Good morning Bloggers! Last we I discussed critical literacy learning as the literacy topic of the week. Critical literacy learning involves the collaborative efforts of teachers and students learning together through conversation and multiple literacies. I would like to continue to discuss critical literacy learning more deeply this week with a focus on how to engage students in critical literacy learning. Lynn Gatto’s work is mainly used in the post because she masterfully cultivates critical literacy in her class. She engages students by ignoring commercial literacy programs and creating her own units that are rich collaborative work, meaningful activities, and multiple litearcies You will find that many of the themes I have discussed in previous weeks are integrated in critical literacy practices.
Gatto does not use the commercial literacy programs and commercial products created for a scientific approach that satisfies high stakes education. She states, “Textbook publishers’ expensive sales brochures claim their programs will help students become successful, motivated, confident readers and writers”, but she does not believe them (74). Moreover, she goes on to explain that NCLB has impacted every classroom and that “Most districts are adopting curriculum and textbook programs designed to prepare students for these tests” (74). You may remember the post on neoliberalism in which I discuss how Apple and Lipman argue the negative effects neoliberalism and high stakes testing has on both teachers and students. The agenda is to make a profit and mainstream students. When Gatto’s district began conforming to the Reading First Grant she refused to buy into it. Freire’s work on the pedagogy of the oppressed supports Gatto’s decision to go against the commercial literacy program. As an example, Freire claims, “The capability of banking education to minimize the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed” (54). In all, the authors I have mentioned claim that policies and commercial or Banking Education do not stimulate students critical thinking because their agenda is based on mainstreaming and profit to suite them.
Instead she designs her own literacy units that stem from silent sustained reading. Gatto explains, “My approach is to provide experiences and problems that engage students in expanding their existing literacy practices in order to construct and use new ones” (75). Overall, her she engages students by introducing experiences and problems that students can scaffold off of their present knowledge. To accomplish this she considers “the individual students, planning carefully, selecting appropriate materials and activities, and adjusting activities” (77). It is clear from this that she is not the giver of knowledge and does not support what Freire describes as Banking Education, which is when teachers treat students as objects to fill knowledge with (52). Her role is “…constructing an atmosphere where the children see themselves as valuable to the process of learning within the classroom” (75).
She creates a community for learners to have engaging discussions and activities. As I mentioned last week, students need to be treated as members of the academic community. Gatto explains, “Within a community of learner’s framework I make sure the children in my class have multiple opportunities for literacy events and practices within social contexts” (75). In other words, her students are constantly practicing literacy with their peers. This refers back to Allington and Rief from last week who stress students need to be immersed in continuous literacy practice. It is taken a step further by Gatto who designs her classroom off of her unit themes. As supported when she states “I begin every unit by crating an environment for immersion into the topic” (78). Furthermore, she illustrates this idea when she describes how she filled the classroom with books, periodicals, posters, and models relating to the unit theme on butterflies.
Another practice she uses to engage students in critical literacy is using multiple literacies that are authentic to students. Gattos students can build connections and gain real meaning from the literacies that they practice in class. For example, in their butterfly unit they read James and the Giant Peach. They were able to connect science with English in a cross discipline study on insects. Another example is the two times in the butterfly unit in which students connect the litearcaies of America and Mexico. The students were not simply translating their writing from Englsih to Spanish, but expanding their community and literacy practices. A bilingual class was called upon to enter in their community to help them with their task of translating and revising a letter. Also, they cared about performing the activity because there was a meaningful goal. As the unit progressed they began to care about the butterflies, so they wanted to write a letter to the Mexican government in regards to preserving them. Gatto was luck to have a school with bilingual classes. After exploring bilingualism in a previous post and reading this aspect of Gatto’s teaching I wanted to find a way that I could incorporate bilingual activities for my students. After some research and thought I found penpals via Skype© a great way to include not only bilingual cultures and literacies, but technology literacy as well. Here is a video clip of fifth graders communicating with German students via Skpe, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG4Vt8lQ8dU.
Most importantly Gatto engaged her students because her unit was authentic. Gatto’s persistence for her students to have an authentic education reminds me so much of another famous teacher, Ms. Frizzle from the popular Magic School Bus series. I have provided a link to show my connection between the two teachers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPp0tCLIEFM . After watching the clips you will notice that both teachers first engage students by immersing them in the unit topic through the classroom environment. Then they have students physically and mentally interact with the topic through questioning, problem solving and field trips. Another supporter of authentic education is Freire who explains, “The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking. The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication” (58). One again, it is stressed that learning must be student centered with students doing the thinking. It involves students interacting with reality or the real world through conversation. All of the activities created by Gatto were based off of questions students had at the start of the unit. As Gatto states, “Authentic questioning generates in-depth and sustained student conversation or dialogical instruction” (75). Real thought provoking questions lead her students to have deep conversations. Similarly, last week I talked about the importance of inquiry in the classroom studied by Wilhelm and Smith. Dialogical instruction or inquiry happens when students participate in deep meaningful conversation that leads them on the pursuit for knowledge and answers.
These conversations lead to enriching activities that had meaning to students. It is said by Gatto “Authentic literacy includes activities that allow children to communicate about real things of interest to them and to a real audience”(76). So, authentic activities involve students performing real world tasks for an audience. I think an audience engages students because they have a reason to do the activity. This supported by Rief who claims an audience is needed when writing. Examples of authentic activities in Gatto’s butterfly unit include trips to museums, writing to local newspaper, and designing and running a butterfly museum vivarium for the public. I was amazed at the responsibility the students took in researching, communicating with public (governments, newspapers, peers, teachers, community members), and organizing a museum. In all, the butterfly unit supports Gatto’s comment, “My classroom was a community of learners in which students and teacher work together in goal-directed activity” (85). Freire supports the idea of teacher and student working together to learn when he states, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students” (53). To put it differently, education can be improved when both teacher and students agree to learn together.
The following line from Gatto helped me consider how I would use her pedagogy to promote critical literacy in my future classroom, “I use their experiences, interests, history, culture, language, and literacy practices to develop the literacy program in my classroom. The children know they are valued as learners within our classroom. Their ideas and opinions count…In my classroom, literacy is the bridge between the exciting and meaningful hands-on unit of study and the minds-on construction of knowledge that is central to providing challenging curriculum” (88). Like Gatto, I will take my students’ interests, backgrounds, literacies, and experiences into consideration when developing authentic units. I have mentioned several times that teachers must have a positive relationship with students to create lessons that will benefit them and match their learning styles. Furthermore, I will show that I value them as contributing members of the academic community by taking their ideas and opinions into account. Inquiry or dialogical learning will be vital if I am to achieve this. Students must be heard and I wish to learn from them during inquiry conversations. I found that the students involved in the butterfly unit took on a lot of responsibility and challenged themselves. They were in charge of their learning and as a result they gained meaning and performed higher functioning thinking because of it. As a result of the success of Gatto’s butterfly unit, I would like to mimic these qualities in my own units. Already, I have begun to brainstorm ideas for authentic units and I came up with an idea for a newspaper unit. Inquiry would be necessary for students to brainstorm ideas for running the newspaper and writing articles. Authentic activities would also be key like in the butterfly unit because students would have to take filed trips and communicate with community members to perform research for articles. Of course, multiple literacies would be incorporated as well because students would have to read and talk about the production of newspapers and topics they wish to write about. I found this article, http://barnegat.patch.com/articles/barnegat-high-schools-newspaper-a-class-act, about a class that runs their own newspaper that I can use for the future.
I hope you have gained something from this post my blogger folowers! Check back for more discussion on literacy.
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