January 2021 – Musings of a Modern TL

Month: January 2021

ETL402 Assessment 2 Part B

My Approach to Literary Learning: A Critical Reflection

Having studied the subject outline at the beginning of this course, I was both perplexed and mortified by this assessment; not only by the multiple parts it contained, but also by the complete lack of knowledge and awareness I had of the concept of ‘literary learning’.

After some initial readings it became clear that ‘literary learning’, although a concept strongly linked to the learning of literacy, was not the same as ‘literacy learning’ (Lehman, 2007). Although there is a strong connection between the two, literary learning relies on an entirely different set of skills to employ higher order thinking and can be suited to any subject or curriculum area – provided that there is quality literature concerning the area of study! A growing awareness of multiliteracies further highlighted the significance of this connection, as ‘literacy’ does not just encompass an ability to read or write but a wide range of abilities and skills across all areas of life, such as digital literacy, critical literacy (Antsey & Bull, 2006) or even ‘virtue’ or character literacy (Hart et al., 2020).

Once I had achieved an understanding of the concept of literary learning, I attempted to visualise it in the classroom and library space. In doing so, a distant memory of my primary school casual teaching days came back to me in which I remember teaching several library lessons to a Year 4 class. I cannot remember the exact book, but I strongly remember teaching the concept of places and belonging through a picture book reading and teacher-led discussion, what I now know to be a simple literary learning strategy. Since then, I have used more sophisticated strategies to teach literary learning in secondary classrooms. The most significant example of this was a combined Geography and English novel study looking at how the themes in dystopian texts are reflected in our own world and global attitudes towards sustainability and the environment. I found this to be a highly effective unit with students for two reasons; students had choice of the literature they were reading, a method I had used before on this group of students (Johnson, 2020), and discussions were conducted in a modified version of Socratic Circles (Styslinger et al., 2010) that allowed students to vocalise their thoughts and opinions about the texts they were reading to make connections with other students and their choices of literature. However, a lack of teacher cohesion on the content to be assessed did lead to some difficulties with the culminating project created by the students. As a result of this and my increased understanding, in future I aim to make literary learning units more cohesive and clearer by collaborating closely with classroom teachers to establish a common purpose and goals for student development of multiliteracies across the unit (Merga, 2019). By deciding on a common purpose at the beginning of the unit, students will have a better idea of where the unit is going, and how the content being studied in their chosen literature relates to the overarching concepts and content from the relevant subject.

References

Antsey, M., & Bull, G. (2006). Defining multiliteracies. In M. Antsey & G. Bull (Eds.), Teaching and learning multiliteracies: Changing times, changing literacies (pp.19-55). International Reading Association.

Hart, P., Oliveira, G., & Pike, M. (2020). Teaching virtues through literature: Learning from the ‘Narnian Values’ character education research. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 41(4), 474-488. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2019.1689544

Lehman, B. (2007). Skills instruction and children’s literature. In B. Lehman (Ed.) Children’s literature and learning: Literary study across the curriculum (pp. 43-56). Teachers College Press.

Merga, M. (2019). Collaborating with teacher librarians to support adolescents’ literacy and literature learning. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(1). https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1002/jaal.958

Johnson, T. (2020). The ‘too cool to read’ group: A success story. CSU Thinkspace. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2021/01/12/the-too-cool-to-read-group-a-success-story/

Styslinger, M., Pollock, T., Lowery, R., & Fink, L. (2010). The chicken and the egg: inviting response and talk through Socratic Circles. Voices from the Middle, 18(2), 36-45.

The ‘Too Cool to Read’ Group: A Success Story

Working in a secondary school library for just under two years now I have dealt with my fair share of reluctant readers, typically in the 12-15 year old boy category. A lot of our students come from ATSI or migrant backgrounds (up to 70%) and do not have long histories of reading for pleasure, nor any desire to start in their library lessons! This was one of the first issues I identified in working in this library, a real lack of reading culture that permeated from Year 7 right the way through to Year 12 AND staff. However, that being said, there are a number of success stories that have come out of the library in my attempts to establish this reading culture. The one that I am most proud of would have to be the case of the ‘Too Cool to Read’ group of three Year 7 boys.

My Success Story

These boys had already established themselves as the ‘cool’, disruptive group within the first few weeks of being at school, and although they could be menaces in class they were mostly respectful towards their teachers. I couldn’t help but find myself striking up a connection with these three funny yet incredibly frustrating boys. In sustained reading lessons they would pretend to read various copies of the Guinness Book of Records, but really they would just flip through the pictures laughing and pointing out what they saw as similarities between some of the more frightening images and their friends’ faces. Through various conversations I managed to find out that these boys thought reading wasn’t ‘cool’ and that they preferred to watch TV or movies, particularly action films full of guns and swearing and catch phrases they could use to get a laugh in the classroom.

As a young boy of a similar age, I had a real affinity for Matthew Reilly’s action-packed fiction books. Although not the best quality literature, these books read like action movies, so much so that I would picture the scenes in my head every morning on the bus on the way to school. After a few initial library lessons in which I was getting to know all the students, I came to realise that this might be a really engaging connection to literature for these boys in particular. In their next library lesson, I negotiated with the boys, saying that just for today we’ll put the non-fiction away and that I’d like them to read only the first 5 pages of these books (just the first 5 nothing more!), and for them to tell me what they thought. I handed them Ice Station, Temple and Seven Ancient Wonders and left them to their 5 pages.

Cut to half an hour later and the boys hadn’t come back, the library was quiet, and I had to investigate. The boys were sitting in their corner as always, but this time they were silent with books in hand. As I walked over to them, they all looked at me with massive smiles on their faces, and admitted that these books were indeed ‘cool’ and wanted to keep reading. Each one of the boys proceeded to borrow the book I had given them that lesson and finish it within the week. All three then came back to borrow the books their friends had read in that first lesson, until all three of the above titles had been finished. Then they came back again the following week asking if he had written any more books, and by the end of the term all three boys had read Matthew Reilly’s entire collection that was available in our library. From that point on it wasn’t a matter of reading ‘not being cool’, but the books they had read in primary school and that their parents had picked for them just weren’t cool enough.

I will never, ever forget the looks on their faces as I walked over to them in that library lesson. It was as if they had accepted defeat and were too embarrassed to admit it, but were so happy that they had. I see it as one of my proudest teaching moments, making serious connections with these students, finding out their interest and how best to connect them to meaningful literature that they would enjoy. I will be telling this story at their graduation in four years, that’s for sure!

References

Reilly, M. (1998). Ice Station. Pan McMillan.

Reilly, M. (1999). Temple. Pan McMillan.

Reilly, M. (2005). Seven Ancient Wonders. Pan McMillan.