"Bad" Video Games & Literacy

The question I'm asking in my MGRP is: Is it OK for video game source material – even violent material – to comprise content of elementary students’ storytelling?

Not surprisingly, I've found a lot of material suggesting that "good" video games can be helpful in promoting some form of literacy among children. After all, they are learning much about why characters make decisions, conventions of story, and how to form compelling material. The articles I've read, however, have offered only a cursory treatment of what I'll call "bad" video games -- ones that offer heavy doses of violence and realism, ones that further offensive gender stereotypes, etc. While some games might offer content and depth that promote healthy literacy habits like those mentioned above, what about games such as these?

It seems to me that none of the authors I've read would be entirely dismissive of the violent/suggestive genre of gaming, although I'm yet to see the research to justify a claim of any kind. The question is, however, as one author puts it: "is one type of narrative better or more valuable than the other?" (Ranker, 2006) The driving question for this paper came about as I saw more and more students with whom I worked consumed with violent gaming to the point where any opportunity they were given to write/draw ended with gore-soaked depictions of the games they played. From a strictly literary standpoint, you could do work with their content and craft. But is it OK? Should these students (often low-income males in my experience) be told: "I'd like for you to make some other choices in regard to content?" And if so, when?

I tend to lean toward the literary -- let them write what they write and work on craft. But it's content I would hope my sons would not write, and as a teacher, where do we draw the line between explicitly promoting literacy and implicitly condoning sex and violence?

Creativity and Limitations

"Independence in topic choice is not something teachers should expect to happen naturally/ The phrase 'I don't know what to write about' can be a way for students to procrastinate, but it can also be a legitimate reason for not getting started." (Hale 195)

I thought this was a really valuable point. A common misconception about creativity, it seems to me, is that it is free-flowing, open-ended, a river without banks or a dam. But when we are encouraging others, especially children, to write creatively and with good intentions say, "write about whatever you'd like," we can be counterproductive to the creative process. We are fostering a paralysis of information -- "write about whatever" is simply too much to process on many occasions.

Creativity is in essence problem-solving. It is most satisfying when it overcomes an obstacle and serves a purpose. Think about all the years we spent banging that one spot on a glass bottle of ketchup, only to have either nothing or a far-too-generous blob flop out. Someone finally conceived the squeeze bottle. Then we spent another several years trying to balance that ridiculously proportioned bottle on its tiny head to drain the last bit out. Someone finally had the idea to widen the spout so the bottle could always be stored upside down, eliminating the balance problem and the issue of that nasty ketchup-water that gathers as well. Each step represents a creative process undertaken by creative people. If we were to gather the creative people and tell them to do something, they might or they might not. But if we say: apply your creativity to this problem, something purposeful happens and the creative fruit is most satisfying.

The same is true for writing. A writing assignment that is left entirely open-ended has one of two tendencies: to dry up or to sprawl. When we can give some limitations to the assignment, however -- some problem to be solved -- students can turn their creative efforts to overcoming the obstacle. For example, in a personal piece, suggesting to a student struggling for ideas that they think of a personal narrative from the second grade gives them a focus -- a boundary -- which has the dual purpose of both reining in and unleashing their creative energy. In a fiction piece, suggesting they think of a type of character (say, a sailor) who wants something (to ride on an airplane, maybe) gives them some walls off which to bounce. There are a million ways that story can turn out, and the creative energy of the student is turned from developing an idea to solving a problem.

I wish someone had helped me clear up this misconception about creativity at a younger age. Creativity was nearly always presented to me as: "do whatever you want." More often than not, this was a dead end. Did any of you have a teacher that was especially good at fostering creative writing?

Try-It Pages

Forewarning: there is nothing especially profound about this blog entry, but I am really into this idea of "Try-It Pages" (Hale 103). I have struggled a bit with the idea of students using their written record as a diagnostic tool, mostly because outside of spelling and punctuation (which are important, don't get me wrong) I wasn't sure how easily kids would be able to track their progress as writers through their records alone from the start of the year to the finish. I don't want to dismiss their ability to do so necessarily, but have a record of Try-It pages along with their written record seems to me doubly effective.

The pages can be collected and kept so that at the end of the year, kids have created a reference book of their own with all types of helpful craft tips for future writing. These pages could be easily adapted into activities to use at multiple grades, beginning as children are first learning to write. I especially like the teacher-created template (p. 112) -- these could be available in the classroom for upper elementary children to pick up during a writing time along with other reference materials listing specific craft concepts they'd like to try. At this age, I imagine students inventing their own craft techniques as well, which could be added the concept reference materials in the classroom. What a great way to show that craft is always evolving, able to incorporate new techniques and combinations of techniques as needed.

Writing with Detail (Crafting Writers, Ch 1-6)

I've noticed a few other blog entries concerning "detail" in children's writing, so I thought I'd toss in my two cents. The key phrase for me in Elizabeth Hale's book is this one:

"Not only is offering suggestions for details that could be added to someone else's work a different skill from actually writing with detail, but squeezing in details is also a different skill from using details as you write. We want students to get better at using details as they write, not adding them after the fact." (Hale 11)

I am thrown a bit by Ms. Hale's use of the word "skill." I am not entirely sure if she is using "skill" in a necessarily positive light (as in an ability a student should have) or a neutral one. I would suggest writing with detail is a positive skill, but "squeezing in details" is actually a detriment to good writing. I would also suggest that adding detail after the fact, while perhaps not as ideal as using them during the initial writing process, is not necessarily a bad thing.

First, squeezing in detail. The real question a writer (or anyone attempting to communicate - orally, dramatically, musically, etc) must ask is: which details will help me best communicate my idea to its intended audience. Adding detail for the sake of adding detail is not a habit we want to encourage in students. We have all read books that eventually frustrate us with unnecessary information, abundant adjectives, etc. To be a writer also means to be a ruthless editor -- to be able to look at a piece of your own writing and cut what does not serve to advance the story or elucidate the idea you are trying to further. Now, I don't know to what extent young children can edit their own work, but certainly by the middle elementary grades, they can look at a detail that does not help their work and get out the red pen.

Adding in detail after the fact is another part of the editorial process. Just as children can learn to include helpful detail as they are writing and axe unhelpful details after an initial draft, they can (and should) be keeping an eye out for places where more detail will push their story or idea along. It's not harmful to encourage children to add detail as they write, but it's not entirely realistic, either. Good writing requires multiple edits and drafts, both to eliminate and add material after the fact. Communicating that writing is always a work in progress until a final draft is not a bad thing.

The ultimate goal is to help children best communicate their idea/story and however this is done -- suggesting ideas for detail, cutting unnecessary detail, or adding detail in later -- is beneficial to the student.

Every Mark on the Page

The discrepancy that surfaces on the first page of Ms. Cusumano's article is thought-provoking: ninety percent of children come to school believing they can write, yet a vastly smaller number of parents would seem to agree with their child's assessment. Why such a discrepancy?

Certainly, a large part of this difference of opinion lies in the definition of "writing." Is writing the ability to draw the symbols we use as letters? the ability to put marks on a page? I was helped tremendously by Ms. Cusamuno's assertion of the latter -- her borrowed comment that "every mark a child makes on a paper is made for a purpose." The article reeked of common sense -- that writing in a child's eyes is a combination of all writing and drawing ability in an effort to communicate to others. Related to my previous post, the importance of story trumps the importance of phonetics, correct spelling, and artistic convention (both in writing and in drawing).

In an age when parents seem increasingly neurotic about educational benchmarks, it was refreshing to see an author treat children as children -- and even more, children with something to communicate. Even though my tongue will bleed for biting on occasion, I hope that as a parent and educator, I am content to allow students to make mistakes in order to communicate a story they are itching to tell. As screenwriting teacher Robert McKee says, "people don't care if a screenwriter comes to them with chicken scratch written on toilet paper -- if it's a good story, they will work to make sure it gets told." Writing is about more than convention -- it's about community, and helping children tell their stories is an admirable goal.

Selfish Reading

"The use of high-quality, high-interest reading material motivated the children to want to learn how to read independently." -- Sound Systems (Lyon & Moore), p. 97

At the risk of being overly laudatory, amen. At the risk of being a little dismissive, duh. Reading is ultimately a selfish endeavor. It's not a secret that children want to read, but we're naive to think that they want to do it to be part of a wonderful, literate community. They want to do it because they understand the immediate benefit to themselves. If we want to encourage literacy, we shouldn't shy away from allowing children to pursue it for their own ends.

Let me share a bit about two of my three children -- one a six-year-old first grade student and one a three-year-old. Ellie, our first grader, was born with physical limitations that kept her from walking until the age of two. She has small lungs and air passageways and for the first few years, needed to spend half an hour daily with a nebulizer doing breathing treatments. The silver lining was that this provided us as parents with a golden opportunity to read with her. In a world (and even a home) that was often beyond her reach, learning to read became a lifeline -- something she could do sitting or laying down that freed her imagination to go to places she could not. She memorized books and then words. She recognized those words in other places. By the time she was three, she was reading fluently. As we sat in bed reading Little House in the Big Woods aloud, she would ask us seemingly irrelevant questions about the text: "how did Carrie get sick?" Turns out she was reading silently ahead of us on each page, wondering about the things that would happen next. Reading mastered, she then started devouring non-fiction books -- especially reference books with lists of words. She had begun creating her own stories in her head and was looking for source material: names of places, people, and things she could incorporate into her storytelling. Now, at six, she is back to fiction and starting to think about the craft of story: what elements, characters, etc make a compelling story? Understandably, she was mildly dismayed when she returned home after her class's first visit to the school library to find out she could not check out a Cam Jansen book. It was in the "green" section of the library, apparently reserved for second graders. Whether it will be available to her later in the year or on special request is unclear, but the question I have is this: what good are phonetically appropriate books if the subject matter is not compelling to the reader and her current literary objectives? Are we seeking to raise a generation that can read or wants to read? Frustrating.

My three year old has, up to now, been far less interested in reading. Whereas his sister was silently reading chapter books at his age, he knows a handful of letters and their sounds, and is nonplussed when he guesses that "basket" begins with L. I would like to say that my wife and I have nobly let him chart his own path (and we have at times), but we have tried to force his hand a bit too. Lately, however, we fished a hundred letter magnets out from under the fridge. His interest in them is largely categorical/mathematical -- he divides them by color, stacks them in groups of three, etc -- but lately, he has been wanting to understand their meaning. "What does this spell?" he will ask, pointing at a JRTQQWB emalgam on the fridge door. Benny could care less about what happens to Laura and Pa. But he wants to know the meanings of his own letter combinations, and as a parent, I am enjoying helping him decipher. He has since asked to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar three nights in a row.

I don't want to suggest that Lyon and Moore are wrong-headed in their emphasis on phonics. But as I see the materials produced by phonics educators to be used in the classroom, I want to pull back on the reins a bit. If we put words in front of children that they want to read, I believe their desire and ability to see the patterns implicit in the texts will grow. I suppose it's a cart-and-horse sort of thing: should we teach reading first through phonetic understanding or first through identifying words and materials the student wants to read? I would suggest the latter.

What do you think?

Community Literacy Dig: Observing Literacy in Action

Our group elected to spend the morning at a popular children's park, making observations about the forms of literacy going on around us. Courtney and I shared the responsibility of observing and recording vocabulary (both written and spoken) that were unique to the park environment we witnessed.

I hypothesized that much of the language unique to the park would center around the play equipment found there, as this is what makes the park itself unique from other environments. I strategically camped out by some "spinners" (devices you sit in to be spun around) and the "spider web" climbing structure, hoping to hear children and adults used invented terminology to discuss these apparati. I soon discovered, however, that much of the language used for these play structures was implied (for example, "let's go climb on that" or "can you help me into this?" For more familiar equipment and play areas, I did often hear parents and children say things like "I'm going to the red slide," "You wanna go swing?", and "if you want to play in the mulch, use that yellow tub." While it comprised much of the unique language I heard at the park, spoken words about the play structures were not the only thing noticed.

There were some phrases spoken at the park that while not unique to the park, certainly took on a unique context in the park setting. It was common to hear children asking to be pushed, and the question "can you push me?" meant something in the park context that it would not mean elsewhere. A lot of language that focused on children's accomplishments (e.g. "am I allowed to go to the tippy top?" or "you made it to the very top!" are things that could be said in different arenas but clearly refer to the unique play structures when heard at the park.

It was common to hear sound effects and onomatopoeia that were special to the park setting. The distinct "wheeEEEEeeee!" of a child going back and forth on a swing, or the echoing "whooooooooo!" inside a tunneled slide were constantly ringing through the park. It was not unusual for children and parents to create sound effects (e.g. "thumpthumpthump" when stomping around) that connected to their unique activities on the playground equipment.

There were not many written signs unique to the park environment, though I have included a few. The vocabulary on these signs wasn't especially unusual, but the combination of words is such that you would only find them on a park or on specialized play equipment. Most of the signs I chronicled related to specific rules or safety information connected to the park. A couple examples are shown here, one taken at the park's entrance and one taken on a swing.

The park proved to have a language of its own -- one I likely would have heard more of had I not been a little intimidated about being a solitary male sneaking around the park with a camera!

Here are my teammates' blog entries:

Patti (http://l549patti.blogspot.com/2010/09/community-literacy-dig.html)

Diana (http://l549diana.blogspot.com/2010/09/literacy-dig-at-park.html)