Karen+for+Oct.+9

 ¶  __ James Gee: __  ­  “In interaction with more advanced peers and adults, children learn to use language to take new perspectives on experiences, but they may not question those perspectives very deeply. . . In dialogue with equals, children appear to compare and contrast perspectives more deeply and reflectively, learning thereby not only how to take particular perspectives through language, but also how to reason about such perspectives and perspective – taking.” (55)  ­  “With the current return in our schools to skill-and-drill and curricula driven by standardized tests, good learning principles have, more and more, been left on the cognitive scientist’s laboratory bench and. . . inside good computer and video games.” (57)  ­  “. . . [T]oday’s young people often see deeper and better forms of learning going on in the games they play than in the schools they attend.” (59)  ¶  __ Brian Street ____ : __  ­  “The walls of the classroom become the walls of the world. The maps of the USA and the world on the wall at the front of the classroom indicate the system of signs through which that world may be attained.” (121)  ¶  __ Shirley Heath: __  ­  “The general view has been that whatever it is that mainstream school-oriented homes have, these other homes do not have it; thus these children are not from the literate tradition and are not likely to succeed in school.” (74)  ¶  There were two reading which really spoke to me the most this week, and that was //What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School// by: Shirley Heath and //Learning and Gaming// (chapter five in the Gee book). These two articles really made me think what I can do as a teacher to help the students in my classroom who are from a town like Roadville and a town like Trackton, as well as those who are from a more “main street America” town in which they learn more of the mainstream way of learning. I thought that maybe doing more read alouds, in which you model the techniques you are looking for, could help these students develop the specific skills they may not have fully developed yet. But then I read the //Learning and Gaming// chapter and I thought that maybe there’s a way in which you can bring all of the wonderful learning that occurs in computer and video games into the classroom, possibly by even making your own computer game as a class. But then several questions occurred to me as I thought about this, and these are the questions you see below. My concern is that we as educators can not standardize literacy learning based on the social norm. Each child has individual learning styles and various literacies that are important to their cultures. It was interesting to me that the literacy practices in the home were dirven by the parents and not the schools. It is often assumed that such "schooled" literacy learning is driven by educators because they feel that they understand what the correct method is.
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 * 1) Is it possible to create a “gaming” environment in the classroom? And if so how would you go about doing it?
 * 2) Are you still able to meet the state and federal requirements if you were able to create a game like environment in your classroom?
 * 3) Do you think that this is kind of environment could be beneficial to all types of learners? Why or why not?
 * 4) Could creating a game like environment work for all subject areas or only a few? Which ones may it not be able to work for?
 * 5) How do we, as educators, create a classroom environment and lessons/activities which “meld” the three learning “styles”, mentioned in the Heath article, together?
 * 6) Can incorporating more read alouds into the curriculum help these students develop the different skills they may have not quite developed upon entering your classroom?