Double Journal Entry #3

Cultural Capital is described as a teacher's belief that a student's culture is beneficial to learning experiences in their classroom. In this example, culture capital is seen as the fact that students use a calculator or an abacus. The non-economical value of their experience with either of these is viewed as cultural capital regardless of which tool is more resourceful.

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As presented by The National Council of Teachers of English, danger to adolescent literacy begins as early as elementary school. Research shows that students lose the ability to read for ideas, information, and concepts due to the focus on reading processes. This is a concern as it affects the reading skills of these students as they grow older and begin content area classes that require these crucial skills for a successful experience.

Not only does the pressure created by high stakes testing harm the instruction of adolescents by stealing precious time that could be used to explicitly instruct literacy in discipline, but it is also important to note that test scores do not truly represent literacy. Instead, test scores impede progress as they represent the need for fast, effective help. I feel that grades and test scores both lack in their ability to represent the knowledge a person has obtained. I feel this way for multiple reasons. One example from my own experiences with grades  is that I've scored lower in classes that I've actually learned a great deal of content compared to courses where I've easily earned an A. With that said, test scores are only good for the purpose of expressing what areas of the material need to be focused on more than others, which isn't always the best way to go about what to teach. I believe a good teacher is emphasizing multiple skills everyday throughout time.

The myth that students struggling with one type of literacy struggle with all forms of literacy contains a truth that I find rather surprising. The truth here is that some students who are exceptional at reading physics books may have a difficult time reading poetry. I found this myth the most surprising because I imagined that a student who truly could read a physics book and comprehend the material would be able to decipher the lyrics of a lyrical poem. I now realize that students, especially adolescents, have to be motivated to read. By allowing a student to choose a book that relates to their life or their interests, they will be motivated to read. By reading this form of literacy, a student will become experienced in a special type of reading material. I guess this means that teachers need to incorporate multiple forms of literacy in their classrooms regardless of the course subject. By doing this it will motivate students to learn and read.

As a content area teacher of general science and chemistry, my ultimate goal is comprehension. There are four basic organization patterns of textbooks that should be made aware by the teacher to the students. In order to use a textbook successfully, students need to recognize textbooks that are in a time-order sequence, that are using comparison and contrast techniques, that are using cause and effect relationships, and where material is listed in a textbook in no specific order of importance. The goal is to create stronger readers by having students recognize and use these organizational patterns of text. Also, students would benefit if the teacher  occasionally used these organization patterns in their instruction. A good activity for a chemistry  classroom would be to have students compare and contrast molecular compounds with ionic compounds. In order to create a variety of presentations, students would select a unique molecular and unique ionic compound. After students have time to read the book and formulate their ideas, they could create a presentation using technology or visual aides to demonstrate to the audience what they've learned about these two types of compounds.

Literacy is not confined to words. In fact, symbols on signs contain a lot of information that one must learn in order to understand the meaning of the symbol. Being a guy who was born into a family who greatly appreciated automobile racing, driving symbols along with symbols used to indicate what parts of a car need attention are among my non-school based literacies.

To me, a literacy practice is a means engaging in understanding or communicating information. Writing, Reading, and Thinking are words I immediately think of when I hear the term literacy practice. One specific example of a literacy practice might be using the internet to locate information of interest. This probably falls under the categories of computer literacy and information literacy.

The best way for me to describe my understanding of a discourse community is with an example. Politics would be considered a discourse community. This is because the group of people communicate in a way that allows them to reach a goal. Speeches, which are given by congressmen and candidates, are unique ways of communicating to people and involve special terms that normally wouldn't be used in a different setting. To read more examples of discourse communities, please read the information found on this web page about discourse communities. After reading it, I thought that "bloggers" have created their own discourse community.

Students who have valuable multiple literacies that are not acknowledged in school tend to become unmotivated. They will never be able to see the importance of the literacy being used/taught if their own literacy is not acknowledged.

One way to bring a student's extracurricular literacy into the classroom is by using an educational purpose to that literacy. The example striking me at the moment relates to the popularity of Facebook. Teenagers who use Facebook to communicate with their friends and family at home would benefit from using a site that is very similar to Facebook except that it has an educational purpose to it. The name of this site is Edmodo. Having some experience with the site through a previous course, I can say that it is a fun and interesting resource that can be used to recognize an extracurricular literacy.

In attempt to use one of the research- base strategies described by the NCTE, my sixth grade reading teacher never assigned a book for the class to read. Her classroom was filled with bookshelves that were stuffed with pages and pages of books. Throughout the year we would read books from cover to cover that we picked from her bookshelves. By allowing the students of my class to select a book that was interesting to us, we read more and enjoyed reading. This method known as "meaningful choice" actually did motivate our class to participate.

Although there have been successful attempts to improve literacy in my days as a K-12 student, I really can't say that I've ever experienced an attempt in multicultural literacy. My region is far from diverse. Thankfully I've been able to experience more diversity after high school. Hopefully I can use resources such as Spanish/English glossaries and other cultural learning practices to enhance my future classroom. The ability to recognize and appreciate diversity and different ways of doing things is a great way to gain respect for everyone's individuality. The same is true for teachers who can recognize and respect the diverse ways of teaching performed by their peers.


References

Bolima, D. (n.d.). Contexts for understanding:educational learning theories. Retrieved from http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm

Adolescent Literacy. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Chron0907ResearchBrief.pdf