things like the rubric and web evaluation lessons. Superb work again Jo-Anne!
Marlene
I'll first respond to your final reflections which somehow got posted on your comment wall not as a separate blog post but I found the two assignments so that's the main thing. I appreciated your candid and insightful reflections of your learning through this part of the course. It was much too intense even for an introduction to the complex notion of new literacies but I can see through your blog posts and forum discussion contributions that you have worked extremely hard and learned so much. I agree that your own self-questioning about assumptions of teaching and learning and literacy is the best indicator of being deeply affected by the ideas you engaged with. Ideally, I would have liked a combination of face to face and iBrary -- for practical and pedagogical reasons. I realize how difficult it was to be thrust in a new learning environment and then given such challenging content to interact with as well. I hope you consider ways of using/adapting social networking with your own students. I totally agree with your realization that linking EAL, the library and new literacies is a new frontier -- and I strongly encourage to pursue this area in the next two courses of the master's program. The possibilities are mind boggling as you say. You have the foundations -- now you need to make the practical connections for your school.
I salute you in achieving such high standards of learning Jo-Anne. Your school and province are most fortunate to have you in the education system. I do hope you and the others in the cohort remain a strong team in your province - there is huge potential there.
Best wishes,
Marlene
Grade Eight - Language Arts Class Novel - The Outsiders
The novel The Outsiders remains a perennial favourite, year after year, with my grade eight students. It is part of the Atlantic curriculum, under the grade eight language arts theme of Heroic Adventures. As an educator what I like about the novel is the real life issues it touches upon: the concepts of family, relationships, teen pregnancy, smoking, underage drinking, death, grief, child abuse, and identity. It is a novel that I find conducive to reading aloud. Students stop me years later to tell me that they still remember me reading it to the class. I never fail to get choked up when I read the part where Johnny dies, and my emotional response seems to generate empathy amongst the students for the characters. Since this has been a positive approach for me, I would continue to use the novel as a read aloud. Afterwards, however, I would follow this activity:
1. As a group brainstorm what overall topics are covered in The Outsiders such as loss, friendship, grief, family dynamics, growing up in the sixties, class distinction, prejudice, intolerance, etc. Allow time for group discussion and input.
2. Using the Internet, encourage the students to further investigate all of these topics in order to develop a sense of what resources are available to young people dealing with such issues. Allow time for collaboration and sharing of information in regard to sources located. Tie in web site evaluation techniques so that the students have the opportunity to look critically at the sites, and to be able to recommend valid sites with useful and relevant information.
For example, the Kids Help Phone site: http://www.kidshelpphone.ca/en/home.asp is one which is recommended to our students by the guidance department and by teachers in general. The site is easy to read and navigate, it contains useful information and ready access to qualified counselors. It contains little advertising. Students can look up information on topics such as violence, bullying, family issues, dating, friendship, and health issues. The information is presented in various formats which should be appeal to learners. For example, the information on bullying is in graphic novel form, videos, and print.
3. Once the students have an overview of all topics they will narrow their focus to one topic that they would like to learn about. They will further investigate and become knowledgeable about one specific topic. As the students gather information to answer the questions that they want answered, they will become the “experts” in their areas. Once they have gathered relevant information they will then be in a position to be able to advise one of the characters in the book about an issue that he is facing. For example, they might choose to advise Ponyboy on how best to provide support to Johnny, who is living in an emotionally, and sometimes physically, abusive home. They might choose to give advice to Johnny on the legal system and what he can expect to deal with in a court of law when a teenager is under suspicion of manslaughter. They may want to provide Darry with suggestions on being a parent. Or they might want to investigate foster homes.
4. Once they have gathered their information, answered their own questions, and developed an expertise in their area, they will decide what format they will use to present and/or share their findings to the group. For example, they may choose to make a video, create a web site, make a brochure, create a slide show, etc.
5. As well as an assessment by the teacher, using a rubric, the students will also complete reflect on their work. They will identify what they learned, how they presented it, what they might have chosen to do differently, and how knowledgeable they felt about their topic of choice.
Teacher Resources for Information on the novel The Outsiders:
Book Rags Book Guide http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/The_Outsiders_%28film%29
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders_(novel)
The Outsiders - Novel Study http://www.hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/engramja/outsider.html
Cliff Notes http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/The-Outsiders-About-the-Novel-Introduction.id-139,pageNum-3.html
Book and Movie Site http://www.theoutsidersbookandmovie.com/
Lesson Plan Ideas http://www.lessonplanspage.com/LATheOutsidersNovelWarmUpActivityIdea712.htm
Webquest http://712educators.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=712educators&cdn=education&tm=93&gps=74_99_1020_518&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//falcon.jmu.edu/%7Eramseyil/hinton.htm
Web English Teacher http://www.webenglishteacher.com/hinton.html
The Outsiders -Writing http://www.geocities.com/frankie_meehan/OutsidersConference.
htm
Examples of resources that students might find useful:
The Sixties http://www.bbhq.com/sixties.htm
MADD http://madd.ca/english/research/stats.html
Violence Prevention PEI http://www.stopfamilyviolence.pe.ca/index.php3?number=1017051&lang=E
Information for Kids http://www.safecanada.ca/kids_e.asp
Legal Info. PEI http://www.isn.net/cliapei/pub/42.htm
Help Guide - Grief http://www.helpguide.org/mental/helping_grieving.htm
Children and Grief http://dying.about.com/od/childrenlossandgrief/Children_Loss_Grief_and_Bereavement.htm
Children and Grief http://www.childrensgrief.net/info.htm
Helping Teens with Grief http://www.hospicenet.org/html/teenager.html
Teens and Alcohol http://www.focusas.com/Alcohol.html
Teens and Smoking http://www.bygpub.com/books/tg2rw/smoking.htm
Teenage Pregnancy http://community.michiana.org/famconn/teenpreg.html
In this activity the students must navigate the Internet, locate information, evaluate it critically, synthesize it and communicate it to others using a method that they feel will be effective. This process is representative of skills which are necessary for our students to have, in order for them to succeed in this century's economy and workforce. Since technological information and communications are constantly changing, evolving, and growing, this activity is not intended to be stagnant but rather fluid, allowing for and encouraging creativity and adaptation to new technology as it becomes available to our students.
According to Donald Leu (University of Connecticut) "To be newly literate means to take advantage of the information resources that are on the Internet, and that requires new reading and writing skills. These new literacies are central to our students' futures. Their futures are going to be defined by their ability to read, write, and communicate within networked information environments." This theme has resonated throughout the readings that we completed from Sampling “the New” in New Literacies (Lankshear and Knobel) and Lieracy in the new millenium (Lonsdale and McCurry).
According to the U.S Department of Labor, technology information is doubling every two years; by 2010 it will be doubling every 72 hours. It is essential that we prepare students as best we can for the changes that are occurring in technology, at an ever-increasing rate. This is the heart of every educator: to give our students the best that we can because they deserve the best and because that is our job. We need to investigate new literacies, develop training for teachers, and prepare our students to become adults who can navigate information effectively and succeed in this century in all areas of literacy.
Comprehensiveness
I wonder how one could ever feel that one has responded to all course content pertaining to this part of the course, which included one hundred and twenty-eight pages of difficult reading in a two week time frame, while working full-time ! There is no hard evidence that I responded to all course content but the reflection, questioning, and challenges which I have posed in my mind do indicate a comprehensiveness to me because of the wide range of those thought processes.
Engagement
I was able to identify the main points in the articles on New Literacies. I still feel that I barely scratched the surface in terms of my own understanding and learning but the fact that some of it is starting to make sense indicates deep thinking and processing. Furthermore, the fact that I find myself questioning everything I do now, in regard to teaching, is probably the strongest indication that I am taking this in and being challenged in a positive way.
The exercise of listing questions that I have in regard to new literacies was beneficial to me. It’s interesting how we all learn in different way. I notice that most other people responded to this topic by asking one or two questions, which is absolutely fine, but I feel like I am saturated with questions and curiosity, about a subject which I have found equally fascinating and frustrating. Reading others’ questions and following the discussions has also provided food for thought. There is some comfort in knowing that everyone else has questions too and is feeling the enormity of this course content.
I found myself making connections to other readings that we have completed in this course as well as some of the readings that I completed for my literature review in the fall. My literature review focused on EAL students and the library. I find myself looking back at the literature and realizing that very little of it seemed to link new literacies with EAL students and the library. This is like a new frontier, and, as my school grows by leaps and bounds in the are of diversity, it is certainly an area that merits further attention. My own experiences and knowledge came into play, although I feel that my experiences far outweigh my knowledge. I have been teaching for twenty years, and never have I felt so challenged to think outside the box and to question the validity of what I do on a daily basis. I find myself critiquing and everything I do which can feel somewhat overwhelming at times. The implications for teaching are mind-boggling but I still need more practical examples, as I mentioned before, to see how this will impact what I do on a daily basis.
Dialogic learning
I found myself learning from others and their responses. It’s different building knowledge online, than in a face-to-face situation. I didn’t like the one-sided feeling I got this time from the experience of participating in an online course. I felt like I needed more guidance. I also felt stupid a lot of the time. I realize that I am an intelligent, capable human being but the course content was so overwhelming that I found myself wondering if anyone else was feeling out of her depth. I talked to a colleague today, who is currently completing her PhD, and she assured me that these feelings of inadequacy and questioning are perfectly consistent with life-long learning at this level so I found that reassuring.
Take care and see you on Tuesday.
Karen