Literacy Short Assgts Reading. Fadi Awwad My

¶ … Literacy Short Assgts

READING. Fadi Awwad

My Reading Engagement Journal for Chapter 3

I already knew about the need for sensitivity to cultural differences in the classroom because I was raised in a devout Muslim home (that was also an American home), and the years corresponding to my own secondary education were years in American life where a kind of noxious Islamophobia very frequently poisoned public discourse. I am grateful to the extent that I had teachers who were able to rise above the level of Fox News idiocy.

I want to know more about the use of graphic novels in teaching content area literacy, as described by Vacca and Mraz on pages 79-80, because I happen to be a fan of a particular graphic novel, Palestine by Joe Sacco, which describes the artist's experiences staying on the Gaza Strip in 1991-1992. If graphic novels are an easier way to teach literacy, this particular example would help to teach cultural sensitivity in an area that still requires work for many Americans. My favorite visual from the reading is the botanical graphic organizer from pages 86-7, because it illustrates perfectly how visual learning can be used to assist those who aren't necessarily fluent with complicated vocabulary. I had trouble with nothing in this chapter, really, because

Vacca Vacca and Mraz write with a clarity that is, to use a favorite vocabulary word of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, pellucid.

My favorite sentence/phrase from the reading is "When teachers attempt to help students understand diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives by providing them with ongoing opportunities to read about concepts and events, make judgments about them, think critically, and generate their own conclusions and opinions, they are using a transformative approach" on page number 64 because I myself understand personally what it would mean to transform society in a positive way, by encouraging young people to think critically and intelligently about the received racism and hostility that often attends upon cultural diferences. I plan on sharing the information about multicultural reading lists on pages 66-68 to enhance my own reading, and for anything that I might assign, because I am aware that my own experience as a Muslim American (and familiarity with literature regarding this) can actually be better contextualized by looking at some of the works described here, with their engagement with the experience of Japanese-Americans during domestic internment programs in World War 2 or with the struggles of immigrants to America from around the world. If I could speak with the authors of this textbook, I would ask them the following question: In the list of recommended reading for English classes regarding multicultural issues, why did you not include a text that deals with specifically Muslim issues? It seems like this is a particularly large insensitivity in American life today, and the reading list offered would be improved with attention to it. I predict that the information I read in this textbook will come in handy if I have to draw up a reading list in a large public high school with a multi-ethnic student population.

The following visual from the National Endowment for the Humanities http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/mayjune/feature/the-odyssey-ulysses-s-grant reminds me of the information in this chapter because it demonstrates a form of cross-cultural understanding from the opposite direction -- here, a Japanese artist of the 19th century uses traditional Japanese woodblock art to depict the arrival of the American President and war hero Ulysses S. Grant on an official visit to the Emperor of Japan. We can see that cross-cultural understanding works in both directions. I made the following connection of thinking about a foreign cultures depiction of Americans as strange and unusual with information from John Guare's play A Few Stout Individuals, which dramatizes Grant's visit to Japan, and which features some of this unique Japanese woodblock art as the cover of the published text.

My Reading Engagement Journal for Chapter 9

I already knew that writing can definitely aid in the process of reading because I have often engaged in the kind of writing that expands upon reading, by participating in fan-fiction communities online, in which young people can create their own narratives using existing characters like Harry Potter, Edward Cullen, or Christian Gray.

I want to know more about how Admit Slips and Exit Slips as described on page 290 work in practice because my guess is that students will write down any form of nonsense to be permitted to escape a classroom, and this suggestion by Vacca and Mraz may prove to be somewhat unhelpful in practice. My favorite visual from the reading is Figure 9.5, the sample double-entry journal assignment from students regarding Jack London's Call of the Wild, because it shows a useful way to force students to engage with reading and writing: if they choose to write down an idiotic or uninformed answer, the double entry system requires them to justify it. I had trouble with the idea of "bio-poems" as a valid writing exercise because the assignment seemed pretty silly, and I am skeptical about how much actual learning goes on when students throw together something like the examples given on page 289. My favorite sentence/phrase from the reading is "RAFT is an acronym that stands for Role, Audience, Form and Topic" on page number 301 because the ready-made utility of using this system to construct writing assignments is pretty self-evident. I plan on sharing the information about the different "Discourse Forms for Content Area Writing" outlined in Table 9.1 to enhance any classroom work I ever do because the idea of asking students to write a sea-chantey outlining the plot of Heart of Darkness sounds like a good way to get them to remember the plot of a difficult novel.

If I could speak with the authors of this textbook, I would ask them the following question: isn't it important that writing assignments be fun for students but also require a certain level of effort? The biopoem assignment seems more like a "Madlibs" exercise that will allow students to retain no real information on a topic. I predict that the information I read in this textbook will come in handy, however, if I ever have to come up with a writing assignment in a hurry, because this offers multiple strategies for getting students to exercise their writing skills while also grappling with their reading.

The following visual from Kate Beaton's literary webcomic "Hark, a Vagrant!" http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=259 reminds me of the information in this chapter because Beaton is essentially engaged in the same form of creative and thoughtful response to a frequently-assigned text, in this case The Great Gatsby, that Vacca and Mraz are suggesting with their different forms of writing assignments. I made the following connection of thinking of Beaton's way of making intelligent comments about literature with information from the discourse forms in Table 9.1 -- many students may not be as talented in cartoonining as Beaton is, but the style of intelligent response to a text is something they could learn to emulate.