Literacy Moves On Ch. 5-10

I thought that the Beanie Baby activity was really interesting. Normally you don't think about how kids are affected by marketing, but they are on a daily basis, and this activity brings that to light. I like how in the next chapter, the students have to critically evaluate their own neighborhoods. Most of the time you don't think about the things that go on around your house. But when you actually take the time to notice, you will find some things that you never thought about before.

In the chapter about Heroes and Villains, I found it really interesting to see the different ways boys and girls viewed castles, and how the colored them, and drew what was inside them. I also think that doing a project like this would be fun for the kids, since it is relevant to their interests (most likely).

Literacy Moves On Ch. 1-5

In Chapter 1, the author talks about multimodal texts, and the importance of using images that represent words. I think that this idea is especially important for younger kids, because pictures can be a big help to those students who aren't sure what they are reading about yet. They can look at a picture of an elephant, and know that the funny-looking word that they can't read, must actually be the word elephant.
I thought that it was interesting how in chapter 2, children were introduced to making videos. I think that this concept is a little advanced for young kids, like the ones who the author mentions. In the 1st grade classroom I am placed in, I cannot see any of them actually figuring out how to create a film, and staying on task long enough to get something out of it. So, I don't think that creating videos/films is best for younger students.


The rest of the chapters mostly focus on how students create their own literacy, through games and movies, books and music. I think that this is really neat, and it shows how varied students' experiences can be.

MGRP Reflection

I thought that the MGRP paper was interesting, because I did find out things that I wasn't aware of before. However, I hate research papers, so that part wasn't exactly fun for me. However, it was fun to come up with the genre pieces. All in all, I did learn something new, but I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had worked with a partner on all the research and the actual writing of the paper.