Children's Everyday Literacies: Intersections of Popular Culture and Language Arts Instruction. Written by Donna E. Aalvermann and Shelley Hong Xu.
Some key points from this article regarding the use of popular culture in the classroom are:
• “children’s everyday literacies can be used in schools to connect popular culture with the language arts curriculum”.
• The authors did a study that looked at how teachers and children use popular culture in the classroom.
• Things like music help children who had very few English language skills to become involved in the school. Students were invited to come into the music room and play regardless of if they had ever played an instrument before. The school found that music was an effective way of letting students communicated with others.
• In the past school literacies have ‘served’ the higher classes (those that have had exposure to the type of literature that schools use). Pop culture includes everyone.
• A way of using it in the classroom that the authors support – involves helping student’s’ develop the ability to reflect upon the way they use pop culture. Ideas that can be investigated include how media and mass produced symbols impact us by influencing our emotions and lives. – Development of critical thinking.
• Ideas re: using pop culture in the class
1. Compare how teachers and students use pop culture. (Give each student a survey that asks them about their interests – movies; TV. shows; music; books; magazines; web sites; video games; trading cards; other.)
2. Use student’s interest in pop culture to connect home to school. If teachers choose from a wide selection of pop culture materials they can find ways to provide a culturally responsive literacy program for their students. Music is another way of drawing in other cultures – what do lyrics mean, learn about the composers etc.
3. Use pop culture to encourage/interest reluctant readers and writers to learn language arts concepts and skills.
4. Use it to help teach critical literacy.
• Ideas: use pop culture as a way of making learning fun. Involve it in areas like word play (use the letters of a character to make up new words; Pokémon can help students see how words are made and why (word morphology), it can be integrated into a unit about animals; it can be used to help solidify concepts like sorting, fractions, percentages and decimals related to student’s favourite Pokémon character; write how-to paper’s; use the material as a way of teaching critical awareness.
• Look at some of the common themes running through some of the pop culture texts/shows. Superheroes perform extraordinary feats of courage – most are male (can have students challenge this idea, discuss it, debate it...) Develop this into a discussion of real-life superheroes (policemen, firefighters, doctors...)
• Talk about how superheroes can be used to deliver powerful messages
• Use popular shows like “Survivor” to begin a discussion on what traits you need to be able to survive. Bring in different books that have similar themes – Hatchet, Julie of the Wolves – as a teacher you can begin with a discussion on what physical traits it takes to survive, then move into a more in-depth discussion about the ‘spiritual’, or inner-strength to survive (i.e. Topics like slavery).
• Teachers need to look at how pop culture fits within their own lives. Understanding this will help teachers to understand how it influences their student’s lives and how they can then incorporate it into the classroom.
