The Importance of Prior Knowledge

The Blue Walloo

Over the next few days, we will explore the controversy regarding allocating additional funding to The Blue Walloo. Stakeholders supporting the move have expressed concerns that failure to do so will provide incentive to further defund similar programs. Those opposed state that such funding sets precedents that are difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.

Please state and defend your position regarding the funding of The Blue Walloo. You must include supporting evidence and a concise conclusion.

What is wrong with this exercise?

Do you know what The Blue Walloo is? Did you make a guess--and if so, what did you guess?

It could be a night club, an oceanographic exploration, an endangered bird, a novel, a painting, a secret service operation, a cultural event…

What if I gave you the following words to define--would this make the exercise accessible?

blue

controversy

funding

precedents

stakeholders

opponents

concerns

walloo

allocating

programs

Now, try substituting the phrase “The Blue Walloo” with one of the following:

Brexit

Polar bears

The Children’s Festival

The Food Bank

The Museum

The Norther Gateway Pipeline

OK2BME

Foreign Aid to Nigeria

The Humane Society

Municipal snow removal

The Heritage Front

House of Friendship Shelter

ION LRT

International Space Exploration

Arms trade with Columbia

Reception House

The Public Library

Employment Insurance

Medical research

Local hockey team

Local Symphony Orchestra

Safe Injection Site

Automotive Industry

Cyber surveillance

Now try a different one of those. How does the meaning change?

How can we use this exercise to inform our approach to teaching students what they need to know  when learning and improving their reading comprehension?

If you are from outside of southwestern Ontario, you may have found some of the last examples equally mystifying as “The Blue Walloo”.

Students come to us with a wide variety of prior experiences. We have students who have lived in different countries, and different cultures within our own country. Some students are learning English as an additional language. The diversity in cultural and socio-economic backgrounds means that the prior knowledge and vocabulary they understand cannot be assumed. We need to actively build those into our teaching so that there is an accessible context from which students can reflect, build connections, make predictions and evaluate the validity of statements.

Cross-Curricular Considerations

This applies not only to language as a distinct subject area, but all academic areas. Relevant vocabulary needs to be introduced and prior knowledge developed in order to ensure that students are able to access the subject matter.

For example, word problems in math need to use examples that students can understand and relate with. One way of ensuring this is to enlist students to create and share their own word problems.

For content areas such as social studies and science, sharing introductory materials in a variety of reading levels for students to access, keeping an active glossary that is built upon as a class, and reviewing, summarizing and sharing in small and large groups collaboratively can help to provide the necessary prerequisites for content fluency. There are many great sites that can be used to this end, just a few of which include:

National Geographic Kids

Brittanica School Online

PebbleGo

Capstone Interactive Library

Newsela

CNN10

Culturegrams

Kids Info Bits (Gale)

Epic Books

BookFlix

Can Points of View

This is not by any stretch an exhaustive list, but should help provide a starting point. If you teach or attend school in Ontario, the Library Learning Commons site will have links to most of the above resources.

               

Censorship and Food

After many threats to internet freedom over the past few weeks, we are now coming up to Freedom to Read week.

Remember a few months back when "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was re-published with all of the historically accurate and appropriate uses of the word "nigger" deleted? Unfortunately, this sort of thinking is not rare. There are many people out there who are afraid of ideas that run different to or counter to their own. They would have these ideas silenced for everyone.

Like many others I know, my personal gut reaction when I hear of censorship or attempts at censorship is to automatically decry it. After all, people can choose whether to read something. What right do they have to make that decision for others? Even in school, where reading is prescribed, there is room for discussion & analysis for any novel. Seeing another point of view is an important part of education and growing up. I disagree with many aspects of the politics of Ayn Rand, but would be a fool to believe that there is no value in reading The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged.

And then...

I read about some other instances that made me start to rethink the absolute nature of my opinion.
What if there was a medical textbook or journal that had a misprint, or erroneous or outdated information? What about other material that contains inaccuracies that could lead to personal injury, hardship or even death?

What about hate literature?

Then there is another example that will always stay with me. Remember Paul Bernardo & Carla Homolka? Well, before the video tapes were released, and while the general public was led to believe that Homolka was  also a victim of sorts, a book was written on the subject. Once the tapes were released, it was revealed that she was also guilty. In the meantime, the book was released. Imagine, if you will, being a relative or friend of one of the victims, and having to walk past a bookstore every day and see this book on public display. I suspect that even the most staunchest supporter of the public's right to freedom to read would agree that moving the title out of public view in the victims' hometowns was an act of pure compassion.

So, now that I've found even this issue has some "shades of grey" (at least, it does for me), how, in fact can we support both the concept of freedom of information as well as protect the public from the extremes that could become dangerous?

What if we were to provide labeling and a recall system to publications, much as we do for movies or food? For example, a book with violent themes could have a warning label on it, similar to the movie rating systems. A book with graphic violence might be restricted, less graphic might be pg-13, etc. Personally, I would have loved to have seen a warning on Steinbeck's The Pearl. While it is a fantastic piece of literature, it was too much for me to take at the time I happened upon it (I was 13 then). With a warning, I would have saved it for a later time. Other 13 year old kids might have been ready for it; I was not. Labeling could help sensitive people make better reading decisions. This might lead to better acceptance of a wider variety of literature in general.

Errors and omissions, as well as needs for updating could be handled similarly to food recalls, except rather than withdrawing the offending piece, consider the distribution of appendices/labels/etc. that could be added to the publications as required. That way the original is kept intact, but the erroneous information is corrected. With e-readers, this task could become quite easy to manage.

There is the issue of oversight, but since there is obviously a huge population who already willingly takes on the "task" of challenging books based on politics, religion, etc., many of these areas might be covered without the need for an official system. In regards to errors, omissions, revisions and retractions, the author, publisher and peer review committees might find it beneficial to take up the cause.


More about Freedom to Read week, including lists of challenged books.

Some of my own family's favourite books.
Pen International supporting writers facing persecution for the peaceful expression of their ideas
Forest of Reading Ontario's reader's choice awards for children of all ages

Libraries: the Cornerstone of Civilization

I am a library person. Even before registering the births of my sons, they were registered library card holders. We went home with favourites from my husband's and my own childhoods including lullaby CDs and our favourite stories and poems. When my youngest was born, we were such library "regulars" that the news of his arrival made the internal library staff's newsletter. While many people watch TV, play video games or go and hang out at the mall, you can find my family spending our few spare leisure hours at the local library, or back at home exploring our library loot.

I've read on various internet sites that evidence of libraries dates back to about 5000 years ago from clay tablets found in Mesopotamia. The first known public libraries emerged in about 400 BCE. If I could travel back in time, my first choice would be a visit to the library at Alexandria. Of course, I'd also like to arrange to be able to read ancient Hebrew, Greek and Coptic (and probably a few other languages as well) in order to actually gain anything useful from the experience, but imagine the treasures once housed there (or in any of the associated library buildings). You can keep your gold and silver, your gems and trinkets--I'll take the library thank you very much!

I would argue that the strength of a society can be measured best by looking at their libraries. But--remember that paper books and written words may not be the only form a library takes. The oral traditions of North America First Nation, for example, can be argued to be a form of library in which elders and storytellers become living repositories. Likewise, the internet is also a form of library. When knowledge is retained in retrievable format, this constitutes a library. When that knowledge is shared without limit, that becomes a public library.

Public libraries are an essential as part of a society's educational system. They allow for the spread of ideas, knowledge and information, and promote freedom of speech. They allow and promote a free and just society by giving all members access to vital information. Enemies to public libraries include those who would censor or destroy material, or limit public access.

Libraries should be free to use for all. This is perhaps one of the most crucial institutions for any government to maintain. When a population is educated and can find and share information and ideas readily, they are empowered to become better citizens. Reliable information built upon the work of many replaces guesswork and the need to "re-invent the wheel".

Libraries are also environmentally friendly. Imagine what the cost would be in money, ink and trees if every time you wanted to read a book you had to purchase a new copy. Now consider how much it would take for your town or city. For a family of voracious readers like mine, it would be truly phenomenal.

If you consider all the other materials that our libraries also provide, such as audio-visual materials, magazines & periodicals, you can see that the sharing nature of libraries is something that we might want to even consider expanding much further. Why not a power tool lending library? Or a toy lending library? In fact, there are places in which these are available too.

If you want to do some detailed research, you can explore the library at the closest university or college.

The sad part of this is that many of us have learned to take our libraries for granted. When government cuts are made, libraries should be last (or near last) on the chopping block, yet in recent years, that has not been the trend. When a library is closed due to lack of public funding, it is akin to a society throwing up its arms in despair. It is a defeat of the spirit of curiosity and exploration, the very thirst for knowledge, which gives us meaning and purpose. Such a move hurts the most vulnerable members of society.

Libraries promote literacy, and provide a means to this end.
Long live the public library!