Cultural Practices of

Reading I

Cultural Practices of Reading

Understand and analyze how our different cultures value and make meaning

from text

Overview

• Goals • Objectives • Instructions • Reflections • Adaptations

Day 1

Day 1 Objectives: Frontloading

Instructions: 1. Fold a piece of paper into four

squares 2. Label each square: home,

community, school, online3. List the types of texts you read in

each square

Identify students’ languages and reading practices

Day 1 Objectives: Constructing

Create a three-column KWL chart:

In the first column: What do you know? What do you want to know? What have you learned?

In the second column: Identify the types of languages and texts in each of the charts around the room

Identify students’ languages and reading practices

Freewrite for 15 minutes: • Explain what you learned about

the languages and readings listed• Use your KWL chart for reference

Day 1 Objectives: ExtendingIdentify students’ languages and reading

practices

For homework:• Select two short texts you read from

four corners• Bring samples of it to class• Be prepared to explain its importance

Day 1 Objectives: ExtendingIdentify students’ languages and reading

practices

Day 1: Reflections

• How do we engage monolingual students?• This is a great way to demonstrate how

writing is contextual, connected to communities

• Helps to start a conversation about what a text is

• How you think of yourself as a reader vs. what kind of reader you actually are

• How reading is situated?• What are our expectations for literacy

awareness in our students?

• We need to develop what students are reflecting on

• Use the classroom space to set up four corners

• Select students to say what they expected to see, what surprised them, then full class

• Spend some time developing “communities”

• Talk about kinds of groups students belong to

• Label things students do in different languages

• Talk about overlap of categories

• Ask “why does this matter?”

• Use a Google Doc to hold four corners activity and add links to texts.

• Have students use cell phone cameras to photograph their four corners exercise—email it to you to put on class website if you have one!

Day 1: Adaptions

Day 2

1. Explain the text you brought in • Why did you choose it? • What do you love about it?

2. Pair up and introduce a partner to texts

• What are they about?• Why did you choose them? • Why do you love them? • What memories do you associate with

these texts?

Day 2 Objectives: FrontloadingIdentify cultural strategies for reading

Note the strategies used as the instructor models reading strategies with text using think-aloud method

Day 2 Objectives: ConstructingIdentify cultural strategies for reading

• Think aloud with your favorite texts • Have your partner list the reading

strategies used• What strategies to you bring to bear

before you’ve read? – During your reading? After you’ve read?– What types of translating did you do?

• Repeat

Day 2 Objectives: ConstructingIdentify cultural strategies for reading

1. With your partner, compile your reading strategies into a Venn diagram

2. Write a summary of your reading strategies

3. Share findings with the class

Day 2 Objectives: ExtendingIdentify languages and reading practices

4. In small groups of 4-5, discuss: How does your home language impact the

type of decoding you do as readers? How do different types of text demand

different types of interaction? Why are these texts valued differently in

the communities that use them?

Day 2 Objectives: ExtendingIdentify languages and reading practices

For homework: Write a 1-2 page draft describing the

types of argumentative writing you did in school

Bring a sample school essay to share with class if you have one

Identify languages and reading practicesDay 2 Objectives: Extending

Day 2: Reflections• These surface metacognitive strategies in

reading familiar texts.• Surfaces the fact that reading is a complicated

process.• Do we want to promote metacognitive

awareness or change how students read?• Do students have reading strategies that we

don’t know about?• Do some of Kucer’s strategies not work (for

certain texts, etc.)?

Day 2: Adaptations• Copy a text instructor has

already marked up to show reading strategies and give to students.

• Write/find a piece in L1, translate into L2

Day 3

• Listen as the instructor presents a five-paragraph essay outline and essay they wrote

• Note the ways in which the structure is linked to:– The exigencies and cultures of American schools – How English/American readers want to be told

everything directly and do little imaginative work filling in the gaps

Day 3 Objectives: FrontloadingExplore a cultural comparison of schooled

writing

Interview your partner to find answers to the following questions:

1. What kinds of essays did you write? 2. What did they say? 3. What did they do? 4. How did you organize them?5. How was a typical essay format organized in

your school? 6. In what ways were arguments made? 7. What types of evidence was preferred? 8. What was expected of readers?

Day 3 Objectives: ConstructingExplore a cultural comparison of schooled

writing

• Compare essays written between you and your partner

• In a quick write, explain:– What did you do similarly or

differently? Why?– What do these types of readings

suggest about the constraints, values, and cultural expectations of your schooling?

Day 3 Objectives: ExtendingExplore a cultural comparison of schooled

writing

Day 3: Reflections

Day 3: Adaptations

Day 4

• As the instructor returns the four corners exercise, think about how: – The texts are now webbed for the

crossing of contexts and ecologies– The literacies/languages are not just

isolated from each other

• What reading practices take hold and across these contexts? Why?– Identify the possibilities and constraints

Day 3 Objectives: FrontloadingMoving across culture—tracing paths, making connections

• Create a web of reading practices within the “learning journeys”

• Do the categories of family, community, friends and school still make sense?

• Experiment with new categories• Which reading practices can be

grouped?

Day 3 Objectives: ConstructingMoving across culture—tracing paths, making connections

• Connect your “learning journeys” web to life at MSU

• Brainstorm new categories now as a college student (or as a US college student)

Day 3 Objectives: ExtendingMoving across culture—tracing paths, making connections

• Imagine you’re being interviewed by an advanced MSU student who is researching learning journeys for her honors’ thesis

• Using your web, describe a journey focusing on 1-3 texts that seem to appear often on your route– What types of texts are these?– What kinds of activities surround them? – How are they valued by you and those around

you across cultures and communities?

Day 3 Objectives: ExtendingMoving across culture—tracing paths, making connections

Day 4: Reflections

Day 4: Adaptations