This course gave me the foundation of literary learning pedagogy, that in retrospect, was lacking from the literature in the digital environment course. I feel more confident in my pedagogies using literary texts to promote student learning and advocate for their use to teachers and colleagues I work with. The learning outlined in this course has given me more of a powerful overview of different genres of texts and their capabilities for learning across many different subject areas, as well as extended learning about social issues, culture, and global issues.

I have learned about the value of incorporating transmedia into students’ literary learning opportunities and transforming literacy capabilities across platforms, and that these have the power to make any topic more powerful and personal (Gogan & Marcus, 2013; Loertscher & Wools, 2014; Whitin, 2009). The goal of narratives and the enjoyment of reading comes from connecting to texts on personal, social, and cultural levels (Loertscher &Wools, 2014; McDonald, 2013) and this will be at the forefront of my mind when planning choices of literature in the future lessons. I feel more strongly now about children’s access to quality literature and their rights as readers (International Literacy Association, n.d.). All of this has contributed to feeling more informed and able to advocate for children’s literary learning in my context. This was a hope of mine mentioned from my initial blog post upon undertaking this course (Ries, 2020).

Something I’ve been able to expand upon is my repertoire of literature response activities from the concrete examples explored in Module 6. I always held the read-aloud as most valuable, like Barone (2010) mentions, most adults remember a moment in their schooling when a teacher read aloud to them, this holds true for me. Through Assessment 2, I was able to extend upon ways to leverage reading aloud quality texts related to topics planned for through activities such as book bento boxes or book trailers. These literary responses can complement your typical read-aloud and be used for inquiry-based learning or project-based learning methods.

As someone who is not a librarian, nor studying to become one, this was a challenge of this course at some points for me. For example, in Assignment, I did not dive as deeply into the role of the teacher-librarian as was expected. I found this difficult as it’s not an area of interest for me. Taking a technology integrationist perspective, who works very closely with the librarian is what worked for me, irrespective of the points I lost in this assignment. Despite this, I feel I have learned much about the importance of literary learning and I am equipped with many future ideas for coteaching with teacher librarians I will work closely with. I was able to extend my learning of knowledge networks and information landscapes (Valenza, 2010) I am a more avid user of Goodreads now as one simple example.

I have a newfound respect for the realm of the school library, and how it really can become the heart of a school’s learning. The way that the library can become the heart of a school is to honor the education of the whole child and learners from all walks of life (Johnson, 2018). My hope for the future of our school library is to be able to provide more culturally diverse books and also fiction titles, researched from Assessment 2, to incorporate into digital citizenship learning. I am excited to be able to give colleagues my literary learning resource kit when we have complete access to these texts.

 

Reference List

Barone, D. M. (2010). Children’s literature in the classroom. The Guilford Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csuau/reader.action?docID=581948

Gogan, B. & Marcus, A. (2013). Lost in transliteracy. Knowledge Quest, 41(5). 40-45. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=87625911&site=ehost-live

International Literacy Association (n.d.). The case for children’s rights to read. https://literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/resource-documents/the-case-for-childrens-rights-to-read.pdf

Johnson, D. (2018, August 10). BFTP: School libraries- a student right. The Blue Skunk Blog. http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2018/8/10/bftp-school-libraries-a-student-right.html

Loertscher, D. V. & Wools, B. (2014). Transmedia storytelling as an educational tool. International Federation of Library Associations, 2014 Lyon. http://library.ifla.org/881/1/168-loertscher-en.pdf

McDonald, L. (2013). A literature companion for teachers. Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA). https://doms.csu.edu.au/csu/file/863c5c8d-9f3f-439f-a7e3-2c2c67ddbfa8/1/ALiteratureCompanionforTeachers.pdf

Ries, K. [kirsten.ries4] (2020, November 23) ETL402: Blog pot 1 reflection. Kirsten’s reflectivce blog (KNDI).  https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/grade1ries/2020/11/23/etl402-blog-post-1-reflection/

Valenza, J.K. (2010, December 3). A revised manifesto. School Library Journal. http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2010/12/03/a-revised-manifesto/

Whitin, P. E. (2009). Tech-to-stretch: Expanding possibilities for literature response. The Reading Teacher, 62(5), 408-418. https://doi.org./10.1598/RT.62.5.4