Unlocking the power of a child's unofficial world

What is a child's unofficial world and why am I interested in it? My understanding is that the unofficial world of a student includes anything that takes place outside of school. This can include their families, their hobbies, their friends, T.V., music, books, video games, board games. The list could go on and on. The main focus for me looking at a child's unofficial world is to determine how a teacher and a mother like me can use it (ie. interest in: video games, T.V., comics, anime, and Pokemon) to motivate my students (in particular boys) and son to write. I think that teachers and parents need to understand how important it is for a child's learning to value as much (or maybe more) what our children do outside the classroom as what they do inside of it.

In the past decade the media has zeroed in on how poorly boys are performing relative to girls in literacy (reading and writing). Governments in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the United States have spent considerable amounts of money funding research in the hope of explaining this phenomenon. What a lot of the research suggests is that for boys to be successfully engaged in literacy, the material needs to be:

• of personal interest to the boy;
• include active aspects vs. passive ones;
• provide built-in success for each boy;
• be fun; and
• have some relevance to the boy's life
  

If you have a son or have a number of boys in your classrooms then the above suggestions shouldn't be a surprise. As teachers I know we are continually be told to know our students. If I ignore what my students do outside of the classroom and limit them to the traditional curriculum resources that I have in my classroom then aren't I doing the opposite of getting to know them? Learning should be fun especially when you're young after all we want our children to want to continue to learn about new things, take chances and feel that their knowledge from outside and inside the class is of value. Inviting our children to bring their unofficial worlds into the official world of school seems to me like a brilliant idea.

If you are interested in reading some of this research you can be access it by clicking on the link entitled "research".