Students select texts and bring them to class to share. Student Material
Unit Overview
This module focuses on helping students understand what they already know about reading and literacy but may not be aware that they know. Drawing on their own curiosity and expertise (hobbies, after-school activities and interests), students bring out-of-school texts that are meaningful to them into the classroom for exploration, appreciation, and study. Bringing texts from their personal lives into the classroom helps students make conscious connections between in-school and out-of-school literacies and encourages them to see how having a literate identity actually bridges in-school and out-of-school worlds. The out-of-school literacies students tend to share in the context of this module represent a wide variety of text types (from poetry, maps, origami instructions and science experiments to blog or Reddit posts and magazine articles about skateboarding and dance), and that is part of the fun. Because some texts are extremely specialized and complex, they may even be challenging for peers and teachers to read; that too is part of the fun. As students collaboratively explore the texts they bring to class to share, they also analyze the various genres with which they’re familiar, characterizing their textual features, conventions, and purposes. In the latter half of the module, students and bring to class one scholarly article about the same topic covered by the text they brought to class to share.
The purpose of working with this second text is twofold: 1) it helps students become aware of the wide variety of genres authors can choose from to communicate with readers about a particular topic; and 2) it strengthens connections between out-of-school and in-school literacies, thereby broadening conscious conceptions of what counts as “literacy” or “reading.” Bring a Text You Like to Class honors students’ life experiences, background knowledge, and out-of-school reading expertise as well as their conversational command about topics and activities they already know and care about. In so doing, this module bridges literate worlds where students already feel comfortable with new and different literacies we want them to learn about, understand, and enjoy (including the texts valued by people in the literate world of academia). Students are familiar with many kinds of texts outside the classroom and already read them well (e.g., lyrics to popular music, social networking posts, video game instructions, online multimedia, hobby-related reading). Bringing these out-of-school literacies into our classrooms for collaborative analysis can provide students with a more conscious understanding of their own knowledge and expertise and boost confidence about their own reading. As students recognize that they are knowledgeable experts in particular literate contexts, their views of themselves as readers and thinkers change in ways that support literacy as a vital element of classroom culture.
Unit Objectives
In addition to the focus on Common Core State Standards, the module targets the skill areas listed below. Students will be able to
Reflect upon and share their out-of-school reading expertise
Build awareness of and be able to explain how di erent genres make unique demands on readers
Link the expertise they possess with more familiar types of texts to their work with expository texts like those they are likely to encounter in college, at work, and in their communities
Further develop their awareness of how purpose and audience shape texts of various expository genres
Strengthen their awareness of and ability to strategically apply rhetorical and metacognitive strategies to comprehend and produce a wide variety of genres