This week in ECI 521, we broke down literacy and got to the bottom of what it actually is. We had our first book club, asked our guest speaker/teen writer, Oliver, questions about fan fiction and Dr. Crissman modeled the CCI process to set us up for next week’s class. The big topics that stand out to me from last week are literacy and the power of collaboration.
LITERACY First, literacy is basically competency in something. Thanks to our guest speaker for adding in that concise definition. To me literacy is taking in, putting out, and reflecting on information. That information can be transmitted visually, textually, auditorially, even numerically. A literacy based classroom looks like consists of dialogic inquiry, or project based, collaborative learning. Below is a visual representation Wells’s model. I currently facilitate research and collaboration in my class, but I definitely need to increase the reflection piece. As class goes on and I’ve added to my own blog, I’ve thought more and more about having my students blog next year. With Weebly student accounts, my students can blog in a password-protected online environment. I showed one of my classes this blog last week and talked about the book Navigating Early. It was a really neat experience for me to share my writing with them. I don’t do it enough! They enjoyed my poem and many students expressed interest in reading the book. Even better, they saw me as a writer and I was able to model the writing process for them and show them my authentic reaction to the book. I had a lot to contribute this week when we discussed Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell and fan fiction in general. I was (Was? Who am I kidding) am a huge Harry Potter nerd and would devour HP fan fic in high school. It was cool to hear Oliver’s Shakespeare fan fic and perspective on why teens (or anyone really) writes fan fiction. During class, Dr. Crissman asked Oliver about fan fic’s place in the classroom, whether teachers could use it in the classroom, or if that would, in fact, ruin it and defeat the purpose. I can see it working, but I can also see it falling apart. If writing fan fic was a person’s sense of escape, anonymity and freedom, having to write it for a class could spoil it. I think the key here is still allowing for personal choice. I can offer writing fan fic as an option for a way to creatively respond to a book, but it shouldn’t be the only option out there. Some of my students are reading Treasure Island right now and they’re meeting in groups next Friday to have a final discussion on the book. I liked the idea of book clubs so much that I scrapped the lit circle jobs they were going to do for the last meeting and instead told them to create something (anything!) in response to the book. We talked as a class and came up with a huge list of options for students to choose from (though if they though of something not on the list later they had the freedom to pursue another idea). I added fan fiction to the list and while most of the students didn’t know what it was, some of my sixth-graders gasped in excitement. I’m glad that it’s something they’re willing to pursue in a classroom context and will definitely reflect on how it works in an upcoming post. The book club was great and I loved discussing Maggot Moon. I look forward to discussing the other books during our next meeting.
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