As we read and reviewed Literary Practices as Social Acts, we considered the following questions. We not only used these questions to guide us through the reading; we used these questions to guide our own literacy practices in the classroom.
Social Status, Class, and Power
How are students perceived by their teacher and peers based on social status, class, and power?
Some talking points:
ReplyDelete--As with Julia, I find that the females are often the most vocal and confident in literary discussion. Oppositely, I find that I will sometimes favor the males for this reason and try to make sure they get equal speaking time. I try to make discussions equitable though this is a diffict tas especially during Book Clubs when I am not overseeing the conversations as much.
I was thinking more about this after our group's presentation and I wondered about a few of my kids. Within my class there's obviously a wide range of students and although the majority fall into the overall category of "free and reduced lunch" there is a wide range of how their overall class is perceived. A lot of times this comes down to what they're allowed to do, I think -- like which kids have Facebook accounts monitored by parents (and therefore set to private) and which have sneaky or unmonitored Facebooks. Which kids stay up really late watching TV or whatever, on a regular basis. Which kids take the public bus (in 5th grade at my school this is a big thing...many kids' parents feel it's too dangerous for their 5th graders but by 8th grade most of them take the bus). I think that does have an impact on how their class is perceived even if by the statistics, an outsider would perceive most of my students to be in the same class.
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