Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h6MKVU709657; Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:31:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:31:30 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <000a01c3508e$b7be8380$130101c8@workstation1> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George Demetrion" <george.demetrion@lvgh.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2458] back to the original lesson & more X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 9835 Lines: 158 (Long) Colleagues: Recall that after giving up on having the group identify the word "restaurant" through phonemic strategies, I did not simply give them the word. I did give them a very strong prompt. With "restaurant" on the board and after their struggling engagement with the various sound combination of the last two syllables, I said, "It's a place to eat." The difference between simply giving them the word and providing a very powerful clue may have been minor, but I argue, significant. The significance being that it still required an >inference< on the part of the students and that is all the difference in the world. That is because an inference still requires thinking, even as in this case, the thought process was instantaneous. In Vygotsky's terns I upped the scaffold as the earlier experiment in phonemic skill identification was not working in this case. If my goal for the lesson was merely teaching words, I could have attempted to add clues that might have helped them further with connecting the sounds to the words. For example, since they knew "rest," I could have then proceeded to have them sound out "ant," which they might have pronounced like the insect. (I may have actually done that.) With that prompt, I could have played off the rhythms of the syllables. That is, with rest" on the board, they and I together could have stressed the sounds in the rest of the word. Thus, for the next syllable I could have said something like "bomp," just to get the flow of the word going in their lived experience. Then with "ant" pronounced at the end, I could have continued playing with the word rhythmically, having them engage the flow of the word with "bomp" as the second syllable. Thus, "rest"/"bomp"/"ant", having them say that several times under the assumption that they would have made an imaginative connection that might have finally clicked. Note that that would not have been a phonemic approach strictly speaking as I would have been relying on context clues beyond the innate logic of what was embedded in the sound combinations, especially of the second syllable. The linkage would have been with their own innate sense of the flow of oral language that, conceivably, could have served as a cueing mechanism grafted on not only to the middle phoneme, but in seeing the word whole in their minds. That is, it still would have required an inference beyond the literal sounds, in which the sounds would have tapped into certain symbols in their own processing, leading into the integrated whole. I could have taken that approach, though I did not because my focus was not the teaching of isolated words and sounds. It was, rather, the content of the narrative that we had read, even as >one< of my objectives was to have the students notice and work with words with which they had difficulty. That is, as intermediate levels readers, they had a basic phonemic grasp of print language, but still needed considerable practice in a variety of skills and aptitudes in becoming increasing fluent, including the interpretive capacity to sift texts for multiple meanings. In this I work with a model based on >literacy< that obviously includes reading as a major component, but isn't defined exclusively by it. On that, I share close affinities with the EFF project, to say nothing of the Freirian quest to read the word in order to read the world as well as with Sticht's functional-context theory of literacy. Thus, in this case, I drew on a meaning context clue. With that clincher, the students then gained the insight to look at those letter and syllable combinations with fresh eyes and perceive (even if only in a flash) how the sounds in the word "restaurant" came together. A retrospective approach is also a valuable source of learning. Either way, whether I continued with the phonemic vein, bomping along, or gave them another context clue, the critical factor remains the same. That is, the centrality of stimulating thinking throughout the learning process, whether of sounds in words, whole words by sight or of the content of what is read. Perhaps this is where syntax and meaning come together, in the mediation of thinking through active learning as a symbol-making process of making sense, whatever the overt learning task may be focused on. There are other places to go to further draw this out. However I turn to Chapter 11 of John Dewey's Democracy and Education, written close to a century ago. The chapter is titled "Experience and Thinking." How apropos to the anecdote! How apropos to all that is best in adult literacy education! Here's Dewey, and a little bit of me. I'm the one with the training wheels. For Dewey it is not experience, per se, that is important, but the expansion of experience through critical reflection and disciplined activity in the process of progressively resolving a problematic situation. This certainly fits our bill in terms of what we seek to accomplish in adult literacy education. Experience, Dewey tells us, involves "trying." That trying is an essential part of an experiment within a problematic situation in quest of resources and direction that lead to its resolution. While the trying is the effort, the "undergoing" is what happens as a result. We make progress, or we get stymied, or we remain in a doubtful situation. But, in any event, the trying and the undergoing together, changes experience. Thus, for us, the nature of the word identification exercise changed in the process of experimenting with it. It is not simply the trying, then, but the undergoing, too, which stimulates the critical reflection on a problem in the midst of a quest on route toward resolution. The problem is progressively worked on through ever deepening thinking and continued experimentation. At least that's the ideal. Hypotheses emerge that require additional experimentation-additional trying and undergoing as one works toward what Dewey phrases as the "ends-in-view." In the lesson at hand, I started out with a tentative hypothesis that it was within the students' capacity structure to get the word "restaurant" exclusively through phonemic prompts. Note, my experience and theirs did not prove that that was false. However, it did disclose certain problems that were not easily resolvable in that case simply through isolating sounds of syllables even if the individual sounds of the syllable unit were correct. (They still had difficulty with that second syllable.) They had most of the parts to the word (though I speculate here that they did not fully possess that knowledge of the sound letter combinations), but they couldn't put the sounds together into the integrated whole of the word. An element was still missing. What was that? In part it was limited phonemic dexterity (even of what they knew) at a high level of internalization. Perhaps as fundamentally, they lacked dexterity with the syntax and grammar of print literacy. Of course, they knew the word "restaurant," that's not the point. Yet they were limited in their capacity to play with written language in the use of a broad range of logic to figure things out. ( Note, I am only speaking here only of written language). I don't know this, of course, but that's an experientially based informed hypothesis that would still require confirmation in the ongoing process of critical engagement with this group of learners. The key stimulus in my view, is what Dewey refers to as "vital learning" whatever that may be in specific terms. It was with that stimulus when learning is most vital that students are most likely to fully use their "judgment: to hunt for the connections of the thing dealt with." In my own limited way, this vital learning is what I seek to stimulate within students, whatever specific content areas or methodologies that I may utilize. The word "restaurant" was a very small part of our lesson that day. The word in itself was unimportant. What was critical was the extent to which the lesson as a whole was permeated by vital learning, tapping into and expanding the meaning-making symbolic discourse system of the students in the context of their group interaction. It is that which turns "an experience" into an experience of learning worth having. Pushing forward in such a learning/teaching climate, the teacher works in a thoughtfully experimental way, testing and thinking in the search for those connections that move learning forward, as an ideal, in each particular instance. Both students and teacher together are engaged in this experiment of learning as long as the process of learning and teaching is going on. "The object of [such mutual] thinking is to help reach a conclusion," that of a satisfactory learning outcome as defined by the participants. "Since the situation in which thinking occurs is a doubtful one, thinking is a process of inquiry, of looking into things, of investigating." As Dewey continues to explain it, "It is seeking, a quest, for something that is not at hand..All thinking is research, and all research is native, original, with him who carries it on, even if everybody else in the world already is sure of what he is looking for." Thinking in this case was figuring out the meaning of "restaurant" by whatever means best suited the purpose-the purpose at hand in this particular learning situation. That situation was a creative striving for investigative learning (i.e., research), propelled by the "vital experience" that I sought to stimulate through the reading selection I chose for the day. and the many ways that we interacted with this text, pushing learning forward all the way through. The word "rest-aur-ant" was a microcosmic manifestation of that situation. George Demetrion Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford george.demetrion@lvgh.org
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