As I was writing my review of the Barton text, I decided to group chapters thematically. I hope the themes make sense to other readers, but if they don't, I tried to explain the groupings explicitly in my opening paragraph. I've committed to this approach, but I'm afraid that jumping around the book will be confusing. Hopefully, this fear will cause me to pay special attention to my descriptions and organization.
On another topic, I've found this book to be very interesting and useful for thinking about disciplines outside the realm of 'literacy'. I can't say that I have much to be critical about (other than Barton should have organized his book the way I do in my paper!).
Sunday, February 22, 2009
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Eric,
ReplyDeleteI think it was a great idea to organize your Barton review based on related chapters. At points in my own review I grouped 2-3 chapters under one idea. It seemed like the best thing to do for the sake of organization and also to maximize the space. I had a really hard time keeping my work under 1500 words.
My main criticism of Barton's work was that I felt that he portrayed public school teaching practice to be repetitive and routine in a negative sense. As a second grade teacher, I find the work that I do with my students to be so important (both in the development of oral and written work), particularly when students come to school without emergent literacy skills that the mainstream culture seems to have.
Overall, the book was interesting and provided me with many new insights about literacy (especially in an ecological sense).
Cheers!
Aimee
You make a great point about Barton's description of public school literacy instruction.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest lessons that I'm taking away from this class, and my time at TC in general, is that among the countless ways to teach, really good teachers draw the best out of each.
When I think back to my time as a teacher, our literacy specialist drew from the ecological model quite a bit, but she never called it that. So either schools are beginning to move towards that perspective or some schools have been doing it all the while.