The first chapter of Reading History: A Practical Guide to Improving Literacy by Janet Allen has a great deal of information about the connection between history and literacy. Allen discusses different ways to engage the students into the content, and provides lists of different methods of doing so. Allen presents ways to engage today's students in lessons about history from hundreds of years ago. It is extremely important to interest students in such foreign and ancient subjects because without interest they will have a hard time learning, and will definitely not enjoy the learning process. During my CPD I have seen both of my mentor teachers effectively connect the subject matter to their students. Their students enjoy the learning process more because they are able to relate to what is being taught.
I also think that reading the strategies that Christine uses to employ literacy in history is extremely interesting and useful. Christine's methods to employ literacy could be very useful in my classroom. By employing artifacts and readings that my students will find interesting they will want to do the work and even enjoy doing it. When I was in high school I had teachers in my social studies courses who made learning about history fun. I never felt like I was doing work, or being taught, I was learning in a way that was so organic and natural; that feeling of enjoying learning is the reason I want to be a teacher. As a teacher I will try to make my classroom this way.
I'm glad there was a lot to relate to here - both in terms of your experience at the CPD and your student experience. I'm wondering, too, how these strategies fit into the framework of other things you have read in this class. I'd love to see your dialogue journal begin to make those text-to-text connections as well and to get more specific, enabling some critique of what you are reading and seeing, too. Don't be shy about commenting on others' posts, referencing their ideas or dialoguing a bit more here.
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