Recommendations: Literacy for Empowerment

Influences on Language and Literacy Development & the Teaching of Reading

While the first half of Chapter Four focuses on the principles of literacy development (including discussion of direct phonics instruction, emergent literacy and print awareness, dialect variation in oral language, and dialect miscues), I found the section on cultural patterns, cultural discontinuity, differentiated instruction and school policies to be most helpful in considering my own classroom.  While space here will not allow for a more in-depth discussion of these ideas (and how they are connected to ideas of power, privilege, and possible change), I will instead focus on the great recommendations outlined in the last half of the chapter.

After discussing the issues of power dynamics between students and teachers, the authors offered the following ideas to help empower students:

• Integrate multicultural literatures into literature classes, not the token poem or novel written by a minority person but the inclusion of significant pieces of literature from a wide range of cultures.
• Give more than a token nod to the history of various ethnic groups in this country in history classrooms.
• Discuss invenstions by women and minorities in social studies and science classrooms
• Affirm differences rather than ignore them.
• Provide opportunities for all students to become critically literate, to use their language and literacy resources to critique the society that exercises the power.  Only when students feel that their literacy can be used for critical as well as for economic power will they see its full value in their own lives.
• Allow full disclosure and discussion of the limits of literacy--that literacy is no guarantee of power and that literacy can fetter rather than liberate if it is misused and granted only to certain segments of society.

Then, the authors provide the following "best-practice" approaches to integrating literacy acquisition for students of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds in the secondary classroom:

1. A reading/writing workshop. Use mini-lessons on reading and writing strategies and processes, provide classroom time for reading or writing, and use one-on-one or group conferencing to assess student needs, strengths, and necessary interventions.
2. Personal anthologies.  Students love to tell their own stories, but they also love to share the stories that are meaningful to them.  Have students compile personal anthologies using multiple genres, multiple authors, and multiple topics.  Students can complete personal reflective pieces on the process and on the texts themselves.  This strategy can be used in science classes (including journal articles, magazine articles, newspaper clips using topics such as ecological issues or medicinal herbs), math classes (have students collect information on architecture, statistical trends, the economy) or art classes (students can investigate a particular time period in art based on an artistic movement's current influences or relevance in modern times).  These portfolios are great ways to motivate students with topics they have chosen.
3. Skinny books.  Don't feel so tied to the textbook!  Consider making your own skinny books, or files with several accessible articles written about your unit's topic.  With a government class, use current newspaper articles and don't be afraid to include more difficult texts, as students may begin to access them once they have developed a stronger prior knowledge base.
4. Experimenting in the discourse of the discipline.  Teach history?  Teach your students to use the cause-effect discourse patterns used by historians!  Teach poetry?  Teach your students how to write using the poetic forms of literary critics!  Teach science?  Teach your students how to present information using the analysis and classification of scientists!  Those patterns, or codes of discourse structures, will definitely help students to make new knowledge more explicit and predictable.

Finally, the authors suggest a whole language framework for developmental reading programs for struggling readers based on the principles of reading as as a psycholinguistic process.  These suggestions, taken with the above recommendations, are important for me especially, as I tend to work most often with the struggling, "at-risk" students.  Their suggestions include the following:

1. Use self-selected, independent reading.  Students should be allowed time each week to devote to reading that mirrors reading in the real world, including reading appropriate magazines (no High Times, high school students!), nonfiction, young adult novels, mysteries, pamphlets, manuals, and other self-selected text.  I had a student who brought his Bible to class, tattered and torn, who read next to a student who was reading The Golden Compass.  Incredibly, they would leave class on reading days debating with each other, but were always respectful to one another.
2. Sustain independent reading.  Before having independent reading, have discussions to help students engage in the independent reading.  Topics might include the reading selections and recommendations, myths and misconceptions about reading, problems students may have in reading (followed by mini-lessons for strategies), or current issues in education related to reading (what harm is there in talking with your students about the political and social implications of the SBA or school report cards?).
3. Read aloud to students. There is no age limit on this!  Students of all ages love to be read to, and a good story read aloud can provide a great time to model questioning, summarizing, or identifying important sections.
4. Use writing rather than worksheets and short-answer drills.  Make written responses to reading meaningful!  More about this topic will be covered in the next blog post...
5. Rewrite texts.  Students should put material into their own words.  Many students enjoy re-writing the end of a story, or even re-writing the story from a different character's point of view.  In a science class, consider having students re-write an article about a scientific concept for a younger audience.
6. Encourage self-expression.  Student responses to reading should come in many forms, including painting, scrapbooks, book jackets, writing stories, group activities, organized interest-based reading groups, or dramatic activities.

Recommended Reading
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers.html
http://www.sojust.net/
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/index.shtml
http://www.teachingforchange.org/