Literacies are foregrounded, experienced, accessed, required, extended, represented and PRACTICED in every subject area across my accounts, which in turn represents across my pedagogy. I see proof of this in each of my Projects. There are multiple literacies at play in every Project and in every subject. There are literacies of reading, writing, understanding and representing and also literacies of specific subject area discourse and ways of being, (Writing). These literacies are not exclusive of each other, (they interconnect/overlay), but they are also not inclusive of each other, Science requires a different discourse than PE.
In Literature Circles I taught how to talk about the novel, how to access the learner's knowledge in relation to the novel, how to work in a group. Then the students took these understandings of literacies as their own and represented their learning in their 'Harris' projects.
In Buddies - Term One I helped the Big Buddies build a relationship with the Little Buddies through shared learning experiences, (reading, writing and playing). They required literacies for this, ways to talk with and question their Little Buddies, ways to read and write with their Little Buddies. Then I gave the students a project to work on that engaged those new understandings. They engaged their literacies and represented their understanding for their Little Buddies in the form of a Letter from Santa and a gift of a board game.
In Buddies - Term Two I took the Big Buddies to another level of literacies with their Little Buddies, mentor. The Big Buddies were often responsible to help the Little Buddies understand a concept each week, how to measure temperature with a thermometer, the dangers facing a salmon egg. While the Big Buddies were working with the Little Buddies I often heard language from our classroom discourse, 'Would you like to draw your idea or would you like to use words?', 'I don't understand what you mean, could you tell me more about your idea?' or 'Pokeman is not a danger to the salmon, so we can't include them in this drawing. Can you tell me a danger we might be able to include?' The Big Buddies accessed many of the strategies I used with them and they used with each other when working with their Little Buddies.
In Reading, Talking, Drawing, Talking, Writing I intentionally extended the idea of literacies from reading and writing to talking and drawing about understandings. I worked through the novel in this manner and then I opened the idea of literacies up again with Diane Potts help and the introduction of Modes, Media and Intelligences. The students took these new found understandings of literacies ran with them and created their 'Zack' projects.
Science: A conduit for language learning
In the Fall Unit I taught, modelled and I expected Science discourse, written and oral. The students learned the language of science while learning the concepts of the unit. I accessed what the students already knew, I extended their knowledge and I had them represent their understandings: write a letter of application to the Canadian Space Agency, create a myth for a constellation, prepare a formal experimental write up and take a unit test. The representative tasks were intentionally designed to challenge the student's understandings and to allow for multiple ways of representation through their extended literacies.
In the Winter Unit I worked from the foundation of the Fall Unit. I was less directive with literacies instruction while working concepts. I used the concepts and the groundwork to have the students access their knowledge. In the second unit I used the students to model and I helped them collaborate to find new understandings/representations. There was science discourse in their writing, speaking and drawing from the Fall Unit. Framing a concept with a scientific perspective and discussing it from that perspective were the goals of the Winter Unit. This extended scientific discourse is in their commercials, in their written responses in their unit tests and in their faces in the images of them at the Stave Lake Generating Station. They talk, write, draw, think and organize their thinking like scientists do. They have acquired scientific literacies.
In the fall I accessed what knowledge they had in regard to working and playing together. I modelled and expected the language of co-operation and the language of each sport. I designed opportunities to learn how to help another person become confident and able. I directly taught language for learning, and language for teaching. These are literacies. These literacies are useful in the gymnasium, in the classroom, in the way they are with each other and in the way they are in the world in general.
I modelled and expected how to read and create, (write if you will), a play. Student understanding was represented by strategic practice for improvement and by knowing how to play by the formal rules of the game, by becoming a valuable, contributing member of a team.
The students became comfortable with this way of being, so comfortable that the second term account was authored by students. They modelled their account after my accounts and personalized it in several ways, one being the addition of audio in Cantonese.
In this subject area when I accessed prior knowledge I extended the idea to languages in general, so students were invited to bring in their other languages and I introduced creating projects on the Multiliteracies site. French brought access to other languages. The projects brought broader access to technology. Together these combined for further multiple literacies to be at work. They read, wrote and represented in French, and sometimes another language, and they also read, wrote and represented in the literacies of the technologies required to create their electronic books.
Assessment, Grading and Communication
I taught students strategies to examine/reflect on their learning, to write their report card from their understandings of their learning and to represent their learning and their examination learning to their parents. This required literacies. They needed to read and understand their work, analyze it's personal value and also analyze it in relation to what is expected at their grade level. Then they had to write a representation of their understanding in a specific formal discourse used in reporting. Writing a report card for yourself is a highly skilled task. Their report cards are exemplars of their reading, writing, understanding and representing abilities.
Every account I wrote, in every subject area engages multiple literacies. These literacies are not exclusive of each other, neither are they inclusive of each other. They can be seen as fluid and connected. I am a literacies teacher all day long. I want the students in my class to be engaged literacies learners all day long, reading, writing, understanding and representing their way through their world as best as they are able, and always wanting to be more able.