Johannessen's 8 Principles of Literacy Instruction

I think the following five principles of Johannessen apply to my unit plan:

1. Focus on complex, meaningful questions and problems so that students' reading and writing can be in service of genuine inquiry.
2. Embed basic skills instruction in the context of more global tasks, such as including reading comprehension and composing skills in introductory reading and writing activities or instruction.
4. Model powerful thinking strategies for students.
5. Encourage students to use multiple approaches to academic tasks.
7. Use teaching strategies that will help students internalize the questions that good readers ask when they read (interpret) literature and good writers ask when they tackle complex writing tasks.

The four principles listed above, except for principle #5, are principles that encourage students to ask relevant, critical questions as they read and write. I tried to do so by showing them exactly what those types of questions are in each lesson's literacy activities. By focusing on important aspects of the readings, the activities in a way help students formulate an idea of what sort of questions should be asked when they read something. This is enforced by various writing assignments, which force the students to explicate how much they understand the text.
The one principle that I have trouble implementing is to make a connection between the subject material and real life experiences primarily because I just find it hard to find pertinent examples.

Resources for Teaching Women and Music

I chose to teach about the history of women's role in music in the Romantic Period, focusing
on the life of Clara Schumann as an example.

Below are the list of resources I researched:
- Textbook (A History of Western Music)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Schumann
(This website contains a direct quote from Schumann that reveals her own opinion of women's role in music)
- CD (Norton Anthology of Western Music Vol. 2); contains pieces composed by Clara Schumann
- http://www.southernct.edu/organizations/hcr/2001/nonfiction/equality.htm (article on Clara Schumann; provides a more detailed account of her life and career)

Instructional Strategies

For my unit plan, I intend to utilize to instructional strategies listed in "Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas."

For preparation, I will primarily be implemnting text walk strategy to point out important concepts in the reading. The point is to help the students understand what they should be focusing on and also the general outline of the reading.

For guidance, I want to implement graphic organizer assignments. This is to help the students organize what they read and get a sense of the text's structure. Also, I intend to assign journal entry assignments, providing questions that will help them focus on the important concepts in the reading.

For independence, the main strategy I will implement is writing because writing gives the students the opportunities to reflect on and evaluate what they learned from the text. They will develop their own opinions on the material. I will be implementing writing as the final large assessment of the unit.

Critical Reading, Critical Literacy, and Content Area

For a music class (with some exceptions), I do not think critical reading or critical literacy plays a significant role, relative to other subjects. Critical reading may play some role in that students must be able to connect their previous knowledge to the current knowledge in the text to facilitate learning. However, unlike history or politics, music usualy does not entail one's perspectives or opinions. Also, critical literacy really provides no insight because there is no power relationship inherent in musical concepts. An exception may be a music history class because a music history text may contain the author's own interpretation of historical events in relation to musical developments. Also, sociological, cultural, or political factors may have influenced the text's historical interpreation.

On Bloom's Taxonomy

Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist famous for his classification of learning, called Bloom's Taxonomy. He states that there are three types of learning: cognitive, affective, and psychometer. The cognitive domain is further categorized into six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Furthermore, he developed specific question types for each level, which are widely utilized in today's classroom.

I believe Bloom's Taxonomy can be beneficial to literacy instruction because an instructor can utilize the question types to test the students' level of literacy on various aspects. For instance, I would ask questions that test the student's analytical ability (such as compare and contrast questions) or those that test his/her application ability (such as questions asking for implications).

Resonse to Henry Giroux's Question

- How do questions of audience, voice, power, and evaluation actively work to construct particular relations between teachers and students, institutions and society, and classrooms and communities? (Are there power relations inherent in the content being taught? Are there power relations inherent in the ways in which content is being taught?)

Giroux's question can be understood best in the context of power relationship: what is the balance of power between two entities? Basically, Giroux's critical pedagogy is rooted on progressive education, which promotes a power relationship totally different from traditional education. In traditional education, the power relationship between the teacher and the student is tilted heavily toward the teacher. The teacher is the omniscient dispenser of knowledge and wisdom, and it is the duty of the student to receive them totally and unconditionally. Progressive education, however, opposes this view: it rejects the notion of the student as a receptive audience. For the student to learn truly, he must become an active participant in his learning experience. In this sense the power relationship between the teacher and the student is equal because they are partners in the search for knowledge.

In this view, literacy instruction must also be based on this kind of power relationship in which the students are active participants. This becomes especially crucial in literacy instruction for many reasons. For example, literacy is so diverse and dynamic that the teacher does not have the full capacity for it alone. Students, too, must pitch in to teach one another to become literate.

In a wider context, this new view of power relationship is beneficial for students as they grow and become members of the society. They no longer see themselves as receptive, ineffectual individuals, but active and dynamic force that can truly change the society. As more citizens view themselves in such a way, this democratic society will become more diverse and mature.

Saying all this, to answer Giroux's question in short, is that those questions foster such relationships by changing people's perception of the power relationships they have with other entities and by transforming them into active participants, rather than receptive audiences.

Alternative Assessment to Pop Quiz

I think one good alternative method assessment to pop quiz can be journal entry. Speaking of literacy, instructors can utilize this type of assignment to assess the students' level of critical thinking and reflection on the readings more thoroughly. Moreover, because the students have more time relatively and the text itself to refer to, they are really encouraged to think deeply about what they read. For example, the journal entry may ask students to assess the implications of the author's theory, to analyze his/her argument, to compare it to other arguments, and etc. I think this method is beneficial to the teacher as well because he/she can see just how much the student understands the text and not just how much he/she remembers it.