Creating a Culture of Literacy in Our Schools

Rich CellaEDLP 6040

Question: On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the

highest) what level of basketball literacy do you feel you have?

Being “Basketball Literate” Common everyday words acquire

specific meanings in the basketball domain.

Insiders vs. Outsiders

Words gain meaning through shared experience.

What is LITERACY?THINK-PAIR-SHARE

What is LITERACY?

What domains do you feel you are an expert in?

School-Wide Literacy James Paul Gee

“The Problem of Content” “Based on common attitudes toward school,

schooling, learning and knowledge.”

“The idea is this: Important knowledge is content in the sense of information rooted in, or, at least, related to, intellectual domains or academic disciplines like physics, history, art, or literature."

School-Wide Literacy “The problem with the content view is that an

academic discipline…is NOT primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles.”

“…a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices…”

“…the “content” is generated, debated, and transformed via distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, and often writing and reading.”

School-Wide Literacy You can’t treat basketball as “content” apart

from the game itself.

How well would a student understand a textbook on basketball if they have never played or watched a game?

Would they be motivated to learn about it?

This is done all the time in areas of math and science…

Understanding VocabularyArnold B. Arons “Few students, even at the college level, have had

direct experience, making them self-conscious about examining how words acquire meaning through shared experience.”

James Paul Gee

“The coffee spilled, get a mop.”

“The coffee spilled, get a broom.”

Should Physics be Peddled as “Algebra-Based”?Arnold B. Arons

“Why do things fall?” Asks the child.The parent responds, “Because of gravity.”

“Children, as well as adults, take this answer very literally: since the word “because” is used, they uncritically jump to the conclusion that a reason has been given – that the “why” has been answered. They naively believe that a scientific name provides a reason; much of their experience with science in the schools has reinforced this acquiescence.”

Mathematical Literacy vs. Literacy Literacy

What’s the difference?

I would say, not much…speaking, writing about, listening to, and reading are all important aspects of becoming mathematically literate.

Domain specific vocabulary…how are words USED in “talking math?”

“If you can’t say it you don’t really understand it.”

Odd Question #1 Pia is thirty-one years old, single,

outspoken, and smart. She was a philosophy major. When a student, she was an ardent supporter of Native American rights, and she picketed a department store that had no facilities for nursing mothers.

(odd questions from Ian Hacking…Intro to Probability and inductive logic)

Odd Question #1 Rank the following statements in order of probability

from 1 (most probable) to 6 (least probable). Ties are allowed.

(a) Pia is an active feminist.(b) Pia is a bank teller.(c) Pia works in a small bookstore(d) Pia is a bank teller and active feminist(e) Pia is a bank teller and an active feminist who takes yoga classes.(f) Pia works in a small bookstore and is an active feminist who takes yoga classes.

Odd Question #2 You have been called to jury duty in a town

where there are two taxi companies, Green Cabs Ltd. And Blue Taxi Inc. Blue Taxi use cars painted blue, Green Cabs uses green cars.

Green Cabs dominate the market, with 85% of the taxis on the road.

On a misty winter night a taxi sideswiped another car and drove off. A witness says it was a blue cab.

Odd Question #2 The witness is tested under conditions

like those on the night of the accident, and 80% of the time she correctly reports the color of the cab that is seen.

That is, regardless of whether she is shown a blue or green cab on misty evening light, she gets the color right 80% of the time.

Odd Question #2 You conclude, on the basis of this information:

(a) The probability that the sideswiper was blue is 0.8 (80 %)(b) It is likely that the sideswiper was blue, but the probability is less than 0.8 (80 %)(c) It is just as probable that the sideswiper was green as that is was blue.(d) It is more likely than not that the sideswiper was green.

Conclusion Content should be active NOT passive.

WE ALL WILL: learn to experience the world in new

ways. In order to… “…gain resources that prepare us for

future learning and problems solving in a domain and, perhaps, more important, in related domains.”

Professional Development ScheduleProfessional Development Schedule

Oct. – Intro and Types of Literacies ✔

Nov. –Differentiated Instruction – If/Then construct and ELL’s

Jan. – Close Read: Excerpt from James Gleick’s “The Information”

Feb. – Science Words in Everyday Language – Webs, Venn Diagrams, Visual Learning and Graphic Organizers Mar. – Inquiry Based Learning

Apr. – “Savages” Example of a Project for student engagement – Role Play/Debate

May – Graph Literacy

ReferencesArons, A. B. (1997). Teaching introductory physics. New York: Wiley.

Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. London England: Falmer Press.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hacking, I. (2001). An introduction to probability and inductive logic. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.