Welcome Back! Starting Round 2: Linking Literacy and Curriculum

Hello, and Welcome to Round 2 of blogging about my journey as an education major at Saint Michael’s College! It was a long and enjoyable summer, but I am definitely glad to be back at my home away from home (where Fall is already in the air). Year three of my studies is off to a busy start— especially in the Education Department, where this semester I will be studying the ins and outs of middle and high school literacy and curriculum.

To kick off the academic year, my peers and I dove right into learning about how literacy and curriculum are constantly changing with new theories and studies, innovations in technology, and practices that teachers develop when adjusting proven strategies and techniques to their own styles. More importantly, my classmates and I placed the future of literacy and curriculum (that is, the literacies and curriculums we will be teaching) into perspective with the growing influence of technology in our digital age.

In both my Literacy and Curriculum courses, I was challenged to create a presentation using different digital apps that described: how I define and will implement my understandings of “literacy” in a digital age, social studies classroom; and what curriculum orientation I identify with, a definition of the orientation, the major theorists involved with the orientation, how I have been influenced by the orientation, and how the orientation will impact my future curriculum, respectively.

Going into Literacy, I knew that there was a lot more to being “literate” than one’s ability to read and write. As a future social studies teacher, I have always been fascinated with how understanding and communicating through written texts, language and body language, symbols, and a multitude of visual stimuli (paintings, videos, photographs, etc.) has created, influenced, and preserved the world’s history. With the rise of digital technology, I also knew that in order to reach my future students, I will have to master the art of creatively and effectively using the digital platforms they are familiar with, but may not know how to use to their full potential. The link between literacy and the digital world was obvious: my students will need to learn the skills necessary to find, vet, and utilize online texts; and simultaneously develop visual literacy skills to analyze maps, images, videos, documents, and other historical evidence. As for curriculum, the link to technology was a little less clear.

Source: https://icenvtech.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ebooks.jpg

After taking a brief quiz to determine my curriculum orientation (check out that quiz and score chart), I was not surprised to discover I was most strongly aligned with Progressivist thinking-- I have always believed that schools should center curriculum around the interests and abilities of the children they teach. However, I was stuck wondering if incorporating technology would really benefit my lessons more than harm them with easy distractions. After all, I hardly used computers in middle school, and my high school was far more paper-based than tech-based. But, when considering what I had learned in Literacy, I began to understand why technology and digital literacy would greatly benefit my curriculum. The digital world is very much a part of the reality my students will be living in, and in order to teach them the common social studies goal of productive citizenship, I will have to incorporate all aspects of their reality into my lessons. Promoting digital literacy will allow me to draw from different online texts, design digital projects, and expand my own lessons and sources so that new and intriguing topics are presented as familiar and within reach.

In alignment with the Saint Michael’s College Education Department’s Mission Statement, creating and presenting both my literacy and curriculum projects has furthered my studies as a creative and integrative educator, as well as enhanced my skills as a reflective and contemplative practitioner. By investigating my own beliefs, preferences, and skills as a future educator, I have gained a better understanding of how I can adopt known theories and practices into my teaching. Closely linking Progressivism to my teaching will not only allow me to center my lessons around the needs and interests of my students, but I will also have the opportunity to focus on their development as citizens beyond learning from a textbook. Furthermore, expanding the traditional understanding of literacy has allowed me to adapt my previous conceptions about reading and writing to better fit a social studies curriculum. By encouraging my students to close read images, maps, and documents for deeper meaning and historical context, I will bridge the gap between surface and full understanding, as well as employ transferable skills that will be beneficial to my students in other classes, at home, in the workplace, and beyond.

With traditional definitions of literacy challenged and evolving, and with my new and developing understanding of how curriculum relates to the content and skills I will be required to teach, both of my presentations have greatly enhanced my already acquired knowledge, skills, and strategies as a future teacher. The technology requirement of both projects exposed me to new presentation platforms, all of which provided an entertaining yet professional mode of communication that is engaging and easy to use. I chose to use Nearpod for my curriculum presentation, which allowed me to share my presentation on my peers’ devices— a feature that minimizes the threat of distraction while also allowing students to interact with the information presented directly. Although I enjoyed using Nearpod, I favored using Keynote in my literacy presentation, mainly because Keynote offered more animation and transition choices for the slides. However, I thought both platforms were professional, and I could make the material engaging without compromising understanding of the content on each software. In the coming months, I hope to learn more about the skills (both literary and others) that will be most beneficial to my students in a social studies classroom, and how I can teach and incorporate them into my lessons. Stay tuned for more updates on my investigation into middle and high school literacy and curriculum!