Moll's Funds of Knowledge
Where did Moll's case study take place, and on what demographic did he and the research team focus on?
The research was a collaboration between education and anthropology with working-class Mexican families in Tucson, Arizona.
The focus is to reimagine what classroom management looks like by having teachers:
- engage in self-reflection of their own power and privilege
- transforming their practices in the classroom
- building a classroom culture
- building on assets from students and their families
What are the 4 dimensions of college Readiness
- Key content Knowledge
- Academic Behaviors
- Key Cognitive Strategies
- Contextual Skills & Awareness
What is Shanahan & Shanahan's (2008) model of literacy progression
top tier - Disciplinary Literacy: The expectation to read, write, and think in discipline-specific ways from encountering more complex texts and requiring prior knowledge and processes needed for the discipline.
What is detrimental about the current trend of superficial, shallow, and rushed reading with teachers on students literacy
It inhibits their ability to make inferences and declines their motivation to want to read or learn, as well as their attention span to the text.. Students need time in class to read, analyze, discuss, and evaluate various texts (page 63).
Examples of Bodies of Knowledge (List at least three)
How can teachers create an environment or classroom culture that students feel involved in
Encouraging students to showcase their strengths will make them more curious, engaged, and, therefore, more active in the classroom and lessons.
About how many students are actually college and career ready at the end of their high school studies?
Roughly 31% are college or career-ready.
How can teachers prepare to get students to have deeper readings and thinking about texts that the CCSS (2010) suggests they need to be prepared for college
Teachers should identify multiple perspectives on the topic and provide evidence that supports each of them. In an English discipline, this can set up students to see how deeper thinking and cognition work, and also develop their own metacognition by having them defend those viewpoints in discussion with their classmates.
What did the ACT test fail to differentiate and what does CCSS (210) response of focus in student reading?
ACT could not distinguish between college-ready or career-ready students and those who were not. CCSS suggests students need to progressively be exposed to more complex literature, focusing on "55% informational, 45% literacy" in 8th grade (page 65).
How have stereotypes harmed students and the assumptions made about them (think of Carlos's example with traveling)
Teachers forget to value or take an interest in students returning to their families in Mexico for the summer or for longer periods of time than a typical vacation, whereas students who went abroad to Europe or Asia tend to be seen as more travelled and experienced in culture.
What issue does Milner see regarding Institutional and Systemic Barriers?
Teachers and faculty appear more concerned with test scores than actual development or care for students, particularly their engagement and interests in their learning.
What should assessments focus on for best adaptability for teachers and usefulness for students?
Assessments should enable students to demonstrate knowledge and skills, and be structured so that teachers can see the results and adjust their ensuing lessons accordingly.
According to Zygouris-Coe, what are the goals of ELA
- To promote personal enjoyment, social, occupational, and civic literacy
- to understand and use ELA for personal enjoyment, understanding others' perspectives, communicating with others, accomplishing goals, shaping opinions and attitudes, and developing new knowledge (Zygouris-Coe, page 41)
- encouraging students to seek insight about human experiences through texts and metacognition
How are teachers failing to ensure students have a wide exposure to sentence length, vocabulary, and language choice to better understand texts?
Teachers rarely stray from the textbook and should instead expose students to a variety of informational texts as well as different levels of complexity in texts.
How does Moll and the research team suggest incorporating funds of knowledge in the classroom?
Encouraging teachers to assist students in pursuing their interests through guided, or more narrow, lessons that focus on their funds of knowledge
What is Classroom Management about (Chapter 1)
Teachers being Culturally: Responsive, validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory.
What is the difference between Disciplinary Literacy (DL) and Disciplinary Specific Literacy (DSL)
The difference is that DSL is focused on the corresponding discipline of the class, whereas DL is the fundamental ability of a student's general literacy.
What are some of the common misconceptions teachers have about student literacy? Not to say these are always false conceptions, but unfair conceptions to assume every student has the capability of.
Teachers assume that students know how to read and comprehend the texts they read
- that students have sufficient prior knowledge and comprehension skills
- adequate vocabulary or sufficient ability to write and communicate
- motivation and interest to read and learn, or can collaborate academically with others
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What are Text-Dependent Questions, and what are their benefits?
Text-Dependent questions are questions that require students to go back to their reading to defend their answers or to find evidence to the question. Teachers often have Text-Dependent questions and questions that pull the student away from the text simultaneously in attempt to relate the text to real life. Instead, teachers should hold the questions that pull away from the text and ask questions that require students to interpret a specific portion of the text and what it means to them. This keeps the students in the book, but also pulls the relevance of the text into the student's own thinking.
What are three interrelated activities Moll suggests combining to further assist students and embrace their bodies of knowledge?
Ethnographic analysis of household dynamics, Classroom practices, and development after-school study groups with teachers
What are the 3 categories for Urban and how does Milner differentiate each of them (Intro)
- Urban Intensive: large metro cities, massive size and density with +1M inhabitants (Cities like LA or New York)
- Urban Emergent: <1M inhabitants, some scarcity of resources (materials, economics, food access, etc.) Still a fairly large city/community, but not on the scale of Urban Intensive
- Urban Characteristic: Not located in a large population yet still experiencing traits of an urban area, such as a large increase in English Learner students, or diverse religions/household cultures
What are the characteristics of the classroom environment or lesson/course structure does Zygouris-Coe emphasize as the ideal structure?
- rigorous curriculum + challenging courses
- relevant learning opportunities
- family and community involvement (learning outside of the classroom)
- Strong collaborative leadership
Principle 1 Learning is a Socially Constructed Process - learning and literacy are best understood when viewed in relation to others, thus student-to-student engagement is crucial to ensure students are not fearful or stressed from participation or to take risks in their interpretation
Principle 2 Teacher as Mentor, Students as Apprentice - Deep learning and grasp of knowledge cannot occur by simply covering the basics; teachers must model, support, and guide their students along the way before assuming they can conduct it on their own. How we create our lessons to encourage student activeness matters.
Principle 3 Content and Literacy Knowledge Develop in Tandem - Disciplinary learning should be taught simultaneously to reading, vocabulary comprehension, writing, and communicating so that the skills are taught while incorporating the discipline rather than appearing separate to the students
Principle 4 Students Engage in Discipline-Specific Inquiry Learning - Instruction that engages students in reflective thinking/inquiry "equips them with learning knowledge and develops reflective learning tools that will serve them well with their own metacognition" (p. 53). This looks like asking students questions that demand them to think further about the text and its message, or audience, or characters and their psyches.
Principle 5 Assessment to Drive Instruction, Instruction to Drive Assessment - Teachers should use multiple types of informal/formal assessments to plan instruction and track student progress, and collaborative teacher inquiry on assessment issues is vital for the success of the teacher and student
Engaging students in thought that is based on their PERSONAL readings of the text (not the thoughts of their teacher telling them how to interpret the meaning of texts) that asks them to support their interpretations with textual evidence, encourages deeper thinking, research abilities, and a greater grasp of the text itself. It's important to understand that in the English field, the lens through which we read a text greatly changes our interpretations of it.
Giving students the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the text by exploring their own insights of the text will encourage greater class participation.