Literacy: Never the Same Again
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My 15 minute keynote from BLC13. As the way I connect my classroom has changed, the way I teach literacy has changed as well.
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Literacy: Never the Same Again
- 1. Literacy: Never the Same Again
- 8. New Audience
- 14. New Tools
- 18. New Ways to Learn
- 19. New Vocabulary
- 21. New Resources
- 23. New Skills
- 30. Learning
Editor's Notes
- Carson Why would we want to do that? His implication was that that particular practice would do nothing to help us to learn to read, which was his goal for the year.My journey with connecting my classroom began…and the way that I teach literacy has changed as well.
- It began with this classroom blog… A place for me to share with parents and a place for students to write. A connection with the parents. I couldn’t find any other primary classes online. I don’t think there were any. Finally, at the end of 2005, we discovered a class of kindergarten students in New Zealand who also had a blog and we began following what they were doing through the words and pictures on their blog. Then one day, Jody Hayes posted this picture on their blog.
- The caption told us that they were holding their nose because they were looking at a dead and very stinky shark. My students thought for a moment and then they looked at me quizzically and asked “where did they get the shark?” ……..I live…
- I live here. There are not a lot of places in North America that are farther from an ocean than we are. None of my students had ever seen the ocean. Many never will.
- So you can see that the idea of having a shark in your playground is a pretty foreign concept. We wondered other things, too. Why are they all dressed in the same clothes? Where did they put the shark? We began to leave comments on their blog, and they began to do the same for us. Later, we discovered that the last half hour of our day in Moose Jaw was the same as the first half hour of their day THE NEXT MORNING in New Zealand. That led to more questions. It also led us to our first Skype calls as we asked and answered questions and discovered things about each other. We learned that we all liked to play with our friends and we were all learning to read, but that the games we played were different and that we sometimes ate different foods. The seasons were different—winter, summer. What on each was Marmite? Link to social studies and science. AuthenticI was hooked. I wanted that same experience for every class that I taught.
- Connection was possible because of our blog. WE HAVE A NEW AUDIENCE for our work. We are still learning reading and writing, but we are also serendipitously learning about other people and classes in far away places. We continue to connect with other classes through our blog, watching to see what they do in their class… as they are
- As they are watching to see what we are doing. These dots represent the visitors to our classroom blog, the larger the dot, the more people have visited. This map shows my students that when they post on their blog, they have an authentic audience for their work, even if they do not receive a comment.
- This ability to connect has transformed my classroom from a community of learners that exists within the four walls of our classroom to a growing community of learners literally from around the world.
- I used to print poems and chants on chart paper and laminate them. We would read them aloud together in our shared reading time.
- And Twitter. I used to have volunteers come in to listen to my students read. NEW TOOLS. For beginning readers, there really is no substitute for practicing.
- Skype to practice reading with anyone anywhere who will take the time to listen. One of the ways to get students to practice their fluency is by doing Reader’s Theatre. NEW POSSIBILITIES
- Reader’s Theatre – Now we can do it with classes across Canada or in another country.
- All first grade classes are learning about silent E. Silent e words,
- New communication form. Like every other media we use, we begin by doing it together, talking about what is appropriate to post online and gradually letting the students take over the tweeting. NEW WAYS TO LEARN, NEW WAYS TO COMMUNICATE. These new forms of communication mean new vocabulary.
- All of these new ways to connect have meant new vocabulary for my students.
- Part of being literate is Speaking and listening skills. I used to have guest speakers.
- We use Skype to connect with experts who can answer our questions. Heart, brains, lungs, passover, jobs that people do, other communities. NEW RESOURCES. Those resources are sometimes digital tools, but more often they are people.
- Used to have students record their ideas on paper or even a small whiteboard
- Now record their ideas on Twitter: NEW SKILLS– Backchannelling
- Writing and drawing pictures
- Take pictures to make a digital record of or make a video or other digital products. NEW WAY OFTHINKING
- Sometimes the video is related to our curriculum.
- Sometimes it’s not. This group of students was fascinated by the dominos in our classroom and by the possibilities they presented. They wanted to learn how to make the dominos fall in a line and they wanted to build towers with them. They documented much of their learning about this. I’ve seen videos just like this made by much older students—showing some form of learning that is important to them.
- Literacy today isn’t just about reading and writing. It’s about creating, It’s about new ways to communicate. It’s about using new tools to teach digital citizenship as the students learn the conventions of print. It’s about using new devices and new text forms. Literacy has changed.
- And Carson, the boy that I told you about at the beginning? By the end of the year, he, along with all of my students could tell you why we connect. We connect because we can
- Learn from and with others. We can become literate members of a global community that supports and encourages each other as we learn together.