Literacy Development Through Current Events
Raising student awareness of global issues is increasingly important as the countries of our modern world are ever-growing in interdependence. It can be difficult as an educator to incorporate events like these into the curriculum, but, if handled with careful thought and sensitivity, using current worldly events can broaden perspectives and provide a backdrop for meaningful literacy lessons.
On March 11, I shuffled through my morning routine preparing to substitute teach for a day of 6th grade English. Shocked by the devastating news of the massive 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, my mind rushed to a piece of writing I received along in packet of stories from the story exchange project with South Korean students of English. Just one month before the earthquake, one student wrote and illustrated a harrowing and rather gory tale of an earthquake in Japan that causes complete ahniallation of the entire country and her people. The events were strikingly similar to what happened in true life. Even his drawings of the events in his story, and the geographic location of where the tsunami hit in Japan had an uncanny resemblance. I decided this event was too fascinating not to share with the students I would be spending the day with, and I knew I could somehow incorporate it into their curriculum for the day.
In my experience as a public school substitute teacher, it is not uncommon to begin each day with a daily language review (DLR). A simple Google search for Daily Language Review results in several pages of packaged language products for purchase designed to "keep language skills sharp with focused practice presented in standardized testing formats." Most of these products offer "five items for every day of a 36-week school year. For the teacher there are scope and sequence charts, suggestions for use, and answer keys."
Assuming I'd begin with one of these prescribed sentences asking students to edit the mistakes, I brought in the story about the earthquake in Japan for a possible alternative for the DLR. I was right. The lesson plans that were left for me directed me to select two from the following choices.
Instead, I introduced the day by asking if anyone had heard anything of interest in the news this morning. Floods of emotion poured out as though my question had pulled a plug releasing pent up shock, anxiety and despair for a disaster that would take thousands of lives. Honestly, how could anyone come to school at 8:00 in the morning having been hit with such devastating news only to be asked to sit quietly in their seat and edit a random sentence about some stranger's puppy wagging it's tail?
On the overhead, I presented the class with this story.
I read it aloud to a eerily silent class of 32 sixth graders. Students asked me if I had called the police or the news, assuming this kid had presented us with some sort of omniscient prediction that that should be brought to the attention of the media. Expecting that a group of six graders might focus on the magic of
this true-to-life story, I told them that I thought they should see it first, and I did a little research before I went to find a visual demonstrating the seismic activity in Japan, and likelihood of earthquakes, and
subsequent tsunamis given Japan's geography surrounded by ocean.
In addition to impressing a group of American 6th graders by thinking he's a soothsayer of sorts, the South Korean student author also brought to their attention several meaningful lessons about writing, editing, science, culture, society, geography and history.
For the editing portion, I first provided background information about this piece being written by a student in English as his second language and we talked about how different Korean is from English. Then I asked them to pretend to be English teachers and find everything their Korean student of English did correctly in his writing. They came up with a impressively expansive list of rights:
On March 11, I shuffled through my morning routine preparing to substitute teach for a day of 6th grade English. Shocked by the devastating news of the massive 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, my mind rushed to a piece of writing I received along in packet of stories from the story exchange project with South Korean students of English. Just one month before the earthquake, one student wrote and illustrated a harrowing and rather gory tale of an earthquake in Japan that causes complete ahniallation of the entire country and her people. The events were strikingly similar to what happened in true life. Even his drawings of the events in his story, and the geographic location of where the tsunami hit in Japan had an uncanny resemblance. I decided this event was too fascinating not to share with the students I would be spending the day with, and I knew I could somehow incorporate it into their curriculum for the day.
In my experience as a public school substitute teacher, it is not uncommon to begin each day with a daily language review (DLR). A simple Google search for Daily Language Review results in several pages of packaged language products for purchase designed to "keep language skills sharp with focused practice presented in standardized testing formats." Most of these products offer "five items for every day of a 36-week school year. For the teacher there are scope and sequence charts, suggestions for use, and answer keys."
Assuming I'd begin with one of these prescribed sentences asking students to edit the mistakes, I brought in the story about the earthquake in Japan for a possible alternative for the DLR. I was right. The lesson plans that were left for me directed me to select two from the following choices.
Instead, I introduced the day by asking if anyone had heard anything of interest in the news this morning. Floods of emotion poured out as though my question had pulled a plug releasing pent up shock, anxiety and despair for a disaster that would take thousands of lives. Honestly, how could anyone come to school at 8:00 in the morning having been hit with such devastating news only to be asked to sit quietly in their seat and edit a random sentence about some stranger's puppy wagging it's tail? |
| Photo courtesy of: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/ |
On the overhead, I presented the class with this story.
this true-to-life story, I told them that I thought they should see it first, and I did a little research before I went to find a visual demonstrating the seismic activity in Japan, and likelihood of earthquakes, and
subsequent tsunamis given Japan's geography surrounded by ocean.
 |
| Image courtesy of: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/japan/density.php |
I also mentioned briefly that there exists a strong element of tension between Korea and
Japan that dates back several centuries when the Japanese began taking part in the struggles between the independent kingdoms of the Korean Peninsula and Japanese pirates regularly wreaked havoc along Korea's coast, raiding ports and sacking towns. I followed this by asking if any of the students had ever learned anything about tension between two or more countries, and I got answers speaking about the Iraq war, and opposition on issues related to illegal immigration at the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico.
In addition to impressing a group of American 6th graders by thinking he's a soothsayer of sorts, the South Korean student author also brought to their attention several meaningful lessons about writing, editing, science, culture, society, geography and history.
For the editing portion, I first provided background information about this piece being written by a student in English as his second language and we talked about how different Korean is from English. Then I asked them to pretend to be English teachers and find everything their Korean student of English did correctly in his writing. They came up with a impressively expansive list of rights:
- proper letter capitalization at sentence beginnings
- correct use of proper nouns
- neat handwriting
- proper punctuation
- complete sentences
- story written in context with easily understood meaning
- good story sequencing from beginning to end
- detailed imagery (we can picture the disaster in our heads)
- good accompanying illustrations
By the end of the list, they were much more impressed with his writing.
Then we went onto editing. I asked each student to choose a sentence to edit. By the end of the lesson, the students had edited the entire piece and were still engaged in what would otherwise be a mundane daily editing lesson with sentences lacking context or meaning.
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