Cultural Practices of Reading II

Cultural Practices of Reading II

Cultural Practices of Reading Goal: To teach rhetorical reading strategies of complex, culturally situated texts.

Overview • Goals (linked to general learning goals of PCW/FYW/ULL) • Objectives(SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) • Instructions • Reflections • Adaptations

Day 1

Day 1 Objectives: Frontloading Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: Give students these short texts and ask them to pair up to make sense of it. What do these mean?Collect their answers and compare them.

Day 1 Objectives: Constructing Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: • Give students this short list of inferencing strategies (NOTE: see handout for strategies). • Still in pairs, ask them to identify all the strategies they used to make sense of these texst. Ask: What types of prior knowledge are they linking this text to? What did they need to know to make sense of it? What information didn’t they have?

Day 1 Objectives: Constructing Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions (cont.) • Write this question on the board and ask students to come to the board and write their answers to it. • Q: why did we read this in different ways? • Read their answers together and reflect together in pairs: what did this exercise tell you about inferences? What did it show you about the relation between our cultures and how we make inferences? Why was there no “wrong” reading of these texts?

Day 1 Objectives: Extending Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: • Group students in fours or along a row • Assign each student in the group an audience (e.g. txt msg 2 frnd; report to police officer; poem to friend celebrating an everyday gesture; steps of instructions to a gas pump user in home country, etc). • Ask them to revise the first passage in light of the new audiences’ needs • Once revised, pass the revision to the right. • Each student answers one of these questions, then passes to the right • What do you like about this revision? (pass answer to the right) • What did it make you think of? (pass answer to the right) • How well did the writers paint the picture of this for you? (pass answer to the right) • What questions do you still have about this? (pass answer to the right) NOTE: See handout for alternative activity.

Day 1 Objectives: Extending Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Reflection: How do audience expectations shape the amount and type of information you include in your writing? • For homework: • Read two sample literacy narratives from our reader. As you read, write in the margins of the reader using sticky notes or just in pen. • What are the turning points in each narrative? What are the most important things the writer seems to learn? • What events or insights did you find most interesting? • What seem to be the key ideas of each narrative? • How does or doesn’t this experience relate to your own? • Bring only your annotated text to class.

Day 1: Reflections

Day 1: Adaptations

Day 2

Day 2 Objectives: Frontloading Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: Photocopy a page of text you’ve heavily annotated and distribute it to students. The messier the better. Model you reading of it to explain these comments. As you do ask students to use the list of 10 kinds of inferences given on the handout to try to determine what types of inferences you were making. Give students a short list of inferencing strategies.

Day 2 Objectives: Constructing Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: Ask students to take out their book and any notes they wrote in the margins or on a separate sheet as they were reading.In pairs, ask them to exchange their annotations with each other. Using the above list, identify all the strategies they each used to make sense of this text. Collect their strategies on the board and confirm their excellent work. Q: How did the questions before reading help them make their inferences? What types of questions do they typically ask themselves before reading a text? (Collect on board and ask students to collect these as well)

Day 2 Objectives: Constructing Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: • Ask students to review the questions from homework last night, and compile their notes next to the reading. In a quick write, give students 2-5 minutes for each question to write a response (ELL TIP: for students whose first language isn’t English, make sure they know they can use their first language to respond, as needed if they can’t think of a word. They’ll need to translate when sharing). • Share the responses with a peer.

Day 2 Objectives: Extending Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Instructions: • Present students with a very basic description of a haiku. Wikipedia has a nice one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku • Ask Japanese students to write one in Japanese scripts, Chinese in Mandarin scripts, and English speakers in English.

Day 2 Objectives: Extending Understand and analyze how individuals make meaning from difficult text. • Reflection: How do audience expectations shape the amount and type of information you include in your writing? We know haikus are Japanese forms of poetry, but where did their conventions come from? How are the expectations for this genre historically and culturally created? • Take Away: Knowing the cultural and historical situatedness of genres helps you as a writer understand the extent to which you should strive to satisfy or can legitimately frustrate a reader’s needs.

Day 3

Day 3 Objectives: Frontloading Analyze readings as rhetorically and culturally situated. • Instructions: • Pop Quiz: Take a sheet of paper and in a small group list as many inferences as you can remember. Talk to other groups until you’ve recalled all ten. Compile them on the board.

Day 3 Objectives: Frontloading Analyze readings as rhetorically and culturally situated. • (NOTE: See handout on “U Turn”)

Day 3 Objectives: Constructing Analyze readings as rhetorically and culturally situated. • Instructions: • Read “U Turn” aloud to students once through. • Read it again and stop periodically. Prompt students to say something using one of the 10 inferences you choose. • Q: How did the introduction before reading help them make their inferences? How did the language and spelling help you understand this text? What do we need to know to understand this? What questions do we still have? • Additional Qs: How did the arrangement help you understand this text? How did the arrangement signal the genre of the text?

Day 3 Objectives: Constructing Analyze readings as rhetorically and culturally situated. • Instructions: • Give students David’s analysis of this language in a separate handout. Read aloud the first couple of paragraphs for students modeling for them how you’re seeking answers to their questions and making inferences. • Then ask students to read the remaining paragraphs to form answers to their questions in small groups (ELL TIP: Let speakers who share similar L1s speak to each other in the native language about this. Then report out in English). • Ask students to compile answers to their questions on the board around the room or on large post-it notes.

Day 3 Objectives: Extending Analyze readings as rhetorically and culturally situated. • Instructions: • Ask students to write this same text substituting all the verbs and all the adjectives for ones of their own. • Prompt them to use creative spellings and be prepared to have it read or share it. • Collect the papers and read some selections aloud to them, pointing to the strategies for writing in creative registers they’re using following Kirkland’s analysis of U-Turn’s work. • Reflection: How do audience expectations shape the type of language and spelling you include in your writing?How are these expectations historically and culturally created?

Day 4

Day 4 Objectives: Frontloading Extending inferences into rhetorical reading strategies. • Instructions: • Ask students to count from 1- 8 and group them according to their numbers. Hand out one strategy effective readers do for each group (NOTE: see handout for list of strategies). • Ask the groups to come up with 2-3 examples of their own experiences where they do that. What kind of text are they reading? What situation are they in when they do that? Do they do that with their school text books or assigned readings? Why or why not? NOTE: See adaptation on handout.

Day 4 Objectives: Frontloading Extending inferences into rhetorical reading strategies. • Instructions: • Collect students examples for these verbally to the rest of the class. As they report out, listen and take notes on what’s surprising about their findings. • Still in small groups, discuss their notes and consider what role context, situation, purpose, and formality of the situation play in their reading strategies. • Q: Which of these factors influence their reading strategies the most? How do these strategies differ if you’re reading in a second language?

Day 4 Objectives: Constructing Extending inferences into rhetorical reading strategies. • Instructions: • Remind students of the U-Turn poem analyzed last class and the sense of agency and power that Dr. Kirkland attributes to this students’ word choice and language play. • Give students 2 minutes to freewrite a working definition of agency. • Ask them to share them in their groups and come up with a group definition of agency.

Day 4 Objectives: Extending Extending inferences into rhetorical reading strategies. • Instructions: • Using these definitions of agency read Smith and Watson’s overview of the term as it’s described in several social theories. Assign each of the groups a task for reading this passage—they are to be able to report an answer to the following in a forum on Angel, shared Google doc, or class Facebook site: • What is the situation to which they are responding? What in the language they use suggest this to you? • What is the purpose of their analysis and argument? What in the language they use suggest this to you? • What is their main claim or thesis? What in the language they use suggest this to you? • Who do they believe their audience is? Why would this audience care? What do they value? What in the language they use suggest this to you?

Day 4 Objectives: Extending Extending inferences into rhetorical reading strategies. • Reflection: What connections do you see between language and agency? What kinds of agency does language give you? • Homework Using the four rhetorical reading questions above, read your next reading. Write a journal of 1-2 pages in which you reflect on the reading’s rhetorical purpose. NOTE: See handout for alternative activities.

Cultural Practices of Reading II