Active Literacy Across the Curriculum
Connecting Print Literacy with Digital, Media, and Global Competence, K-12
- 154 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Active Literacy Across the Curriculum
Connecting Print Literacy with Digital, Media, and Global Competence, K-12
About This Book
Help students become more confident and successful readers, writers, and thinkers in today's world. In this new edition of a bestseller, highly acclaimed author and speaker Heidi Hayes Jacobs offers practical ideas for closing the literacy gap by teaching classic literacies (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) along with essential new literacies (digital, media, and global). The expanded second edition features Heidi's latest work on the new literacies and provides enhanced versions of strategies designed to help educators integrate critical language skills into their daily operational curriculum. These strategies include:
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- Revising and expanding the role of all teachers so that they see themselves as classical language and contemporary literacy teachers;
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- Separating vocabulary into three distinctive types with distinctive instructional approaches to sustain and extend independent language development;
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- Building creative and visual notetaking and sketchnoting strategies;
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- Designing media projects for every class level and employing a consistent editing and revision policy for writing assignments;
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- Using a formal approach to develop speaking skills through four discussion types to increase civil public discourse;
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- Employing direct technical instruction that promotes the use of the human voice and body as a speaking and communication instrument;
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- Using Curriculum Mapping to develop formal benchmark assessments for active literacy and new literacy cultivation in every subject and on every level.
Each chapter is focused on a specific strategy and includes practical examples so you can easily implement the ideas, no matter what grade level or subject area you teach.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1
Updating Roles
New Pedagogy: The Relationship Between Past and Present Literacies
- Antiquated pedagogy (What do we cut?): There is no direct relationship between teacher and learner, but rather the emphasis here is on the dispensing of knowledge to the student who is a receptacle. The word âcoverageâ comes to mind when we consider that content is to be presented and that it is the childâs problem to memorize and make sense out of it. Therefore, literacy is equated with the ability of students to listen and to read without a great deal of concern for their response in any depth. This antiquated notion also tends to minimize the necessity for teacher intervention into the development of a literate learner. The notion behind this stance is basically âa child either reads or does not, there is not much a teacher can do about it, thus, let us sort those who cannot read into more menial types of work.â Through most of human history that approach has ruled the lives of human beings, given that the concept of universal education only began as a viable approach in the latter part of the 19th century.
- Classical pedagogy (What do we keep?): Classical traditions are timeless, thus always timely. When we think of great classic works of literature, art, architecture, or science, a culture acknowledges the critical role that meaningful thought and engagement play from any period of history. With classical pedagogy there is a powerful and clear relationship between teacher and learner regarding the best way to pose content, provoke questioning, organize learning groups, and observe student needs. In terms of literacy, the critical role of an interactive teacher posing the right questions, calling attention to tips to assist the emerging reader, modeling good listening, providing sentence starters to pose questions, encouraging risk taking in writing that first original sentence, and applauding progress is essential and will always be essential as timeless teaching pedagogy. Classical literacy is predicated on the cultivation of the basic four capacities: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These capacities are timeless, timely, and necessary. Throughout the book there will be suggested strategies to support four capacities and their inherent connections. The contention here is that the new literacies sit on the shoulders of these classical approaches. If a child cannot read, he or she cannot read a computer screen.
- Contemporary pedagogy (What do we create?) With learning 24/7 as a possibility and the extraordinary immediacy of net-based tools, we have new kinds of learners. Our children and youth are self-navigators who can reach out and âbrowseâ sources freely and with ease. However, this does not mean they are literate in their searching. Accessing is not the same as diving deep and making strategic selections of quality information and resources. As teachers in our 21st-century times, we need to cultivate new approaches that support learners in engaging in the new literacies: digital, media, and global in conjunction with the classical. To clarify what these literacies look like in classroom life and what their connection is to the classical literacies, I have developed a definition of each grounded in what they look like in educative practice based. To be clear, each of the literacies is distinctive from the others, though there are points of overlapping. I will share my working definitions of these key literacies below.
- Accessing capability, which is the ability of the learner to enter the portal into web-based learning and applications. There are currently three points of access: key-boarding, voice, and touch and effect. It is important to note the similarity between phonemic awareness in classical literacy and accessing capability, because neither skill set guarantees literacy. Simply because I can decode a word does not make me a knowledge, insightful, or meaning-making reader. Similarly, simply accessing the internet does not guarantee that I have any sophistication. This latter point leads us to the next capability.
- Selection capability is about strategic and informed choice regarding the location of the appropriate digital tool, application or website resource to match the demands of a problem or issue. Given the ease and immediacy of digital tools, it is tempting to take the first tool or the first website that appears. In the classical world of print, this is akin to simply taking the first book that appears in a library.
- Curation capability is a skill set focused on the critical need to organize source material and to display that information effectively in a virtual format. Just as a museum curator organizes the display and sequence of paintings, the web-based curator shows an intelligent sense of what resources are of value by creating a clearinghouse of sources. The skill of âtaggingâ key sites and applications is central to creating a website reference tool.
- Creation capability points to solution and product building using digital tools, such as creating an application, software platform, or model employing virtual tools.
- Receptive media capability points to a critical review of both information and narrative media formats. Students can validate informational source material. One of the most important skills here is the ability of students to avoid taking the first site that comes up when using a browser to search for information on the internet. They literally can identify the perspective or angle that is taken, such as what the cameraman holds that determines what the viewer sees in a news report. Information is gathered from television and film on an unprecedented level because of access to media via a computer, tablet, or smart phone. If the media is narrative as in film, the goal is to cultivate media critics who value the story telling, direction, acting performances, craft, and technical expertise that are requisite in great film and the consummate talent of great film-makers. Just as students study literary authors, so should our students be studying auteurs.
- Generative media capability is the ability to express personal messages or stories through media formats. The world of âfilmmakingâ has been democratized through the 21st century with the ease of access to media-making tools, whether it is a video cast or audio cast. Any laptop is akin to a production studio. There is a tremendous range of choices available to learners with the technical ability and motivation to create media, yet simply using a digital camera on a smart phone does not assure quality. The teaching profession needs to improve professional development skills to help educators become more generative in developing media in order to support our learners.
- Investigate the World;
- Recognize Perspectives;
- Communicate Ideas;
- Take Action
The Classical and Contemporary Literacies in Every Classroom
Every Teacher Is a Communications Coach
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Meet the Author
- Introduction: Essential Strategies to Nurture the Literate Learner: Classical and Contemporary
- 1 Updating Roles: Every Teacher Becomes a Contemporary Literacy Teacher
- 2 Developing Three Types of Words with Classical Approaches and Digital Tools
- 3 Activating Notemaking: Extraction, Reaction, and Sketchnoting
- 4 Editing and Revising Classical Writing and Media Production: A Consistent Developmental Policy to Support Student Independence
- 5 Face to Face in Real and Virtual Space: Speaking, Listening, and Discussion Types
- 6 Tuning the Speaking/Listening Instrument: Giving Voice Lessons in Each Classroom
- 7 Activating Literacy in Our Plans: Upgrading Curriculum Maps Kâ12
- Bibliography