CHILDREN AND THEIR TEXTS-

1
CHILDREN AND THEIR TEXTS-    

• 39th UKRA Conference
• 11th 13th July 2003
•   University of Cambridge
•  Homerton College

2

• TEACHING READING
• IN THE 21ST CENTURY
• Reading as a set of interrelated social and
  cultural practices.
• Pat Smith Margaret Zeegers
• University of Ballarat

3
READING PRACTICESLuke Freebody 2000

• code-breaker (How do I crack this?)
• text participant (What does this mean?)
• text user (What do I do within the here and now?)
  
• text analyst (What does all this do to me?)

4
READERS AS TEXT CODE BREAKERS

• Pooh plunged into the water, seized the bottle,
  and struggled back to his feet again. Bother!
  said Pooh, as he opened it. All that wet for
  nothing. Whats that bit of paper doing? He
  took it out and looked at it. Its a message,
  he said to himself, thats what it is. And
  that letter is a P, so its a very important
  Message to me, and I cant read it. I must find
  Christopher Robin or Owl or piglet, one of those
  Clever Readers who can read things, and they will
  tell me what this Message means. Only I cant
  swim. Bother!
• (A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1927, p.123)

5
Read this paragraph. Be ready to answer some
questions.

• Eth exten four pacherts will manimex three
  spectas of dinger crapites. The three spectas of
  dinga crapites which will be manimexed are
• 1. Thaw eth ding esod
• 2. Who eth ding spoleved and
• 3. Thaw cheaters od ot tureen sheet dinger
  crapites. Sith pachert manimexes dings sa
  edoc-karebers. (After Ken Goodman)

6
Text code breakers

• They attend to visual information and to
  non-visual information to decipher text
• Word attack skills phonological perceptions,
  discriminations and predictions to crack the code
• Know the patterns and conventions of print
• Use IT skills
• Decipher visual/pictorial symbols

7
SCAFFOLDING CHILDREN AS TEXT CODE BREAKERS

• Facilitate and transfer code breaking skills
  through a systematically orchestrated teaching
  and learning cycle.
• Related classroom practices include
• Modelled reading
• Guided reading
• Independent reading

8
Objectives related to literacy.

• To consolidate students knowledge and skills
  related to research
• To consolidate and extend students knowledge and
  skills related to report and persuasive texts
• To develop students knowledge and skills related
  to conducting WWW searches
• To nurture students sense of purpose in research
  and reporting of outcomes.

9
Modelled Reading 1

• Review skills in using library catalogues, shelf
  skimming and scanning, and text selection.
• Review students access procedures for entering
  WWW
• Review search engines and where and how to find
  them

10
Searching the WWW

• We then went about researching on the net
  initially typing in McLibel ...
• and a whole lot of stuff came up !!!!
• http//www.btimes.co.za/97/0629/world/world1.htm
• http//asups.ups.edu/tanthony/pg315/summary.htm
• http//www.tmtm.com/sides/mclib.html This one
  also mentions use of their toys
• http//lists.essential.org/pipermail/commercial-al
  ert/2002/000122.html This
• one is a useful one to focus on the potential to
  buy corporate citizenship
•  We tried to ensure that the sources of
  information were as reputable as we could
  ascertain. We didn't want to lose out
  creditability just because we'd tapped into some
  fringe stuff.
• This web site sets some of the background for the
  current ads that focus on the 'real' food
• http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2787219.stm

11
Search

• Search
• Mad cow newsscipics
• Google LycosYahoo
• News Services
• Science newsTicker
• NY TimesW.Post
• USAToday
• WorldUS papers
• IndependentTelegraph
• GuardianBBCIHT
• Meat News Braakman

12
Modelled Reading 2

• Demonstrate searches in regard to topic
• Demonstrate searches in relation to another
  aspect of topic
• Demonstrate different kinds of searches and their
  impact on search results
• Demonstrate and discuss search results
• Demonstrate skimming, scanning, culling and book
  marking of search results

13
Guided reading

• Practising what has been previously modelled.
• Shift the focus to a new aspect
• Have students gather information and take notes
  in library and back in classrooms.
• Allow for mediating conversation especially about
  code breaking practices used to locate
  information.
• Each side jointly drafts and composes text

14
Independent reading

• Students continue to work in groups cooperatively
  at computer terminals
• Explore relevant sites
• Provide opportunities for students to visit local
  public library.
• Collate information into reports as previously
  modelled and guided
• Build up debate argument from research.

15
Guided reading

• McDonald's is "bad" (2001). This groups focus
  was the affirmative side
• Guided reading Discussed some of their initial
  ideas and planned out what they saw as some key
  issues I.e. to look at how McDonald's worked and
  the type of 'food' they provided!)who would be
  the people who would be wanting to present a
  'different' side of McDonald's and why they
  wouldn't bother searching McD's sites. The
  teacher was aware that McDonald's had a court
  case in the UK in 1999 and they talked about how
  that could demonstrate how McD's operated and how
  it represented their ability to be either
  customer-focused or corporation-focused.
• Printed off reports, sorted into useful group
  and used these for Guided and Independent
  Reading.

16
READERS AS TEXT PARTICIPANTS

• Text participants make meaning from texts. They
  can
• Retrieve literal meanings
• Draw inferences
• Interpret
• Construct figurative meanings
• Evaluate text
• Make links to prior knowledge and experience
• Read pictures and other kinds f visual images
  across print, IT and other media

17
Text Participants and related practices in
modelled, guided and independent reading

• Discuss prior knowledge of text types (genres),
  text structure and language appropriate to text
  type.
• Help students to anticipate and select
  appropriate reading strategies
• Engage students in a range of activities to
  explore and express their meanings and responses
  eg Book circles, Read and retell. DRTA, KWL,
  semantic webs, debates.

18
KWL

• Always greener environmental policy launch
• McDs Sauce

19
READERS AS TEXT USERS

• Use texts in social and personal situations to
  achieve purposes
• Interact with others about texts
• Participate in reading events
• Select texts to suit reader purpose
• Adjust reading strategies to suit text type and
  readers purpose.

20
A text user

• CONCENTRATE
• As a text code breaker, are you able to decipher
  the text? What does the word say?
• As a text participant, what meaning did you make
  from the text?
• As a text user, what is the purpose of the text?

21
You are what you eat.

• McDonald's Mad Cow Worries May 21, 2003  
• Chicago - Shares in major hamburger chains like
  McDonald's fell sharply after Canada said it had
  confirmed a case of mad cow disease, bovine
  spongiform encephalopathy(BSE). The fatal
  brain-wasting disease has never been detected in
  U.S. cattle, but a case so close to the U.S.
  border scared investors. Mad cow caused sharp
  declines in beef consumption in Britain,
  Continental Euro and Japan after outbreaks there
  in recent years. A similar disease in humans is
  contracted by eating tainted meat from infected
  animals. The human variant of the disease, known
  as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, has killed more
  than 100 people in Britain and Europe in recent
  years.
• John Glass, an analyst with CIBC World Markets,
  said even though Canada is not a major market for
  McDonald's, "this is a serious issue, because
  you're not dealing facts, you're dealing in
  perception."

22
Readers as text analysts

• Reflect on a texts ideological meanings
• Interrogate texts
• Detect a texts position
• Take a position-accepting, rejecting, or
  challenging a texts position
• Recognize and talk about opinion, bias and point
  of view in texts
• Construct alternative positions to those in texts
• Recognize and describe ways in which a text is
  crafted

23
Palm notes 1

• That McDonalds is bad
• 1 Introduction. According to the Oxford
  dictionary to be bad means having undesirable
  qualities being harmful, wicked or evil. I want
  to show that in fact McDonalds is all of these.
• 2 In a recent court case in England, McDonalds
  was shown to be very bad. The judge ruled that
  McDonalds was bad in lots of ways. These ways
  included thatMcDonalds exploits children
  because they are more susceptible to advertising,
  pressuring their parents into going to
  McDonalds.
• McDonalds marketing has pretended that their
  food has a nutritional benefit that it can not
  match (its actually high in fat and salt, etc.)
  McDonalds is responsible for animal cruelty
• McDonalds pays low wages, helping to keep wages
  down in food service

24
Palm notes 2

• 3 McDonalds uses children
•  McDonalds has a worldwide budget for promotion
  and advertising of 2 billion pa..
• They aim their advertising at children.
• In their Operations Manual they say that
  because children like Ronald McDonald and he
  likes McDonalds, then children will like
  McDonalds too.
• Children nag their parents to go to McDonalds,
  to collect toys and to play in the playgrounds.
• Parents agree because it keeps the kids quiet.
  There is always a McDonalds store - no matter
  where they are going.

25
Palm notes 3

• 4 McDonalds is not good food Show poster
• McDonalds meal is high in fat, salt and sugar
• The other meals is low in fat, salt and sugar but
  high fibre, water, vitamins and minerals
• McDonalds public relations staff actually said
  that We dont sell nutrition and people dont
  come to McDonalds for nutrition
• 5 McDonalds causes animal cruelty
•  McDonalds produced a statement on cruelty to
  animals.
• But they say they only do this in some countries
  and that the cost of the animal product is much
  more important than the animals quality of life.
• McDonalds buy battery eggs because they cost 50
  less than free range
• Suppliers to McDonalds have been shown to have
  chickens laying eggs in cages 5 to a cage, each
  with less than an A4 piece of paper for space.

26
Social critical literacy

• They act on what they have learned
• They are attention grabbers in the attention
  economy (Lankshear 2003).
• They use literacy to make a difference.

27
Mad About You
Mad About You - A documentary about the mad cow
and man questionDaniele Tabellini, Francesco Buso