Emotional Literacy Through Scrapblog

1) YOUR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING:

How has your conceptual understanding of literacy changed since beginning this class?  How does your research on a new literacy and development of your own digital literacy (using your new technology) inform your thinking? What new knowledge, skills, strategies and dispositions are you now aware of, and how do these compare/contrast with more traditional literacies?

When I entered college, I believed that literacy could only refer to, as I’d originally stated on our ‘literacy definitions page,’ the gaining and manipulating of language.  Literacy had everything to do with reading and writing: a literate person could read and write, and an illiterate person could not do either.  To me, literacy, back then, was black and white.  In my consideration of becoming a high school English teacher, I took a class (ENG408) that helped gray-ify literacy, and caused me to see that literacy is more a synonym for mastery or discovery... of any area, be it football, working a desk job, reading another language, or understanding the nuances and production of a technology!  So my UNDERSTANDING of literacy had already been changed prior to this class, but I now was fortunate enough to develop this understanding more with my experimentation of two new literacies: emotional literacy, and scrapblog literacy!

I had tweeted that learning how to use scrapblog was like learning how to read all over again, and I could not second that statement any more!  Just as I had to master my letter-sounds, my comprehension, my vocabulary, etc. in order to gain ELA literacy, scrapblog required a knowledge of text tools, inserting photos and stickers, creating a cohesive design from slide to slide that did not clash, etc.  I am proud of the product that I put forth, but know that I have a long way to go in order to gain full literacy of scrapblog, particularly with the “blog” aspect.  Scrapblogs can be shared, reviewed, etc., and so far, my scrapblog experience has been concentrated upon finishing the product, and not with the social interaction that it can bring.  Maybe in my future teacher endeavors, I will have scrapblog literacy, and will use scrapblog in this way, and collaborate and bounce ideas off of others in the field, to give my students the best instruction!

Researching emotional literacy gave me an ability to reflect upon the learning that I had already done, with the lens of a teacher.  With every positive statistic, every idea that emotional literacy brought to the classroom, I couldn’t help but wonder why my schools had not implemented such a program.  As I’d stated in my new literacies proposal, I was bullied in elementary school, and struggled to have control, or literacy, over my own emotions.  I somehow concentrated all of my efforts, then, on school, but I knew of so many other girls who were being picked on that did not have this ability.  I actually focused upon my ELA literacy, poring over books, writing stories (that may have been far higher than the level of my bullies).  And even with my ability to concentrate on school, my social skills and want and ability to make friends, aka my social literacy, truly fell by the wayside.  I knew that this kind of instruction, the ability to reflect upon my feelings, would absolutely have benefited me as a coping mechanism, but upon further research with emotional literacy and the success that it has with full school communities, I may not have had a reason to cope!  I found out that emotional literacy means both being able to handle your own emotions, as well as others, and an ability to reflect upon why we do the things we do, or think the things we think, and come up with a plan in order to deal with these feelings in a constructive manner.  My bullies would have benefited from this training, and maybe would have left me alone!  As a former victim of bullying, I have always considered myself to be an advocate of everything anti-bullying related, and a voice to the bullied, but I now see that the bullies need just as much help as the bullied.  With my newfound emotional literacy, I ask myself: Why do bullies need to act out?  What is going on with their emotional state?  How can I create a classroom atmosphere that eliminates bullying?  I believe the answer to these questions lies within instruction in social and emotional literacy.  Sure, the ELA literacy that I concentrated upon helped me as a student, but I would have been a much more well-rounded 4th grader if I had the opportunity to become literate in other areas.

2) EFFECTIVE LITERACY INSTRUCTION:

What does it mean to provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners?  How does your research on a new literacy and development of your own digital literacy (using your new technology) inform your thinking?

Providing effective literacy instruction to diverse learners extends far past what I wrote on my concept map, which included “grammar” “spelling” “vocabulary” “reading” “writing” and other things that specifically described effective ELA literacy instruction.  Effective literacy instruction does indeed include these items, as students need mastery of such items in order to gain ELA literacy, but even within the guidelines of ELA literacy lie plenty of opportunity to teach other, new literacies.  For example, my GLCE for my kindergarten/1st grade literature lesson was “students will make text-to-self connections to the story by each sharing an example of how they can get along with one another and help their friends or siblings in a small group setting.”  The text-to-self connections, of course, is part of ELA literacy, but not ELA literacy alone.  Students with emotional literacy will make stronger emotional ties to the characters in the text, and be able to identify WHY they make these ties.  Students with cultural, political, numeracy, visual, etc. literacies will be able to reflect upon their own views of these literacies in relation to the cultural/political aspects, or the pictures, etc.  And students who may struggle with ELA literacy as a separate identity may find that when paired with other literacies, really shine.  I know that I have friends who struggle to write papers and comprehend passages, but could figure out how to work scrapblog in an instant.  Are their abilities with technology less valid than my ELA literacy?  Certainly not!  In this day and age, jobs require diverse sets of skills, and students need to be prepared with these skills!  If my learners are diverse, so must be my literacy instruction!

In order for my students to successfully create a scrapblog about emotional literacy, they would need to have some digital literacy, such as how to use a mouse, how to drag and drop items, how to save files, how to search for pictures on the internet, etc.  I know that some of my students have these things under control, but others need help with working a mouse.  In order to gain emotional literacy, my students would need to have an open mind, and would need to be able to speak and listen.  For this age group, I do not think that reading and writing would be the most important or most accessible skills for them to have in order to understand this literacy, especially since my instruction is done in Spanish, and the students know how to listen and speak, but cannot yet read and/or write with fluidity in Spanish OR English.  Forcing them to do so would turn the lesson into strictly an ELA lesson, when the material would, in fact, be either developing scrapblog literacy, or emotional literacy!  Students would need to listen to instruction as to what emotional literacy is, listen to directions of activities, and be able to express themselves in a healthy way.  They would then need to reflect upon these activities and emotions to represent them in a digital format.

I would want my students to deeply identify the emotions of a character in Tacky the Penguin, and represent this emotion in a 1-3 page scrapblog.  As previously stated, they would need to be able to have some kind of emotional literacy to identify the character’s emotions, and how they came to this identification, as well as an ability to use scrapblog’s sticker, design, photo features, and to express whether they would like help in constructing a way in which to write their thoughts on the scrapblog.  I would certainly have to provide them with the support they need to do this, if not direct instruction!

3) LESSON PLAN:

Outline a brief lesson plan that takes an integrated approach to helping students at your grade level learn something new that would help them be successful in using the new technology to teach their peers about a new literacy.

Target area and rationale: Emotional Literacy in Tacky the Penguin.  My students are currently very adept at being able to identify a character’s emotion with one word, usually based upon the pictures in the book.  Giving my students the experience with identifying emotions in themselves and peers, and working with emotion will give them the tools to really identify a character’s emotion, how they know the character has this emotion, and why the character may feel this way.  They will be encouraged to give more than one word responses, and will be asked to consider the text, instead of just the pictures.  This kind of instruction falls under the ELA literacy feature “comprehension,” as well.  Students will also be asked to use scrapblog in order to represent this emotion in a visual, digital realm.  Many of the students in my classroom, when asked to share, digress away from the story.  It is my hope that focusing their efforts upon emotion and scrapblog will allow them to keep their ideas within the confines of what relates to the story.  Why/how would this area be needed for your learners to learn to use the technology to teach peers about the new literacy?

List your objective(s): Students will identify the character’s emotion, how they know the character’s emotion and why the character feels this way, and represent and explore these ideas on a scrapblog page (or few scrapblog pages.)
List the materials and supplies needed: copy of Tacky the Penguin, scrapblog access, computers for each student, chalkboard, chalk
Outline of key events (use bullets):
-teacher will read Tacky the Penguin
-teacher will then ask students to consider a character, identify their emotion, and ask how they know they feel this way
-teacher will then show students an example (from a different book, one the students had already read together) of a scrapblog page that shows the character’s emotion, how we know, and why (s)he feels that way
-teacher will ask students to consider a character, and these three things
-students will go to their individual computers
-teacher will go through sign-in for scrapblog and a few basics (saving, text, photo, shapes) - because the students are in kindergarten, the teacher will have previously uploaded pictures for them to use, so they do not have to search the internet for them
-teacher will provide support to students while they explore the character’s emotions through this format
Closing summary:  The teacher will ask if the students think it is important to not only understand character’s emotions, but their own emotions and why.  The teacher will ask students to consider if the story were real life and their character understood his/her emotions more fully, if the result would have been different.
Ongoing assessment:  Challenge students to consider, in every text, HOW they know every character’s emotions, and WHY they may be feeling this way, instead of focusing upon solely identifying an emotion based upon a text’s picture.  If students are doing this, they are not only comprehending the text, but gaining their own emotional literacy as well!