History and Art Literacy

Disciplinary Texts/ History & Art

Synthesis

Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas Chapter 13

The attitudes expressed in the beginning of this chapter are often voiced in classrooms around the country. Reading history is seen as boring by students; teachers think that it is the English teachers’ responsibility to teach students to read, and reading history is not the same as literature. Texts in the core subjects are not very different in the early grades, but becoming increasingly different as students move through school. The text emphasizes the change by giving 9^th grade as an example. History teachers go to great lengths to teach history, but sometimes avoid or shorten text book reading because of students’ refusals or difficulties. However, being able to actually read and interpret texts is a crucial skill for truly understanding history. When talking to historians, researchers found that historical readings focus around three skills: sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating. In history, readers must focus on the author and the perspective, as well as what perspectives are left out.

Jetton and Shanahan Chapter 8

History requires different protocols and strategies than other texts. History is open to bias, perspective, and interpretation. One of the main points of this chapter is that history is intertextual, and that that includes the “text” that each person has inside of them. This chapter closely follows the history readings of two students: Brad and Aeysha. Their teacher, Ms. White, has a very exploratory approach to teaching history. Students read multiple texts about a historical event. When they do this, Ms. White is encouraging them to attempt to read like historians. While reading multiple texts about an event, students can either become frustrated or intrigued with the problems and discrepancies that that the texts create. These students deal with these issues very differently. The chapter explains that this might have to do with their background, or the text that they have in their head. In addition, all history texts are also hypertexts-they interact with other texts that have been written on the topic. Readers of history must be aware of the context, author, purpose, and possible bias. In history, many things can be considered texts such as media, visuals, and internet texts are all historical texts. There are many things to consider including powerful criteria, satisfactory reading protocols, and ongoing arguments about the texts. Also the organizational ideas of significance, causation, progress/decline, and change/continuity also determine how readers analyze the texts. These things are highly scrutinized by historical readers. The text emphasizes that reading must be “all texts all the way down”. All texts must be given a chance and read thoroughly. Only through reading multiple texts and asking questions can meaning be made about history. Evidence within texts must be used with other texts to make sense. Sometimes, everyday reading techniques do not work for history; how to read history must be taught explicitly.

Jetton and Shanahan Chapter 9

The arts also have multiple literacy requirements; in addition, multiple artifacts qualify as texts. The arts are about making meaning: which is exactly what literacy is. Through music and visual arts, meaning is made in many ways through different elements. The common core standards focus heavily on performing or creating, and then on listening/seeing and analyzing/interpreting. Each genre of the arts has different techniques for assessing meaning. For example, for music in general a conductor’s movements and sheet music have meaning and a certain way to read them. For visual arts, shape and color have meaning. In addition, music and visual arts also often involves reading written texts that include criticism, history, and introductory materials.  Students interact with musical and visual arts and connect with them almost on a daily basis, so teaching students how to read them can be very effective.

Response

Text to Self: As an English teacher, I feel like history and the arts are very closely tied to what I do. They both require literacy that is similar to Language Arts, and often intersect and overlap in content, themes, and context. So, I feel that learning how to better address these different types of texts is directly relevant to my subject. Very often, students are drawn to one of these subjects, if not both, and it is crucial to show how literacy can help them to understand the meaning behind them.

Text to Text: These texts relate to the other texts that we have read in this class because they are disciplinary. There are multiple skills necessary for reading multiple texts. Texts and literacy have a broad definition that centers on meaning making. Students engage better when they can explore and are taught the appropriate elements to look for in a text.

Text to World: History and the arts permeate society and are more accessible now with technology. Students come to school with ideas and a running texts about both history and arts. So, these are very relevant to them and are easy to understand that there is a message there that is trying to be made clear to them. Popular culture and the media present both history and the arts, so students must be able to understand how to effectively read these texts in order to function in society.

Questions:

1. What about other art forms or other electives, sports, or “extra-curricular” activities, can we, and how would we get in touch with these literacies?

2. How do we move students from discomfort to discovery?

3. I feel like these texts are missing conversations about how to access technological texts…thoughts?