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Tagxedo - snow white

wordle cinderella

week4 - jig zone

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Week 4 - ED

Week 4 – Digital Literacy (Unfortunately I was unable to attend this weeks session, however I have drawn on the relevant readings and reflected on my own practice).

 Children and young people are a different generation; they are ‘Digital Natives’ (Paffrey & Gasser, 2008). As teachers, we must become educated in these technologies (21stCFP) in order for us to be able to effectively teach the new generation.

The inter-relationship between literacy and technology stands out as one of the major strands of educational debate in the early 21st century (Merchant 2009:38); digital literacy ‘is rarely granted status within our education system’ which provides concern as teachers have been educated to stress the importance of enrichment through reading (Millard & Marsh 2001:27). Tim Ryland is an experienced primary school teacher and his blog is designed to assist adults, and children to aspects of ICT and digital literacy, introducing them to how using this can be beneficial to their child’s learning. He states that ‘as more of our life happens online, internet skills are crucial to living responsibly’ (Ryland 2013). Similarly, Merchant (2009) states that ‘the central concern of digital literacy is reading and writing with new technologies’ and therefore teachers must embrace this technology and think of ways to successfully emerge it within their classrooms (Halsey 2007).

 However, teacher’s may feel anxious and have little confidence of doing this as ‘introducing new digital literacies into classroom settings is an important and challenging task’ (Merchant 2009:38). This is something I witnessed on school experience, when the class teacher was nervous that she did not know enough about the computer programme. Therefore, if teachers become secure in their subject knowledge they can incorporate digital literacy effectively. Halsey (2007:102) states that one way teachers could engage children is through writing that is published on the internet as it provides a real audience for authentic purpose. Although, there are concerns with children uploading writing publicly, it can also be beneficial, not only to the child but ‘the local community can be drawn in on something that, without the weblog, would have been isolated within the school’ (O’Hear in BBC News 2004).

To conclude, I believe these issue could reflect on my own practice tremedously because digital literacy is of growing importance to today’s children and teachers should involve this within their teaching to reap numerous benefits; building confidence, develops connection with the journey, and increases a feeling of success when a destination is approached (Rylands 2013).

 Bibliography

BBC News (2004) The seven-year-old bloggers http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3804773.stm (accessed 06/02/13)

Halsey, S. (2007) ‘Embracing emergent technologies and envisioning new ways of using them for literacy learning in the primary classroom’ English Teaching; Practice and Critique 6 (2) pp 99-107

 Merchant, G. (2009) Literacy in virtual worlds Journal of Research in Reading Vol 32, Issue 1, pp.38-56

  Millard, E. & Marsh, J. (2001) ‘Sending Minnie the minx home: comics and reading choices’ Cambridge Journal of Education

 Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008) Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation of Digital Natives New York: Basic Books

Ryland, T. (2013) http://www.timrylands.com/ (accessed 06/02/13)

 The 21^st century Fluency Project Understanding Digital Kids II 

Does the use of comics and graphic novels (hard copy/electronic versions) within the primary literacy curriculum undermine the values of the classroom or do they offer opportunities for learning?

Does the use of comics and graphic novels (hard copy/electronic versions) within the primary literacy curriculum undermine the values of the classroom or do they offer opportunities for learning?

Comics have attracted a lot of criticism for their literary opportunities. Many believe that there is a need for censorship and in some cases complete banning (Millard and Marsh, 2001). It is widely seen that if children choose to read comics instead of ‘traditional’ literature they are “denying themselves encounters with more ‘nourishing’ material” (Millard and Marsh, 2001:25). Millard and Marsh (2001) state that in the majority of cases they are only used within the classroom in wet playtimes.

However, there are many benefits for teaching literacy using comics. They are engaging and give children motivation to read (Millard and Marsh, 2001),they  promote reading for pleasure and could help teachers become more comfortable with using digital literacy and popular culture in the classroom (Education Scotland: online). It could be a gateway into children reading the ‘less engaging’ texts of the traditional classroom.

However, it must be noted that many comics are aimed at an older age-range than Primary, and therefore when being introduced into the classroom, they need to be assessed by teachers for inappropriate content like violence, swearing, adult content and sexualisation (Stafford, 2009).

Education Scotland (online) lists ways in which comics have been used in their curriculum, for example; used to teach layout and structure of story; moving from reading comics to writing them; and using them for debate and tackling issues in Citizenship. Stafford (2009) also promotes the use of comics, suggesting that they are indeed a challenging media to read themselves and can be used with comprehension – they pictures being used to help with inferential, deductive and evaluative questions.

Whilst on the second year placement in school, their current topic was superheroes. Therefore a lot of their activities involved reading comics, writing captions and speech bubbles. It was seen by teacher, pupils’ and parents as one of the best topics they did and that it created so many literary opportunities as well as other curriculum opportunities like PSHE and Citizenship.

 

Millard, E. & Marsh, J. (2001) Sending Minnie the Minx Home: comics and reading choices Cambridge Journal of Education 31:1

Learning and Teaching Scotland: Graphic Novels in the Curriculum http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/resources/g/graphicnovels

Stafford, T. (2009) ‘Teaching comics’ in Duncan, D. (2009) Teaching Children’s Literature: Making stories work in classrooms Abingdon: Routledge

Week 3

Does the use of comics and graphic novels within the primary literacy curriculum undermine the values of the classroom or do they offer opportunities for learning?

 

Comics have been found to contribute to children’s literacy development (Guzzetti, 2007).  However, this view is not shared by everyone, comics have received sever criticism and even banning at times (Millard and Marsh, 2001).

Millard and Marsh (2001) claimed that comics rarely appear on the classroom shelves.  Some teachers choose to exclude comics, due to believing that children deserve better quality reading matters and the concerns of the suitability of the content (Millard and Marsh, 2001 and Stafford, 2009). Comics have been viewed to undermine reading skills (Educational Scotland). This could be due to people believing illustrations are only used for children who are unable to read (Millard and Marsh, 2001). However, teachers reported in Millard and Marsh’s (2001) research that, some children’s reading development improved due to the comic project. Graphic novels and comics have encouraged and motivated children to want to read (Educational Scotland and Milliard & Marsh, 2001). This view was shared with a teacher who believed that using comics/ graphic novels in Literacy would motivate a child who sometimes needed encouragement to complete the work. As comics play an important part of the child’s daily life.

Comic books and graphic novels have been used to support children’s Literacy development (QCA/UKLA, 2005).  The QCA/ UKLA’s (2005) research shows how comics and graphic novels can be used to develop children’s: comprehension, understanding of developing a narrative for the reader and punctuation. I had not thought about using comics and graphic novels to develop children’s comprehension. However, the QCA/UKLA has influenced me to use comics/ graphic novels for children who need to develop their inference skills within my planning. This could be achieved by using speech and thought bubbles. A teacher who had taken part in Millard and Marsh’s (2001) research stated that, comics were beneficial as it encouraged the children to read both visual and print elements. This is supported by Rakes (1999, cited in Frey and Fisher, 2008) who claimed that, combining visuals and text can improve children’s comprehension development.  This could be due to children drawing on their experiences when looking at the illustrations (QCA/UKLA, 2005).

 

Frey, N.E and Fisher, D.B. (2008) Teaching Visual Literacy London: Sage

Guzzetti, B. (2007) Literacy for the new Millennium Westport: Praeger Publishers

Learning and Teaching Scotland: Graphic Novels in the Curriculum http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/resources/g/graphicnovels/intro.asp

Millard and Marsh (2001) ‘Sending Minnie the Minx Home: comics and reading choices’ Cambridge Journal of Education, 31:1, 25 – 38

Stafford, T. (2009) ‘Teaching Comics’ in Duncan, D. (2009) Teaching Children’s Literature: Making stories work in the classroom Abingdon: Routledge

QCA/UKLA (2005) More than words 2: Creating Stories on page and screen. London: QCA.