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Artwork by Wanda Waldera

FINAL POST Digital Portfolio 10:  Teaching Nonfiction in ELA

1. Powerful nonfiction means quality content and form. As Sara Mosle argued, “What schools really rachel Malchow Lloyd and Scott Wertsch need isn’t more nonfiction but better nonfiction, espe- cially that which provides good models for student writing.” As one unit goal was to use this text for modeling research and in- formational writing, the transparency of the re- search process was important. We also sought a text that included thoughtful visual design.

2. Students now saw the text not as an isolated in- stance of reading information, but as part of a com- plex fabric of social issues and biases. They began to recognize that age, gender, and social class compli- cate the racial disparities in America. Finally, through our reading, writing, and discussions, we found evidence that students were beginning to understand that history (like many informational genres) is both fact-based and con- structed. They compared the traditional narrative of Rosa Parks they learned as children to their new knowledge of Colvin. 

3. Students’ motivation to read and think deeply about their reading is improved when the text has real-world relevance. As Bruner argued, curricu- lum development should begin with “choos[ing] the crucial problems, particularly those which are prompting change within our culture. Let those problems and our procedures for thinking about them be part of what school and class work are about” (98). The role of the social justice teacher is to help students read society, to discover “how things came to be” (Christiansen). Nonfiction reading has an edge here. As we select texts, teachers must attend to students’ engagement with the personal and the present. Teachers can do this by introducing students to quality nonfiction texts that help them understand historical events, empathize with diverse protago- nists, and become empowered as a result of seeing a role for themselves in working to change social hierarchies.

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Digital Portfolio 9:  Critical Media Literacy  

1. The importance of multiple perspectives. It values everyone’s different perspective when reading a text and shows that there are multiple right answers as long as there is a sound argument.

2. Reading the world. Having students learn multiple perspectives also helps them read the world around them. They can take what they have learned though literature and apply it to the world around them.

3. Covering different perspectives not only encourages critical thinking, it also creates a new interest in readings that the student may not have been as engaged with previously.

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Book Rationale

Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down

The story Long Way Down all takes place in the span of a minute.Will’s brother, Shawn. has just been murdered and Will knows it is up to him to seek revenge as he goes down the elevator from his apartment to kill the person that he thinks murdered his brother. Each floor that he goes down has another person that has been murdered in this ongoing feud of revenge and we realize how much bigger the rivalry is than just involving Will and his brother. We learn that it has gone on for generations, even involving their father and uncle. When learning that his father killed the wrong man shortly after his father walks onto the elevator, we realize that Will may not even be going after the correct person. The story ends abruptly as Will exits the elevator and continues the cycle of violence that plagues his neighborhood.

The story is written in verse to emphasise the cramped space of an elevator. It shows how deep the cycle of violence goes, that young people are just trying to do what’s right and follow the “rules” that they have been told to follow. Through the lens of American literature, Long Way Down humanizes the reasons behind youth violence in impoverished and crime filled neighborhoods and realizes the long history behind the brutality, making it larger than a few spats, but actually a system of oppression that continues to oppress people belonging to such systems. To relate this story to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it shows how far back the systems of oppression in troubled communities go.

After reading, I have realized that I would like to teach this book as a way to humanize the violence that we see in the news every day about the people in the city or troubled neighborhoods. Frequently, I’ve noticed a divide in the classrooms that I have observed, between students, predominantly white, from more wealthy families and students, predominantly of color, from more impoverished upbringings. In so many of my classes growing up, I was taught the idea of capitalism, the “cream rises to the top” and Atlas Shrugged opinions that put the blame on the impoverished for being in such a place, rather than acknowledging the systems that cause this and the fact that many have been afforded more privileges than others. This story helps students start to think critically about the history that many are weighed down with.

It is meant for teens who do not come from wealthy white neighborhoods, but ones in difficult situations who have experienced loss. As David Greene of the Morning Edition of NPR states, “ it's about us, a community, thinking about those of our family members and our friends who we've already lost”. Much of african-american-vernacular-english is frowned upon in public schools, and this book is a good way to show students that their language is not beneath standard English, and can be used creatively to create stories and develop the voice of the person in their stories. Of course, there is a place for standard English, but there is also a place for non standard English in academia as well. I feel that the best way to teach this reading is to do so in a creative writing course or in a unit that focuses on systems of oppression, perhaps teaching this story shortly before starting a cultural wealth unit.

Many of the reasons that I love this book and would like to teach it in a classroom setting are also good reasons to not do so. It is gritty and real-- not much like many of the books that are read in the classroom. The main character also chooses to prolong the cycle of violence at the end of the story, which though paints a realistic picture, may be an issue in the classroom. I don’t think that this makes the book unteachable in a classroom, however. Though it may be safer to just recommend this title to students, I feel that it has enough merit to be taught to a whole 10-11th grade class, though, confidence and care need to be considered when doing so. If the class or school does not seem like a good fit for handling this, Monster by Walter Dean Myers may be a good alternative, as it covers many of the same topics, but has more of a moral and uplifting ending.

Works Cited

Greene, D. (2017, October 30). In 'long way down,' The ghosts of gun violence chill a plan for revenge. NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560286304/in-long-way-down-the-ghosts-of-gun-violence-chill-a-plan-for-revenge.

Reynolds, J. (2018). Long Way Down. Faber & Faber.

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Artwork by Lu Cong

Digital Portfolio Topic #6-- Useful Ideas for After Reading Activities Based on this week’s new readings.  What are your 3 most important take aways from this week texts about meaningful after reading activities for adolescents?

This chapter (Beers) had the idea of using scales (140) after a reading, something that I had never done in school. I like how this, instead of focusing on the teacher’s opinion/interpretation, focuses on the student’s ideas and critique

Having students fill out what is going on in the story through charts also helps students process plot and motive of the characters. Having students summarize and retell the text is great, but I feel that organizers would help them do so with more understanding of why the events are happening as they are.

Lastly, the importance of modeling for students. Not only should a teacher model how to read, they should also model the steps that come afterward, including retelling the story. 

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Drawing by Ritchelly Oliveira

What are your 3 most important take aways from this week texts about designing scaffolded reading experiences for adolescents before & during reading?

1. Comprehension, such as summarizing, visualizing and predicting should be modeled for students. The teacher may want to model this by doing a cold reading to the class (something that absolutely terrifies me!) and announcing what strategies you are using while reading the passage. Model these strategies and give students real reading situations where they can practice these same strategies as well. 

2.  To help students make inferences, list these on a poster and refer to this list often. Read aloud passages and make inferences out loud. Remind students that inferences aren’t made from nothing, but are evidenced in the text that they are reading.

3. In my own personal experience, I’ve been learning that scaffolding needs to be stretched out far more than I have previously thought. Introducing new concepts as rapidly as I had sometimes originally planned in my lesson plans can feel rushed or overwhelming. I need to learn to pace myself.

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What are your 3 most important take aways from this week texts about selecting meaningful young adult literature for adolescent readers?

1. Some ways to get students to be interested in reading:

Have a variety of subjects for students to choose from, know the student’s interests

Have the characters be their age or slightly older

Read aloud to students, teasing the beginning of the book. Create a book cover or bulletin board for the book so that they don’t just judge a book by its cover. Make a good books box.

2. Students read through a range of social stances: racial, religious, sexual orientation, etc. Content, response, and meaning are in constant transaction of each other and need to be honored.

3. Use strategies such as previewing (activating prior knowledge), using a graphic organizer for visualization, and connecting this reading to prior reading experiences. 

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The scribbles of a 16th-century Welsh schoolboy, National Library of Australia (NLA)

Teaching Vocab Well

My middle school years were filled with mind numbing workbooks and worksheets that was created as busy work to grind spelling into my head. This is the case for many of us, as teachers commonly go back to teaching vocabulary the same way they were taught, thus continuing the process. Reading Beers’ approach to learning vocabulary reminds me much about how I’ve come to enjoy learning vocabulary as an adult-- something I couldn’t stand as a kid. Teaching vocabulary doesn’t have to be a punishment, but can really be turned into an interesting lesson. Instead of learning drills to hopefully be remembered on standardized tests, students can learn words that they may actually use.

My favorite parts of these chapters were the ones that I felt turned learning into a game. Students can act as a detective when looking for context clues. They can visually and creatively look at the vocabulary by making word trees or graphic organizers. They can go on a word hunt and look for roots of a word and how it relates to other words with the same prefix or suffix. They can think about how the same word differs in different contexts or think about synonyms and antonyms. 

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Manuscript self portrait of Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), by Sergio Albiac - Portrait of the french poet using one of his manuscript poems

“The 3 most important ideas from this week’s readings. . .”

1.  The need for specific vocabulary instruction. “In the early stages of reading most of the words in grade-level texts are familiar to students as part of their oral vocabulary. However, as students progress through the grades, print vocabulary increasingly contains words that are rarely part of oral vocabulary” (11). It is easy for students to fall into the trap of reading what they are comfortable with and not challenging themselves with more difficult reads. This results in the student not progressing into higher reading levels. Challenge is important, but giving students the tools to be more confident in addressing challenge will keep them from becoming overwhelmed.

2.  “Children often learn new words incidentally from context. However, according to a meta-analysis of the literature, the probability that they will learn new words while reading is relatively low—about 15 percent” (11). Students need additional instruction and usually do not learn new words while they read. Instruction is necessary to develop vocabulary.

3. Have multiple ways of studying the new words as well as a lot of exposure to them. “Words are usu- ally learned only after they appear several times. In fact, researchers estimate that it could take as many as 17 exposures for a student to learn a new word” (13). Obviously, it would be rather boring for students to have to just do the same vocabulary exercises to get to these 17 exposers, so it is a good idea to mix up the process, both for the student’s sanity and for students who learn better differently from one another to get the proper instruction that they need.

“It is also helpful to combine this repeated exposure with a number of different explicit instruction strategies, such as using direct instruction techniques (getting students to look up definitions in dictionaries), helping promote students to independently acquire vocabulary skills (using context clues to derive meaning), offering students the opportunity to work on the computer using various software, and allowing students to discuss what they have read” (14).

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Artwork by Han Xiao

Literary Narrative

I’d like to think that I had an eclectic childhood. For better or for worse, I experienced just about everything. My younger life took place in rural northern Minnesota and Wisconsin in middle class white communities. In elementary school, it was discovered that I had Dyslexia after my teachers had tried to push me into Special Ed. classes, unable to do so after I scored above average on the IQ tests given to me. It was estimated that I would not be able to excel past middle school, yet in just a few years and with a lot of work, English turned from being my worst subject in school, to being my best.

My freshman year of highschool was difficult. After running away with my mom, I became a homeless youth. When I was 15, we moved into an apartment in Minneapolis. The city is the only place that has ever felt like a home to me. I met Tom here. I’d like to think of Tom as my real dad, though we are not physically related whatsoever and he was unable to have children of his own. I was just some weird kid with autism, tourette’s, and some severe anxiety (among who knows what) who would make rude remarks to anyone in order to be left alone, but Tom and I clicked right away. We had the same favorite movie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Tom introduced me to endless amounts of literature and film history. “You’re so smart,” he would say, “you need to go to college.”

After graduating from Perpich Center for Arts Education and winning an ArtScience competition that took me to compete internationally in France, everything went quiet. I stopped excelling and achieving. I think that everyone except for Tom had given up on me at that point. Tom pressured me to go to college, and afterwards, always made sure that I got the grades that were up to his standards. I’ve never not been on the Dean’s List and I hope to be the first in my family to graduate from college.

Tom is gone now after losing his battle with addiction. I guess he’s a big reason that I’d like to teach-- I’d like to return the favor of being there for others, even if we’re not related. I’d like to help others as I have been helped over the years. Tom wasn’t a perfect person and he had more flaws than I care to get into, but I hope that you understand that you can come to me with problems without the fear of judgement. No one is perfect, but they still matter.