Video Games and Literacy

Just thought I would put it out there, if anyone who is reading this has any interest in using video games to support literacy in the classroom, I would love to chat with you.  I have always loved video games throughout my life, from the Commodore 64, to the various Nintendo systems, up to the PS3 now and I really want to look into ways to use children’s interest and abilities with this to boost their literacy skills.  I have a few ideas and am sure there are a lot of things you can do with this and would love any suggestions.  Look forward to hearing from you.

 

My Literacy Poem

My Literacy Poem......or at least an attempt at a poem.

I have been told I entered school reading

And haven’t stopped since.

Primary years filled with basal readers and round robin.

A member of the Bluebirds; never a Crow.

Lived for Scholastic book clubs and read to anyone who would listen.

Allowance saved to buy the next Berenstein Bear and Babysitter Club book.

A loner at times with books as my best friend. 

Many reports written, projects done and analyses completed.

The classics read, but never loved.

Mystery and detective novels are my go-to.

A one-time book reader.

Not a book collector.

Can’t put it down once I start.

Enjoyment is the goal.

My Thinking, Lately

I am not teaching in a classroom this year, and with the rate in which I am learning and reflecting, I can’t wait to get back and start up again.  But between now and then a lot will happen and a lot of literacy growth will occur.  As I hope to interview out for a different school I often lie in bed and think about how I can articulate my thinking and ideas when asked to describe my literacy and math programs and how I will achieve classroom management (exciting, I know).  I feel badly for these unsuspecting principals who will ask me these questions, as I feel like I have a world of things to tell them about my interests and passions in literacy and the endless ideas and new things I want to try out.  Somehow in the next month or so, I am going to have to articulate what my literacy program will look like.  If you had asked me 5 months ago, I had a solid answer based on past practice and the beliefs I held.  Now, I don’t feel like I could even begin to summarize what I see happening in my literacy program in a tidy 2-3 minute answer.  I feel like my brain is sending frenzied messages like lightening bolts through my head, somewhat in a concept map format, where one idea branches off to hundreds more, none of them set in stone, but more along the lines of what I am thinking now and what I want to try out.  I am not sure how a principal will respond to this, but I feel extremely excited and motivated to see how it all might work out. 

After reading the whole language article, I was surprised to realize that my ideas around literacy learning are getting closer and closer to this line of thinking.  As I discussed in my “inkshed”, I have always viewed myself as sitting somewhere in the middle between whole-to-part and part-to-whole learning.  While I have never been a worksheet teacher, I still did work on learning parts outside of the whole (Chalk and Sock, Making Words, etc), while always trying to connect them back to the whole.  In my current role as a Reading Recovery teacher, which I know is not a whole language approach, I have been amazed to see the huge gains our lowest literacy achievers are able to make by reading and writing.  Some work is done around parts, but most of this is because the child is noticing it and ready for further instruction around it.  Within these 30 minutes, almost all of the time is dedicated to purely reading and writing.  I have had many teachers sit in disbelief that I have a child reading and writing on their very first day with me, and some of these children come to me knowing five letters and no words outside of their name.  With the continued exposure and time dedicated to reading good quality, authentic texts, the children I support become independent and self-extending readers and writers, without large chunks of time being taken to teach individual ‘part’ skills to them or fill them with this knowledge before we begin; they learn along the way.  I recently had a teacher come in and observe a lesson.  As a child quickly took a word apart on the run (e.g., may) put it back together and kept reading, she asked me, “When do you teach them about the ‘ay’ sound?”.  I think my response surprised her, especially as I continued to discuss how each child I work with does not learn in a linear or similar manner and I don’t program anything specifically on where or when I think they should be ready for something.  Throughout the past 2.5 years, I have worked with approximately 30 students who are at the very early stages of literacy acquisition and each child has made gains, but has gone about it in a different way.  From the rate at which the students progressed through books, the types of strategies they used to work through words and the sight and written words learned, no one did it the same way.  This is particularly important to acknowledge, especially when working in the classroom.  While I understand that it is not possible to differentiate everything, a closer look into where a child is and what they are moving toward next is important.

To continue further on this topic and from our most recent readings, I strongly agree with the articles that discussed the importance of reading and writing with someone close by who is able to support you.  I think the more time we give our children to read and write, the better they will become at it.  Especially if we give them the choice in what they want to read and write.  Nothing seems more frustrating to me than when children are expected to read during independent reading time and then respond to repetitive sentence stems such as “My favourite part was….” or “I liked when….”.  I think that this is the fastest way to get children to dislike reading and writing.  To connect it back to what we have been discussing and what I have been writing about in past blogs and ‘inksheds’, I believe that the inquiry-based approach supports this immensely. 

On a final note, our readings throughout this seminar take me back to what I have always believed in and have been made clearer over the past few months and continue on from what I wrote about last seminar.  It is the idea of the asset model.  I feel that this belief in our children is so important and one that cannot be stressed enough.  We need to believe in our students and hold high expectations for all of them.  The children need to know that we feel this way about them and their abilities and that we value the vast knowledge and experiences that they bring to school each day.  We need to share and embrace our differences and learn from each other.  The teacher needs to facilitate the learning and guide children using their strengths, instead of focusing on what they cannot do and trying to fill them up with some arbitrary knowledge that a group in power has decided on.  We must provide a curriculum that is authentic, meaningful and engaging.  I continue to feel so empowered with the idea of inquiry-based learning as it really exemplifies all of these sentiments and puts them into action.  I was particularly shocked by the article “Is It Really English For Everyone?”.  The sadness I felt with the idea of labeling students and the detriment it obviously is to them.  I know I will never look at this the same way again.  The downward spiral that happens when a teacher lowers their expectations in response to a child’s formal or informal label is tragic.  We must continue to work diligently to ensure all children have an opportunity to succeed. 

And one final thought around this that Jerry Harste discussed is how critical it is for us to respond positively and with encouragement to our children.  As he said, it can be hard to get children to view themselves positively and not just as readers and writers, but on a bigger scale as an important and valued person in the world, but it is so easy to break them down.  Jerry mentioned a comment that was said to him and I certainly to this day still battle with several things said to me in my childhood, as I am sure most of us do.  We need to choose our words carefully so that we use our role as educators to uplift and encourage our students based on their many positive assets and abilities.