Engaging imaginations in Learning Literacy

The 9th. Pan-African Literacy for all conference&

The 10th. RASA national literacy conference

Cape Town, 3rd. Sept. 2015

Kieran Egan

Simon Fraser University

What is new about this approach?

The Imaginative Literacy Program is distinct because of the ways it uses feelings and images, metaphors and jokes, rhyme and rhythm, stories and wonder, heroes and the exotic, hopes, fears, and passions, hobbies and collecting, and much else in engaging the imaginations of both teachers and learners with developing literacy.

http://ierg.ca/ILP/

Introduction to the Imaginative Literacy program

Kinds of Understanding

IE is based on five distinctive kinds of understanding that enable people to make sense of the world in different ways

enable each student to develop these five kinds of understanding while they are learning math, science, social studies, and all other subjects

needs to be accomplished in a certain order because each kind of understanding represents an increasingly complex way that we learn to use language

Somatic Understanding (pre-linguistic)

Mythic Understanding (oral language)

Romantic Understanding (written language)

Philosophic Understanding (theoretic use of language)

Ironic Understanding (reflexive use of language)

Somatic Understanding

Bodies and their tool-kits

Somatic: the body’s toolkit

•Bodily senses

•Emotional responses & attachments

• Humor & expectations

•Musicality, rhythm, & pattern

•Gesture & communication

•Intentionality“little factories of understanding”Ted Hughes

emotional responses & attachments

Orientors to knowledge throughout life Fundamental organizers of our cognition Expectation and frustration, or satisfaction “perfinkers” Setting us in a network of love & care

humour & expectations

The smile appears at a uniform time in children everywhere, even deaf/blind

Peek-a-boo The unexpected and incongruous Affectionate communication nets

musicality, pattern & rhythm

Singing Neanderthals (Steven Mithen) Rhythm tracking Walking, marching, and dancing We are a musical animal Meaning in pattern

Mythic Understanding

understand experience through oral language

The tool-kit of oral language

Cognitive tools: Story

Cognitive tools: Abstraction and emotion

The structure of childrenThe structure of children’’s fantasy:s fantasy:

• articulated on binary oppositions;• abstract;• affective.

Concrete content requires abstract concepts.

Cognitive tool: Opposites and mediation

Cognitive tools: Affective images generated from words

Teacher and Japanese garden

Image and concept in teaching

Image and emotion

Cognitive tools: Jokes and humour

When is a door not a door? What do you call a bear with no ear? Why did Lucy cross the playground?

Observing language as an object, not just a behaviour

Vivifies thought and language, and, incidentally, gives pleasure to life

Cognitive tools: Metaphor

Tool that enables us to see one thing in terms of another

Lies at the heart of human inventiveness, creativity and imagination

Maintaining children’s metaphoric capacity

From cognitive tools to planning teaching

1. Locating importance 

2. Shaping the lesson or unit 2.1. Finding the story 2.2. Finding binary opposites 2.3. Finding images 2.4. Employing additional Mythic cognitive tools 2.5. Drawing on tools of previous kinds of understanding

3. Resources 

4. Conclusion

5. Evaluation

Introducing “Too”

Too is clearly very big, because he eats “too” much, he is also “too” tall, is clearly hyperactive, and always going beyond what is sensible. Unlike everyone else in his group, even when he includes the letter “o” in his name, he has to include two “o”s.

Introducing “Two”

Two does everything in pairs when she can—she has two cell-phones, two bikes, and is obviously over careful, in case she loses one thing she always has a backup. It is clear from the spelling of her name that she really wishes she were a twin, as she’s managed to put a “w” in her name, which is half way to “twin,” even though there is nothing in her name that the “w” sounds like.

Introducing “To”

To is constantly on her way elsewhere, or pointing to different things and places. She’s clearly never satisfied with where she is or what she’s got: a bit of a complainer. But she is neat and compact and well-organized—she doesn’t need those extra letters that too and two insist on having. But, you could say, she’s in so much of a hurry to go to some other place that, unlike the other two, she’s dropped the third letter from her name, and is the slimmest from all her hurrying around.

Example: Mythic understanding

Example: Mythic understanding

Try introducing a “metaphor of the week” competition

blank sheet of paper on a wall and invite students to either write, or have someone write for them, a good metaphor they heard someone use, or one they invented themselves.

Every Friday afternoon vote on the best metaphor. You will find quite quickly that the students all quickly understand what a metaphor is, and become enthusiastic in listening for unusual and surprising ones.

You can have a special “Metaphor of the Month” competition also, in which each week’s top three are pitted against each other. Then the concluding “Metaphor of the Year” event—for which an Oscar or something similar might be awarded..

Romantic Understanding

understand experience through written language

The toolkit of writing

From oral to literate culture

Cinderella to Superman: Peter Rabbit to Hazel and Bigwig

‘win’ in ‘window’ : ‘at’ from ‘cat’ : stop and watch the stopwatch

White bears on Novaya Zemla; Blue shamrocks on Sirius 5.

Extremes and limits of reality

associating with the heroic

romance, wonder, and awe

The literate eye

The list The inventory The table The flowchart Organizing experience and features of the

world in visually accessible terms

matters of detail

“Romantic” planning framework

1. Identifying “heroic” qualities 2. Shaping the lesson or unit 2.1. Finding the story or narrative 2.2. Finding extremes and limits 2.3. Finding connections to human hopes, fears,

passions 2.4. Employing additional Romantic cognitive tools 2.5. Drawing on tools of previous kinds of

understanding 3. Resources 4. Conclusion 5. Evaluation

humanizing knowledge

Examples

Punctuation: The Mighty Comma!

Monks and courtesy. Image: The comma as superhero!

Greater impact that Caesar, Napoleon, and all warriors. The unsuspected power of the comma––along with its tiny allies, the full stop, spaces, quotation marks, etc.––as transformer of the world, makers of democracy.

And confusion: "Jane claimed John made the mess" is crucially different from "Jane, claimed John, made the mess."

Example : punctuation

THEFIRSTACTIVITYOFTHECLASSMIGHTINVOLVEGIVINGTHESTUDE NTSAPIECEOFTEXTWITHOUTANYPUNCTUATIONSIMPLYALLTHEWO RDSFLOWINGTOGETHERWITHNOBREAKSCOMMASFULLSTOPSOR ANYOTHEROFTHEELEGANTANDECONOMICALCUESTHATMAKETEX TSEASILYACCESSIBLETOTHEEYEHEYWHATDOYOUMAKEOFTHIST HETEACHERCOULDASKJUSTSEEINGHOWMUCHMOREDIFFICULTIT ISTOREADWILLGIVESOMEIMMEDIATESENSEOFAVALUEOFPUNCTU ATIONHAVETHESTUDENTSREADTHETEXTALOUDTOHEARRATHER THANSEEHOWMUCHEASIERITISTOTHENMAKESENSEOFCHOOSES OMETHINGWITHLOTSOFQUOTATIONSSUBHEADINGSANDSOONGR APHICILLISTRATIONEHWHATSALLTHATSOMESTUDENTMIGHTSAY

Example : punctuation

THE FIRST ACTIVITY OF THE CLASS MIGHT INVOLVE GIVING THE STUDENTS A PIECE OF TEXT WITHOUT ANY PUNCTUATION SIMPLY ALL THE WORDS FLOWING TOGETHER WITH NO BREAKS COMMAS FULL STOPS OR ANY OTHER OF THE ELEGANT AND ECONOMICAL CUES THAT MAKE TEXTS EASILY ACCESSIBLE TO THE EYE HEY WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THIS THE TEACHER COULD ASK JUST SEEING HOW MUCH MORE DIFFICULT IT IS TO READ WILL GIVE SOME IMMEDIATE SENSE OF A VALUE OF PUNCTUATION HAVE THE STUDENTS READ THE TEXT ALOUD TO HEAR RATHER THAN SEE HOW MUCH EASIER IT IS TO THEN MAKE SENSE OF CHOOSE SOMETHING WITH LOTS OF QUOTATIONS SUBHEADINGS AND SO ON GRAPHIC ILLISTRATION EH

Example : punctuation

The first activity of the class might involve giving the students a piece of text without any punctuation, simply all the words flowing together with no breaks, commas, full stops, or any other of the elegant and economical cues that make texts easily accessible to the eye.

"Hey, what do you make of this?" the teacher could ask.Just seeing how much more difficult it is to read will give some immediate sense of a value of punctuation. Have the students read the text aloud to hear rather than see how much easier it is to then make sense of. Choose something with lots of quotations, subheadings, and so on.Graphic illustration, eh?

Example : punctuation

Tyrone wants to send his girl friend a message that he wrote as:How I long for a girl who understands what true romance is all about. You are sweet and faithful. Girls who are unlike you kiss the first boy who comes along, Adorabelle. I'd like to praise your beauty forever. I can't stop thinking you are the prettiest girl alive. Thine, Tyrone.

Unfortunately, Tyrone read the message to Adorabelle's sister over the phone. She wrote it down, but had no idea how to punctuate in such a way as would capture Tyrone's meaning. Poor Adorabelle received this message:

How I long for a girl who understands what true romance is. All about you are sweet and faithful girls who are unlike you. Kiss the first boy who comes along, Adorabelle. I'd like to praise your beauty forever. I can't. Stop thinking you are the prettiest girl alive. Thine, Tyrone.

Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown stories (1986).

Example : punctuation

• Courtesy is the heart of punctuation, making the page more hospitable to the eye, and resolving confusion:

Let’s eat, Grandpa!Let’s eat Grandpa!

• Students could work in small groups to come up with a new punctuation mark that might help make reading a text easier.

•

You try it! -- e.g. the interrobang: ‽

Example : playing with plurals

Perhaps too often, basic word features are taught mechanically, but it requires only a little thought to recast those activities into humorous mini-stories.  Instead of simply giving the learners a list of singular words and asking them to write the plural forms, for example, you can make a list of singulars and wrote them into a brief story.  The stories you create do not need to be riveting, knuckle-whitening thrillers, but can be quite simple accounts of people engaged in everyday activities.  Obviously, the more entertaining you can make them the better, and it works better if you can form them into jokes.  The students can then be asked to rewrite a particular simple story using plurals.  In this case the list of singular words that are to be transformed into plurals included:

woman,   stone,   my,   he,   I,   boy,   pencil,   brother,   paper,   friend,   plant

Instead of putting the words in a column, with a blank space in which to write the plural, as is common, you can write a simple story in which you underline the words you want the students to write in the plural, asking them to write out the story again with plurals in place of the underlined singulars.

“A woman went down to the river to get some water for a plant that looked too dry.  A boy sat on a stone with a pencil and paper.  The woman asked the boy what he was doing.  “I am writing to my brother,” the boy said.  “But you can’t write,” the woman replied.  “That’s all right,” said the boy.  “My brother can’t read.”

Underlying principle

All knowledge is human knowledge; it grows out of human hopes, fears, and passions. Imaginative engagement with knowledge comes from learning in the context of the hopes, fears, and passions from which it has grown or in which it finds a living meaning.

Contact us

Website: http://ierg.ca/ILP/

E-mail: ilp-ed@sfu.ca.

Phone numbers:Telephone: (778) 782-4479Fax: (778) 782-7014