1. Creating a Culture of Literacy in Our Schools Rich Cella EDLP 6040

2. Question:  On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest) what level of basketball literacy do you feel you have?

3. Being “Basketball Literate”  Common everyday words acquire specific meanings in the basketball domain.  Insiders vs. Outsiders  Words gain meaning through shared experience.

4. What is LITERACY? THINK-PAIR-SHARE  What is LITERACY?  What domains do you feel you are an expert in?

5. School-Wide Literacy  James Paul Gee “The Problem of Content”  “Based on common attitudes toward school, schooling, learning and knowledge.”  “The idea is this: Important knowledge is content in the sense of information rooted in, or, at least, related to, intellectual domains or academic disciplines like physics, history, art, or literature."

6. School-Wide Literacy  “The problem with the content view is that an academic discipline…is NOT primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles.”  “…a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices…”  “…the “content” is generated, debated, and transformed via distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, and often writing and reading.”

7. School-Wide Literacy  You can’t treat basketball as “content” apart from the game itself.  How well would a student understand a textbook on basketball if they have never played or watched a game?  Would they be motivated to learn about it?  This is done all the time in areas of math and science…

8. Understanding Vocabulary Arnold B. Arons  “Few students, even at the college level, have had direct experience, making them self- conscious about examining how words acquire meaning through shared experience.” James Paul Gee “The coffee spilled, get a mop.” “The coffee spilled, get a broom.”

9. Should Physics be Peddled as “Algebra-Based”? Arnold B. Arons “Why do things fall?” Asks the child. The parent responds, “Because of gravity.”  “Children, as well as adults, take this answer very literally: since the word “because” is used, they uncritically jump to the conclusion that a reason has been given – that the “why” has been answered. They naively believe that a scientific name provides a reason; much of their experience with science in the schools has reinforced this acquiescence.”

10. Mathematical Literacy vs. Literacy Literacy What’s the difference?  I would say, not much…speaking, writing about, listening to, and reading are all important aspects of becoming mathematically literate.  Domain specific vocabulary…how are words USED in “talking math?”  “If you can’t say it you don’t really understand it.”

11. Odd Question #1  Pia is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and smart. She was a philosophy major. When a student, she was an ardent supporter of Native American rights, and she picketed a department store that had no facilities for nursing mothers. (odd questions from Ian Hacking…Intro to Probability and inductive logic)

12. Odd Question #1  Rank the following statements in order of probability from 1 (most probable) to 6 (least probable). Ties are allowed. (a) Pia is an active feminist. (b) Pia is a bank teller. (c) Pia works in a small bookstore (d) Pia is a bank teller and active feminist (e) Pia is a bank teller and an active feminist who takes yoga classes. (f) Pia works in a small bookstore and is an active feminist who takes yoga classes.

13. Odd Question #2  You have been called to jury duty in a town where there are two taxi companies, Green Cabs Ltd. And Blue Taxi Inc. Blue Taxi use cars painted blue, Green Cabs uses green cars.  Green Cabs dominate the market, with 85% of the taxis on the road.  On a misty winter night a taxi sideswiped another car and drove off. A witness says it was a blue cab.

14. Odd Question #2  The witness is tested under conditions like those on the night of the accident, and 80% of the time she correctly reports the color of the cab that is seen.  That is, regardless of whether she is shown a blue or green cab on misty evening light, she gets the color right 80% of the time.

15. Odd Question #2  You conclude, on the basis of this information: (a) The probability that the sideswiper was blue is 0.8 (80 %) (b) It is likely that the sideswiper was blue, but the probability is less than 0.8 (80 %) (c) It is just as probable that the sideswiper was green as that is was blue. (d) It is more likely than not that the sideswiper was green.

16. Conclusion  Content should be active NOT passive. WE ALL WILL:  learn to experience the world in new ways. In order to…  “…gain resources that prepare us for future learning and problems solving in a domain and, perhaps, more important, in related domains.”

17. Professional Development Schedule Oct. – Intro and Types of Literacies ✔ Nov. –Differentiated Instruction – If/Then construct and ELL’s Jan. – Close Read: Excerpt from James Gleick’s “The Information” Feb. – Science Words in Everyday Language – Webs, Venn Diagrams, Visual Learning and Graphic Organizers Mar. – Inquiry Based Learning Apr. – “Savages” Example of a Project for student engagement – Role Play/Debate May – Graph Literacy

18. References Arons, A. B. (1997). Teaching introductory physics. New York: Wiley. Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. London England: Falmer Press. Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hacking, I. (2001). An introduction to probability and inductive logic. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.