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Analyze your unit through the three lenses for literacy that we discussed during the first part of class (cognitive, sociocultural, and critical). Which theories are emphasized and where? All three theories were emphasized throughout the unit. Students throughout the unit are engaged in cognitive, sociocultural and critical literacy. All three of these theories help to shape and define the importance of learning about leadership through social change. The students are developing their literacy skills by analyzing and synthesizing social issues through the lens of those directly affected.
Cognitive literacy is described by Chall and Purcell Gates as stages. For a student to progress in their literacy development, they would need to have developed some aspect of the stage prior. Our eighth grade students according to Chall should theoretically be in stage 3, phase b - Reading for Learning the New. This is based on their age and grade group. In our unit, we would say that our students are in Stage 4 - Multiple Viewpoints. Our students are reading, writing and listening through multiple viewpoints and deepening their understanding of these viewpoints through multiple activities. Purcell-Gates said that Stage 4 is “seen to correspond with the increased maturity and experience that high school and college students bring with them (Purcell-Gates p 60).” Our students are learning about leadership through homelessness. The students learn about characteristics of leaders through historical figures and through current issues like homelessness. Pahl’s sociocultural literacy theory is also emphasized within our unit. Sociocultural literacy focuses on the importance of teaching literacy as literacy events and literacy practices. Pahl’s ideas are based on the idea that “it is possible to combine an understanding of literacy as a set of skills with an understanding how we use literacy in everyday life.” We emphasize this first through our second experience, where we have our students write letters to the homeless people they read about in Lives Turned Upside Down. The students are using the social practice of writing letters to develop their skills. The fourth experience also emphasizes the sociocultural theory. Public speaking is the social practice the students are in engaged in. Critical literacy is the most emphasized theory throughout our unit. Christensen’s theory that students need to embrace and have the opportunity to learn through their home language and question the language is present through all the experiences. In the first experience, the students are creating trading cards for leaders. The students are thinking about the leadership attributes of each person and writing them on the card in a way that is relevant to them. In experience three the students are analyzing The Invisible Girl and are raising questions like, “Why are the homeless portrayed in a certain way?” or “Why are there no homeless leaders in the media?” How does your unit engage Ladson-Billings’ three areas of culturally relevant pedagogy?Our unit engages in Ladson-Billings’ three areas of culturally relevant pedagogy by having students learn about leadership through a real life social issues. The unit focuses on academic achievement by introducing a variety of literacy strategies. Students are learning to write letters, graphic organizers, and create role plays. The different types of literacy strategies, coupled with a mix of group and individual experiences allow the students more opportunities for academic success.
How do the selected materials reflect diverse perspectives, including the experiences of marginalized groups?The materials we selected will work with a diverse set of learners. For our visual and auditory students we will watch a movie. Both auditory and kinesthetic learners will benefit from the town hall meeting drama and speech to be done during our class time. Our materials have a focus on a real world issue and many of them take our students outside the walls of the classroom thus drawing from Linda Christensen’s “Critical Literacy” which stresses the need to present texts relevant to our students; making it applicable to their own lives. We will be looking at two marginalized groups as we discuss leaders from Civil Rights Movement and current leaders of today. Finally, our students will be discovering via various points of view how the marginalized groups of homeless students’ live and learning about the diverse group of individuals who have been or are still homeless.
What are various ways that students might engage with the texts, respond, and/or feel based on their identities and social locations?
Because both the identity and social location of homeless families and their children may be unclear to our students, we took care to include examples from a variety of sociocultural backgrounds. Homelessness can occur in every level of society and within any race or ethnic group. As students engage themselves with the story from the movie The Little Red Wagon, we feel they will become even more empathetic with the plight of the homeless. They should be feeling both the unselfish motives of our leader, Zach, and also understand how his sister is disappointed in what she is asked to do without for her brother’s cause to help the homeless. The movie also has a side plot that focuses on a mother and her son’s journey as a homeless family. Students in the classroom currently experiencing homelessness may make a more meaningful connection to the boy and the mother. These students also bring their own unique point of view from their experiences to the classroom. After our role play experience, everyone will come to better understand their own unique leadership qualities and the role they would best take when wanting to help address a real world social issue.
Students that are currently experiences homelessness in the classroom will see that their experiences can help them to become powerful leaders in the fight for the homeless. The first experience helps these students to develop the mindset that they are leaders too, while the second experience shows that the currently homeless can also provide awareness for help. What actions will you take to foster safe, meaningful discussion and learning about cultural diversity and/or social issues?
Since we have a mix of White, Asian, and African American students, we will need to create a safe environment for open communication and to lead our students to interact effectively and sensitively with their diverse classroom environment. Throughout our lesson as we discuss Civil Rights Leaders we may want to also address why and how stereotyping of groups of people closes effective paths to resolution. This lesson is influenced by Christensen’s belief that students must question why our society functions as it does and Freire’s ideas concerning the need for students to think critically about their world and then take action. Both our movie and our role play will be addressing these two critical questions, “How do leaders facilitate change?” and “How do leaders bring awareness to issues?” In the first lesson of this unit we asked students to create trading cards with information about not only civil rights leaders, but also leaders from various cultural backgrounds; especially those of the students in our classroom. As each student ends our lesson by giving a speech, our goal is to deepen our understanding of leaders and leadership as we enrich our classroom with these diverse perspectives.
mily:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"'>Students that are currently experiences homelessness in the classroom will see that their experiences can help them to become powerful leaders in the fight for the homeless. The first experience helps these students to develop the mindset that they are leaders too, while the second experience shows that the currently homeless can also provide awareness for help. es on the importance of teaching literacy as literacy events and literacy practices. Pahl’s ideas are based on the idea that “it is possible to combine an understanding of literacy as a set of skills with an understanding how we use literacy in everyday life.” We emphasize this first through our second experience, where we have our students write letters to the homeless people they read about in Lives Turned Upside Down. The students are using the social practice of writing letters to develop their skills. The fourth experience also emphasizes the sociocultural theory. Public speaking is the social practice the students are in engaged in. Critical literacy is the most emphasized theory throughout our unit. Christensen’s theory that students need to embrace and have the opportunity to learn through their home language and question the language is present through all the experiences. In the first experience, the students are creating trading cards for leaders. The students are thinking about the leadership attributes of each person and writing them on the card in a way that is relevant to them. In experience three the students are analyzing The Invisible Girl and are raising questions like, “Why are the homeless portrayed in a certain way?” or “Why are there no homeless leaders in the media?” What literacy skills or strategies does your unit engage?To address the diverse backgrounds and learning styles in our classroom our unit engaged in several strategies and skills including some of the following: Visual Literacy using KWL Trading Cards, Charts and Graphic Organizers, Auditory Literacy using open-ended questions/asking and receiving and Kinesthetic Literacy using Frozen Images and Drama. Throughout our unit students were also given time for dialogue thus Giving Students a Voice.
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