CHILDREN AND THEIR
TEXTS39th UKRA Conference
11th – 13th July 2003
University of Cambridge
Homerton College
TEACHING READING
ST
IN THE 21 CENTURY:
Reading as a set of interrelated
social and cultural practices.
Pat Smith & Margaret Zeegers
University of Ballarat
READING PRACTICES
Luke & 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?)
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. What’s that bit of
paper doing?” He took it out and looked at it. “It’s a
message,” he said to himself, “that’s what it is. And that
letter is a ‘P’, so it’s a very important Message to me, and I
can’t 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
can’t swim. Bother!” ‘
(A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1927, p.123)
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 edockarebers.’ (After Ken Goodman)
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
SCAFFOLDING CHILDREN AS TEXT
CODE BREAKERS
Facilitate and transfer code breaking skills
through a systematically orchestrated
teaching and learning cycle.
Related classroom practices include
1. Modelled reading
2. Guided reading
3. Independent reading
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.
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
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-alert/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
Search
• Search
Mad cow: news+sci+pics
Google +Lycos+Yahoo
• News Services
Science news+Ticker
NY Times+W.Post
USAToday
World+US papers
Independent+Telegraph
Guardian+BBC+IHT
Meat News; Braakman
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
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
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.
Guided reading
•
•
•
McDonald's is "bad" (2001). This group’s 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 corporationfocused.
Printed off reports, sorted into useful group and used these for Guided
and Independent Reading.
READERS AS TEXT
PARTICIPANTS
Text participants make meaning from texts. They can:
1. Retrieve literal meanings
2. Draw inferences
3. Interpret
4. Construct figurative meanings
5. Evaluate text
6. Make links to prior knowledge and experience
7. Read pictures and other kinds f visual images across
print, IT and other media
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.
KWL
• Always greener: environmental policy
launch
McD’s Sauce
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.
A text user
CONCENTRATE
1. As a text code breaker, are you able to
decipher the text? What does the word
say?
2. As a text participant, what meaning did
you make from the text?
3. As a text user, what is the purpose of the
text?
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."
Readers as text analysts
•
•
•
•
Reflect on a text’s ideological meanings
Interrogate texts
Detect a text’s position
Take a position-accepting, rejecting, or challenging a
text’s 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
Palm notes 1
» That McDonald’s 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 that:McDonald’s exploits children
because they are more susceptible to advertising, pressuring
their parents into going to McDonald’s.
• McDonald’s marketing has pretended that their food has a
nutritional benefit that it can not match (it’s actually high in fat
and salt, etc.) McDonald’s is responsible for animal cruelty
• McDonald’s pays low wages, helping to keep wages down in
food service
Palm notes 2
3
•
•
•
•
•
McDonald’s uses children
McDonald’s 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 McDonald’s, then children will
like McDonald’s too’.
Children nag their parents to go to McDonald’s, to collect toys
and to play in the playgrounds.
Parents agree because it keeps the kids quiet. There is always
a McDonald’s store - no matter where they are going.
Palm notes 3
4 McDonald’s is not good food
Show poster –
• McDonald’s 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
• McDonald’s public relations staff actually said that “We don’t sell
nutrition and people don’t come to McDonalds for nutrition”
5 McDonald’s causes animal cruelty
• McDonald’s 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 animal’s quality of life.
• McDonald’s 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.
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.
Mad About You
Mad About You - A documentary about the mad cow and man question
Daniele Tabellini, Francesco Buso