Hall, L. (2011). How popular culture texts inform and shape students' discussions of social studies texts.                                

               Journal of Adolescent And Adult Literacy, 296-305.

 

Johnson, H., Watson, P., Delahunty, T., McSwiggen, P., & Smith , T. (2011). What it is they do: Differentiating knowledge and literacy practices across content disciplines. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 100-109.

I don’t know why these Blogs are so hard for me to write, more like intimidating.  I’m not much of a writer- or even a free flowing non-structured writer at that.  I never really know what to say.  I am much more of a reader- I’ve already started on book number two in the science section of our book list.  I also knocked out each Harry Potter book the day that it came out… not that I am bragging or anything. J I just enjoy reading because the text is already down on the page for me.

The first article I read was, “How Popular Culture Texts Inform and Shape Students’ Discussions of Social Studies Texts.” I really enjoyed reading this article. It was not just information after information like some of the other articles. It actually had examples of the points the author was trying to prove which made it very relatable to me.  I like to hear about the examples.  I thought it was really cool that the girl named Emily in the article used her prior knowledge about arches to understand Roman architecture.  Whoever thought McDonalds would be helping children out in school?! I do have to agree with Emily though, whenever I think about arches those golden ones are always the first ones to come to my mind.

I also thought it was really interesting how the students thought that if something is in a movie it is automatically not real.  Specifically when they were talking about if Atlantis was real or not one of the students said it wasn’t because it’s a movie and another student agreed because he said it is also a video game. Thomas jumped to a conclusion and said, “Cool. So, yep, not real.” Pop culture can be both beneficial in the classroom and also harmful. If students jump to quick conclusions, they will be hurting themselves in the long wrong. Students need to be able to distinguish between the non-fiction and fiction in pop culture texts.

Another interesting topic of debate is with the girls not being allowed to be sailors. A student brought up that you never see girl sailors in movies so they must not have been allowed. I actually think this is very humorous. Pop culture portrays women to be helpless and not equals to men. Robert said: “Right. Girls don’t explore. They stay home, or they get saved.” Robert does have a point, because women in movies are more often than not portrayed like that. And just because Eric and Robert made a case to Linda about girls not being in those movies or video games, it made Linda reconsider what she was thinking just because those two had evidence in movies/games.

The second article I am blogging about is “What It is They Do: Differentiating Knowledge and Literacy Practices Across Content Disciplines.”  I also really liked this article. I find it really interesting how much Math and Geography are really similar in how they are taught. The article thoroughly explains how we are shifting to disciplinary literacy. This somewhat confused me throughout the article because I wasn’t really sure what it was referring to.  The disciplinary approach was defined as, “a more complex view of literacy instruction that addresses the literacy demands specific to content areas and is based in the belief that deep knowledge of a discipline is best acquired by engaging in the literate habits valued and used by experts in that discipline (p.101)” Wait what? This has to be the most confusing definition ever.

I did however relate to one of the points made in the article. “Students often question why they have to learn about reading if they are going to teach math, science, social studies, art, music, or physical education “(p.102). I definitely had this thought process growing up. “Why do I have to learn this. It will never be useful to me.” While I did THINK this, I never said it out loud in class like some of my other classmates did. Even in my math classes, “Why do we have to learn about derivatives? Who uses this stuff in everyday life?” The article does mention how teachers have to be EXPERTS. I guess teachers do have to be really smart in almost every subject. It would just stink to have a math teacher who could not communicate well. But hey it happens.

I thought the articles were very interesting this week. I’m trying to be better about this whole blogging thing so hopefully I did a lot better than last week!!