Text! Fascinating...

This video references many terms from Gee's Theory of Literacy...

Language

Language is the body of words and the systems for their use common to people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. Language is a system for the expression of thoughts, feelings, etc, by the use of spoken sounds or conventional symbols. It is the faculty for the use of such systems, which is a distinguishing characteristic of man as compared with other animals. It can mean the language of a particular nation or people: the French language any other systematic or nonsystematic means of communicating, such as gesture or animal sounds: the language of love. It is the specialized vocabulary used by a particular group such as medical language or programming language. It can also be a particular manner or style of verbal expression.

Secondary Discourse

Secondary Discourse is interactions with the public sphere-schools, churches, community groups, state and national businesses, agencies and organizations.

Linguistics.

Linguistics is the science and study of language.

Enculturation

Enculturation is apprenticeship. It is the process whereby individuals learn their group's culture, through experience, observation, and instruction. It is the social process by which culture is learned and used by a human infant.

Socialization

Enculturation is related to socialization. Socialization refers to the deliberate shaping of the individual, in others; the word may be used to cover both deliberate and informal enculturation. Socialization is the continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position; the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologies. It may provide the individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society; a society develops a culture through a plurality of shared norms, customs, values, traditions, social roles, symbols and languages. Socialization is thus “the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained.”

Meta-knowledge

Meta-knowledge can be loosely defined as "knowledge about knowledge.” It is knowledge about a preselected knowledge. (Interesting related link: http://www.skeptical-science.com/science/metaknowledge-internet/); “Meta-knowledge can actually make you better able to manipulate your first language”; Meta-knowledge is liberation and power.

Cake Wrecks & Textual Intelligence

One of my favorite blogs is Cakewrecks.com. I rarely cease to laugh out loud when reading it. While it is not literacy specific, what makes it appealing is based in literacy. Jen Yates started this blog in May of 2008 “one night when she was bored. She honestly never thought anyone would read it.”

CakeWrecks.com won the 2008 Blogger's Choice Award for Best Humor Blog, and three 2009 Weblog awards (Bloggies) for Best Writing on a Blog, Best New Blog, and Best Food Blog. She has also written a book Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong

Jen explains what a cake wreck is:

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

In addition to wild looking icing blobs and laugh-out-loud-to-tears inducing visuals, some of what is extremely funny are the grammatical errors in the inscriptions. Punctuation, misspellings, homonyms, and decorator interpretations of the text totally change the meaning and the intended response to the cakes.

Jim Burke author of Illuminating Texts offers a companion website to go along with the book.

Featured on the website is an article he wrote Developing Students' Textual Intelligence Through Grammar which relates to the Cakewrecks inscription dynamic. (It is also reminiscent of Lynn Trusso’s books, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Girl’s Like Spaghetti and Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, every punctuation mark counts! )

In the article Burke discusses Textual Intelligence. He writes:

Textual intelligence (TI), a term I like, refers to our knowledge about how texts---literary and informational, on a page or a screen, spoken or written---work. TI requires that students understand the difference between usage---where and when, or under what conditions a word or its meaning is appropriately used---and grammar---the rules that govern the structural relationships between words in sentences.

TI also applies to how texts are made, and how different grammatical structures create meaning for or affect the reader.

Burke wants students to understand and develop textual intelligence to learn and experience how language shapes meaning and causes in readers certain feelings.

To describe textual intelligence, Burke uses the metaphor “intellectual tool belt.”

TI asks text builders (readers and writers) to decide what tools they need, how the structure works and what materials will work best on a particular job/text.

In making those decisions readers and writers might ask questions and analyze:

• Format (Why write this as an essay instead of a poem or short story or dramatic monologue?)
• Sentence type and structure. (What type of sentences---e.g., short, staccato ones, or long, rolling ones---are most appropriate for the effect I want to create in the reader?)
• Tone (How do I create a dark (or anxious or somber or comical) tone in a story?
• Clarity (Should I use a list here with bullets instead of paragraphs? How do I keep everything in the list parallel?)
• Word Choice (What words will make the reader feel that this character was wise, dangerous, evil or good? What word makes the idea clearest? What word is best?)
• More Word Choice (What words do I need to choose to make the character, idea, information, content in the text come alive for the reader?)

Having textual intelligence and insight into the text provides “some sense of power in a world where language is often used to coerce and confuse instead of clarify and communicate.” By developing a TI tool belt loaded and heavy with tools needed to write and read different kinds of texts in different media for different audiences and purposes.

Reading The World...from the moon

The purpose of education in this society is to bring the kids up to be conversant with the most important ideas and the representation systems that are used to express them. –Alan Kay

Burke begins the first chapter by discussing his experience as an elementary school student viewing “a small square of light that promised a glimpse into the next world: the first walk on the moon…a sacred moment…we all experienced the same sense of awe, our open mouths spelling out our wonder.”

Today things are more complicated. There are all manner of information sources. Burke says, “Information, whether it is about a product, an idea, history, or science has become one more product in a market saturated with texts, each one competing with other…”

The teacher’s role is to provide students with “a tool belt heavy with strategies and the skill to use them appropriately when reading---and making---texts.”

Burke quotes James Gleick:

All those clamoring activities line up by rank, in order of the power of their claim on your attention. That book looks appealing but this magazine pulls harder. Even better is that new jazz recording, but then you prefer the exhilarating rush of an online session of the game so fittingly called Total Annihilation. It’s, as if, corrupted by haute cuisine and soft mattresses, we can’t go back to the simple pleasure of bread and butter and sleeping under the stars. (1999)

Burke argues, “Through textual studies students can and should bee required to—think and operate as practitioners of the domains they are studying…” Imagination’s role in education has been dismissed as “irrelevant or even dangerous.” As teachers we must encourage and support students in experiment with “a series of possible selves through our disciplines, while helping them develop the necessary abilities in those subjects in the hope that they will find the ones they wish to become in their adult lives...” Students are constantly engaged in reading the world and reading themselves in a search to discover “where they fit into the texts of the world.”

Read the World!

The book I chose to blog about is:

Illuminating Texts: How to Teach Students to Read the World

by Jim Burke

http://books.heinemann.com/products/0497.aspx

About the book:

Today's students face such a barrage of competing texts in so many different forms and media that it's almost impossible to know what to trust and where to turn anymore. So it's now up to teachers to help students determine not only what should be read, but how it should be read.

Illuminating Texts, Jim Burke's most ambitious book yet, addresses this issue. It explores the powerful idea of "textual intelligence," offers both practical and theoretical information on teaching and reading, and explains how to incorporate the newest ideas and techniques into actual classroom practice. Jim also presents an important argument for teaching what students will need to know, and be able to do, in the future—one of our primary responsibilities as educators.

Each chapter has a clear focus—e.g., Reading the Internet, Reading Textbooks, Reading Literature, Reading Images—and all follow a similar format, including background information and rationale, standards connections, questions to ask, classroom connections, elements of the text, and additional resources. You can turn to the book for a five-minute read and find some questions to use in your next period. Or you can read an entire chapter, to help you clarify your thinking.

Illuminating Texts' accompanying website—www.englishcompanion.com/illuminating—continues and complements the book by providing additional resources, all of which are frequently updated.

The world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism...

I'll kick your ass with literacy!

I heard my personal favorite quote on literacy in 1996. I saw and heard homeless guy in Seattle’s Pike Place Market yelling to no one and everyone, “I’ll kick your ass with literacy!” While I find it humorous I also find it to be absolutely real. Literacy is a powerful tool.

Why should I blog?

Why should I blog?

• To express myself. If have something to say, a blog provides a place to say it and be heard.
• To connect with people in the world of literacy.
• Many blog are written to encourage connections and interactions with others experiencing similar insights. Blogging brings like-minded people together. Starting a blog can help you find those people and share your opinions and thoughts.
• To establish myself as a teacher interested in the power of literacy.
• To make a difference for myself and for others.
• This blog is literacy-based. In trying to express myself and to provide information I am enriching myself.
• To stay active and gain knowledge in the area of literacy.
• Successful blogging is dependent on writing and posting frequently. I must provide updated, fresh information. This is an opportunity for me to stay active and gain knowledge in the area of literacy.
• To develop connections and to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing literacy related texts, stories, photos, videos and more.