Journal 1:
In my art classroom I like to think that I provide a variety of opportunities for students to explore different types of literacies. I have a bookshelf that is alway open to every grade level as a choice when they are done early, along with finger puppets that "like to be read to." With several grade levels we write short stories that we then illustrate, or we write down our thoughts about artwork and share it verbally with one another. I am definitely aware that literacy doesn’t just mean reading and writing on paper anymore, Huffaker (2005) “Technology has added a new type of literacy to consider.” though I don’t believe that I provide as much opportunity for students to explore their digital fluency as I could.
Oftentimes with my younger students we will read a story out loud together, looking at the pictures and discussing the story. We then use this story as a starting point for an art project; focusing on either the subject matter, illustrations, or the story’s theme. An example of this would be the project I did with my Kindergarten artists: we read Anansi the Spider and then connected that to painting, shapes, cutting, and gluing to create our own spiders. Once our project was complete we watched the story on the promethean board I have in my room. I found the video story on youtube, it reminded me of the old reading rainbow stories (do you remember those?!), where it wasn’t quite animated, but the pictures moved a little bit while the story was narrated, and it had the subtitles on as well.
This project is an example of the “new literacies” that Wilbur (2010) discusses in his article, “ New literacies are multimodal (Kress, 1997; Jewitt, 2009; Walsh, 2009), or comprised of multiple modes – visual, sound, and text-based.” I read the book aloud and the children listened and looked at the pictures- verbal literacy. Then by watching a video of it, on a digital device, while it was narrated and captioned the students were exposed to digital literacy.
One of the reasons I structured my lesson this way was because of a student we have that is deaf, does not know ASL yet, and has some behavior issues. By reading the story, and showing the video it allowed all of the students an opportunity to experience the story, and helped this particular student participate more fully with it and our project.
There are so many ways that literacy can be connected to the arts, but I also think kids just like stories, and by exposing them to both verbal and digital literacies we help them both academically and social emotionally as well.
References:
Huffaker, D. (2005). The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98
Wilber, D.J. (2010). Special themed issue: Beyond ʻnewʼ literacies. Digital Culture & Education, 2:1, 1-6.
I found your blog very interesting. I am an art teacher as well and I love when you brought up the idea that "With several grade levels 'we' write short stories that 'we' then illustrate, or 'we' write down our thoughts about artwork and share it verbally with one another". This is a great way to incorporate reading in to the art room. I teach at a middle school level, but I will definitely be using a strand of this technique in my classroom.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, nowadays that, literacy is not just reading and writing. Technology over the years has had a huge impact on literacy. I have used a similar method as well as doing a read aloud then presenting a video after or presenting pictures for students to understand better a concept I am teaching. As a special education teacher, it is very helpful for students to learn, given multiple opportunities to benefit how they learn. Every student learns and absorbs content differently, and supporting your students to reach their maximum potential is important.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is difficult to provide students with all the necessary tools it takes to interact with ever changing digital fluency. However, differentiation is one of the most important devices teachers can employ. As an earth science teacher, I try to expose students to multiple forms of media for a vast array of topics. Just the other week, we used VR to explore and compare different environments formed by glaciers. We then watched a few short videos and used simulations to relate glacial evidence to our own community. By using an array of new media platforms, students were able to gain multiple new perspectives on the information within the classroom.
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