Xu- Introduction - Trading Cards to Comic Strips Introduction

Xu is exemplifing the home and school connection through pop culture for many kinds of Literactices. Teachers can use this information to help motivate their students in classroom situations.

An example of the home connection of literacies would be my following information. While at a garage sale, I found a whole sack of Blues Clues VHS vidoes for one dollar each which I gave to my grandchildren. They, including their mother, still talk about the birthday parties where their mom made up her own clues for a treasure hunts for my grandchildren. Much excitement, listening to clues, and thinking about the location to go to next were involved. Then they could make up their own clues for their own game, also.

Another example would be the school connection. This past week our fourth grade class used the internet web site google to look up famous mountain men of the west. This was a high interest search. I could see much excitment generated by this activity when they found pictures as well as music in the hpertext they were viewing. One problem that appeared that a couple of boys got off track on hyperlinks that lead away from the main idea of the search. Their purpose was to find information and write down notes that answered specific questions.