Disciplinary Literacy in ELA

Here is the final component of my blog and disciplinary literacy study by focusing on how this applies to ELA.  This covers the types of texts that are read and created in ELA, the questions effective readers ask, the terminology and concepts that need to be properly understood to ask these questions, and examples of engagement strategies to introduce these skills.

In my presentation, I have drawn primarily on the work of Lee & Spratley, Smagorinsky, the Common Core State Standards, and Lattimer.

Mapping the Text

For my visualization project, I put together a map which brings together cites from Maus, The Diary of Anne Frank, and a few contextualization sites.

I found myself indecisive as I worked on selecting my visualization method.  Initially, I favored a timeline approach because this seemed the most straightforward.  My idea was to have students place events of whichever text they worked with on a timeline with events from the war.  However, I didn’t really like any of the recommended timeline platforms and I couldn’t find one on my own.  This led me to using an interactive map.  Initially I was leaning towards MyHistro and worked with it for a short time.  I changed my mind yet again when I realized that Google Maps had an option for creating your own interactive map and I found it to be user friendly and fit my needs exactly.  Like my original idea for the timeline, I wanted to be able to juxtapose the events of the texts with the wider events of the war.  However, using locations and the map to do so proved to be more effective.

In the end, I found when I put the map together that this worked better than I originally thought it would.  Maus in particular has a wide geographic reach.  I was not fully aware of the location of many of the towns mentioned, aside from the fact that they were in Poland.  Placing these locations on a map made Vladek and Anja’s story tangible in a way it was not when I was reading the text.  Admittedly, I probably should have looked it up while I was reading, but this lapse in judgement on my part made it clear to me how helpful this visual representation would be to students who also would not have taken that step.  I also took the time to incorporate the locations of The Diary of Anne Frank into my project, along with some other pertinent locations.  I wouldn’t necessarily expect students to incorporate locations from both texts (wouldn’t rule out), but this was mostly for my own exploration of this program. 

I went into this project believing that the visualization project was best suited to be an after reading activity.  As I put it together my opinion on this shifted.  Especially in relation to Maus, I wonder how well this activity could be incorporated during reading.  In Maus there is a fair amount of geographic transition between characters and this was the text I think this would be most helpful in.  It also serves as a non-traditional way to take notes on the text.  We would not simply know that Vladek and Anja went from one Polish town to another, while their son went to still another, but we could see just how vastly the war has separated them.  All the while, they have no way of knowing that their son is doomed or what will happen to them.  Granted, this would not work as well with The Diary of Anne Frank, as everything written by Anne is set in Amsterdam and most of that is in the Secret Annex.  There are a few location details incorporated in the supplementary part of the text, where Anne’s fate after her diary ends is recounted.  I do still think these are important and effective for the purpose of studying Anne’s life though.  It’s jarring to look at the map and see just how far away Amsterdam is from Auschwitz, which is still further from Bergin-Belsen, for example. 

Historical details can all be found and corroborated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Adding in the historical details was, for me, very easy because a lot of it was background information I already had.  However, having a reputable comprehensive source such as this for students is invaluable, as it is a fairly comprehensive and user friendly resource.