This week we have talked about non-traditional texts and the ways we can support students in reading them closely. We have been pushing ourselves to consider what falls into this category of “non-traditional texts” and have come up with the following ideas:
Paintings
Sculpture
Photography
Video clips of sporting events
Faces
Body language
The dynamic between two people
Nature
Television commercials
Traffic
Movie trailers
Print ads
Performances
An animal’s posture
We wonder what other ideas you can come up with to extend this list. As we think about reading these “texts” with students, we love the idea of connecting these texts, with some actual print material thrown in, across different instructional contexts. For example, refer to Monday’s post with the Geico commercial. Imagine first engaging students in a shared reading about Christopher Columbus and then “reading” the commercial together (or vice versa). The possibilities and permutations are endless!
We love to hear new ideas. What lessons have you done using non-traditional text?
Classroom design/desk arrangement, the way we dress, computer fonts, business logos, websites for competing businesses (REI vs Big 5), book covers, furniture, sandwiches (see scanwiches.com), Instagram filters, FB posts/pictures, talk show sets, TV show intros, the list goes on….your list, this list, any list!
Lately, in our science investigation, we’ve been reading beetles closely. We’ve examined them with jeweler’s loupes. We’ve noticed external structures and speculated on what are the functions for these structures. We’ve observed them in their “habitat” to see how they use these structures. We’ve devised experiments to see how they respond to various stimuli. We’ve generated our own texts to accompany our study: detailed drawings with labels and short descriptive paragraphs. All of these activities have required us to go back to the “text” (the beetle itself) to observe, retrieve information, to delve deeper, and to experiment.
Along the way, we’ve also been pouring over Steve Jenkins’ book, Beetles, and a couple Discovery Channel video segments about beetles to see how our beetles fit into the larger category of beetles, and how beetle structures are related to what matters most to beetles. I suppose this might also be considered a “close reading” of various beetle “texts?”