Teachers and their reading
Teachers and their reading 19/ 08 / 08
Eammon:
Welcome to radio 103.8UB. The University of Ballarat’s Education radio and online network . I’m Eamon Jones and today we’re streaming live from the Literacy Lecture of Dr Wendy Warren.
But before we start the show a quick weather update.
Seems from the freezing cold start to the lecture series in this theatre we’re finally starting to warm up. So take off your coats and scarves and sit back and listen while we talk about TEACHERS AND THE READING THEY DO.
Our first guest is a storyteller Anne E Stewart who has been involved with the students telling stories about “Literacy”
Thanks for joining us
Tell us Anne how did you start to acquaint yourself with the material Wendy wanted you to tell stories about?
Anne E
Actually it must be nearly a year ago when Wendy approached me at the Ballarat City Council’s Early Literacy conference and asked me to become involved in the project. Of course i said yes. Developing a love of language and literacy has always been a prime motivation of a mine as a librarian and storyteller. And i was hoping to understand a little bit more about the actual nuts and bolts of teaching literacy.
But I must say, when Wendy gave me the text book I was floundering a bit.
With that invite though, it seemed everywhere I looked there was something for me to read about literacy.
It was newspaper articles that helped me into the subject..
The first one I read was in the Australian newspaper
Bring on the reading revolution Janet Albrechtsen | April 09, 2008
This was to lead me back to another article
Education failures creating a lost generation
Phonics has a phoney role in the literacy wars August 16, 2005
By now I had involved my mother an ex-teacher and she got the bug and bought us a copy of the newly published book we’d read references to “The Literacy Wars”
This book was organised into the following chapters: Literacy under Attack, Grammar Reading, Culture, Gender, Testing, Technolgy, Curriculum and Literacy Fights Back. Now that we’re at week 5, I can say in retrospect that with all this reading I was doing I was using the 4 resources model as a way of gaining understanding.
This early reading was like Code breaking. it was introducing me to the Language of literacy, I think it would be fair to say the Meta language of literacy.
As I rang or emailed Wendy with my findings, she’d shoot back questions or more readings to question my views.
Are you reading legitimate resources?
Eammon:
So as well as being a user of this material Wendy was having you analyse it too?
Anne E
That’s right. I remember an early e-reading of Shannon’s and the notions of “The Politics of teaching.” and how much it got me thinking about the responsibilities of the teacher. And just recently the academic paper Trash Aesthetics and Utopian Memory : The Tip at the End of the Street and The Lost Thing by Kerry Mallan. I actually knew her name because she has written a book called Children as storytellers. I have to admit that I read this article with a dictionary beside me to try and decode some of the terms she used. And I had to reread it as well. And I’m glad I did
Eammon
And what did you take from this reading?
Anne E
Well you know I was rapt Wendy had passed on this particular article because I gained a better understanding of the intent of the authors and the multi literacies involved in both books.
Words and pictures at play and cultural preconceptions and understandings. It was hard work but this academic paper offered huge insights I would not have understood or been able to share and dissect with a class without having read it. I t had a profound effect on how I now looked at those two books.
I realised that if I was a teacher I’d make sure I subscribed to professional journals both on-line and hard copy to develop more profound reading of texts. From my days working as a children’s librarian I also knew there were some great Children’s Literature Magazines that would point they way to a multitude of books and resources. Magazines like “Magpies and The Horn Book” review and critique children’s books. I mightn’t be able the read all the new books coming out but these journals were a great signpost.
Eammon
Do you read many children’s books?
Anne E
Well as a matter of fact I do. In my days as a children’s librarian it seemed that’s all I read. Picture Books, children’s novels. I was pretty good at matching books with readers. It’s great when colleagues point out good reads to me. In fact I remember about 6 months ago visiting my friend, a children’s librairan. “Read this Anne E, it’s great” And so it was, what was interesting was it went on to win the Children’s Picture book of the Year, early childhood section. You must look it up.
Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley. It’s also been great in this class to have Wendy draw so many great reads to my attention.
Eammon
And what about the student blogs have you managed to read any of these?
Anne E
As a matter of fact on Sunday afternoon I read through everyone of them. I realised teachers would do this everyday, read student journals, appraise the uptake of ideas by students and readjust their strategies to fill in the gaps in their learning . It really was a great insight into how everyone’s progressing, in fact I was so impressed with people’s thoughtful approaches to their learning.
It was reading through these that I realised that the students that are progressing are the ones doing extensive reading of topics associated to what we have been studying
Eammon
And what about reading for pleasure, do you still have time for this?
Anne E
Not as much as I’d like but i do try to read novels for the sheer escapism and cultural signposting. At the moment I’m reading The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. It puts me in mind of Midnight in the Garden Good and Evil. Story of factional story. My other great pleasure is the Saturday papers. In fact Eammon I was wondering did you happen to read an article in this weekends Australian newspaper. I know that Wendy is talking today about Visual Literacy but the article coined a new phrase “Visuacy”. What do you think? Eammon you have been using lots of images and connected meaning to it. Do you think students need to be taught how to create and analyse images?
Eammon
???????
I wonder want the audience thinks, maybe we’ll throw the interview open to the students, particularly as you mentioned to me Anne E, that many of these students come to teaching with artistc backgrounds.
AnneE.
Yes Eammon, the main premise of the article was that a recent report calls for a rethinking of school art education to end the distinction between art and other images and to overcome the idea that the purpose of teaching visual arts is to train artists.The arts should form the basis of the national curriculum alongside English, maths and science.
Eammon
We’ve just about run out of time here on 103.8UB. so in summary Anne
What are teachers reading?
Anne E
To produce good readers, fluent, critical readers we need to read widely as well
Eammon
Thanks Anne and that’s it for this mornings broadcast live from Dr Wendy Warren’s Literacy Lecture. You’ve been listening to 103.8UB, The University of Ballarat’s Education radio and online network