Literacy Thoughts and Lesson Plan

In our Tompkins book, literacy is defined as “the ability to use reading and writing for a variety of tasks at school and outside of school”. That is basically the definition of literacy that I carried with me into this class. If nothing else, the New Literacies project has taught me that literacy encompasses much more than simply reading and writing, although those are the topics that are emphasized the most in regular school instruction. Through my research of emotional literacy, I have realized the grave importance of educating students to be literate in more than reading and writing. If students are not emotionally literate, they are at risk of bullying and being bullied, which has many awful consequences. Looking at my other classmates' projects has opened my eyes to just how many forms of literacy there are in the world, and has given me the information that I need to become the best teacher that I can be. The different lesson planning skills that I have learned throughout my time in teaching classes at MSU can all be applied to the lessons that should be focused on developing political, social, visual, emotional, and other types of literacy. I believe that though these literacies are different than the traditional forms of literacy, both the traditional and new forms depend on each other for successful implementation. Many of these new literacies (perhaps with the exception of visual literacy) depend on a person having a certain level of reading and writing literacy in order to be considered fully literate.

I think that the basis of providing effective literacy instruction is being sure that all students understand the purpose behind learning about different and expanded forms of literacy. If students have had experience with a certain form of new literacy (for example, if a student watches the news and then realizes that they are not politically literate enough) they will be more motivated to learn more about it. In this way, students will take more control of their learning and it will be more meaningful to them. It will also make our job as teachers easier, because students will be more independent if they have invested their own time and effort into researching a new form of literacy. I was under the impression with this project that we were learning about these new forms of literacy in order to become more well-rounded teachers, leading us to include ideas about new literacies in our future lessons. However, this prompt leads me to believe that students should be researching these topics themselves and coming up with their own conclusions based on what information they find. Unless the students are in the upper elementary grade level, the sources that I used to research my project would be much to advanced for them. In order to read some of the information that was given on the websites, students would have to have an advanced reading level and be able to understand basic mathematics (to understand the statistics). I do believe that this would be an effective project for older students to undertake, especially if they used a prezi to present their findings. PowerPoint is quickly becoming outdated as more people are looking for ways to stand out during presentations. I also think that prezi would be more effectively used if it was supplemental to a prepared speech about the presented topic. I found it difficult to include all of the information that I wanted to when I knew that they people viewing it were not going to be receiving any additional information, as they would if I were doing a formal presentation on emotional literacy.

Brief Lesson Plan (centered around Emotional Literacy and prezi):

• Objective:
  • Students will be able to relate to different characters in the book "Nothing but the Truth" by Avi by presenting different viewpoints using a prezi.
• Materials/Supplies Needed:
  • A copy of "Nothing but the Truth" by Avi for each student
  • Pencil/paper for each student (for their personal use to write notes)
  • One computer with prezi for each student
• Outline of Key Events:
  • [Students will already have the background knowledge that they need to successfully navigate prezi.com.]
  • [Students will already have read through the book "Nothing but the Truth" by Avi, and we will have had various small-group and whole-class discussions centered on the different things that happen as the plot progresses.]
  • Students will be assigned two characters to analyze using prezi to illustrate their findings. Students will be asked to related to the characters in the book on an emotional level. Guiding questions will be given:
    • What do you think he/she is feeling (at this point in the book)?
    • Why do you think that he/she feels that way? Is there anything from the book that you can use to prove that this is how they are thinking or feeling? If there is, please include this information on your prezi, along with a pager number.
    • Have you ever felt the way that this character does (at this point in the book)? Think about including this in your prezi, or tell a general story like what you went through.
    • Can you relate what is happening to this character (at this point in the story) to another character in a different book you have read? Please include this information on your prezi.
    • How did you feel about this character at the beginning of the book? The middle of the book? The end of the book?
  • At the end of their prezi, I will ask students to include what their individual feelings were (in general, not just about their two characters) at the beginning, middle, and end of the book. How did their own emotions change as the book progressed?
  • [This is a good book to do this type of activity with because there are so many different viewpoints already included in the book. Students will not have to stretch their imaginations too much to find the information that they will need to compile an interesting, encompassing project.]
  • All students will present their findings to the class through their prezi (this will probably be done a different day), and we will have another class discussion based solely on the emotions and feelings of the characters throughout the entirety of the book.
• Closing Summary:
  • You all did a fabulous job on your projects! I can tell that you all learned a lot about different viewpoints through what different characters were thinking and feeling. I also think you all have a good idea of how to use prezi to communicate your thoughts with others. I am very impressed with your dedication to this book and to this project.
• Ongoing Assessment:
  • This would be a very informal assessment, but I would start to try and recognize when students are noticing the emotions and feelings of the characters in other books that they are reading (either individually or as a class). I would continue to focus on being educated about the thoughts and feelings of others, and present the students with books that have varying viewpoints or ideas that would be different from their own. I would use various journal entries or discussion inputs to guide my assessment, and if I determine that the students have not really grasped the emotional literacy information that I wanted them to, I would design another lesson that applied directly to more "real-life" situations.

Here is an image from my placement classroom, where bullying is defined and posted for students to see!