Chapter 6
Trading Cards to Comic Strips
Xu, Perkins, and Zunich
Mary’s comment that she needs to keep informed about student’s literacy interests outside of school is important. Because this can be the driving force in motivating the children’s literacy work. I suggest that another way to collect this information about what children like besides show and tell would be a questionnaire that the children fill out.
It is interesting to note that although this book was written by Xu, Perkins, and Zunich in 1964, I have noticed several of our classroom children’s conversations that link to the literacies of Yu-Gi-Oh cards and movies, Pokemon, and Japanese animations or (anime). One child had drawn his own Yu-Gi-Oh character on a card and had given it characteristics. I will have to admit that I am not very knowledgeable about these topics presently but now I have new motivation to learn about it.
I think that a motivating activity for our class would be to make trading cards for either their characters that they study in the Wyoming History fiction books or for the Mountain Men they are writing about. This could be a culminating activity of a unit.
While looking at Webs sites last week, I discovered the Website with the planets and solar system trading cards. These would be fun to print out in color and have students add the important information about each.
Shelly wanted ideas of how I could do something differently than in the text. What I would suggest is to use the movie “Cinderfellow,an old Jerry Lewis Movie and compare that to the Cinderella stories.
I liked the ways that U WYO student teachers used modern literacies by teaching the “Literature Circles” on the internet program using camera’s, microphones, and children from two schools.
The different types of questions that are available in this textbook would be helpful in preparing for different kinds of Literacy experiences, too. Questions regarding “researchers of language”, guiding questions, deep viewing questions, considering other perspective questions, and finally questions regarding “My Idol” are excellent resources to have available.
After watching an old movie The Sahara, I would be able to look the question lists over in the text book and select the questions that fit it. The theme is about a woman Dr. in Africa who finds people dying and discovers that the cause was a poisoned water supply. There were treasure hunters in that area searching for treasure. They joined forces and solved the problem. The set of questions that I selected for this movie were the Lester (1995) set of questions.
I wrote a summary of this article but then decided to write about the ways that I could use the information instead.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Scavenger Hunts: Searching for Treasure on the Internet
Web Site Review
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr113.shtml
Sample Page of Questions regarding Penguins Around the World
http://www.education-world.com/a-lesson/hunt/images/hunt066.pdf
The Scavenger Hunt is recommended as an excellent way to start students in an easy manner in initially searching for information on the Internet. This particular site says it has three good goals. They are problem solving, improving reading comprehension, and learning to search on the Internet.
Teachers will find it is easy to create a Scavenger Hunt for any curriculum and age but if they desire, they can use the Lesson Plan site to find ones already made.
If you happen to start on the Education World’s Home page, click lesson plans, and the Internet Scavenger Hunts. This will take you to their monthly organization of topics to select a lesson plan. January alone had eleven plans but number varied for different months. From the Curriculum page, the URL that I listed was a sample lesson plan that I examined on “Ants Go Marching…Into Your Lesson Plans”. There were approximately 35 questions that varied in difficulty for different grade levels. The question levels were grade 2 – 4, 4 – 6, and 6 on. The URL’s were given for the student to find the answers.
To broaden the children’s experiences, Language Arts Activities were listed. One was an URL address to watch an Ant Farm and then the child could send an E-Postcard with two comments about what they learned to a friend.
Seven additional “Ant ernet” Resources were included. One was “Ants On A Log”, a tasty treat and The Ant and the Grasshopper,an Aesop Fable to read with a particular lesson to learn.
At the end of all the sites was the nice feature of all the questions being answered.
Scavenger Hunts are recommended as a whole class, a team, a review or a challenge activity. This is a comfortable way to help children begin using the Internet to search out answers to questions. It is a way to help teachers who are new at using the Internet to begin using it, also.
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr113.shtml
Sample Page of Questions regarding Penguins Around the World
http://www.education-world.com/a-lesson/hunt/images/hunt066.pdf
The Scavenger Hunt is recommended as an excellent way to start students in an easy manner in initially searching for information on the Internet. This particular site says it has three good goals. They are problem solving, improving reading comprehension, and learning to search on the Internet.
Teachers will find it is easy to create a Scavenger Hunt for any curriculum and age but if they desire, they can use the Lesson Plan site to find ones already made.
If you happen to start on the Education World’s Home page, click lesson plans, and the Internet Scavenger Hunts. This will take you to their monthly organization of topics to select a lesson plan. January alone had eleven plans but number varied for different months. From the Curriculum page, the URL that I listed was a sample lesson plan that I examined on “Ants Go Marching…Into Your Lesson Plans”. There were approximately 35 questions that varied in difficulty for different grade levels. The question levels were grade 2 – 4, 4 – 6, and 6 on. The URL’s were given for the student to find the answers.
To broaden the children’s experiences, Language Arts Activities were listed. One was an URL address to watch an Ant Farm and then the child could send an E-Postcard with two comments about what they learned to a friend.
Seven additional “Ant ernet” Resources were included. One was “Ants On A Log”, a tasty treat and The Ant and the Grasshopper,an Aesop Fable to read with a particular lesson to learn.
At the end of all the sites was the nice feature of all the questions being answered.
Scavenger Hunts are recommended as a whole class, a team, a review or a challenge activity. This is a comfortable way to help children begin using the Internet to search out answers to questions. It is a way to help teachers who are new at using the Internet to begin using it, also.
Social Studies: A World of Possibilities
Chapter 6:
Teaching with the Internet K-12: New Literacies for New Times
As I thumbed through this text book I found math a couple of chapters away and was wishing we were reading it for this assignment as our PAWS test is right after Spring Break in March. But I hurriedly jotted down a couple of math web sites that would be helpful at this point.
I took a good look at the five goals to reach by reading this chapter. Several sites were reviewed and some of the sites listed. The following is the information that I was able to compile regarding those goals.
The Library of Congress site, I found did not readily give me the information that I was looking for on Wyoming or Western History and mountain men so I went on to check out two other sites. At the American West.com site Copyrighted 2007 was found information that covered Archaeology, Cowboys, Critters, Emigrants, Expansion, and Films. Early and more recent western films were reviewed. Then the other site which was the Best History Site was exceptional and easy to use. Many periods of history were listed. I checked on the Westward Expansion and then the West Lesson Plans which listed Native Americans, Railroads, Images of the West, the Donner Party, Gold Rush, Lewis and Clark, and the Trail of Hope. The Donner Party included a map, review of a film, and a transcript of the film.
Since I had not previously ventured into an Internet Project Registry site, I looked at a few of these sites. One of the Project Registry sites I found most useable and applicable for our curriculum and fourth grade class was the Global School Net Projects Registry at www.gsn.org/pr/index.cfm. I liked the fact that you could select an age level to use as criteria to research. The site I found useable for our class was the Native American Tribes of North America unit. You can register for it beginning on the date of 9-5-06. The project will continue until 6-16-08. At this site children can share the information that they learn regarding the tribe with other classes. This covers the culture, community, history, Social Studies and the technology used. Available sharing formats were listed as E-mail, List Server, Desktop Doc, Sharing Text, Stories, essays, and letters. From this site, I copied all eighteen active project sites listed to share with teachers.
The other site that I liked was the Australian site that has Flat Stanley listed. This is the Oz Project Web Site. They listed “Gator Tales” which would have been fun to complete. This site was outdated but a good sample of where two classes shared state history, culture, population, and symbols. For participating in this activity, you would have received a stuffed alligator from Florida where the project originated. This activity would have been most appropriate for our class.
Finally, personally I wanted information on “Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid it”. http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml. This site was written more for college, Sr. or Jr. High School level but I discovered the examples were excellent. The article clearly defined to me what plagiarism is. This information could be condensed and passed on to younger children.
Then the awareness issue was raised about a site’s authenticity. “Teaching Zack to Think” was a very good example of what can happen when individuals are not aware that the site is not an authentic one. He obtained some false information regarding the Holocaust. (Several examples were given of checking on the author, evaluating the address, and looking for information regarding the author.) Zack had run into the awareness issue where the author was a holocaust denier and who was a hate monger. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/index.cfm
Finally, evaluating “Webpages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask” was clearly located on a Berkeley University Library tutorial for a scholarly full text evaluation of content online. A five minute review of a site, with questions, helped decide whether or not it was scholarly work exemplified. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/
Then for anyone person who is working on their graduate paper the St.
Martin’s online citations were a very comprehensive source for writing styles from the MLA, Chicago, APA, CBE, to the on line styles for www, E-mail, Listserv and Telenet.
Last of all another helpful feature was how to place PC Web address files into folders in the “Favorite Site”. Recently I set up several different folder headings and have placed my files into these special folders in my favorites at my home. Then when I get back to school, I will attempt help set up folders for the Bookmarks with the Mac computers so that I can assist the teachers in learning how to obtain this skill using the folders to store similar bookmarks.
This Social Studies Chapter had a lot of meat to it. It took time to search it out and digest it all.
Teaching with the Internet K-12: New Literacies for New Times
As I thumbed through this text book I found math a couple of chapters away and was wishing we were reading it for this assignment as our PAWS test is right after Spring Break in March. But I hurriedly jotted down a couple of math web sites that would be helpful at this point.
I took a good look at the five goals to reach by reading this chapter. Several sites were reviewed and some of the sites listed. The following is the information that I was able to compile regarding those goals.
The Library of Congress site, I found did not readily give me the information that I was looking for on Wyoming or Western History and mountain men so I went on to check out two other sites. At the American West.com site Copyrighted 2007 was found information that covered Archaeology, Cowboys, Critters, Emigrants, Expansion, and Films. Early and more recent western films were reviewed. Then the other site which was the Best History Site was exceptional and easy to use. Many periods of history were listed. I checked on the Westward Expansion and then the West Lesson Plans which listed Native Americans, Railroads, Images of the West, the Donner Party, Gold Rush, Lewis and Clark, and the Trail of Hope. The Donner Party included a map, review of a film, and a transcript of the film.
Since I had not previously ventured into an Internet Project Registry site, I looked at a few of these sites. One of the Project Registry sites I found most useable and applicable for our curriculum and fourth grade class was the Global School Net Projects Registry at www.gsn.org/pr/index.cfm. I liked the fact that you could select an age level to use as criteria to research. The site I found useable for our class was the Native American Tribes of North America unit. You can register for it beginning on the date of 9-5-06. The project will continue until 6-16-08. At this site children can share the information that they learn regarding the tribe with other classes. This covers the culture, community, history, Social Studies and the technology used. Available sharing formats were listed as E-mail, List Server, Desktop Doc, Sharing Text, Stories, essays, and letters. From this site, I copied all eighteen active project sites listed to share with teachers.
The other site that I liked was the Australian site that has Flat Stanley listed. This is the Oz Project Web Site. They listed “Gator Tales” which would have been fun to complete. This site was outdated but a good sample of where two classes shared state history, culture, population, and symbols. For participating in this activity, you would have received a stuffed alligator from Florida where the project originated. This activity would have been most appropriate for our class.
Finally, personally I wanted information on “Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid it”. http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml. This site was written more for college, Sr. or Jr. High School level but I discovered the examples were excellent. The article clearly defined to me what plagiarism is. This information could be condensed and passed on to younger children.
Then the awareness issue was raised about a site’s authenticity. “Teaching Zack to Think” was a very good example of what can happen when individuals are not aware that the site is not an authentic one. He obtained some false information regarding the Holocaust. (Several examples were given of checking on the author, evaluating the address, and looking for information regarding the author.) Zack had run into the awareness issue where the author was a holocaust denier and who was a hate monger. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/index.cfm
Finally, evaluating “Webpages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask” was clearly located on a Berkeley University Library tutorial for a scholarly full text evaluation of content online. A five minute review of a site, with questions, helped decide whether or not it was scholarly work exemplified. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/
Then for anyone person who is working on their graduate paper the St.
Martin’s online citations were a very comprehensive source for writing styles from the MLA, Chicago, APA, CBE, to the on line styles for www, E-mail, Listserv and Telenet.
Last of all another helpful feature was how to place PC Web address files into folders in the “Favorite Site”. Recently I set up several different folder headings and have placed my files into these special folders in my favorites at my home. Then when I get back to school, I will attempt help set up folders for the Bookmarks with the Mac computers so that I can assist the teachers in learning how to obtain this skill using the folders to store similar bookmarks.
This Social Studies Chapter had a lot of meat to it. It took time to search it out and digest it all.
Gaining Knowledge of Popular Culture Texts
Chapter Five
Trading Cards to Comic Strips – Shelley XU
While showing several girls in the class the International Library Reading Site at recess time, I experienced a similar scenario as the teacher in Vignette 5.1. One child was familiar with the site and knew how to enlarge the text to make it large enough to be readable. She said, “Just hit the X key and it will enlarge.” Sure enough it had to be hit several times but each time it enlarged a bit more. We do learn from the children that we work with.
It was interesting to view the documentation charts of a child and teacher regarding the engagement of texts in each of their lives. It is no wonder there is at times a communication gap between elders and children. Unless an effort is made by both to cross over in sharing media text, neither will understand what the other is absorbing in text materials.
When television was compared to film text it was found that they are quite similar. It did mention five or so differences. While a film has a complete story in one episode, the television may not. For me a movie theater is often times too loud. I would prefer a quieter setting. Although in film watching, I do appreciate the bigger than life scenes. Then my oldest son really enjoys watching the CD’s because of all the additional information that is gained. He enjoys the information learned about the making of the movie such as the trailer for making the movie, the process of making the movie, seeing unedited scenes, hearing the sound track, learning the historical background, and listening to the interview with the cast and crew.
Hypermedia text has so many links to other text types that a person has to be careful or he’ll end up where he doesn’t want to be. An individual can begin at the top, bottom, side, or middle of the page to read and to link into other sites. Then one link can lead to another and another and another. Sometimes all the links have to be checked out to locate the information you want. When you find the information, you had better book mark it or else you might not be able to find it again.
Rap music has been mentioned a lot in this and the other text. At our school we have a talent day. Not any of our children have come up with Rap music as their talent. So this leads me to say that there would be much more interest in Western Music or popular music in this particular community of children. I am certain that these lesson could be adapted to other musical genres. Although, a Reading Coach indicated that she had heard some jiving rap recently coming from a K – 3 room.
It’s been years since I have read a comic book but I do enjoy reading the Cartoon Strips every Sunday. The term Mangas was new to me but I have probably see these in book stores but wasn’t particularly interested in buying any of them. It’s been not too long ago that I noticed a graphic novel section in a bookstore and thought it was rather novel and different. Again I wasn’t interested enough in it to buy it.
When in elementary school my youngest son collected baseball and football cards of his favorite teams and exchanged them with friends. He still has boxes of cards. I am sure that if he would check the value of each card, he would find that the value has increased.
My oldest son had Play Station games and at thirty-nine years of age still enjoys playing these types of games. I want to copy a couple of these pages of text regarding gaming for him to view. It would be interesting to see what his comments are about the probe, hypothesize, reprobe, and rethink cycles in gaming.
When I saw the term “Zine and E-Zine”, I wondered what is this? So it appears that they are E-magazines written by and for women and teens as support in the many facets of life – social issues, liberal politics, humor, entertainment, reviews, and personal reflections. Participation in discussion groups can occur in this setting very readily.
All in all the author states that we will notice that popular culture text apply similar literacy knowledge and skills as they do with print-based texts. So outside of school, children who read the popular cultural text do get additional reading practice. It is just that in the past, it appears to me, that the students have not gotten to share this information about what they know in the classroom.
Trading Cards to Comic Strips – Shelley XU
While showing several girls in the class the International Library Reading Site at recess time, I experienced a similar scenario as the teacher in Vignette 5.1. One child was familiar with the site and knew how to enlarge the text to make it large enough to be readable. She said, “Just hit the X key and it will enlarge.” Sure enough it had to be hit several times but each time it enlarged a bit more. We do learn from the children that we work with.
It was interesting to view the documentation charts of a child and teacher regarding the engagement of texts in each of their lives. It is no wonder there is at times a communication gap between elders and children. Unless an effort is made by both to cross over in sharing media text, neither will understand what the other is absorbing in text materials.
When television was compared to film text it was found that they are quite similar. It did mention five or so differences. While a film has a complete story in one episode, the television may not. For me a movie theater is often times too loud. I would prefer a quieter setting. Although in film watching, I do appreciate the bigger than life scenes. Then my oldest son really enjoys watching the CD’s because of all the additional information that is gained. He enjoys the information learned about the making of the movie such as the trailer for making the movie, the process of making the movie, seeing unedited scenes, hearing the sound track, learning the historical background, and listening to the interview with the cast and crew.
Hypermedia text has so many links to other text types that a person has to be careful or he’ll end up where he doesn’t want to be. An individual can begin at the top, bottom, side, or middle of the page to read and to link into other sites. Then one link can lead to another and another and another. Sometimes all the links have to be checked out to locate the information you want. When you find the information, you had better book mark it or else you might not be able to find it again.
Rap music has been mentioned a lot in this and the other text. At our school we have a talent day. Not any of our children have come up with Rap music as their talent. So this leads me to say that there would be much more interest in Western Music or popular music in this particular community of children. I am certain that these lesson could be adapted to other musical genres. Although, a Reading Coach indicated that she had heard some jiving rap recently coming from a K – 3 room.
It’s been years since I have read a comic book but I do enjoy reading the Cartoon Strips every Sunday. The term Mangas was new to me but I have probably see these in book stores but wasn’t particularly interested in buying any of them. It’s been not too long ago that I noticed a graphic novel section in a bookstore and thought it was rather novel and different. Again I wasn’t interested enough in it to buy it.
When in elementary school my youngest son collected baseball and football cards of his favorite teams and exchanged them with friends. He still has boxes of cards. I am sure that if he would check the value of each card, he would find that the value has increased.
My oldest son had Play Station games and at thirty-nine years of age still enjoys playing these types of games. I want to copy a couple of these pages of text regarding gaming for him to view. It would be interesting to see what his comments are about the probe, hypothesize, reprobe, and rethink cycles in gaming.
When I saw the term “Zine and E-Zine”, I wondered what is this? So it appears that they are E-magazines written by and for women and teens as support in the many facets of life – social issues, liberal politics, humor, entertainment, reviews, and personal reflections. Participation in discussion groups can occur in this setting very readily.
All in all the author states that we will notice that popular culture text apply similar literacy knowledge and skills as they do with print-based texts. So outside of school, children who read the popular cultural text do get additional reading practice. It is just that in the past, it appears to me, that the students have not gotten to share this information about what they know in the classroom.
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