BCTELA

by Krista Ediger

I've been teaching thematically for the nine years I've been in the classroom, but when I heard Jeff Wilhelm speak at the SFU Literacy Continuum Conference last August, his discussion of the importance of using essential questions to frame and focus units led me to reconsider my unit planning. I had been hearing murmurings of backwards design, and was involved in a group planning process two years ago for Humanities 8 which followed many of the principles of backwards design without my being aware of it, and I worked extensively with a partner on English 11 three years ago tackling big assessment questions, but I knew that it was time to explore the process further. The key difference between the unit planning I was used to and backwards design is the piece where, before deciding on instructional activities, teachers articulate the summative assessments they will use to determine whether or not their students have met their stated enduring understandings or learning outcomes.

Last year, I followed much the same program I taught the year before for English 12, and was feeling increasingly ineffective. In February, I decided I needed to plan the rest of my grade 12 course more purposefully, and so enlisted the help of a district consultant, Joanne Panas. In this article, I'll touch on our planning process, and then outline the unit itself, which grew into a multi-faceted, three month unit on story that touched on literary analysis of poetry and short stories, small group discussion, spoken word and personal narratives. Of course there are things I'll change next year when I teach this again, but it's a unit I will teach again, and some of the principles I practised in this unit in both the planning and implementing stages are ones that I am coming to understand as increasingly important in all my teaching: backwards design (identifying clear enduring understandings, essential questions, summative and formative assessments - all prior to the creation of daily lessons), planning with a partner or team, explicit teaching using modeling, gradual release, and differentiated instruction.

Our Planning Process

Before we began formally planning this unit, we had some conversations that focused on materials and activities. In particular, I was interested in a poetry unit Joanne had done last year with her English 10's that used text sets in a literature circle format. I also wanted to incorporate some spoken-word poetry that had been successful with my students in the past. We had a great conversation about how each of us might open a unit on short stories; from this came one of our big ideas: "Why do people tell stories?" After these informal chats, we set up a meeting to plan with a focus on backwards design. To our first meeting, I brought my copy of Understanding by Design, by Wiggins and McTighe; Joanne brought an activity from her staff meeting the day before, which was a boiled-down version of chapter 1 of Wiggins's and McTighe's book.

We began by determining the enduring understandings we wished to address, and these were based on our knowledge of the new ELA 8-12 IRP and its increased focus on oral language. At the same time, we worked out our essential questions. It's important to note that this was something of a back-and-forth process, not a linear one. We wrestled with phrasing, pared down ideas, checked the book, and moved items from one category to another. Once we had these ideas down, we looked at the skills, knowledge, and attitudes we wanted the students to acquire. Though somewhat "old-school," these last three areas are still valid organizers with their practical and concrete nature, but we realized they should come after the enduring understandings and essential questions are determined.

Our next focus was on assessment. For this part, we decided to go back to our two enduring understandings. We created a chart that helped us see how for each of the enduring understandings, we would have a formative piece and a summative piece. We found it easier to divide the enduring understandings up somewhat, as you can see in our final chart. This gave us a good idea of what we would have students do to demonstrate their acquisition of the big ideas. Again, this was not a linear process; we excitedly came up with ideas for instruction and assessment as we chatted, and wrote them down separately for the next section. At times it was hard to keep focused on just the key assessments. As we worked, we realized that we wanted to weave stories and poetry together; from that came the idea of choosing poems for the literature circles that had something to do with the idea of "story," which linked back to our essential questions.

Next, we needed to get a sense of the flow of the unit-how would we instruct and assess students so as to move them toward these final assessments? Actually, it was by then a fairly simple process. I began by sketching out a flow for the unit, incorporating instruction using modeling and gradual release, as well as formative assessment. Together we brainstormed ways to flesh this out, while continually checking back to our big ideas. Once this flow was pretty well set, we went back through it to make sure we were following a clear pattern of instruction and practice, followed by assessment. When we created the chart from our notes, the purpose of each activity was clear.

We met again about a week and a half later; by that point, I had just begun the unit with a class on "stories" - the history of story, their purpose and power, how their roles have changed. We also talked about narrators and points of view and truth and perspective before sharing some of the stories we tell often from our own lives. Then we looked at three short stories: "Man from the South" by Roald Dahl, "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov and "The Chaser" by John Collier, and did a variety of pre/during/post reading strategies, followed by discussion that linked us back to our opening questions and the essential questions of the unit. Joanne and I began our second formal planning session by brainstorming other possible stories for later in the unit. Then we worked on the shift to poetry. We decided to do a "fishbowl" with three teachers, Joanne, me and Gordon Powell, the teacher-librarian at McRoberts, using a new poem for each of my three English 12 classes; in addition, each of the administrators was invited to participate in the fishbowl sessions, and we ended up having an administrator at each one. We also worked on the poetry literature circle idea, and began to think of suitable poems as well as how to make up the text sets. Because we had done so much work last time on getting a clear idea of our focus for the unit, we were able to spend more time on the actual instruction, materials, and student activities we would use. We were also able to take our initial notes from the first planning day and make changes and additions to them to reflect what was happening in the classroom.

This has been a great process, and has solidified for us a few key points: two minds (or more) are better than one; the process of backward design is very practical, but it's not linear; and there is no "one right way" to incorporate the key concepts of understanding by design into your own planning. It doesn't matter what route you take, as long as you get to the desired destination.

 

The following is the result of our initial work with backwards design.

  

Part 1: THE BIG IDEAS
Enduring Understandings

• Students will understand how to engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and to interact with others around those ideas, orally and in writing.
• Students will understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society, and a variety of effects on us.
  

Essential Questions

• Why do we tell stories?
• What are the ways we tell stories?
• What stories do I (students) want to tell? Skills:

Students will…

• Respond personally to literature and ideas
• Participate appropriately and thoughtfully in small-group and large-group discussions
• Make appropriate choices in diction, language, rhythm, and structure when presenting
• Write analytical paragraphs and essays about short stories and poems

Knowledge: Students will…

• Review and use the elements of literature and literary devices of short stories and poems

Attitudes: Students will…

• Gain an appreciation of the purpose of stories in our lives and culture n Demonstrate willingness to engage in and explore literature and ideas
  

  

Part 2: Assessment

Enduring Understanding	Formative Assessment	Summative Assessment
Engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and interact with others around those ideas, orally…	■ class discussion of rubric for group discussion; students use rubric to evaluate teachers in fishbowl discussion ■ self-assessment and teacher feedback of small-group discussions (first - poetry lit circles and then short stories)	■ self-evaluation of small-group discussions (poetry lit circles)
…and in writing	■ teacher feedback and self/peer-assessment of analytical paragraphs on poems and essays on stories using teacher rubric	■ teacher evaluation of analytical essay on short story
Understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society…	■ peer/self-assessment of language and presentation skills for group poem written in response to a story or poem, presented to the class	See below.
… and a variety of effects on us	See above.	■ teacher assessment of spoken-word poem (your own story) written by individuals and presented to the class (Poetry Café)

 

Jill Kedersha McClay is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.

(Click here to downlaod this article in PDF)

When our two daughters were toddlers, my husband always said that whenever one of them yelled, "Look, Mom! Look, Dad! Look at me!" we were bound to see something we didn't want to see: a little girl dangling one foot off the edge of a cliff, or displaying a mouth full of half-chewed spaghetti and meatballs, or the little one hoisting the older one off the ground in a back-breaking effort. Something to make us cringe, afraid to yell "stop that!" for fear of disrupting the tenuous balance they held. They were testing their newfound strengths and freedoms, and if such testing made their "parental units" cringe, well, so much the better.

Similarly, I see young adolescents testing newfound strengths and freedoms in their literacy world. The difference is that they are not clambering to be noticed, and so we adults may lose opportunities to guide them well. In this article, I want to consider some ways in which young people are engaging in exhilarating, precarious feats of literacy, unsanctioned practices of strength and ingenuity (and questionable taste) that sometimes make adults queasy, powerless, and frightened for them. What opportunities and perils does our literacy world offer to children and teachers? How can teachers encourage today's young people to engage in productive literacy relationships in safety, looking both ways while crossing the literacy streets? To consider these questions, I will highlight ways in which new literacy environments blur boundaries and transform some fairly traditional practices in original ways. Then I will suggest productive ways for teachers and parents to engage in literacy relationships and practices with young people. Such work is, I believe, a moral imperative, not merely a pedagogical one.

Literacy is all about relationships-it always has been and always will be. When Frank Smith (1985) wrote about children's desire to become members of "the literacy club," he understood that people seek out relationships through literacy. The contemporary literacy world offers us new ways to make relationships, in public and in private, with friends, kindred spirits, and strangers near and far. Literacy affords both immediacy and distance in our relationships, allowing us to enter a more expansive temporal frame. We can reach out to the past and future, not only in the grand sense of authors' works lasting for generations, but in a more personal sense of ordinary people holding our moments in time. Even the most immediate and personal of literacy practices-writing a diary-places us in the flow of time. We preserve diaries to re-read on a quiet night in the future and recall, perhaps with a changed perspective and clearer eyes, our self from days past. Personal notes and letters-from surreptitious notes passed in a boring chemistry class to the final draft of a life-changing love letter-are messages sent and received, which, if preserved, enable us to reflect on tangible evidence of our past.

Our literacy practices have always relied on technology, and each generation uses the technology available. The technology introduces some degree of distance into relationships. Such distance is both an attraction and a danger. Because of the technology, we open the door to posers and masqueraders-witness Cyrano's complicit identity theft of Christian in pursuit of the unsuspecting Roxanne. Like Cyrano, we crave opportunities to hide our physical flaws and to reveal our true inner essence. Today, the Internet allows such revelation in anonymity. It allows us to be most clearly ourselves while, as one young man put it, avoiding the "essentializing" categories of gender and age (Tobin, 1998).

So the ability to make relationships with strangers through new literacy technology is not a new phenomenon; nor is relationship via digital technology entirely new. In 1879, Ella Cheever Thayer published a novel, Wired Love, certainly a very contemporary sounding title (Collins 2002). The sub-title is A romance of dots and dashes, and Thayer's protagonist develops a relationship through the dangerous new medium of the telegraph. The novel details the developing romance between two telegraph operators, Clem and Nattie, in frontier towns of the American West. The couple's romance has several turns that are as new as today's blogs: other operators listen in and "flame" them, Nattie attempts to pass as a man online (but Clem "sees" through her ruse), and a flesh-and-blood impostor poses as Clem to a disappointed Nattie-another case of identity theft. Like many contemporary people who form a digital relationship, Nattie and Clem are awkward when they finally do meet in person, tongue-tied and uncomfortable (Jackson, 2005). Clem moves to Nattie's town, but she eventually complains, "I had more of your company on the wire." Their solution is to string telegraph wire between their apartment buildings, and they wire each other late into the nights. As You've Got Mail, and other chick flicks confirm, dots-and-dashes technology has its place for would-be lovers.

Cyrano and Clem notwithstanding, new literacy environments do allow us to make relationships in some new ways, and, as always, the newness is part of the attraction. But certainly many of the old verities are still in place. Young and old meet online, in chat rooms, MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), and palaces, playing with multiple personas and switching genders at will. There are bulletin boards and chat rooms for aficionados of every possible stripe, and support groups for every known interest, malady, or condition. Now, young people are not bound by the isolation of geography or familial and cultural restrictions; they can become members in communities, with these potentially life-saving connections.

 

Blurred or disappearing boundaries

 

New literacy environments allow relationships with unclear or no delineation of conventional boundaries, and many traditional literacy boundaries do not hold in traditional ways. Here I want to consider just two such boundary transgressions: the boundary between private and public, and between child and adult.

The boundary between private and public is now porous almost to the point of disappearance. Cell phones, blogs, and web sites all have a disconcerting habit of being heard and read by other than the intended audience, or, in the turbulent adolescent years, by the audience we intend one minute but not the next. Adolescents and adults alike are caught in disgrace when posting highly personal thoughts on their web sites and blogs. There is a quality of almost magical thinking with which bloggers assume that their blogs will only be read by authorized readers. But as the distinction between private and public gets muddied, young people are also perhaps working this muddiness with a different sense of social acceptability. One young adult commented to me on the benefits of posting on her blog the details of her anger at a friend:

"Well, if she reads my blog, she'll know I'm pissed at her and know why. That way, I don't have to confront her face-to-face and have an argument, but she can stop annoying me if she wants. I think it's a way of being considerate when I'm a little mad about something a friend has done."

It had not previously occurred to me that complaining about one's friend in cyberspace could be conceived of as a considerate act-but then again, I'm not the target demographic. And that is a key point for those of us who attempt to teach children and adolescents about relationships in the new literacy world: young people make their own conventions, and adults need to inquire about their thinking before passing judgments.

A generation ago, a person's diary was sacrosanct, and reading it would be an unforgivable invasion of privacy. But blogs are not only public diaries, they are interactive as well; readers post comments in response to the authors' original entries. Emily Nussbaum (2004) notes the generational differences in expectations and attitudes about private and public writings in her discussion of bloggers:

For many in the generation that has grown up online, the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it....The teenagers who post journals have (depending on your perspective) a degraded or a relaxed sense of privacy; their experiences may be personal, but there's no shame in sharing....If teen bloggers give something up by sloughing off a self-protective layer, they get something back too-a new kind of intimacy, a sense that they are known and listened to. This is their life, for anyone to read. As long as their parents don't find out.

One oddly fascinating interplay of private and public aspects of literacy comes with a cross-over of old and new forms of communication. Frank Warren (2004-06) encourages people to write a secret-something they have never told anyone before- on a post card and mail the card to him. First intended as material for an art exhibit, the collection grows steadily and Warren posts new cards online weekly. The post cards range from the silly and embarrassing to the life-consuming and tragic. People apparently find comfort in telling something intensely private but telling in a way that preserves their anonymity. The way in which this project has grown (now including a conventional print book) is a case study in the boundaries between public and private, as well as in the overlap of old and new media.

The disappearance of the boundary between child and adult audiences and materials is perhaps the most startling and unsettling aspect of new literacy relationships for teachers and parents. Children are now able to enter, unsupervised, the best and worst of the adult world, with no filtering or gate-keeping. They travel faster than we do, often arriving at new destinations before the adults in their lives even know of their existence.

The absence of such boundaries can be dangerous, as children and adolescents are susceptible to predators. Just as in the past, when we could not be certain whom they met inside the movie theatre, now we can't be certain whom they meet inside the chat room. Adolescents have always tested and savoured their power to operate independently of parental supervision, and now this normal adolescent desire combines with their typically superior technological skill to make a chilling danger that can cross from the virtual world to the real. When the Media Awareness Network asks parents if they know what their children do online, most say that they do. When the Network asks children if their parents know what they do online, most say that they don't (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). This divide reminds us that we cannot be present-physically or digitally-everywhere our children roam. It comes down to education and trust. Moreover, when the Network asks young people how long it takes them to determine to their satisfaction whether an online contact is "safe" or not, young people generally indicate a shocking (to adult sensibility) confidence in their ability to make such determinations within a few minutes of online acquaintance.

 

Relationships with new audiences

 

While teachers and parents readily focus on the contemporary blurring of time-honoured boundaries, I want to return to some of the sustaining and encouraging aspects of such blurred boundaries with respect to making new relationships through literacy. The immense popularity of fan fiction sites, for example, attests to some of the positive potential for relationships in online venues.

Not a new development, fan fiction writing became popular among science fiction fans in the days of Star Trek's television popularity. The early trekkie conventions were places where fans could circulate, in costume if they wished, and exchange fan fiction. As these conventions were held in the real world (contrary to appearances, perhaps!), aficionados needed money, mobility, and some independence to attend (Knobel & Lankshear, 2005). In the contemporary literacy world, fans of any particular fiction need only an Internet connection, and they can access an online community to trade analyses and commentary on current episodes of favourite television shows, movies, or novels. More significantly, they can post original fan fiction: their own episodes, spin-offs, or cross-overs. The distinction between amateur and professional is now "obsolete" in online publishing (www.wikipedia.org/fanfiction)

For fans of a particular fiction-in any medium-fan fiction provides a generally supportive environment in which to read abundant offerings of variations on the fictional characters and themes, and, more importantly, to gain a sophisticated readership for one's own fiction. Recently, Raylene, a student in my graduate class, took up my challenge to write fan fiction. A middle-aged elementary school teacher who had not previously known about fan fiction, Raylene gamely wrote a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) episode and posted it with great trepidation. Several weeks later, she reported being genuinely touched and encouraged by the feedback she had received from several readers. They praised her writing, cited specific aspects of the work that they appreciated, and encouraged her to post more episodes. The gentle critiques that accompanied the encouragement were indeed quite constructive, well taken, and given in a generous spirit; responders offered pointers on matters of forensic investigation that are germane to the world of CSI. I should acknowledge here that, as Raylene's writing teacher, I did not have the expertise to offer such in-depth pointers about forensic matters, nor did her classmates.

For young writers, this opportunity to relate to other fans of a particular fiction provides tangible evidence of belonging in this community; they can be accepted and respected for the power of their imagination and knowledge. On fan fiction sites, young writers interact on equal footing with adults who share their passions, giving and receiving detailed pointers for their development as writers of a given genre. The lack of distinction between adult and child audiences seems irrelevant when writers are focused on a shared appreciation of a particular fiction. Needless to say, it also makes such postings a risky business, as young writers are treated as equals and are not allowed much "slack" by other fan writers. Most fan fiction sites have clear rules about positive, constructive criticism, but there is no guarantee of gentle treatment.
Relationships in New Literacies Teaching

As I think about the ways in which new literacies environments offer possibilities for young people to make relationships, some clear implications for teaching arise. Adults sometimes feel inadequate in newer literacy environments and uncertain about the value of such environments; some continue to deny that there is much new or much of value. But one undeniable value is that these are the environments in which our young people are learning about literacy, and, to some degree, learning about relationships. Our place in this environment is vital-as teachers, parents, researchers, and literate citizens-and our experience gives us a role in helping young people navigate this terrain. So the first point about relationships in new literacies teaching is that we must enter into relationships as participants. To teach productively, our participation must also involve respect, attention to security, and broad perspective.

Participation: We need to be in the thick of it with our children and our students. The old traditional-vs.-contemporary debate is irrelevant, because contemporary literacy environments include both traditional and new ways of relating, ways that define literacy for the next generation. We can impose our older definitions of literacy if we choose-for the limited time that we will continue to hold power-as demonstrated by those external assessments that drive teachers' classroom practices. But soon enough the next generation's definitions will take over. It will be more productive for us all if adults have some dialogue with the next generation as they develop their ideas about literacy practices.

A great fuss was raised with the publication of the Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004). While charting a decline in the habits of literary reading in the US, the survey does not include engagements with online literature or other kinds of reading. John Lombardi (2005) recommends that teachers and professors should find out what young people actually do in the online world, noting the wild variety of material available online:

Then I go online. Here I find a complicated world filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Alive and constantly changing, engaged and engaging, requiring my constant decisions about what is worth reading or seeing and what is not. From the lowest pornography to tours of the treasures of the Library of Congress, from the stupidest blogs of the radical fringes, to the most sophisticated discussions of the decline of America's reading habits, everything is there.

(http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/23/lombardi)

We need to enter into new literacies practices with our students and our children, not only because it makes good pedagogical sense to do so. We are morally obligated to go there with them. The literacy world requires sophistication far surpassing the sophistication required to develop or delineate a poem's metaphor or to trace the foreshadowing in a novel. These are still valuable analyses and a source of great literary pleasure, but they are hardly sufficient. The very dangers that adults see in the relationships that are forged in new literacy environments make it imperative for adults to engage with young people in these environments. Adolescence is primarily about the making of relationships-with close friends and with the wider world, and it is a time when young people look with sharper, but still inexperienced, eyes at the adult world.

We need to consider how we enter into relationships with young people in these environments. It is imperative to go there with them as fellow explorers, not as authority figures. We certainly are not experts-adolescents and even younger children go faster than we do and are often more adventurous, more interested in exploration for its own sake, and less encumbered by our baggage. They travel lighter. But we can go there in dialogue, negotiating and sharing authority based on expertise. We can draw on their superior knowledge and experience in some aspects and contribute our superior knowledge and experience in others. We have greater perspective and experience in the real world; often, our young people have greater knowledge of the online world. Because they are making relationships in new literacies practices while young, they take these relationships as part of the given world; as the Media Awareness Network notes, for young people, "The Internet just is" (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). Furthermore, the Network notes that "Kids are ahead of their parents - and on their own - in their explorations of the Internet" (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). The disjuncture between what young people say and what their parents say in the Media Awareness Network surveys are all the evidence we need of the imperative to make relationships with our children while they make relationships online. Such relationships must be founded upon respect.

Respect: We need to take a more collegial stance in our literacy relationships with young people, negotiating authority with respect to their expertise. Respect is key, and we can earn it if we give it. In research involving a series of case studies of multiliteracies teaching and learning in classrooms, I have been struck in each of the case studies by one constant: when the teacher assumes a less authoritative stance, the students respond with respect (McClay, 2006). The multiliteracies work that the teachers established in their classrooms gave students many opportunities, as one teacher noted wryly, "to torpedo the project" (McClay & Weeks, 2004). But students did not take advantage of such opportunities; instead, they appreciated seeing their teachers as people who liked to learn new things and were eager to learn with them. Paradoxically, when the teachers assumed the less authoritative stance of "fellow learner," they actually enhanced their authority and credibility with their students.

Security and safety: We do need to help young people to attend consciously and realistically to security and safety issues. They won't see the same dangers that we do, but we can help them to be better attuned to danger in subtle forms. The inclination of too many adults who work with digital literacy environments with young people is to make the environments safe and unproblematic before we allow young people in, so as not to have untidy or inappropriate material barging into our classrooms. But some attention ought to be paid to the untidy, the inappropriate, the vulgar, even (perhaps especially) the downright fraudulent and immoral in order to teach our youth about these aspects. Our warnings and lists of safe and unsafe behaviours are not effective, as we have seen in the headlines and in the Media Awareness Network's surveys. But our discussions with young people when we enter online environments together can be more powerful, more effective, and more grounded in reality.

We also need to be clear in teaching young people about the real limits of their online power. We have had examples of hapless adolescents being arrested because of the content of their web sites and blogs. When children and adolescents enter the adult literacy world, they suffer adult consequences. They need to understand that their freedoms do not extend to posting hateful or libellous comments; the distinction between passing a note to a friend in class and posting the same comment online must be clear to them. These distinctions should become discussion topics of our classrooms.

Perspective: Adults can play a useful role by helping young people to see the old in the new literacies and the new in the old. Young people will decide what to preserve, and how to preserve it. Undoubtedly, they will do so in ways we would not, as in the case of my young friend who used the forum of her blog to complain about her friend. We old folks have the historical perspective, but they have the future. Ultimately, their decisions about standards and conventions will be upheld. Some of their conventions will seem raw or wrong to us, but many will be much cleverer and more useful than we would imagine. Marc Aronson (2003) discusses the need for adults to present young people with complex portrayals of human relationships in books. He considers various conceptions of "brotherhood" in fiction and nonfictions' books, arguing persuasively for a more complex, inclusive portrayal of the human family. He notes a distinction between children's and young adult literature, commenting that in children's books, the reader/child is part of a family. In adolescence, however, the challenge is for young people to become individuals and to leave their families. This challenge is difficult for adults:

"Inasmuch as we-authors, publishers, reviewers, parents, librarians, teachers-want our books for younger readers to pass on our ideals and values, we feel a kind of queasiness about YA books. After twelve years or so of trying to get kids to listen to us through books, we have three years of trying to help them think for themselves. We just don't know how to connect those two opposite agendas" (Aronson, 2003, p.132).

Young people do not only use television and books as references for their developing sensibilities. They also use online resources-at their fingertips they have the full wealth and poverty of the adult world, unfiltered through custodians of the public airwaves or of the publishing industry. As Aronson notes, we adults have a short period of time in which to influence young people as they develop their sensibilities and values. The very unfiltered view of the complete array of the adult world is part of the attraction of digital new literacy. In the environments of new literacy, young people are not mere viewers and readers, voyeurs of the presentations of adult life as we select and present it for their viewing, as they are when they watch television and movies. Online, young people have agency and the ability to act, to connect, to have impact.

There are no boundaries and no rehearsal period on the Internet-a web site posted is public, open to scrutiny and to comment from strangers of varying intentions. The adults who want to be influential in the lives of young people must engage with them in the literate landscapes in which they travel. We do not have many years in which to do so.

 

References

 

Aronson, M.(2003). Beyond the Pale: New Essays for a New Era. Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, No. 9. Lanham, Maryland, & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Collins, P. (2002). NewScientist, Dec. 21/22, 2002. pp. 40-41.

Jackson, M. (2005).
http://bostonworks.boston.com/globe/balance/archives/121904.shtml Accessed Oct. 4, 2005.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2005). "New Literacies: Research and Social Practice In B. Maloch, J. V. Hoffman, D. Schallert, C. M. Fairbanks & J. Worthy (Eds.), 54th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 22-50). Oak Creek WI: National Reading Conference, Inc.

Lombardi, J. (2005). http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/23/lombardi Accessed Aug. 15, 2005.

McClay, J. K. (2006). Collaborating with Teachers and Students in Multiliteracies Research: "Se have camino al andar". Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 52(3), 182-195.

McClay, J. K., & Weeks, P. (2004). Ensemble Improvisation: Chats, Mystery, and Narrative in a Multiliteracy Classroom. The International Journal Learning, 10.

Nussbaum, E. (2004).
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/magazine/11BLOG.html?ei=1&en=36132f7693f2b Reading at risk: A survey of literary reading in America. (2004).). Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts.

Smith, F. (1985). Reading Without Nonsense. New York: Teacher College Press.

Tobin, J. (1998). An American Otaku: (or, a Boy's Virtual Life on the Net). In J. Sefton-Green (Ed.), Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia. London: UCL Press Ltd.

Warren, F. (2004-06).
http://www.postsecret.blogspot.com/; http://www.media-awareness.ca; www.wikipedia.org/fanfiction

This list was started by Susan Ma and Celia Brownrigg.  It is meant to be open-ended and we hope it will enjoy many contributers.

 

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

- a great book to have.  McCloud acknowledges and tears down so many of our prejudices when approaching the graphic novel medium: comics.  The explanation of active readership (what goes on the our head when we read a graphic text) is easy to understand and integrate in to planning and instruction.  This is an excellent book for a novice in the graphic, or comics, form to start with.  It is written in the comics medium which facilitates McCloud's descriptions of the graphic form as well as subliminally reinforces the stance that "comics" is a medium suited to many types of content; don't mistake it as simply the message (sorry Marshall). This resource is a must-read for any teacher considering using graphic novels or other comics in class.

 

Panel Discussion: Design In Sequential Art Storytelling

Interviews with Masters of the Craft!  What's talking about graphic
novels without talking to the creators and storytellers?  The
interviews are very insightful.

 

 Graphic Novels in Your Media Library Center  by Allyson and Barry Lyga

This resource is notes from a teacher-librarian int he USA who uses graphic nevels in her classroom.   The Lygas' variety of grade coverage is good, covering grades two through ten, as well as their cultural coverage of both "eastern" and "western" graphic novels.  Check out their activity ideas too!

 

In Graphic Detail by David Booth and Kathy Gould Lundy

This resouce is exclusivly available to educators through Scholastic Education.  The approach in this book is particular to using comics in classroom activities.  While some of the examples used could be better, both authors are well-known educators and have great experience working with Canadian teachers and librarians.

Gemini Cheng holds a degree in English Literature and when she isn't busy reading books, she is selling them at Vancouver Kidsbooks.

When I Was A Soldier by Valérie Zenatti

When Valérie Zenatti was thirteen, she and her parents moved from France, her home country, to Israel. After finishing school and writing the baccalauréat in her advanced school program, Zenatti went the way of other eighteen-year-old Israeli girls and joined the army for two years of national service. Her experiences and coming of age in the Israeli Defense Force prompted her to write this book. It is not a traditional memoir. This is not Zenatti's autobiography, but simply an insight into the mind of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl using her own personal history.

Those who like stereotypical teen girl books may tend to shy away from this one. Don't let that happen. This is an important story with no fluff, and some girls find that intimidating, boring, or hard to identify with. Don't worry, for our protagonist is very easy to befriend. In fact, many younger teen girls may be pleasantly surprised by how much they have in common with Valérie. After all, she is just trying to pass her exams while working part-time at the local pharmacy, and most importantly, she is trying her best to forget about her ex-boyfriend.

When I Was A Soldier is not suitable for a class on military operations. Zenatti is careful to tread lightly on heavy topics. This book is not a political statement but a traditional coming of age story with classic themes found throughout literature. Valérie is a young woman striving for achievement, but her weekends at home temptingly give question to her loyalty. With a friend who is already a deserter, her own devotion to the army wavers when she gets a chance to reunite with her ex-boyfriend in Jerusalem. Valérie finds herself homesick and longing for her mother's cooking, not unlike every student who has left home for their first year at university. One of the most hurtful situations she experiences has nothing to do with her service; rather, it occurs when she finds out her ex-boyfriend has found a new girl.

This is a great novel for grade nine and above, offering a unique view to students who have never been exposed to this kind of life, whether because of the geographical setting or the idea that when you reach a certain age, your country expects something of you that is not just voting or driving. When I Was A Soldier paints a solid portrait of one face, one girl, to represent all. Military service is something that everyone in Valérie's life has been required to face at the same age, but becoming a woman is something Valérie must achieve on her own terms.

 

After publishing the annual Wordscapes: British Columbia Youth Writing Anthology for the past six years, Ripple Effect Arts and Literature Society (REAL) will be relaunching the publication as the new Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal in March 2008. In addition to publishing nearly 50 talented high school writers and visual artists each year, the journal will also have a Contemporary Writing section with writing samples by established authors from Canada’s literary community. REAL is excited to have lined up a number of excellent writers to appear in the first three issues in 2008, including: Douglas Coupland, Christian Bök, Wade Compton, Rachel Zolf, Janina Hornosty and Billeh Nickerson.

The journal will be published three times a school year, and each issue will focus on one writing genre – fiction, poetry, and personal essay. The always topical and engaging youth writing and cover art in the journal is by the winners of REAL’s annual BC Youth Writing and Design Contest, now in its seventh year. All students who enter the contest receive a one year subscription to Wordscapes and a chance to win $100-$500 and publication in the journal. (The next deadline for student and school entries is May 31, 2008. See www.rippleeffect.ca in the new year for details.)

REAL believes the new Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal will give students a unique opportunity to read and be inspired by current writing practices as exemplified by their student peers and Canada’s diverse community of authors. For teachers, the journal will provide an enhanced classroom resource that sets a benchmark for provincial writing and motivates students with contemporary literature they are not normally exposed to through standard curriculum resources. Students whose teachers introduce them to Wordscapes in class generally demonstrate higher literacy and write more mature and accomplished pieces.

In order to give teachers an opportunity to see firsthand the quality and teaching potential of the new Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal, REAL is planning to donate 1000 copies of the first two issues to be published in February (Fiction) and March (Poetry) to BC school libraries and teachers. I’ve arranged it so that all BCTELA members who are interested in receiving a free copy just have to email REAL Society at info@rippleeffect.ca and write “BCTELA Wordscapes copy” in the subject line, and your Name, School, Position, and Mailing Address in the email.

I highly recommend all members take a few seconds to take advantage of this offer and check out this high quality publication. It will be a good read for both students and teachers!