I plan on visiting a recreational activity, specifically a little league football game and cheer-leading. These games take place at the nearby High Schools in the surrounding community, mostly at Northern High School in Commerce, Michigan. I chose to go here because a majority of my students and a lot throughout the school and community participate in this activity.
What I expect to see, hear, and learn is about how all the families of the community and those of my students come together outside of school. I hope to see parents, grandparents, and siblings all being a part of one activity. I hope to hear families communicating with each other and students building long lasting relationships with others in the classroom and the outside community. Overall I hope to learn how my students, their families, and the people of the community spend their time outside of the classroom and work environment. I feel that this can give me an idea of who my students are, what they like to do, and more important what their funds of knowledge are so that I can bring it into the classroom and make learning more meaningful for all my students.
My visits will confirm my expectations by already having the notion of how my students and their families spend their time outside of school and work. Each day and after the weekend all my students have stories upon stories about their football games and cheers that they did. This confirms my expectation that my students families play a big part in their lives outside of school because of how excited and knowledgeable they are about their recreational activities. It brings joy to my heart that my students families are so involved in their lives in and outside of the school community and I am glad to have the opportunity to be a part of it myself!
When thinking about the setting and sporting event I will visit during my inquiry one investigation, I was able to jot down some notes about the types of interconnection I feel I am likely to see among reading, writing, oral language and other literacies and how they might contribute to communication in that setting. As Florio-Ruane (2010) stated, “the ecological view of literacy asserts that reading, writing, and oral language cannot be separated in their learning and in their use to learn subject matter. They are interrelated because they are all part of communication and are meaningful within social groups, contexts, knowledge and activities” (pg. 2). When thinking about this one statement, it was clear to me just how much this was true in one sporting event. The students taking part in playing football read plays, and communicate on and off the field. The cheerleaders on the side lines do not only communicate with each other during cheers but they use oral language to communicate to the spectators in the stands. Also, with sporting events, interconnections among other literacies such as the score board contribute to communication in this setting. The score, team names, and time-clock are all displayed for everyone to see throughout the event. From the literacies that are seen in this one sporting event, I am able to make connections between and among contexts in my students’ community. Literacy can and is found in all the contexts of this one sporting event, though they are not always as obvious as they are in the classrooms, and I feel that I can bring these literacies into the classroom so that my students can begin to understand the learning going on outside of the classroom!
I really liked how you chose to look at a recreational activity in your area. This really shows how you incorporated your students’ interests into your own learning about the community. It is interesting to me because you are only in one grade higher and some of the interests are different than my own children or others talking. As I am still getting to know my students and others throughout the building, it is very nice to hear about activities in the community that I may not know about and can also ask my students about. I agree that you can see literacy taking place within social contexts, academic contexts and other ways as well. There is not always one way to represent literacy and it is nice to look into both social and academic contexts. I also liked how you looked into how your students and their families spend their time. Families are very important and can impact how a child learns in school as well as how they interact with others.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is hard to remember that even the little things like reading numbers or letters is a part of literacy and in the community, you see this very often. I sometimes forget that being involved in the community can lead children to learn more about literacy, but then I remember that literacy is a part of our everyday lives. As teachers we intentionally point out literacy to students through reading and writing along with communication. In the community, literacy is embedded in an unintentional way so that students are gaining knowledge without being taught explicitly. It is important that intentional and unintentional learning is taking place. This gives students a chance to learn things on their own and then experience things in the classroom as well. Students will be learning off their prior knowledge and then continue to learn more.
Another part of learning is how children form relationships with others. I love how you wanted to see these relationships as well as see the aspect of literacy as well. One aspect of literacy is social literacy and I liked how you wanted to see how students interact with other adults other than yourself. You see types of interaction occurring that you may not get to see and then you can incorporate this type of environment into your classroom instruction and students have a point of reference for these type of interactions. It is important to interact with each other in the appropriate way in order for students to really grasp other academic concepts.