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Significance in
the Classroom: Making Meaning
Educators will explore the
theme of "Significance" at the 2004
NCTE Annual Convention in Indianapolis,
November 18-23. Program Chair
Randy Bomer points out one of the many ways that this theme touches our
classrooms:
"'Significance,'" he tells us, "reminds us that our work
is about meaning, and about the processes by which we develop meaning." This
collection of ideas highlights the "Significance" of the meaning
we, students and teachers, make in the classroom.
The May
2004 Language Arts article "Deep
Ethnography: Culture at the Core of Curriculum"
(E) outlines how students make meaning through a careful, systematic observation
of daily life and
others' cultural experiences. Try the ReadWriteThink lesson Packing
the Pilgrim’s Trunk: Personalizing History in the Elementary Classroom (E)
to further explore how personal knowledge affects the meaning we make of historical
events.
Take a look at the ways that stories develop meaning in relationship
to our own experiences with the ReadWriteThink lesson Myth
and Truth: The First Thanksgiving (M), which explores the stories and
myths surrounding the Wampanoag,
the pilgrims, and the "First Thanksgiving." Investigate how our
ties to stories of the past help us develop meaning in the present with the ReadWriteThink
lesson Making
Connections to Myth and Folktale: The Many Ways to Rainy Mountain (S).
To explore meaning-making in students' own writing, read "'But
teacher, I added a period!' Middle Schoolers Learn to Revise" (M) from
the December
2003 Voices from the Middle, which urges us to "teach that writing
is meaning making." The English Journal article "Unsettling
Drafts: Helping Students See New Possibilities
in Their Writing" (S) describes activities that allow students
to see their writing and their experience in new ways. For a peer-review
activity based on the meaning-making of readers and writers, check out "The
Interpretive-Paraphrase Workshop" (C) from the May
2004 issue of Teaching
English in the Two-Year College.
Read the new NCTE title Literacy
as Social Practice: Primary Voices K-6 (E) for more details on
the essential role of meaning-making in literacy instruction. Check out
NCTE's
Metaphorical
Ways of Knowing: The Imaginative Nature of Thought and Expression (M-S-C),
which explores the relationship between making meaning and metaphor
with a range of classroom activities. And for a more detailed exploration
of meaning-making, take a look at the NCTE title Embodied
Literacies: Imageword and a Poetics of Teaching (C), which
asserts that all meaning, linguistic or otherwise, is a result of the transaction
between image and word.
NOTE: Free access to journal articles mentioned in this Inbox is provided
for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available
to journal subscribers only. This Inbox Idea was published 11-16-2004.
Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary,
M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, G=General).
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