Over the course of the semester, I have found that my development of Multiliteracies practices has been huge. In this post, I will reflect on some of the many cases in which I have grown a multiliterate approach to education, and talk about how this will benefit me as a future teacher.

First of all, through the Human Library assignment in EDCI 352, I found a very interesting way in which my future students can go from experiencing the known to experiencing the new. If I were to teach one of Grades 6-9 Mathematics, I would plan to have the students experience both of these steps of Multiliteracies practices. I would be keen to show the students how note division in drumming relates to fractions in music (a concept that would be experiencing the new for the students, and experiencing the known for myself). I would then be keen to assign a project to the students in which they relate fractions to something that they experience frequently in their real life (a concept that would be experiencing the known for the students and experiencing the new for myself).

https://youtu.be/8hvJdg8n8v4

I would also love to incorporate both applying appropriately and applying creatively into my teaching. One idea that strikes me as an effective teaching method of these two steps of Multiliteracies practices is the identifying of animals and creation of animals in Biology 11. Biology is another one of my teaching concentrations. Once students became familiar with different classes of animals and identifying animals as belonging to a specific class (applying appropriately), it would be a neat project to have students invent an animal of their own, identifying their eating habits, mating habits, physical appearance, etc. and having them possess the appropriate features to belong in a certain class of animals.

I have grown in so many ways over the course of this semester, including developing an understanding of the steps of Multiliteracies practices and how they can be applied to my own learning as well as the learning of my future students. I am excited to incorporate these concepts in the continuation of my educational path.

We are doing an inquiry project in our seminar class at Vic High, and while working on the project I thought of many ties to the Multiliteracies class that were interesting. My topic for this project is: “What defines inquiry-based learning in Grade 9 math?” Inquiry-based learning is a broadly multiliterate style of learning, possible of incorporating the following Multiliteracies practices: experiencing the known, experiencing the new, analyzing critically, and analyzing functionally.

Through my observations at Vic High, I noticed a style of inquiry that was very simple yet effective: question-based lecturing. Essentially, instead of lecturing through stating facts to the students, a teacher can lecture by asking the students what comes next, as well as asking the students “why” along the way. This is a form of both analyzing functionally and analyzing critically.

Another way in which I have seen inquiry in the classroom is through a project in which students go to a financial institution to inquiry about debit cards, fees, account types, and more. They then similarly look up a credit card and find out more about charges, interest rates, limits, and more. This ties in the Multiliteracies practices of experiencing the new, analyzing functionally, and analyzing critically into the Grade 9 math classroom.

Finally, a project that struck me as multiliterate in the senses of experiencing the known and experiencing the new was one in which students came up with one area of life in which they use knowledge of a particular math concept.

All of these different inquiry-based methods of teaching math proved to me to be effective approaches of also incorporating Multiliteracies into my future teaching. Attached is an image of my poster that I will be presenting on this topic at both a Gallery Walk at Vic High and a Gallery Walk at UVic.

In class, we participated in an assignment called “Human Library.” For this project, each student brought in a particular knowledge/skill that was unique to them, and that could be used in some sort of way in a high school classroom, tying in that skill to the BC curriculum.

Attached to this post is an image of one student’s Human Library project, which consisted of representing the lengths of the digestive organs in the form of crotchet.

The knowledge/skill that I brought to the table was the relation between music and math. In particular, I offered information on how note lengths in music are related to fractions in music. So, for example, just how the number 1 can be divided into two halves, a note in music can be (and is often) divided into halves, or thirds, quarters, sixths, eights, etc. Fractions appear in all musical pieces. This relation between fractions and music can 1) help students in a Grade 6-9 math class understand the incorporation of fractions into everyday life, and 2) help students in a Grade 6-12 music class tie in mathematics to their current musical knowledge.

I think that this would be a very interesting project to incorporate into schools. It can be multimodal; for example, in my project, I incorporated a hands-on drumming activity, a visual and auditory video of myself drumming, and verbal delivery of information. In addition, it incorporates some elements of multiliteracy, such as experiencing the new and applying creatively. Students in a math class who have not compared fractions to the division of time in music are experiencing new concepts, new frameworks of thinking, and new meanings in mathematics. For students in a music class learning about the existence of fractions in their playing, there is opportunity to apply what they have learned and creatively develop new musical ideas and abilities. In my observations and my own experiences of high school math classrooms, there is little to no relation of math to the real world. Therefore, this strategy of relating math to music (or vice versa) can impact students’ interest on the topic at hand.

If high school students were assigned a Human Library project similar to this one, it could be beneficial in multiple ways, such as introducing them to multimodal and multiliterate approaches to learning, and encouraging them to share their knowledge and skills with classmates. I hope to use this cross-curricular, multimodal, and multiliterate approach to learning in my future classrooms.

An activity that we did in our Multiliteracies class last week struck me as an effective and memorable approach to teaching. Each student brought one object (or photo of an object) to class that could be used in the classroom to represent a particular concept or subject. As I am a biology teacher candidate, I brought a photo of my Aloe Vera plant. This plant is succulent, green, majestic, thick, and fleshy. It produces a liquid inside its stems that, when released, can be used for cosmetic or medicinal purposes. I chose this plant because it represents many biological and cross-curricular concepts. It is used differently in different socioeconomic and sociocultural settings, tying in its biological relevance to its cultural relevance.

An idea for teaching stemmed from this class activity. A class partner and I thought it would be interesting to get students in a biology classroom (for example, Life Sciences 11) to take a picture of one plant in or near their home that they felt a connection to. Once in class, they could share the picture with the class and explain why they picked that plant. Then, taking each student’s plant, the class could be spent classifying the different organisms as sexual or asexual reproducers (a content area for Life Sciences 11). This type of classroom activity allows for student inquiry as well as content-related learning.

My first “Visual Journal” entry is on the topic of anchor charts, because this method of learning strikes me as an effective tool to use in the classroom. Some ways in which anchor charts can serve as a student tool include: studying for exams, summarizing readings, and presenting knowledge to others. First off, exams and tests can be a source of anxiety for secondary school students. Having gone through high school, and also having witnessed some classes at Vic High on Wednesdays, there is often a lot of information presented to youth in a short amount of time. Anchor charts can serve as an effective tool to categorize the main points required to know for a test, as well as their connections to each other. Secondly, anchor charts can be an effective way to summarize readings. As mentioned in the EDCI 352 classroom, certain people prefer learning visually over learning by written text. Visual learning can help with future memory of a topic. Therefore, summarizing readings into an anchor chart can help students with creating a visual representation of text. Finally, anchor charts can be a valuable way to present knowledge to peers, teachers, or parents. As a future teacher, getting students to make anchor charts for test review or a reading summary can demonstrate whether or not students have grasped a topic.

I have witnessed the effectiveness of anchor charts in two ways so far: in my personal use in the EDCI 352 classroom, and in scholastic readings online. As seen in the example image attached, our EDCI 352 class made anchor charts for the various dimensions of the multiliteracy framework. This helped to summarize the class readings, as well as present and share our knowledge with the rest of the class. I found this very helpful to grasp the main points of the article and to feel a sense of teamwork with the rest of the class. It was also interesting to read about the multiple uses for anchor charts in the article “Anchor Charts as an Effective Teacher/Student Tool.” As a future teacher, it is helpful to see the many ways that anchor charts can be used in the classroom according to this article. For example, anchor charts can be used to present a lesson plan for the day, to display classroom rules, or to make assignment checklists, ways which I have not yet explored in my personal use.

As a final thought, I would like to talk about one particular topic we made an anchor chart for in the EDCI 352 classroom: “Conceptualizing by naming.” I witnessed this method of teaching while observing a Biology 11 class and it seemed to be very effective. The teacher had students look at various organisms and try to name them, as well as attempt to group them based on their similarities to each other. The class was able to work on many attributes of the “conceptualizing by naming” practice, such as: identifying similarities and differences, categorizing with labels, drawing distinctions, and developing specialized vocabulary. This categorical naming exercise provided clarity and insight on the topic at hand, and overall seemed very effective.