Questions for Moll:
- Moll, on page 565 of the original text, claims that “by capitalizing on household and other community resources, we can organize classroom instruction that far exceeds in quality the rote-like instruction […] children commonly receive in school.” What would this shift practice look like, practically? That is, what would a classroom that eschews rote, mechanized instruction in favor of a more dialogic flow look life in your opinion? Describe the mise-en-scène.
- According to Moll, why is it important to account for the variegated household dynamics found within his focal classroom, which is a relatively diverse classroom milieu?
Moll elucidates that literacy and "funds of knowledge" are not only produced within a classroom setting, but are also produced within one's home. A balance, or rather a fusion of both classroom and household knowledge implementation would be ideal. However, practically speaking, by what means can this be achieved? My aim is to investigate this very question.
ReplyDeleteI believe it best to begin with household visits from the teacher. Parents are the focal point of a child's learning and development, and it's imperative that the teacher understand the child's home life, experiences, and living conditions. I believe that the parents maintain a plethora of knowledge, far exceeding what the teacher, alone, has surmised about the child. That said, weekly visits from the teacher to the child's home would synthesize the relationship between home life and academic life.
In addition, I think that if parents were willing, it would behoove all involved if the parents would write up weekly (or at least periodic) accounts of what the child has been doing at home. Of course, as children grow up, these experiences will change drastically, but in an effort to further the child's academic attainment, if the parents were to write up summaries of what the child has been doing, the teacher could then read it and alter his/her curriculum to include much of what that student is interested in and participating in.
Through including these practical methods of integrating home life with school life, children, parents, and teachers can bridge the gap between education at school and at home. In doing so, education and literacy as a whole can be improved.
- Nicolas Robinette
In my example of Moll's revised classroom, I will be using a math class example, similar to the one that was discussed in the reading. If I was working with a group of boys, and I had probed and discovered that they all shared the favorite food pizza and I happened to be trying to teach about fractions, I would use this knowledge that I had to further enagage them in learning in a way that made sense to them. It is much easier to vizualize something that you are famliar with than just a random circle that they are asking you to invision in your head. I would probably want to integrate perhaps a pizza party into the example because it would seal an experience to fractions and pizza and so whenever they are trying to think through their fractions, they will think back to when they were dividing the pizza up into diffent fractions.
ReplyDeleteThis strategy, to me, is trying to allow children to bring things in which they are familiar to make the learning much more engaging and fun for them. Also, it approaches learning differently in the sense that it is almost altering so that the information is almost aquired in a sense rather than just fed into them where retainment can be low because there is no natural learning. What is the most important point that Moll is trying to bring up, however, is the idea of brining in elements and knowledge that the student has acquired outside of school and in this statement, I can completely agree. I think that is key because it puts the information in relative terms, allowing the student to make a connection between the information they just acquired and previous knowledge.
-Kim
The shift of instruction toward a more interactive learning approach that eschews the traditional rote-like instruction is no easy task. When I first read the article, I immediately thought about my Ed190 class. This class in particular had such a different class structure. It was a discussion based class, and students had a more active role in the class’s system of accountability. There was no “teacher” per say, but rather four facilitators and one head facilitator, who’d guide us during our discussions. Throughout the course, we were able to step into the facilitators’ shoes, and be the experts/teach the class—creating a class agenda, assigning reading assignments with discussion questions, and doing in class presentations— about a specific topic. The logistics of this class were pretty organic. We decided how we would construct a grading system and attendance check for ourselves. The logistics weren’t set in stone until we reached a consensus as a class. Our class’s mission statement was, “…to gain a better understanding of the issues in education through democratically fostering a holistic learning environment in our classroom. This allows us to learn from others in order to expand our perspectives and support each others’ growth. We will do this by applying what we learn in the classroom to the world at large, focusing on the issues we personally care about—extending our classroom community to our larger community… and having fun!” (RFLAP SOA) Because the class was pretty flexible in how we could teach the material to our peers, we were exposed to different forms of media, such as cartoons, music, and games tailored to the topic. As Hull would say, we broadened our instruction through digital multimedia. I felt like I learned the most out of Ed190 compared to all the classes I had taken previously at Cal.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nick that a fusion of classroom and household knowledge would be ideal to implement in the classroom, but how about those who come from unsupportive households and who treat school as a safe haven? Would we still be able to create a fusion using these households?
As far as I am concerned, the new model of classroom suggested in the article has attempted to draw on the resources of the “funds of knowledge” of the child’s world beyond the rather limited classroom contexts. The “funds of knowledge” refers to “these historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills”, which is critical for individual development. Through the analysis of their “funds of knowledge” and class innovations accordingly, children who can be motived by their interests and questions are more likely to be actively engaged in the teaching and learning than the traditional rote-like way. As presented by Moll, drawing on information gathered from the research on households, a learning module with a rather unusual theme-candy has been developed, which is a good example of this shift practice. In the class, students were encouraged to provide their ideas associated with the topic. With the assistance of the teacher, they further pursued their interests by specifying a research question. Finally, in the form of a research team, students explored the ingredients of the candy by themselves and also made advertisement posters and labels for the candy to sell what they made at the school talent show. Therefore, it can be seen that innovations in class can provide a learning context that far exceeds in quality the mechanized teaching instruction, where students attain new knowledge through their inquiry process and strategically using their social contacts outside the classroom.
ReplyDelete