18th Century vs. 20th Century... Children and Books

-evaluating my own consumerism as a parent, and as a future teacher

Where do I fit in the scheme of consumerism?  I am very guilty of perpetuating the ways of Corporations.  I have been captivated by toys that connect to books and movies.  As my children were growing up, I wanted them to have what others had...or even have more. (Ouch!  That hurts to admit, but it is true.)  

This week I read an article in Reading Research Quarterly from 2009, about branded fiction in children’s literature and new literacies.  This article pointed out the history of books for children, and how consumerism has changed the media children have access to use in their play.  This article specifically discussed tweens, children ages 8-12 year-olds or 3rd through 6th grade students.  Based on all the articles and books I have been exposed to in the past year about educating children, I realize that the influences on children start before 3rd grade.  With that in mind, I reflected back on my own consumerism as a parent, when my own two children were very young.  

Comparing the current century to the 18th century, there are so many more products available that are tied to books in the market place.  This article specifically focused on the American Girl, Hannah Montana, Harry Potter, Neo Pets, Disney (Mickey Mouse),  and Kewpie Doll brands.  It compared and contrasted their availability (in their popular time frame), their affordability, globalization...in terms of making media and distribution, and their access via the Internet.  More products are available to more people, which means there are new ways for children to ‘enter’ the story world.  Childhood is different too.  Middle class American’s have more disposable income.  Children are more capable of spending their parent’s money; mostly through mother-child relationships.  Children do not understand the difference between advertising and entertainment, but parents, who should, do not want their child to be left out of the latest fad or crazy. Here I will admit, I fell totally into that trap.  

When my children were very young, Disney’s Pocahontas...the movie, was popular.  I purchased the Disney book that retold the story, I purchased the Little Golden Book that retold the story, I read said stories to my children, I purchased the figurines for play, encouraged my extended family to purchase the “stuff” to accessorize play, and sadly...I took my children out to eat weekly just so they could collect the meal toys from MickeyD’s.  Oh my.  I have picture after picture of old toys: Pokémon, Ty Beanie Babies, Hamtaro, Polly Pockets, Legos, Jurassic Park, Barbie, Harry Potter, etc., that still reside in boxes in my spare closet.  Again, children do not understand the difference between advertising and entertainment.  Parents do.  Clearly, I did not. 

Children are immature, inexperienced and naïve.  This causes them to be easy to manipulate, especially by the marketers of brands.  As a parent, it is our job to step in and educate our children.  But, societal pressures to keep up with everyone else, especially if one happens to have enough disposable income to justify weekly dining out,

(No soapboxes on the health issues, please.  I have changed my ways, and I DO know better.) make it hard to say no.  

Literacy is no longer the ability to only communicate in ways that are bound in printed text.  Literacy truly has shifted to include communicating in ways that facilitate communities that enable people’s learning through new technologies.  In a word, the INTERNET...a wonderful source of entertainment, and advertisement.  

I am proud to admit that my husband and I read every single Harry Potter book aloud to our children as they were growing up.  Many conversations, filled with opinions, wonder, imagination, vocabulary lessons, and curiosity of what will happen next filled our family time.  

As a teacher, I see the benefits of play through branded fiction, or popular toy franchises.  I know not all children have the same access at home to interact with stories.  That may mean they are not exposed to the same books, toys, or Internet as their peers.  But I am also a book lover.  So, I will always try to encourage books first.  Everything else will be welcomed in my classroom, as long as it follows school policy of course, and as long as it adds to creating the reading and writing skills of my students.

Excuse me now...I need to go play with the Jurassic Park toys...they are calling me!  

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Carver Sekeres, D., (2009) . The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(4), pp. 399-414. 

retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25655466

Balancing Accelerated Reading with Readers Choices in one Classroom

In November of 2010, the journal Language Arts published the insights of Mariana Souto-Manning as she, along with her class of second graders found balance and acceptance of the AR program used in their school.

It is important to note that in the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) every student should read at or above grade level by the end of third grade.  Hence, funding for schools is tied to students’ test performance.  One way to test students regularly is to encourage school wide reading, such as the Accelerated Reading (AR) program.  AR is a computer software program that makes reading assignments based on multiple-choice tests.  It limits students reading choices and disregards teachers expertise.  Implementing AR in kindergarten and grades one and two is meant to be a form of early intervention.  The goal is to accelerate literacy in the early years in an attempt to erase perceived deficiencies that some children bring with them as they enter into school.  

Schools that use the AR program assign points to students based on their rate of accuracy (test scores) in combination with the level of book read.  Accumulated points can be turned in for tangible rewards.  

Problems with AR are that, as noted above, it includes a lack of choice in book selection.  It also disregards readers background knowledge and interests, and does not encourage collective reading and/or discussions.   

Unfortunately, with the adoption of NCLB, children’s learning is constantly being monitored by their teachers.  This leaves little room for a teacher to creatively teach or for students to “play” as a form of learning. 

Ms. Souto-Manning was told by her administrators that she had to use AR.  The year prior to this she had been with the same group of students.  She looped with them as their teacher hoping to build on the previous year experience of creating a culture of inquiry in their classroom.  Together, teacher and students brainstormed to engage in critical action research forming an inquiry of how they could make AR serve their needs better.  The students noted that they were segregated by colors(decided by their AR scores) on their library cards.  They were only allowed to check out certain books based on their AR level, and were actually discouraged by the media specialists when they wanted to check out different, more interesting books.  The color coding worked to censor student choices and discouraged reading motivation.  Also, even if a student read a book beyond his level, he would not be able to receive test points for it.  Students started identifying themselves as the color-coded readers they were as noted on their library cards.  In addition, because peers may not be labeled the same color, they weren’t necessarily able to read, then discuss, the same books.  ‘Reading was reduced to a textual, cognitive process that was striped of it’s sociopolitical aspects.’  Other problems the students noted were that the AR book choices were not plentiful enough to include all their varied interests.  Nor were there many children of color represented in the texts.  

Ms. Souto-Manning’s class worked together and fund raised, earning $800.  They surveyed their families and came up with a list of books they believed would more authentically represent their class make up.  Books were purchased and then the Media Specialist was consulted and these new books were added to the AR lists…with parent volunteers using websites with details on how to write appropriate AR quizzes.  The Media Specialist was able to add these new books to the schools pool of resources.  

The class decided to stop the AR reward system and instead work as a class towards points and then reward the whole rather than individuals for efforts.  To overcome the “you can only check out your color coded AR books in the library”, Ms. Souto-Manning had her students generate a weekly list and she would personally check out books from the school library to have in her classroom.

Ms. Souto-Manning was resourceful with her students.  The lesson she taught them, in my opinion, empowered her students to make take a system they had to use and make it better for all.  The community of learners she started to grow as first graders blossomed into capable second graders who made a difference in their school community.  

Reading needs to make meaning to students.  Students who have more book choice options to choose from, book choices that reflect their interests and book choices in which they can see themselves, they make connections that will propel them even farther in their learning.  

~ltk

Souto-Manning, M.  (2010) . Accelerating Reading Inequalities in the Early Years . Language Arts, 88 (2), 104-113. 

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What type of books are you reading to your preschool children?

In an article from Reading Research Quarterly published in 2009, authors K. Hammett Price, A van Kleech and C.J. Huberty discussed results from three studies that compare the talk during book sharing between parents and their preschoolers.  Specifically this article focused on parents engaging with their preschools while reading storybooks and reading expository (non-fiction) books.  

It is widely known that when parents read with their children, they create a dynamic between themselves, their child and the book they are reading.  This early literacy knowledge is a foundation children bring with them as they enter school.  The focus of this particular article discusses the types of books parents read aloud, and the type of skills or language that are gained by their children.  

When parents read books to their children, they typically participate in extratextual talk.  This means they talk beyond the actual text they are reading with their children.  “Even though parents may not view their extratextual talk as a method of explicit teaching, they do adjust their interactions in ways that support the child’s learning.”  (Rogoff, 1990, 2003)

Parents who spend the most time reading to their children give their children a longer-lasting advantage over children whose parents spend less time reading or interacting with them.  The same advantages happen based on the amount of general talk parents do with their children as well.  “(The)...amount of talk was strongly associated with the children’s trajectory of language learning.”

When teachers read aloud to their class, they are not only reading a story they hope their students will enjoy, but teachers are doing a number of different things.  They may be modeling their thoughts to show the students extended ways to interpret the text, they may be connecting students background knowledge by asking if someone has had a similar experience to a character in a story, or they may be asking open-ended questions to encourage deeper thinking.  During book sharing at home, especially if a child is preschool age, parents can and do these very same things!  When parents engage with their child in these ways, they are giving their child a head start on what others may only learn for the first time in the school setting.  Children can learn targeted vocabulary better when a parent both reads, and discusses a text.  

The general differences children can take away from storybooks versus expository books are:  Storybooks have more narrative, include more character’s intentions, perspectives, mental state verbs (e.g.thought, knew) and temporal connectives (e.g. and, then).  Expository books are written with more purpose of providing more scientific type of information about a topic, use more comparison and contrast, and use technical vocabulary/academic words.  Expository texts also expose students to the following literacy extensions:  labels, captions, keys, and dialogue bubbles which are used to aid in interpretation of diagrams.  At the preschooler level, expository books have a higher vocabulary diversity.  

As students progress from grade to grade, the number of storybooks used in the classroom become less and less.  Storybooks are replaced by expository texts.  Therefore, the earlier a student can become comfortable with, and understand literacy feature differences between different genre, the farther ahead the student has the potential of being over his/her peers.  

                                   ~ltk

Research Article:   3 of 5

Talk during Book Sharing between Parents and Preschool Children: A Comparison between Storybook and Expository Book Conditions

Lisa Hammett Price, Anne van Kleeck and Carl J. Huberty

Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 2009), pp. 171-194

The Importance of Play in the Classroom...

In today's classrooms, especially from grades one on up, there is a lot of 'business' that MUST get done.  Besides teaching, teachers are required to pre-test, and post test students over lessons.  The testing results are expected to show a mastery of the lesson taught.  Students are expected to sit in their desks, following the rules: quietly sitting, not bothering their neighbors and staying on task.  Time for students to create seems to have vanished with the extra recess part of the day at most schools.

In an article from Reading Research Quarterly, Dr. Karen E. Wohlwend (2008) documented the importance of play in learning within a kindergarten classroom.  Specifically, Dr. Wohlwend goes on to say that playing school at school is an important tool for students.  In playing school the students pair up reading and playing as reading-to-play, and playing-to-read.  Students showed these disciplines connected by reading books, reading charts, pretending to be the teacher, and by teaching pretend students.  In these ways, students made sense of books and multimedia, as well as produced social spaces where they indicated how kindergarteners should acts as readers and writers, leaders and followers, or boys and girls.

If these practices in a kindergarten room reinforce peer learning and set the stage for norms expected within the classroom, why is it that school districts feel teachers should act more as disciplinarians and less like facilitators of knowledge bearers?  Why are students expected to sit and be spoken at all day long?  How drab.

I understand the importance of being able to account for what our students are learning, and agree that tests are a quick and easy way to test knowledge.  But I feel there are also other ways our students can show what they learn.  I feel deeper learning happens when students are allowed to learn through inquiry, and study topics that matter to them.  Upper elementary students still need play in their lives.  I hope to be able to facilitate playing-to-learning within my classroom through role playing.  To learn about different cultures and groups who shaped our history, and to grasp the important lessons to be learned, my classroom will transform into those different cultures.  As an example, when studying Indiana history, we shall become members of tribes or explorers from the early days of Indiana.  We will write about our experiences in authentic ways, keeping journals, writing letters, reading recipes.  We will read stories that connect us, our classroom, to our community of long ago.

I believe no child benefits from being seated at their desk the entire school day.  Truly, most adults in the real world function by interacting with others.  Most adults are not in stationary positioned all day long either.  Why then do we expect that of our students?   In order for our students to become active learners, they need to be inspired by teachers who are willing to interact with them.

~ltk

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” 
                                                                                        ― Benjamin Franklin

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reference:

Wohlwend, K. E. (2008) . Kindergarten as Nexus of Practice: A Mediated Discourse Analysis of Reading, Writing, Play and Design in an Early Literacy .  Reading Research Quarterly, 43(3) , pp. 332-334 . Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20068350?uid=3739664&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103781288033

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"A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words"

     As a Literacy Facilitator, I have been trained to help children develop strategies for learning to read and write.  As I move forward in becoming a classroom teacher, I am realizing that literacy involves so much more than just strategies for becoming a proficient reader and techniques for writing.  This semester I initially questioned, why am I taking Art Methods for Teachers as a class?  Digging deeper into how children learn to read, I am starting to understand the benefits of drawing...or pictures...and art in a young child’s life.  

     In the January issue of Language Arts magazine, Drs. Jerome Harste and Gunther Kress discussed semiotics and children.  Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how they are used.  Harste’s background is in elementary education, and inquiry-based learning. He spent many years researching what children ages three to six knew about reading and writing before they went to school.  His research sparked his interest in semiotics.  Kress’ background is in linguistics, but he noted that his interest was pique  when in his research he observed six and seven year olds, “that they took as much care with their images as they took with their writing.” He also comments that he observed when children are older, say ages 13-14, and studying science, it is not uncommon for a teacher to say, ‘Write down what you did and draw what you saw.’  Kress goes on to suggest that drawing an image causes deeper thinking. If a student is told by their teacher to “draw a cell with it’s nucleus on the board,” the child will have to ask, or will have had to learn, how big the nucleus is, and where in the cell it may be located.  Drawing may offer more detail than solely writing...’a cell has a nucleus.‘   

     In a second article I recently read on images, called The Writing behind Drawing: Lessons learned from my Kindergarten Class by Wing-Yee Hui (2011), Hui used her own classroom as a study for observing drawing as writing.  From Hui’s research she notes that displayed in Olshansky’s Artist/Writer Workshops (2008) young children intuitively understand the meaning of pictures long before they master reading and writing of words on paper. Hui discusses the Reggio Emilia teaching approach which values the art languages as the way children make their thinking visible.  The light bulb just clicked on in my brain!  THIS is why I am taking an art methods class.  Art is a tool for thinking!  It allows different perspectives to be shown, emotions to be felt, and for properties of the physical world to be connected on deeper levels!  Heading into a classroom as a teacher this fall, I will now restate my writing day manta.  I used to say, “this is writing time, not art class.” I believe I will now be quicker to say, “Tell me about your drawing” or “show me what you mean with a picture.”

      Hui continues and sites Kress where he found that children were able to construct meaning naturally and easily using multi-modal symbols (multi-modality).  Multi-modality in this sense would be combining the visual (drawing) with audio (oral story telling) about what is happening in the student drawings.  In my own experience, while studying Math Methods for Elementary Teachers last semester, we placed importance on not only needing to be able to explain in words what we were doing as we solved problems in our class. We also had to draw a picture in our notes and/or on the board, as a way to make sense of our problems, and solutions.  Therefore, I would stretch Kress’ comments that even in Math classes, we have students draw images as a way to clarify thought, and show deeper meaning.  

     In the Language Arts magazine article, Harste asks Kress his opinions on what classroom teachers should keep foremost in their minds when using images (visual literacy).  Kress responds that society, through its culture, expresses itself in many different ways.  As a future classroom teacher, it is my job and responsibility to allow each of my students to share with me all the ways they understand the topics we are studying.  

~ltk 

references: 

Harste, J.C. and Kress, G. (2012) Image, Identity, and Insights into Language. Language Arts, 89 (3) , 205-210.

Hui, W. (2011) The Writing behind Drawing: Lessons learned from my Kindergarten Class.  Journal of Classroom Research in Literacy, 4, 3-14. 

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