21st Century Literacies Activities
General Assignments 2
Class Wikis 2
Class Blogs 2
Blog Subscriptions 2
Snapshot and Tableaux Dramas 2
Sketch to Stretch 2
Internet Scavenger Hunts/WebQuests 3
Multigenre Paper and Multigenre Group Presentation 3
Abstract Representation 4
Myspace Page 4
Using Murals 4
Vocabulary Image Journals 5
English Assignments 6
Hypertext Writing (Annotate a Text) 6
Make an Online Anticipation Guide 7
The Album Cover Project 7
Julius Caesar, the musical 8
Theme Song Essay 8
Writing in Email English 9
AuthorQuest 9
Clothing Catalog 9
Site-Specific Audio Walk 10
Listening Centers 10
Writing a Movie 10
Sound Movie 11
Fan Fiction 12
Antique Photos 12
Evaluate a Web Page or Document a Search 12
School Commercialism Scavenger Hunt 12
Gender Bias 13
Critical Literacy Discussion Prompts (Bean & Moni, 2003) 14
Cultural Memoirs (Multigenre Autobiography) 14
Character Mandala 15
Revision in the Computer Lab 16
Short Fiction Write-Around 19
General Assignments
Class Wikis
Assign students to build a wiki around a certain topic that is being studied. See the following link from Clarence Fisher’s class for an example:
http://studyingsocietiesatjhk.pbwiki.com/
Use Wikispaces, if you want to upload pictures and videos (you have a 2gb limit). Use pbwiki, if you’re wiki will be mostly text based.
Class Blogs
You can either set up a blog for the entire class or one for small groups. Go to Blogger, and follow the easy instructions. Blogs can be set up to limit accessibility to only the email addresses allowed to see it. Then, you could post entries, have students post entries, or have a guest blogger post entries and then have students respond to the entry or entries. For schools that have blocks on Internet access, you may want to subscribe to a service such as Edublogs or Class Blogmeister, which have additional features.
Source: Digital Discussion, by Helena Echlin, Edutopia, September, 2007, p. 47
See a lesson plan on how to set up a blog:
www.edutopia.org/whats-next-2007-Blog
Blog Subscriptions
Subscribe to a certain number of blogs and make a certain number of postings to them each week.
Snapshot and Tableaux Dramas
"Students were asked to physically or artistically depict the 'freezing' of particular scenes as moments in time that showed physical or emotional relationships, and displayed character gestures, expressions, and activities. When a scene had been frozen I usually asked them to provide a headline or caption for the picture, and sometimes to explain how and why they had created it. Students also drew such 'snapshots' or series of such snapshots in a technique called 'tableaux drama,' which is the visual depiction of a story sequence through the use of several pictures and accompanying captions or scripts.
Sketch to Stretch
After reading a selected passage, have students draw their interpretation of a favorite or significant portion of the reading. After all students have completed their drawings, have them share their illustrations with classmates in small groups. The classmates must “guess” or predict what portion the artist-student is portraying in his or her illustration. Once all students have made their interpretations, the student-artist provides the original explanation. Another student then shares his or her work.
Internet Scavenger Hunts/WebQuests
Make a simple WebQuest involving two to three “pages.” See below for a description. NOTE: You cannot simply use one that you find online. You must create your own new WebQuest. (However, you do not need to complete an entire WebQuest. Two or three pages will suffice.)
"Collect a number of Web sites that deal with a particular unit of study and ask students to go on an information quest. Make up a series of questions for which students have to find the answers. This activity will help prepare students for the unit of study and will give them an opportunity to transact with electronic text. The key here, however, is to not make this a traditional question/answer activity. Make sure your questions require students to think beyond recall. Your questions should be open ended and ask students to form an opinion or come to a conclusion. The Web site, Filamentality, can actually help you put together such an activity. Go to http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/#intro to learn more about this." (Patterson, p. 75).
Or see the following sites for examples
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/matrix.html
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/webquest/webquest.html
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/China/ChinaQuest.html
http://www.ozline.com/webquests/design.html
http://www.memphis-schools.k12.tn.us/admin/tlapages/wq-write.htm
http://www.geocities.com/techlabloms/Quest.htm
Multigenre Paper and Multigenre Group Presentation
You will each be assigned to write a "multigenre paper," which is basically a "new literacy" assignment that asks you to "write" texts that are from a variety of genres, some of which may not necessarily be print-based. (The Multigenre Paper is explained in the Romano text.) You will also be working in a group of three to five people who are writing their multigenre papers on the same topic. With this group, you will present a "group" Multigenre Paper Presentation during the final exam period.
List of Possible Genres
Screenplay Commercial script Letter of complaint Cover letter
Resume Friendly letter Journal entry Book/movie review
Restaurant/food review Reader response log Short story Job Manual
Personal narrative Travel Log Survival Story News Article
Editorial Interview Transcript Description from alternative point of view
Free verse poetry Found poetry Fictional narrative Dialogue
How-to article Comparison/contrast Persuasive essay Speech
Product evaluation Advertisement Research paper Business letter
Technical support manual News feature article College application essay Parody
Satire Self-portrait Fairy tale Fable
Survey results analysis Problem-solution essay Biographical sketch Humorous essay
Scene for a TV show Song lyrics Monologue Play anecdote
Abstract Preface or foreword Extended metaphor Stream-of-consciousness
Sonnet Two-voice poem Shape poem Memory (recollection)
Legend Newscaster script Recipe Haiku
Obituary Summary Picture book story Greeting card
Description Science fiction Letter of recommendation Eviction notice
Arrest warrant Email Thank-you Directions
Declaration of war Job Application Deed Cartoon
Public announcement Love letter Dictionary entries Inspection analysis
Rejection letter Game review Billboard Memo
Product jingles Stand-up comedy script Nursery rhymes Menu descriptions
Epitaph Psychological profile Channel of distribution State of union address
Infomercial Script of telephone call Ghost story/urban legend Limerick
Eulogy Sermon Prayer Love letter
Abstract Representation
Give students several colors of construction paper and scotch tape, but no scissors. Students are to work in groups to make an abstract representation of a text.
Myspace Page
Hillary Freitag
Kent State-Stark Student
Create a Myspace page that is about a character from a book, or a historical figure.
Using Murals
McKenzie, G.R., & Danielson, E. (2003). Improving comprehension through mural lessons. The Reading Teacher, 56(8), 738-742.
Helping kids with advanced organizers, schema, can help comprehension.
Ausubel, D. (1962). A subsumption theory of meaningful verbal learning. Journal of General Psychology, 66, 213-224.
“Structured stories, especially those with an implicit ‘story grammar,’ enable even very young children to organize, encode, and remember a whole series of facts that compose a story (Fitzgerald, 1989). . . Children sometimes seem to have photographic memories. They can memorize a complex mural-like picture and quickly recall the details. Research has shown that this photographic memory can be used in lessons as mnemonic devices. (Belezza, 1987).
“When we want to teach an organized network of words, settings, facts, and relationships about a moderately unfamiliar topic and want pupils to remember a dozen or so elements, we use an extension of a ‘multiple imagery’ technique originally suggested by Levin et al. (1983). First, we find or compose what we call a mural graphic—a picture or scene that shows a physical setting with people going about their business, using the tools and performing the chores typical of that situation. Second, we make up one key-word mnemonic that links the common name for all such scenes to an object in the picture. The key word prompts students to search for an image of the object or picture from the mural in their long-term memory. Third, we make up a story that begins with the object cued by the key word and carries the action on through a logically linked series of details in a description chained into a story. Once the graphic, the mnemonic, and the story line are planned, we tell the pupils to memorize the picture and the story that goes with it so they can draw it from memory. When they read the new story and find new words, they can see the picture in their mind and remember meanings without looking up the words. Then we tell the story, pointing out the details as we go along. Removing the picture in the middle of the story and at the end, we ask a few ‘What was here?’ recall questions and point to places on the blank screen. We find virtually all children can visualize and recall up to 20 elements and explain them with a high degree of success and self-satisfaction.”
Belezza, F. (1987). Mnemonic devices and memory schemas. In M. McDaniel & M. Pressley (Eds.), Imagery and related mnemonic processes: Theories, individual differences and applications (pp. 34-55). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Fitzgerald, J. (1989). Research on stories: Implications for teachers. In K.D. Muth (Ed.), Children’s comprehension of text: Research into practice (pp. 2-36). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Levin, J., Schriber, L., & Berry, J. (1983). A concrete strategy for learning verbal information. American Educational Research Journal, 20, 277-290.
Vocabulary Image Journals
Have students keep a Word document list of vocabulary words and definitions. After this is accomplished go to Google and do an image search. Students choose the image that best matches the definition and paste the image into their Word documents. This gives the participant a visual reminder of what the word means.
Source: Melissa Eddy and Brian Lundgren, Students, Kent State University, Stark Campus
English Assignments
Hypertext Writing (Annotate a Text)
"Nothing helps students learn to negotiate hypertext better than the act of writing it. An easy way to engage students in this activity is to give them a short poem to annotate. You can do this in small groups, where each group gets a different short poem. Or you can do this with one poem, where small groups take a section of the poem or a particular image. Students can create their Webs using a simple Web editor or even a word processing program. The idea is for them to create parts of a whole, and in doing so, get a feel for the hypertextuality of the piece. (p. 75)
"My students create three large Web projects during the school year--a poetry annotation, a biography Web, and a Web dealing with African-American culture or history. Teachers who want students to become better Web readers may want to engage students in a short poetry annotation project. Students could begin by taking a short poem, "The Eagle" by Tennyson, for example, and highlighting key words, phrases, and even literary techniques. Teams of students could take one line or image from the poem, find out more information, and present that to the class. Each group could write their information in a word processing program and make links from the poem to their bit of annotation. The Web does not even have to be published on the Internet. The links will work on a single, stand-alone computer or on a local area network" (p. 77).
Use Netscape Composer or another composer program (Microsoft FrontPage).
Students can either do a web page on an era (Harlem Renaissance) or explore how ideas are translated into different forms of art (architecture, photograph, a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture, whatever they can justify as 'art' (from Claxton & Cooper, 2000, p. 101).
See the following for hypertext annotations
http://www.cybershakespeare.motleyltd.com.au/
http://www.shakespeare.uiuc.edu/floorplan/completeworks/
http://quarles.unbc.edu/midsummer/
American Revolution
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/
Hypertext on American History
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/usa.htm
Once you have written your annotated poem (and presumably read some of them), please answer the following questions:
How is reading hypertext different than reading traditional text?
What differences (if any) did you notice about the ways in which you look for information?
What differences (if any) did you notice about the ways in which you emotionally reacted?
Make an Online Anticipation Guide
Thanks to email, anticipation guides can now be done on-line. Here is an example of an anticipation guide done on-line. The teacher below used Microsoft Office FrontPage threaded discussion.
“This is an on-line anticipation reaction guide to be used for Chapter 1 of Hatchet. All sixth grade students should post their response and reasoning for each statement. If someone posts a reaction different from yours, please respond. Please post any comments, reflections, or anticipated responses to the upcoming chapter. Once you have read the chapter, please respond again, based on the information provided in the text. The content frame shows the titles of all articles posted to the discussion. Selecting a title will cause the corresponding article to be loaded into this frame. You may also post a new article (starting a new thread), or search the articles for a word or pattern. In addition, each article has links to let you reply to it (continue the thread) and navigate the article list.
Please agree or disagree with the following statement and tell why:
1. A 12-year-old has a lot to say to his mother before he leaves on a vacation.
2. Secrets destroy a family.
3. It is difficult to tell when someone has a heart attack.
4. A child has difficulty getting over a divorce.
5. Pilots let passengers fly a plane if they want to.
6. Young adolescents say and do things just to hurt their parents.
7. A flight to Canada for a summer vacation is a lot of fun.
8. A person can handle the most severe emergency situations.
Source: Nichols, W.D., Wood, K.D., & Rickelman, R. (2001). Using technology to engage students in reading and writing. Middle School Journal, 32(5), 45-50.
See KidReach: The Online Reading Center
www.westga.edu/~kidreach/index.html
Cosponsored by the State University of West Georgia and Kennesaw State University, this site
has online anticipation guides for K-12.
The Album Cover Project
www.mindblue.com
“You walk into your local record store; the music is blaring and you’re on the hunt for a new CD. You scan the thousands and thousands of titles but most of the covers seem to blend together. A handful, though, stand out. Something about their appearance appeals to you, but what?