Thursday, July 5, 2012
Connect in the Classroom Through Real Speakers!
I feel there are many great reasons to incorporate nonfiction into the classroom. First off, one of the main goals of the new common core standards system is to incorporate nonfiction into our classrooms. Therefore, this genre of literature is soon going to become a classroom staple. I also feel that nonfiction is the best avenue for making classic literature more relevant for our students. By using nonfiction we can connect with students and help them understand how actual people during a certain time period were struggling. Nonfiction can also be used as companion pieces to join a unit together by filling in the blanks.
Nonfiction is also a great tool for reluctant readers. Most of what students' read is nonfiction: magazines, blogs, twitter, and Facebook. Using this medium will not only help those struggling readers, it will interest our hardest targets, boys. Boys love to read nonfiction about sports, war, and whatever they are interested in because they can connect with the speaker who is an actual person, sharing their interests. Nonfiction is a powerful genre to incorporate into the classroom for many reasons. Most of all, nonfiction gives students a strong connect between speaker and audience, helps students with standardized test material, and gives teachers the ability to connect a unit together.
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Most of what my boys were drawn to when they were little (like 4 and 5) was nonfiction. Even though they are currently into series like "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and "Nate the Great," they still come home with library books about bugs, sports, and world record holders. Every time I take my kids to the library, my youngest boy almost always comes home with 4-5 books about outerspace. My daughter on the other hand chooses books that are pink and have princesses on them.
ReplyDeleteFirst, as to boys and nonfiction, a lot of research has confirmed the strong link. Here's the abstract from one article ("The Nonfiction Reading Habits of Young, Successful Boy Readers"):
ReplyDelete"The reading experiences of six young successful boy readers were studied over a two-year period. In this article, their non-fiction reading is analysed and ways in which the boys make positive connections between masculinity and reading are identified. The boys' non-fiction reading centres on typical boy interest areas and hobbies (for example, football, space, dinosaurs) and, through their reading, they have become experts on these areas. This has earned them respect from their peers, particularly other boys, and a high status, hegemonic masculine identity in the classroom. Thus, for this group of boys, unlike many other boys, masculinity and reading are compatible; in this particular version of masculinity, reading is a desirable pursuit."
Secondly, I want to hear more about your claim, "Most of what students' read is nonfiction: magazines, blogs, twitter, and Facebook. Using this medium will not only help those struggling readers." Do you have specific ideas for using these technologies in the classroom? Do you think this is feasible? Or do you think that implementation of the Common Core Standards will more likely result in "informational" texts that are from textbooks?
I think twitter is an exceptionally accessible and important medium that should not be overlooked in the classroom. After all, isn't just an ongoing autobiographical account of one's life? Students could create an individual account for class and keep an autobiographical account of their, say, eleventh grade year. They could print out the feed on the last day of school and see their struggles and triumphs throughout the year. Also, with instagram, students can not only chronicle their lives with text, but with photos!
DeleteI think Twitter could be a great classroom resource. There are many drawbacks to Twitter however, so it would have to be managed by the teacher. I like the idea of Instagram, but there are issues with any online social media.
DeleteI really enjoyed your post. It is good to hear and see the Common Core Standards are addressing nonfiction. That makes me appreciate the Standards themselves a bit more.
I think Facebook can (or at least could at one point could) combine all your status updates for a year into one big thing. I'm not sure if it was just a "New Year's" thing or not, but I even think it was artistically done in some way--nothing major, but I recall the text appearing in a spiral.
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