Blog #4- New Literacies Noteblog

Part One: CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING

            Creating this new literacy project revolving around emotional literacy has showed me that there are different ways people can be literate in our society.  Prior to conducting this project, I had no idea there were different literacies involving a variety of topics.  I thought the only to way to become literate was to read and write.  After looking at everyone’s literacy projects, I was able to get an understanding of what each literacy was about.  Everyone had very creative methods for presenting their information and material, which allowed me to gather information about a variety of digital literacies as well.  I learned a great deal from this project, and I think exploring ALL of the literacies would give me interesting topics to cover when I become a teacher.  After creating my web site using Weebly, I feel I was able to divide my work up into sections and topics that would divide my research in a great way.  Creating subtopics/web pages allows the reader to know exactly what they are going to read about.  Users can pick an outlet and know exactly what they are going to read.  This made researching a lot easier to do and complete.

            From the very beginning of the semester, I did not include digital literacy into my literacy map.  Nor did I include emotional, social, cultural, social, etc.  These are VERY important literacies that I think I overlooked as a student/future teacher.  I feel that I will use technology the best way I can possible in order to convey meaningful lessons to my students.  Technology can give students new ways to display ideas or materials they have learned, which is so fantastic.  Letting children be creative is so important and can create such an interesting classroom.

 Part Two: EFFECTIVE LITERACY INSTRUCTION

            To provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse students is allowing students to explore the world of literature in a variety of ways.  There are so many different ideas and thoughts that make up each individual student, and as a future teacher; I need to be aware of these differences.  Giving students more options to learn and grow as literacy learners is something teachers cannot take for granted.  Creating a website about emotional literacy let me research the topic through many different websites.  I was able to narrow my search focus and really find out many details about emotional literacy.  As I stated earlier, I was able to come up with certain subtopics I wanted to discuss in relation to emotional literacy.

            I think elementary school students would have had a great time using a web site tool as their digital literacy to explore other types of literacies, such as emotional literacy.  Students would be able to research on emotional literacy and create a website using the information they found.  Students could also learn a great deal from each other while learning through tools regarding technology.  I know that I learned a great amount from my classmates, and I feel that my students would be able to come to the same conclusion as me.  However, I believe students would need to learn how to manipulate the website tool they would like to use.  The teacher would have to model for the students multiple times in order for students to fully understand the tools.  Students would need to understand certain design and editing tools that create a web site and also how to conduct research on the Internet.  Being able to effectively browse the Internet is a task many students would need modeling before completing on their own.  Students need to know what a good research source looks like, and I think the teacher could do a lot of modeling to show students what is and is not appropriate.

           
Part Three: LESSON PLAN

            In creating a lesson plan using a website to demonstrate knowledge learned from emotional literacy, I think if the whole class participated as an entire class, then there could be a lot of learning from each other happening.  This lesson would take place after many lessons involving emotional literacy.  We would have covered what emotional literacy was and different knowledge learned from the students.

    Target Area/Rationale:  Students need to be aware of the usage of technology in literature in order to discover new information regarding new literacies.  There is a great amount of information on the Internet that can be useful to students as they learn about emotional literacy.  Specifically speaking, researching about emotional literacy and creating a website about findings is a great opportunity for students to understand a new literacy they may no understand.

    Objectives:  My objectives would be to have my students create a website about emotional literacy after many classes of scaffolding the students on how to edit a web page.  Students will work together in groups to create certain pages of the website.  This way, students are able to work together and engage in the activity together.  Another very important objective that is going to be included on this website is allowing students to post what they learn about emotional literacy whenever possible.  This allows students to not only learn about emotional literacy, but will scaffold their learning of the digital literacy as well.

    Materials/Supplies:  Computers, examples of what emotional literacy might look like in the classroom (picture books)

    Key Events:

o   To start off the lesson, teacher will pass out examples of emotional literature.   These examples will be picture books about some type of emotional situation.

o   The teacher will ask students to summarize the book and write a little summary about the key events.

o   After, students will get in groups and talk about what happened in their book and what their books are about.

o   After about 10 minutes, the teacher will step in and ask students to share what they learned from their books.

o   After sharing time, the teacher will introduce to the class that they will be making a web site to show all of the information learned from their picture books.

o   Students will have turns brainstorming what goes on the site and how it should look.

o   This may take a few lessons, but I think this will effectively show students how to make a website about a new literacy while working as a classroom community.

o   There will be a webpage for “student findings”, which will allow students to add new knowledge about emotional literacy whenever they think of it or get a chance to type it up.

    Closing Summary:  Emotional literacy is an important literacy that can affect show students behave in the classroom.  I feel emotional literacy is looked over a great amount, and doing a lesson like the one stated above can give students an opportunity to learn about two literacies at one.  Students need to have technology as a part of their learning world; it’s very important and can help students learn new ideas in a different format.

    Ongoing Assessment:  The website will allow me to keep checking in on what students are adding about emotional literacy.  Whenever a student learns something new about emotional literacy, they are to put that information on the website.  This allows me to see my students growth from the beginning of the project until the end of the year.