Never did I think I would be so interested in using Young Adult literature in my classroom. Never before this class, did I think it had a place in the social studies classroom. That viewpoint has changed and I see the need and push for it in every classroom. Our classrooms of today need something to change within them and I see using ya literature as a needed shift.
Have I gained better acquaintance with contemporary YA literature?
Before this class, I didn't really read YA literature. Maybe some "trashy" girl novels, but I would have never walked into Barnes and Noble and selected a YA text. Now that I have read some high quality YA novels, I know that there are many out there and I cannot wait to read more. Some of new favorite authors are Ellen Hopkins, Elizabeth Scott, and Deborah Ellis. I obviously fell in love with The Bread-Winner Trilogy, Crank, and I am Nujood. All these books tugged at my heart strings and opened my perspective on YA lit and the world. At the beginning of the semester I was not transacting at all with what I was reading. I was reading, because that was what I was told to do. I wasn't trying to get into the book and I wasn't allowing myself too. Being an ex-history major, we were told feelings did not below in our papers. Having been told that for the past four years, it is sometimes hard to shift gears. After reading A Northern Light, I began to transact with that I was reading. I started to feel and care for the characters. When the book ended, I found myself helpless, because I didn't know what would happen to the main character. I was starting to allow myself to feel while reading. I found myself being changed because of what I was reading.
Have I developed an understanding of how to utilize YA literature and strategic teaching practices to support secondary school curricula?
I am still learning how to do this question. I am not an ELA teacher, so my understandings of the standards are still limited. With that being said, the main goals for ELA are writing, speaking, reading, and listening and I believe that YA novels really allow for students to reach these common goals.
There are many different devices that can be used to make sure students are transacting with their texts. One of the devices that obviously I have been using to transact with the text I am reading is blogging. I have had a lot of fun creating this blog and enjoyed sharing my ideas with the "world" (per say). Dana Grisham and Thomas Wolsey (2006) state "Human beings don't need to posses information only; they need to belong to a community" (p.648) and that is what blogging has done for me. I feel like I am putting my ideas and opinions about the books I am reading for the world to hear. I am showing the world what I have learned and they can comment on it. I think this really helps students create a sense of authority on what they are reading. When students belong to a community of learners, it makes it much more authentic. "...engage in a process of collective learning that creates bonds between them; a tribe, a garage band, a group of engineers working on a similar problem" and this is what blogging has done for me (Grisham & Wolsey, 2006, p.649).
Another device that I hope to use in my future classroom is reading response journals. These can be created in a classroom wiki, a blog site, or a good ole fashion marble notebook. It just has to be an area where the student at respond at ease and others can comment if they want, or it can be private. This is something I tried to do in my blog site, just a little more formal. The reading response theory is part of the meaning making process and it gives the reader to have a dialogue with the text (Groenke & Scherff, 2010, p.79).
In my project I had my students creating a reader response. I think to support my students more in that, I would create a more journal feel. My unit was based on the powerful memoir, I am Nujood, age 10 and Divorced, which I think will evoked a lot of emotion from my students. In my lesson, I had my students using a learning contract to talk about their feelings and insights into the book. I think I would expand on that learning contract and make my students expand their understandings. According to Jacqueline Glasgow (2001) books like I am Nujood... "Good books unsettle us, make us ask questions about what we thought was certain; they don't just reaffirm everything we already know" (p.51). I think I would want to plan more to what Glasgow has to say, because of the nature of the book I assigned. Students need the freedom to share their ideas and that is when true comprehension happens in my opinion.
I have learned from creating this project that students need room to share their understanding. I think all of us in the class realized how much time has to be dedicated to sharing out ideas or having time to respond. I know my English teacher did not give a lot of time for this and this might have been why I always wanted to fall asleep in class. I will include in my classroom, room to share. I will write it into my lesson plan and give students the chance to share out what they are reading. A time to ask questions or challenge what the author is saying. I think this is the most important thing I have learned and I cannot wait for the future decisions I will have because of this.
Have I Developed an understanding of how to utilize digital teaching and learning practices to support secondary school curricula?
At the beginning of the semester, my professor, Dr. Jones put out a bunch of learning goals for our class, they included: "I want to build group coherence among students, share information about the readings with students and have them share information with one another, process ideas about the reading and share their responses through threaded discussions about the reading, but also through other digital text like an iMovie and build a social environment created in the electronic learning space where students find a voice, develop perspectives, make meaningful predictions, connect the literature with other media, and enable the motivation to read as only peers can". Looking back at these goals, I feel like I have met them, some better than others, but they were met. I was part of the group coherence reading other's blogs and participating in the wiki discussions. I was always interested in what others read and wrote and I tried to keep up-to-date with my fellow classmate's learning logs. I feel this was met and I went beyond the goal. The second goal, I was always sharing my ideas on my readings. For some posts on my blog, I even included outside resources like photo essays or book trailers to complement my reading. I used my blog as a source of information for all those who were reading it. I feel that everyone in the class did a great job at this, sharing was definitely a key part of this course. The third and fourth goal I feel like I could still work harder at. I am still processing ideas and trying to transact during my reading. I feel like I have some a long ways with this, but I could come even more. The fourth goal, I would say I did not master fully. Maybe I am just being shy, but my iMovie was nothing special. I felt like the ideas were all over the place and it didn't have a direct message. I was not pleased with it and it was a very stressful process. I did share it with the class and I feel like I was able to show my ideas in a different form, I just wasn't happy with the finished product. But, it was a new literacy and it was the first time I had tried to create an iMovie. I never had used this type of technology and I was using the method of trial and error a lot. I won't shy away from an iMovie assignment in the future, I will just need more practice with it. And lastly the fifth goal, I think that our class really did create a learning space with both our wikis and blog sites. I know that my voice came through on the blog site, and it was uniquely my own. It gave me a sense of authority over my blog, and I liked that aspect of the assignment. I am not sure if I made a lot of predictions, in The Heist Society, I did, but that might be the only text I did so. I was always connecting the texts I was reading to world events, history, and social problems. I think that I really mastered making connections to the texts I was reading. I tried to motivate those who were reading my blog, but I am not sure if I really did.
I am not sure if I would have been successful at any of these goals if I had not created a blog or joined a wiki site. Both of these sites made my ideas public and this goals were very "publicly" driven. Writing a journal or turning in a journal response every week would have been ineffective. No one else would have heard the ideas I had, and no one else, besides Dr. Jones would have had the chance to read them. So no, I do not think if I had created something else, would my blog entries been as successful.
I think I met most of these goals when I produced my iMovie. I think I built a group coherence on the message I was trying to send in my PSA, and I think everyone in our class got it. I am not sure if I let the public see it they would get it. I feel like I shared a lot of information within my iMovie, I included quotes from the text, pictures of Nujood, and statistics about child marriages, I think that enriched the viewers. If I didn't have these then response would have lacked emotion, a key element in any response. If I had written a written response, I don't think the reader would have had an understanding on the emotions I felt while reading. Goal three I am not sure if I met, but the purpose of the iMovie was to show that I understood the deeper meaning of the text. I believe I did that. Goal four, I did, seeing that was the goal for the creation of the iMovie. Overall, on the surface, I met these goals. But like I said before, I still have a lot of learning and development needed in creating a better iMovie.
Right now, I am not sure if I was successful in creating an iMovie, because I do not know my grade yet. I feel like my iMovie was alright and that is why I am not sure if any other method would have been successful. I was creating a digital response that required a lot of emotional elements. I did that with the use of music, voice and photographs. A podcast or a photo essay would not have had the same effect on the viewer. Other's in the class created book trailers and political videos, and thinking about their effectiveness I cannot see another medium that would have fit. So, no again, I would not have been successful in my digital response using another medium.
Theme and gender played a big role in my iMovie. I think I was able to explore both of these literary elements deeper because of my movie. I was also much more aware of who they came across in my digital response, because unlike in a written response, I could not directly tell the reader what I was thinking.
I think a digital iMovie gave me a chance to think critically on what I was learning. There are four dimensions of critical literacy. "Disrupting the common place, interrogating multiple view points, focusing on sociopolitical issues, and taking action and working for social justice" (Groenke & Scherff, 2010, p. 105). I think that my iMovie really did focus on these dimensions of critical literacy. I was "going beneath the surface" and trying to evoke an emotional response (Groenke & Scherff, 2010, p.105). If I hadn't created this type of project, I wouldn't have had a great response.
I would say what I have learned in short and sweet summery is that I am able to transact with the books I have read. I am able to see the worth in YA lit and how to use it in my classroom. I do not see it as second class text, but more of a world class text. I am excited to see what else is out there!
References
Glasgow, J.N. (2001). Teaching social justice through young adult literature. English Journal, 90(6), p.54
Grisham, D.L. & Wolsey, T.D. (2006). Recentering the middle school classroom as a vibrant learning community: Students, literacy, and technology intersect. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(8), 648-660.
Groenke, S.L.& Scherff, L. (2010). Teaching YA lit through differentiated instruction. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
