Insights and Updates - The Literacy Bug: Recent Episodes

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Some aspects of literacy are tied up in the skills of being able to read (decode) and write (encode) the words on the page (consistently and methodically). Other aspects are extra-linguistic and are tied up in ways of speaking, seeing and doing. In this blog post, we examine the latter part of this dichotomy.

Read the following two textual samples below before proceeding with the blog post for a discussion.

QUOTE FROM A MECHANIC’S GUIDE

To change the oil, slide under the vehicle and locate the oil drain plug. Place an oil catch pan beneath it to collect the old oil. Unscrew the drain plug using a socket wrench and allow the oil to drain completely. Once the oil has drained, locate the oil filter. Using an oil filter wrench, loosen and remove the old oil filter in a counterclockwise motion. Ensure the rubber gasket comes off with the filter. Before installing the new oil filter, lightly coat the rubber gasket with fresh oil. Then, thread the new filter onto the engine by hand, ensuring it is snug but not overtightened. Replace the oil drain plug, tightening it with a socket wrench in a clockwise motion.

QUOTE FROM A FABLE

Once upon a time, in a lush and verdant land nestled between mighty mountains, there existed a serene valley. This valley was blessed with crystal-clear streams that meandered gracefully through its heart, glistening in the golden sunlight. The waters were pure and abundant, supporting a thriving ecosystem and providing life to all who dwelled within. But as time passed, the valley faced an unprecedented threat. A dark cloud settled upon the land, bringing with it torrential rains that turned the tranquil streams into raging torrents. The once-pristine waters grew murky and polluted, carrying with them the remnants of human negligence and greed.

Both texts express information - albeit substantially different types of information.

If I position myself as a literate person, I scrutinise the script in order to access each text. Can I decode these words? Can I follow the logic of these sentences? Can I derive pictures, sense or intention from these sentences and from the text as a whole? If I can do this, what does it all mean? How is it useful? What is important in the message? The answers to such questions rely upon a complex web of prior knowledge, of context, my immediate circumstances and my conversations with others.

We shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it may be to simply derive sense from a text, particularly the technical one. Such literal comprehension is an important starting point. With more experience, I am able to look at the text as a series of choices (Talbot, 2010; Vygotsky, 1978).

“Why this and not that? Hmmm! Let’s see what happens if I move some of these details around (or interpret them differently). What becomes of the case then?”

My position to the texts differ based on my capacity to manipulate states of affairs depicted within each text as well as other possible states of affairs that are not represented in the text. I assess what is in the text as well as what could have been in the text to better consider the choices that have been made.

This takes us back to Wittgenstein’s inspiration for the picture theory of meaning. Ludwig Wittgenstein read about a court case in which there was a vehicle accident (of some sort). The courtroom model depicted the circumstances with tangible figurines in a similar way to how words in a sentence might convey a scene. During the case, all parties would scrutinise this model to ascertain what really happened. Questions were also asked to clarify the scene, including the names of various elements. In doing so, parties would manipulate the model to get to the actual state of affairs of what occurred (from all of the possible ones).

One could draw different conclusions based on the various possible states of affairs. Those best placed to properly assess the model were those with the most first hand experience. Such witnesses would manipulate the model to suggest the true state of affairs, just as if they were carefully selecting their words in order to convey the proper picture of events. Hopefully, one came to the true and sensible picture!

Let us turn to the texts at the start of this blog post. In relation to the technical text, my comprehension relies on some familiarity with basic car mechanics so that I can interface between actual experience and the experience expressed in the text, so I can asses whether the picture is correct (or complete). I also need this context to be able to action what is described within the text. My comprehension can be assessed by how well I can apply the instructions in the world.

In such case, the act of reading is an act of simulating actions in the world. If I engage in this car mechanics on a day-to-day basis, then I have the opportunity to become competent in the field language as well as how instructional texts of this sort might mediate valued day-to-day activity. In other words, I can become competent at literacy within the context of the activities in which language and literacy are embedded, whether it is gardening or cooking or star gazing. Scaffolding the comprehension of the written and spoken also involves the carefully scaffolding of human activity.

• “To bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form.” Wittgenstein, PI 23)
• “Our talk gets its meaning from the rest of the proceedings."(Wittgenstein, OC 229)

Let us now turn our mind to the other text. Let us call it a fable. In the case of the fable, the author may or may not be aware of the many associations that a reader may attach to water, rain and cleansing, which all may come to reinforce how the text potentially expresses a view about a fragile environmental balance. If I happen to live in a place which has experienced dramatic environment and cultural change in the face of industrialism, then the fable may be more meaningful than as simply a descriptive story.

It is even more meaningful if am accustomed to stories being used to navigate shared experiences and values. To another audience, however, it all might be utter nonsense or a nice story (at face value) or something altogether different - a misleading fable that limits our potential for growth and progress.

There is a hidden assumption here. The assumption is that I occupy a form of life in which some texts have a relevance and value (and other don’t). In that form of life, a literate person is one who can decode and engage in literal comprehension, as well as engage with texts for a multitude of purposes. How I come to interpret this picture is tied up in the conversations that I have with others.

• “Children are born into a community and simply acquire the community’s language and the community’s world-picture, children do not learn single sentences or issues, but a whole language or a whole world-picture.” (Kober, 1996, pg. 422)

Where does all of this lead us? As stated at the outset, some aspects of literacy are tied up in the skills of being able to literally read (decode) and write (encode) the words on the page (consistently and methodically). Other aspects are extra-linguistic and are tied up in ways of speaking, seeing and doing. Comprehending texts is embedded within human activity, imagination and discourse, which involve particular domains of language (Gee, 1996). The latter aspects are tied up in problem solving, agency and intentionality. It is not a message that is new or novel, but still own upon which to reflect.

References

Gee, J. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses (2nd Edition). London: The Falmer Press.

Kober, M. (1996). Certainties of a world-picture: the epistemological investigations of On Certainty In H. Sluga, H. and D. Stern (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein. (pp. 411 - 441) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Talbot, J. T. (2010). Where does language come from? The role of reflexive enculturation in language development. Language Sciences 32 (1) 14-27.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. (M. Cole, Ed.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Translated by D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

_____________ (2001). Philosophical Investigations (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

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Hello, from The Literacy Bug,

At this time, we’d like to take the opportunity to share some links to a few quality (mostly free) educational resources that we have come across in the last few years.

We appreciate that many of you may be home schooling children during the present COVID-19 outbreak, or you may be organising remote teaching/support for children. The following may serve as useful resources.

We’d also like to ask the community to share their own suggestions. If you have further recommended resources, please add a comment to the blog or send us an email at info@theliteracybug.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Please note: The following suggestions are not designed to replace the teaching ideas that dedicated teachers are sending home for parents. It’s important to work together to avoid a significant disruption to children’s education.

If you are looking for suggestions consistent with the “Big Six”, then look here … Research clearly demonstrates that budding readers benefit from activities that develop the “Big Six” skills: oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

This is where the FLORIDA CENTRE FOR READING RESEARCH (FCRR) can help. Their comprehensive set of Student Centre Activities provides a wealth of teaching ideas across the Big Six skills for a wide range of ages (preschool to Grade 5). All materials are available freely to the public.

• Preschool activities: https://fcrr.org/resources/resources_vpk.html
• Kindie to Grade 5 activities: https://fcrr.org/resources/resources_sca.html

We do note that it can be a bit daunting to teach using just the activities above, which is why FCRR also includes further planning, teaching and monitoring resources:

• Suggested Instructional Routines: http://www.fcrr.org/assessment/ET/routines/routines.html
• Scaffolds for Planning Instruction and Tracking Progress: http://www.fcrr.org/assessment/ET/guides/guides.html

We all know how to read to our preschoolers … right? … here are a few extra ideas to support children’s early literacy skills Developed by the Crane Centre for Early Childhood Research and Policy at Ohio State University, READ IT AGAIN-PREK! is a practitioner-friendly, scientifically based, and relevant curricular supplement designed to develop and strengthen young children’s early foundations in language and literacy.

All lessons are organized around adult-child readings of high-quality storybooks.

Each lesson idea is designed to systematically build children’s language and literacy abilities in four areas key pre-literacy areas:

• Vocabulary
• Narrative
• Phonological awareness
• Print knowledge

Please note that each lesson is centred around particular picture books. In many cases, you will not have access to these exact books, but you can explore the teaching ideas in the support material and apply these ideas to the book you have access to.

• https://crane.osu.edu/our-work/read-it-again/

There are a lot of phonics apps out there, so we have a couple recommendations that may spark your interestFEED THE MONSTER is a free, engaging Android game that helps children develop basic understanding of vowel sounds, consonant sounds and simple words. In other words, children:

• Learn letter names;
• Learn letter sounds;
• Learn to sound out simple words; and
• Practice reading in an interactive setting at varying levels of difficulty

What’s more important is that Feed the Monster is available in over 40 languages including English, Español, Français, Kiswahili, Hindi, and Farsi. The game was initially developed with support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and USAID and was a winner in the EduApp4Syria contest. It is being further developed by Curious Learning, a global nonprofit focused on promoting literacy.

The various Feed the Monster games (including English) can be found on GooglePlay at https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Curious%20Learning

SOUNDS ENGLISH PHONICS is an innovative new learn-to-read app from the educational company Zaprendo.

It is important to note that the game is NOT a beginning phonics app. It is designed for students who have reached the 'early reading phase’ (a reading age of about 6.5 years) and is based on 92 written sounds that occur most frequently in early reading material. Many of these are vowel dipthongs as well as blended consonant sounds - such as 'bl'. This makes good sense for early readers (as opposed to emergent readers) as this extends students who have already mastered basic short vowels and CVC constructs.

The app recommends that learners focus on three sounds per day (with accompanying words). All learning is organised around the “Great Learning Tree”, which provides a visible indications of the learner’s progress.

What is most impressive is the adaptive learning feature, which monitors the words that children get right and wrong. The system uses this information to determine and modify the sequence of letter-sounds that learners encounter in the game.

Please explore and enjoy! And note, this is a paid app.

https://zaprendo.com/apps/

Are you looking for free reading materials for early readers in English but also in a range of other languages? STORYWEAVER is a digital repository of multilingual stories for children from Pratham Books. Storyweaver is designed to provide children with richly illustrated, open-licensed children's stories in mother tongue languages (including English). The stories are levelled by reading difficulty, so you can find free texts at the right level for your emerging reader.

All the stories are available online and offline. They are downloadable as PDFs for easy printing, and there are also a number of readalong stories in the repository.

https://storyweaver.org.in

Another resource with a similar intent is the GLOBAL DIGITAL LIBRARY from the Global Book Alliance. Keep a look out for the following resource as it is sure to grow in the coming months.

https://www.digitallibrary.io

Are you looking for accessible, information texts for developing readers? TEXTPROJECT’S “FYI FOR KIDS” resource provides a wealth of free, short, accessible texts with accompanying activities. These texts can be used to help developing readers focus increasing attention on how to extract key information as they read.

There are texts in a range of difficulties and in diverse subject areas, including science, social studies, arts, music, history and culture. The website also now includes an easy-to-use search tool to filter text by difficulty and topic.

http://textproject.org/teachers/students/fyi-for-kids/

Are you looking for even more reading materials to help expand learners’ understanding of the world around them?NEWSELA is an innovative site with resources designed to build reading comprehension from a relevant, contemporary source of nonfiction: the daily news.

Newsela includes articles ranging from sport, the arts, to politics, and more. All articles are sourced from reputable new outlets like the Washington Post, Scientific American, the History Channel, and much, much more.

The key is this, though: Newsela creates multiple versions of each article for different skills and abilities. In other words, there will be version written at a Grade 3 level, a Grade 5 level, a Grade 7 level, and so on.

It makes it easy for an entire class to read the same content yet differentiated to suit differing levels of reading skills. In other words, academically challenging content can be presented within the zone of proximal development of the learner.

Please explore and enjoy. You’ll be pleased that you did.

https://newsela.com

Are you wishing to challenge learners with academic vocabulary and enagaging topics? WORD GENERATION is a research-based program for late primary and middle school students which is designed to teach academic vocabulary in language arts, math, science and social studies classes. It is a program that builds academic vocabulary across subject areas by facilitating deep discussion about concepts and issues of concern to children and young people.

Each unit introduces approximately five or six high-utility academic “focus words” and is designed to offer a variety of texts, word-learning activities, writing tasks, and debate and/or discussion opportunities. Specifically, each unit helps:

• expand general and content-oriented academic vocabulary;
• build the reasoning and argumentation skills that are necessary for learning in all content areas; and
• build reading comprehension and content-area literacy by providing students with motivating text, opportunities for discussion and debate, and weekly writing.

Please explore and enjoy:

• Elementary School Years: https://www.serpinstitute.org/wordgen-elementary
• Middle School Years: https://www.serpinstitute.org/wordgen-weekly

Do you need resources to help adolescent readers develop key fluency and deep comprehension skills? Serp Institute’s STARI program (or Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention) is a literature-focused intervention for students in grades 6-9 who read two or more years below grade level. STARI addresses gaps in fluency, decoding, reading stamina, and comprehension, aiming to move struggling students to higher levels of proficiency whilst providing cognitively challenging content that is aligned to the Common Core and other 21st century standards.

Each units includes a range of materials to support growing fluency, comprehension, critical thinking and academic development.

Check this one out: https://www.serpinstitute.org/stari

COMMONLIT is a nonprofit education technology organization dedicated to ensuring that all students develop strong reading, writing, communication, and problem-solving skills.

The system includes over 2,000 high-quality free reading passages for grades 3-12, complemented by questions, paired readings and activities to promote deep consideration of important social, environmental and historical issues.

This includes:

• individual texts (organised by grade level and theme);
• texts organised into units of study; and
• novel (book) studies that guide students into deep, critical thinking.

Please note that CommonLit now includes a range of Spanish content, as well.

https://www.commonlit.org

Last but not least, the COMPREHENSION CIRCUIT TRAINING (CCT) resource from The Meadows Centre provides a range of scaffolds to support youth to read with an analytical and critical mind. The CCT resource is part of the broader PACT project (Promoting Adolescents’ Comprehension of Text)

• PACT website: https://www.meadowscenter.org/projects/detail/promoting-adolescents-comprehension-of-text-pact
• CCT Teacher Booklet: https://www.meadowscenter.org/files/projects/teacher_lvl1_PRESS.pdf
• CCT Student Workbook: https://www.meadowscenter.org/files/projects/Student_workbook_final.pd

Please stay connected and reach out if you have further ideas and resources that you’d like to shareWe are really pleased to share this list with you. It’s not a comprehensive list, but hopefully it has some useful ideas. To explore further, please visit our list of recommended links.

If you’d like to add any further recommendations, please let us know. We are keen to hear from you. Please add a comment to the blog or send us an email at info@theliteracybug.com.

Bye for now.

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UPDATE: We are proud to announce that the Living First Language Platform has been selected as one of the Solvers in the 2019 MIT: Solve Global Challenge for Early Childhood Development. See the post below for more information on the project and on MIT Solve.

__________________________

There hasn’t been a lot of activity on The Literacy Bug in these past few months. To be honest, it has been very quiet in 2019. This has been largely due to another important project that has occupied the person behind this site, Eric Brace.

Eric’s main occupation is as the Director of Programs for The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation. As one aspect of this role, he is part of a team of people who have developed the Living First Languages Platform, which is a digital platform that allows Indigenous Speaker Groups to collect languages assets (e.g. phonemes, words, semantic categories, sentences and texts) so they can create their own language and literacy applications for teaching and learning purposes. This is quite important in the cases of minority and endangered languages where there is often limited materials available to best support the preservation and teaching of literacy in traditional languages. The main premise behind the Living First Languages Platform is best captured in the following video:

Whilst a lot has happened since the making of the video, it remains an accurate depiction of the aims and objectives of the project.

So … why are we writing this today. Well, we think the Living First Languages Platform may be of interest to those in The Literacy Bug network. And we are proud to say the project is a finalist in the MIT: Solve Global Challenge for Early Childhood Development, which will see Eric travelling to New York in late September (during UN General Assembly week) to pitch to a live audience to raise the profile of the project and to seek further support.

You can find out more detailed information about the project by visiting the detailed description at the following link: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/early-childhood-development/solutions/9228

There are many other very worthy projects in this year’s MIT: Solve Global Challenge, so feel free to explore more about MIT: Solve and about the other finalists here:

• About MIT:Solve Challenges: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges
• About MIT:Solve Early Childhood Challenge: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/early-childhood-development
• For a list of all the finalists in this year’s challenge: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/early-childhood-development/solutions#challenge-subnav-offset

We appreciate your time, and hope you don’t mind this less-than-usual update from The Literacy Bug, but we decided that it is something that many be of interest to sizeable portion of our audience. If this is of interest, then - as usual - please explore and enjoy!

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Wittgenstein stated that every philosophical problem is founded on the phrase, “I don’t know my way about.” Consequently, philosophical activity is engaged in the unravelling of perceptual and epistemological conundrums, but I don’t want to occupy myself with such conundrums today.

Instead, I’d like to apply that same phrase - “I don’t know my way about” - to learning.

All learning should begin with the humility and awareness to acknowledge an initial ineptitude (e.g. an inability to do something or see something or know something) along with the willingness for one to find his or her way about in some shape or form.

In other words, an individual may start out “blind” to certain “aspects” or “(meaningful) patterns” in a certain phenomenon but the individual comes to “notice these aspects or patterns” through carefully arranged activities and repeated practice … often guided by others who are more skilled, perceptive, and experienced in the phenomenon.

In this case, “aspects” refers to “salient features” in some phenomenon, such as the features of language, or of an alphabet or even the rules of engagement in particular social situations. In the case of each phenomenon, an individual must learn to recognise and decipher these patterns. At the beginning, the learner may stumble along, but - through guided practice and experience - the learner navigates the phenomenon with increasing fluency and thoughtfulness.

“Understanding comes in degrees.”

Perhaps the following quote from Philosophical Grammar can go further to illustrate how our learning can lead us to read the world in ways which come to be increasingly more meaningful through practice.

"Does it make sense to point to a clump of trees and ask ‘do you understand what this clump of trees says?’ In normal circumstances, no; but couldn’t one express a sense by an arrangement of trees? Couldn’t it be a code?”

Couldn’t such a clump of trees reveal something about the local ecology to one who is trained to discern patterns in a particular way? The answer is clearly “yes”. There is nothing outlandish in Wittgenstein’s proposition.

Whilst the above example does shed some light on aspect seeing, it also allows me to make another point about learning. Let’s imagine that two individuals pass by the same forest on a regular basis. Even though both individuals may experience the forest regularly, it may be the case that only one of the two individuals has been initiated into the ways of seeing such that he or she notices something particularly meaningful in “a particular clump of trees.” In other words, one person has been initiated into a certain form of aspect seeing, whilst the other individual hasn’t, even though they may both have some experience with the same phenomenon.

This has particular applications to literacy. As an obvious one, you may have two learners who both have experienced print but one of the two learners may have benefitted from better instruction in exploring the intricacies of the alphabetic principle than the other. Similarly, we may have two learners who have both experienced ample amounts of shared book reading, but only one of two learners has engaged in the types of sustained conversations around characters, setting, sequencing, and artistry that will benefit him or her later on (e.g. in school-based conversations).

Ultimately, the learner is a novice and the teacher is the expert who attempts to draw the learner’s attention to significant elements in order to manipulate them and interact with a phenomenon with dexterity. We - as teachers - are initiating learners into ways of “finding one’s way about.” As a result, the teacher’s role is to make “unsurveyable wholes” surveyable, if I use the words of Hans Sluga (see definitions at the end of this blog entry).

I must acknowledge that there are intrapersonal, interpersonal and context factors that have a bearing how and what an individual learns. In other words, individuals will differ in their cognitive abilities, in the learning relationships that have they have formed and in the environments in which they live. All of this will impact what/how one processes.

With that in mind, I’d like to end (or near the end) with another example raised by Wittgenstein. He asks us to imagine an alien learning the game of chess. In this example, he want us to ask ourselves, “can this alien intuit the rules and purpose of chess merely by observing the game being played? No explanations. No demonstration.” The answer would be “no”. If possibly “yes”, it would a painful, lengthy and error-ridden process of trial and error which could be alleviated by at least some stages of instruction and explanation, though, even this would be impacted by the lack of a common language between the alien and the chess players. Beyond the rules, the alien would also need to be brought into the whole purpose/context of the playing of chess and the playing of games in general, for that matter. Consequently, the whole process of initiating one into ways of seeing and doing is a lengthy process which grows over time through both skill acquisition and conception development.

That’s it for today, and I know that this is the first update to The Literacy Bug in quite some time, and it’s good to be back. I’ll leave you with a number of terms and definitions below that explore elements of “aspect seeing” and “finding one’s way about”. Thanks for your time. I’d be interested to know your thought. How would you apply the ideas above? What relevance (if any) do they have for you? In the meantime, please explore and enjoy!

RELEVANT TERMS & DEFINITIONS
ASPECT SEEING - (also known as noticing/seeing aspects) To see and interpret aspects (or phenomena) as meaningful, or as imbued with meaning. To discern aspects (or patterns) in a whole and to organise how these aspects fit into a system.

ASPECT BLINDNESS - Refers to the inability to discern or detect aspects. Arises as a result of two possible circumstances. First, an individual does not see (or notice) aspects as meaningful or does not turns one's attention to certain aspects in one's environment. The person has not been brought into discerning and interpreting the aspects in a particular way.

NOTICING ASPECTS - To notice salient features when one is making observations. This requires more than merely seeing. This requires the ability to distinguish features and to see features as significant. For instance, an air traffic controller comes to be able to assess and interpret the instruments before him or her.

SEEING AN ASPECT - Wittgenstein refers to two ways of seeing. The first being "I see x", which refers to the physical act of seeing something. The second being "I see x as (meaning) something". For instance, the written script may appear as either assorted lines on a page or meaningful language with significance. In addition, one may notice a tree in a particular position next to a house. An individual may also see it as fitting into a series of consequences, and so imagine it as possibly falling onto the house. A further example would relate to an artwork's ability to conjure associations with - let's say - peace or freedom. The viewer would need to be able to notice one or more salient features that would move one to interpret or react in a particular way.

SEEING CONNECTIONS - Wittgenstein emphasises that a thinker must piece together elements of experience or of knowledge so as to gain a command of how a system works. In Philosophical Grammar, Wittgenstein writes, "A puzzle picture. What does it amount to to say that after the solution the picture means something to us, whereas it meant nothing before?" And Ray Monk (2005) observes, “An Ubersicht produces the ‘understanding which consists in “seeing connections’” (p 66). In this case, building knowledge and engaging in practices requires an individual to see how the knowledge fits together and how a practice is connected with a form of living.

UNSURVEYABLE WHOLES - It is Hans Sluga (2011) - not Wittgenstein - who uses this term, though it is consistent with Wittgenstein's philosophy. Sluga emphasises that phenomena - such as language, the environment, history - are by nature complicated, immense and unsurveyable. Humankind, nevertheless, develops systems of analysis, fields of knowledge, and ways of seeing that act as tools to make sense and to "survey" or organise what would otherwise be unsurveyable. William Gaddis provides an illustration of this in his novel JR. A history teacher stops a Year 7 lesson to inform his class that history is a lot more complex than the neat historical narratives seem to indicate. He stresses that generations of historians work to preserve order in history so that events do not eventuate as tangled and insignificant.

SURVEYABLE REPRESENTATIONS - A surveyable representation involves an attempt to develop a way of looking at a set of phenomena that allows an individual and /or community to make sense of and - in many cases - to manipulate particular phenomena. Similarly, a system (of culture, of language, of life) may be substantially complex, which would require one to develop a method of analysis, a way of thinking, or a manner of living that would make the 'unsuveyable whole' increasingly 'surveyable'. Consider - for instance - the principles of a religion, or the rules of grammar, or a Marxist explanation of socio-political relationships. Each are ways of representing phenomena. It is important to remember that the representation is a way of perceiving the phenomena, rather than being the only possible description (or rendering) of the phenomena.

WAYS OF SEEING - Wittgenstein uses two metaphorical examples to illustrates how perceptions are subject to the way that an individual arranges experiences into meaningful patterns. The most famous metaphor applies to the rabbit-duck image. From one perspective, the drawing appears as a duck. From another perspective it is rabbit. Regardless of the interpretation, the actual image does not change. The only thing that changes is how one comes to see it. The second metaphor applies to the image of a cube. One arrangement presents the cube as jutting out of the page and at the reader. The other sees the cube recede into the depths of the page. To be able to see both images, one needs to shift one's gaze and reconceptualise that which is under investigation. However, one who is aspect blind may be unaware or resistant to any alternative manner of arranging and interpreting the facts of the case. One who continuously sees in a certain manner may be unaware of other possibilities. One must - then - ask, “how does one come into a certain way of seeing?”

STAGE SETTING - Stage setting refers to all the preliminary activities that prepare one to make meaning or to establish a practice. For instance, Wittgenstein is quick to remind his audience that a substantial amount of preliminary experiences must be in place for one to acquire language, or make sense of algebra, or to become a mechanic. We must ask ourselves, "what are the prerequisite experiences, expectations, role models and understandings that will lay down the tracks on which the learning will occur?" And "do we have the resources, models and opportunities to carry on with the learning so it becomes practiced and relevant and useful?"

SCAFFOLDING - We come to learn methods of activity and systems of knowledge. These methods and systems become reinforced as they are shaped through our interactions with the notion of learning presented to us in a circle of influence. Deep grooves are set in our thinking and our behaviour. In this sense, education proceeded first as a form of training in ways of doing and seeing, which become prototypes for our thinking and decision in future events. Our methods, our experiences, our expectations, our schemas are initially scaffolded for us in the learning process. In turn, these habits, beliefs, rituals and methods become the scaffolding for our engagement with the world in the future. When one is brought into knowledge, one should be brought into content and method at the same time.

COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP - A cognitive apprenticeship brings people into different ways of thinking, problem solving and processing. Cognitive apprenticeship is a model of instruction that works to make thinking visible. The practices of problem solving, reading comprehension, and writing are not at all obvious- they are not necessarily observable to the student. In apprenticeship, the processes of the activities are made visible as the processes of thinking are modelled, jointly constructed and guided.

BOOTSTRAPPING - Bootstrapping occurs when an individual becomes aware of the patterns and rules governing a phenomenon, such as in language or in a practice. The learner develops an appreciation of and a template for meaningful/permittable combinations or actions. By becoming aware of allowable patterns, one can direct one's attention more efficiently since one is better able to anticipate what to expect or how to act. For instance, the first encounter of a new social situation may give one trepidation. However, regular practice allows one to accumulate the experience to be more confident in what to expect and how to act (to play the game). On the other hand, the experience may also limit creativity since one may develop a familiarity that limits (bootstraps) one's ability to imagine other possible ways of seeing or acting. In relation to language, experience teaches one the patterns of spelling, grammar, and discourse. Therefore, one becomes more efficient at predicting or discriminating correct form and use.

CONTINUOUSLY SEEING AS - Refers to the penultimate stage of the learning process (if we take critical reflection as the final stage). At this stage, one does not struggle to notice aspects or to interpret observations. At this stage, the individual has acquired a way of seeing or of interpreting that becomes automatic. To "continually see as" is to commit to or to acquire a certain way of seeing, whether we are referring to perceiving language, to moral practices, to aesthetic judgement or to spiritual beliefs. In all such cases, a certain way of seeing has been incorporated into one's world picture.

STRUCTURING STRUCTURES WHICH STRUCTURE STRUCTURE - Refers to those aspects within one's environment that gives shape to practices, influences what practices one is part of, and comes to sustain practices. The concept is closely related to Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and it refers to the background to practices and knowledge which is often taken for granted or assumed. For instance, an actor must be aware that the ability to attain a career in acting is built on the premise that a culture values the concept of acting and drama, and the culture can allow/afford for members of its community to embody the role of actors. It can be the case that one feels entitled to a form of living without admitting that this form of life is reliant on certain capital, practices, methods of production and division of labour to be in place for the practice to be sustained.

HABITUS - This is a concept used by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who cites Wittgenstein as a key contributor to his thinking. Habitus refers to the lived conditions (or context) that serve as the foundation for certain practices, knowledge, tastes and values. It most closely aligns with Wittgenstein's use of the "form of life" concept. Bourdieu would argue that whilst habitus is key to understanding a practice or a way of thinking, it is often poorly analysed or entirely ignored when people consider social, cultural or learning event.

CULTURE - Stanley Cavell claimed that Wittgenstein was a philosopher of culture. That is, Cacell asserts that Wittgenstein claims that our knowledge, our practices and our values are derived from the interactions of a community. There is considerable evidence to suggest that this is the case. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein stipulates that meaning is derived from the form of life to which our language and practices occur. In addition, On Certainty emphasises how one's knowledge and world pictures are arrived at through one's "upbringing"

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There is a running theme to which I keep returning when I consider the power of literacy: its power to depict.

It is this ability to “paint” or “represent” with written language that can exemplify our desire to record an event or a scene, whether real or imagined. It is also a good illustration of the simple view of literacy, as well as its possible limitations.

Let’s imagine the following common scenario: a learner is presented with a series of pictures that can quite easily form the basis of a narrative. In this scenario, we challenge the learner to carefully draft a descriptive text (which may easily become a narrative text). This becomes a scenario in which the learner can demonstrate his or her skills. The learner may be provided with the opportunity to orally rehearse what could be said about each image. That said, the learner will eventually be required to coordinate language and writing skills to carefully lay down one written sentence after another after another (either independently or with support through joint construction).

“When you write you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a wordcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it and it digs a path you follow.”

— (Fish, 2011, p. 3)

All that is necessary for the production of the text is made available to the learner. Both the stimulus and the language required to describe the stimulus are concrete and accessible. At its most basic, the learner is required to merely describe - through the vehicles of vocabulary and sentence structure - what is seen and - possibly - imagined in each image. This is all captured in the functional elements of grammatical sentences, which allow me to express things like:

• the who’s and what’s;
• actions;
• location;
• time;
• position;
• sights and sounds
• causes and effects;
• and so on.

“There are subjects or objects or actions or descriptives ..., and as such they combine into a statement about the world, that is, into a meaning that one can contemplate, admire, reject or refine. ”

— (Fish, 2011, p. 2)

Sure … a more competent learner will embellish the text with deeper imagination as well as narrative flourishes, cohesion and dialogue that bring the text alive, but these features aren’t necessary for the core task of demonstrating the simple view of literacy, which suggests that a learner is developing control over (a) oral language skills along with (b) the code-based skills necessary to represent and recognise language in print. Throughout it all, the learner is also developing (c) the attention, patience, motor mechanics, working memory, time management, impulse control and work ethic to coordinate these two skills in the execution of a text.

If basic skills aren’t enough to produce a “good” description or narrative, what would be required for a quality narrative to arise? A quality narrative would arise from an individual who has had ample opportunities to experience, understand, practice and share in the art of narrative.

“Entering into such a practice involves the individual’s “willingness to engage with such activities in a particular way, thus changing ‘mere’ activities into practices where standards of excellence do matter.”

— (Smeyers and Burbles, 2010, p. 196)

This additional experience underscores a potential limitation in the simple view of literacy that has been recently outlined by Dr David Francis and colleagues in “Extending the Simple View of Reading to Account for Variation Within Readers and Across Texts: The Complete View of Reading (CVRi)”. That is, the simple view of literacy focuses on individual-centric (or intra-individual) aspects of literacy, such as (a) the extent of an individual’s language skills and (b) the extent of an individual’s decoding skills. Even though these skills are learned in a social context, they are measured by reference to individual-centric criteria, such as phonemic awareness skills, vocabulary size, or mean length of sentence. However, a more complete view of literacy would take into account the interactions between individuals, texts, authors, audiences and subject matter. The more complete view of literacy would take into consideration (a) the extent to which an individual has been brought into different forms of communicating, knowing and thinking and (b) the extent to which an individual has been brought into particular ways of reading, perspective taking and processing information (Snow, 2018).

In short, one can complete the descriptive task that I asked you to imagine to an extent that would demonstrate competency in the elements of the simple view of literacy; however, the resultant text may not be “good” at all. It may be satisfactory but not necessarily good. According to the simple view of literacy, it is enough for an individual to demonstrate satisfactory control of grammar, vocabulary and spelling. Through the lens of a more complete view of literacy, this satisfactory skill is necessary but not sufficient to meet the standards of literacy acquisition. The more complete view of literacy would ask us to question whether the learner is developing the comprehension and communication skills necessary to be deemed literate according to contemporary standards.

Please note that the above is not to be taken as a criticism of the simple view of literacy. Instead, it is meant to show how the simple view of literacy and a more complete one can complement each other. If we started the conversation with the complete view of literacy, we would run the risk of obscuring those necessary early skills that must be developed if any higher order literacy practices are to take shape. In fact, the difference between the simple and more complete views of literacy could be described as the difference between one’s command of surface features as opposed to further control of deeper, more multi-faceted processes that underpin composition and comprehension.

If I am permitted the opportunity to reference Wittgenstein once again, we could draw a division between expressing “sense” and “meaning” (Wittgenstein, 2001). For me to express “sense”, I paint a picture in words, but there is no guarantee that this picture will be meaningful to anyone. It may simply be a picture, as in “See Spot run”. Whilst a “sense” is captured in a picture depicted in a sentence, either the author or the audience must process that picture in some way in order to attach meaning to it. The following sentences express a “sense”, but also the deep potential for many meanings (reactions and association) to arise. What meaning(s) does this picture express to you?

“Old Man and Old Woman sat in the forest. Pinprop sat at their feet. They were in a clearing. They listened to footsteps running in their direction, and to a siren wailing in the distance. After a while, the footsteps receded. ”

— (Okri, 2009, p. 5)

References

Fish, S. (2011). How to write a sentence: and how to read one. New York: HaperCollins Publishers.

Francis, D., Kulesz, P. A., & Benoit, J. S. (2018). Extending the Simple View of Reading to Account for Variation Within Readers and Across Texts: The Complete View of Reading (CVRi). In Remedial and Special Education, Vol. 39(5) 274–288.

Okri, B. (2009). Tales of freedom. London: Rider.

Smeyers, P., & Burbles, N. (2010). Education as initiation into practices. In M. Peters, N. Burbles, & P. Smeyers (Eds.), Showing and doing: Wittgenstein as a pedagogical philosopher (pp. 183 – 198). London: Paradigm Publishers.

Snow, C. (2018). Simple and Not-So-Simple Views of Reading. In Remedial and Special Education, Vol. 39(5) 313–316.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. London: Routledge.

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It is with the greatest of pleasures that we share our latest presentation - Applying Our Understanding to Real-World Case Studies.

This presentation is the culmination of recent work, and it is an important next step in putting one’s growing knowledge of literacy development to use. We may know certain things intellectually - such as the stages of literacy development or the components of literacy - but the true test lies in putting this knowledge into practice.

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For the purposes of this presentation, viewers will be asked to reflect upon the needs and circumstances of individual learners, and to use this information as the basis of instructional planning.

We all know that literacy instruction cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution. For best practice, we need to know where a learner is placed along the literacy journey, so we can provide those experiences that will help the learner continue along in his or her journey.

We must see the enormous potential for profound growth in each learner, and we must commit ourselves to providing learners with the right type and amount of sustained practice to make literacy acquisition a reality.

Ultimately, what is it that we want? We want learners to be able explore, learn and express - fluently and intelligently. We want learners to be able to take control of the script, so they are able use literacy actively and critically for a range of purposes.

Without further ado, we invite you to explore the presentation above. Within the presentation, you will meet Maria, Jonathan, Dakota and David. In the future, we plan to introduce you to a whole cast of others with a focus on providing further opportunities for you to critically reflect and respond to the needs and circumstances of a diverse range of learners.

Please explore the video and download the related slides, which can be found above and on YouTube at https://youtu.be/u7eP9nBFG-U. The presentation slides can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/2-Apply-Case-Studies. We highly recommend that you download the slides, since they contain the case studies as well as suggested activities.

I wish I could be delivering this presentation in a face-to-face seminar to The Literacy Bug audience. I’d be very curious to know the personal perspectives that you’d bring to the content and the case studies. In the abscence of this opportunity, I encourage you to email your ideas to us at ebrace@theliteracybug.com, or leave a comment below or on YouTube. Please explore and enjoy!

To recap, the following are links to the other presentations in the series:

An Overview of Literacy Development
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/yMGU7UIJ4RU
Slides: http://bit.ly/2-Overview-Literacy-v2

Planning and Monitoring for Effective Instruction
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/cZrtB8dTZEg
Slides: http://bit.ly/2-Planning-Monitoring-2

Teaching According to the Stages of Development
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/D7vUhqVXLWg
Slides: http://bit.ly/2-Teaching-Routines-Stages-2

Additional Resources for the Planning and Monitoring for Effective Instruction
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/R71j5_kegzk
Slides: http://bit.ly/2-Planning-Monitoring-Resources-2

Mastering the Alphabetic Principle
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/dA4nt3rxTYM
Slides: http://bit.ly/Mastering-the-Code

Analysing Spoken Words
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/8DVPbK0HSyY
Blog Entry: https://www.theliteracybug.com/journal/2018/9/3/analysing-spoken-words-a-new-activity

Words Sorts
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/HCvYgHk6ODc
Blog Entry: https://www.theliteracybug.com/journal/2018/9/3/word-sorts

Sentence: Types, Features and Structures
Slides: http://bit.ly/2-The-Sentence

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Here at The Literacy Bug, we have been tidying up some of our presentation slides. We thought it would be an opportune time share them with you.

First of all, you may or may not know that we have a few video presentations on our YouTube Channel. These presentations can also be found here.

When reviewing these presentations, it was inevitable that we’d find ways to refine and improve them. In this case, we’ve attempted to trim down excess materials for a clearer expression of the main ideas (or, at least, that is what we hope is the case).

Below are links to pdfs of the updated slides. Please note: we have only updated the slides. We haven’t re-recorded the video presentations. At some time in the future, we may get around to re-recording some of the lectures so that they are more succinct and to the point.

In the meantime, we encourage you to download and explore the updated materials below.

Updated Slides from the Main Presentations:* Overview of Literacy Development * Teaching According to the Stages of Literacy Development * Resources to Assist with Literacy Teaching and Learning * Guidance on How to Plan and Monitor for Effective Teaching and Learning

Updated Slides for Guidance on Supporting Decoding and Encoding:* Mastering the Code: The Alphabetic Principle * Analysing Spoken Words (Encoding) * Word Sorts (Exploring Patterns)

Updated Slides on Sentence Structure:* The Sentence: Types, Features and Structures

We hope you find the updated materials useful. Please enjoy and explore!

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When language-games change, then there is a change of concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change. (On Certainty, #65)

In the previous blog post, I mentioned that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was his flawed masterpiece. And I went on to write that “it is flawed only in the sense that our human language consists of a greater variety of propositions than merely descriptive sentences. We tell jokes. We ask questions. We talk about abstract things. We create rules and so on.”

I’d like to spend this post focusing on Wittgenstein’s attempt to rectify these flaws in his later work, particularly in the Philosophical Investigations. Even more specifically, I’d like to write about his language games concept, since it sheds light on the diversity of language practices learners are asked to adopt over time.

Even before I do that, I’d like to justify my reason for pursuing this rabbit hole. Whilst Wittgenstein is not contemporary literacy research, The Literacy Bug was set up to explore ideas as much as it was set up to share evidence-based practices. Here, I’d like to continue exploring how we use oral and print language to help us render and - even - organise our experience of and interactions with the world.

So here we go … let’s revisit the last blog post again. In it, I wrote,

“If we take a moment to consider descriptive sentences, there is an elegant and meditative quality to the acts of writing and reading. In the acts of writing and reading, we are builders. We are builders of experiences. We are speculators on cause and effect.”

Let’s call this a language game. It is one language game amongst many in our daily lives. Let us define a language game as a particular use of language implicitly governed by certain rules and accepted (by a language community) as serving a certain function or purpose. Certain learners - such as certain children - are raised in an environment in which there is a particular value placed on particular uses of language, such as - say - describing (painting in words) a scene - real or imagined - in exacting detail for consideration. And there will be other contexts - such as in school - that this use of language will be rewarded, reinforced and extended. In this community, there is certain training and praise for this skill, but there are also repercussions if a learner becomes careless or inattentive in this language game, or form of discourse. As suggested by Garver,

"It is ... possible to instruct people in the use of the language. Such instruction involves correction and drill that aims at some (unspecified) level of competence. It is no doubt pursued more doggedly and more dogmatically in some cultures than others." (Garver, 1996, pg 165)

A learner must become both skilled in this language game - of descriptions, in this case - but also motivated to do so in the appropriate circumstances, as suggested by Stanley Cavell, “the pupil must want to go on alone in taking language to the world." (Cavell, 2005, pg 115) And so, the learner is initiated into a particular use of language that the learner will turn to when the time is right. Upon initiation, a certain practice has been established. As stated in our essay Establishing Practices, the features of a practice are as follows:

• “At the very least, a practice is something people do, not just once, but on a regular basis. But it is more than just a disposition to behave in a certain way; the identity of a practice depends on not only on what people do, but also on the significance of those actions and the surroundings in which they occur." (Stern, 2004, p. 166)
• In a practice, what becomes necessary is the individual's "willingness to engage with such activities in a particular way, thus changing ‘mere’ activities into practices where standards of excellence do matter.” (Smeyers and Burbles, 2010 pg 196)
• “Our deliberations seem to be entirely personal and self determined - yet they obviously derive from previous conversations with others, in which their voices and perspectives are represented in one’s own internal deliberations. Often this dynamic is what we call ‘conscience.’” — (Burbles and Smears, 2010, pg 180)
• Therefore, “every instance of the use [or participation in a practice] … is the culmination of a process of socialisation.” (Phillips, 1979, pg 126).

That all might seem quite long-winded for a relatively simple point: children learn to describe (as one use of language) and children come to develop other uses of languages as well. As teachers, we want our learners to become skilled in many uses of language (describing, recounting, explaining, comparing, narrating, critiquing, etc). This is true, but I think Wittgenstein refers to something more important here. He is interested in how we turn to particular uses of language to solve problems in daily lives. This requires both skill and the ability to recognise the circumstances in which to deploy a particular language game and why. James Paul Gee explains these two levels as two levels of discourse:

“I will use ‘discourse’ [with a lower case "d"] for connected stretches of language that makes sense, like conversations, stories, reports, arguments, essays and so forth. So, ‘discourse’ [the spoken or written text] is part of the ‘Discourse’ – ‘Discourse’ [with a capital “D”] is always more than just language.[The] Discourses are ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words [integrate little “d” discourse], acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions and relationships.” (Gee, 1996, p 127)

For instance, we’d want to encourage learners to “stop, consider, describe” when faced with a problem that requires one to outline and examine all the various factors and variables in a scenario, and we’d need to consider how language is used to navigate such a way of thinking AND a way of working with others. Teaching includes providing the scaffolding which supports the turns/sequences in the game. And like any game, we want learners to play this game many times so they are able to discover the nuances in the game and to generalise the rules from the game.

Figure 1: Source: Florida Centre for Reading Research

Figure 1 is an example of a paper-based scaffold that makes explicit the cognitive architecture - or schema - of a particular way of analysing a text. This way of analysis would be an example of a language game. The scaffolding (or guidance) that a teacher provides can also consist of particular activities, axioms, mnemonics, reminders, hints, routines and encouragement, which are essential to ensuring successful completion of the task. Ultimately, all of this modelling and guidance teaches the learners to go on in a particular manner, which involves a whole raft of moves, turns, checkpoints and further points for deliberation.

Then, am I defining “order” and “rule” by means of “regularity”? ... I shall teach him … by means of examples and by practice. -- And when I do this I do not communicate less to him than I know myself. In the course of this teaching I shall shew him … get him to continue a … pattern when told to do so. -- And also to continue progressions. And so … I do it, he does it after me; and I influence him by expressions of agreement, rejection, expectation, encouragement. I let him go his way, or hold him back; and so on. (Philosophical Investigations, #280)

So, being initiated into such a practice - therefore - involves the internalising of - what we might call - deliberative talk. For instance, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein models this aspect by presenting the inner monologue of a character who is building something:

Every now and then there is the problem “Should I use this bit?” — The bit is rejected, another is tried. Bits are tentatively put together, then dismantled; he looks for one that fits etc, etc.. So I sometimes make him say “No, that bit is too long, perhaps another’s fit better.” — Or “What am I to do now?” — “Got it!” — Or “That’s not bad” etc. … (Wittgenstein, Zettel #100)

Diversity of language gamesConsider all the language games which serve to mediate daily lives ... from “morning news” to planning meetings to personal reflection to prayer to meditative poetry to following instructions and much, much more. Learning these games involves the ability to focus attention, participate in the game, and demonstrate an appreciation of how such engagement is purposeful in some way.

Throughout students’ academic, social and moral careers, they must navigate and negotiate through many different and even conflicting discourses (or ways of using language) in order to participate and advance in multiple contexts, school only being but one of them. Navigating through discourses involves anything from understanding the forms and functions of significant linguistic practices, to being sensitive to the conventions of speaking in particular contexts, to critically assessing the assumptions and outcomes of language practices in society.

Guiding students through these subtle areas of language development is complex, and involves more than the teaching of specific language features (phonology, grammars, vocabularies, and structures). It involves initiating students into a growing repertoire of ways of using language to perform different roles with language, whether in constructing knowledge, imaginative recreation, construing activity, or actively impacting the world and the people around them. The very nature of this process of initiation becomes the concern of how literacies (ways of reading, interacting and being through language and communication) are transmitted, formed and engaged in within pedagogical relations amongst people, whether it be between mother-child, teacher-student, co-worker-co-worker, elder-youth, author-reader, institutions-individuals, etc (Bernstein, 2000).

One more thing …There is something that Wittgenstein raises that often isn’t included in the educational literature: he asks us to explore what happens when a complex language game is adopted which is - in fact - destructive. Let’s consider either racist discourse or defeatist discourse, which are both language games that can become habitual and exert a powerful shaping force on how one navigates the world. Racist discourse doesn’t necessarily require further explanation, but defeatist discourse may. In defeatist discourse, a person may learn to self-sabotage any hopes of success by entrenched habits of doubt. Wittgenstein would tell us that philosophy seeks to free ourselves from the “bewitchment” of language by revealing the bewitching patterns of language use and proposing alternatives (e.g. showing the fly the way out of the bottle). However it is not so easy, since it requires the learner to take the brave step of trying to alter the “ruts” of language.

If we switch to an educational example, a learner may not be asking the right questions or sequence of questions that an expert would when trying to get the most out of a topic. Consequently, the learner may be failing to make any forward momentum in an area of learning. At some point, though, the learner encounters a teacher who guides him or her in asking “the right questions” which come to “reshape the nature of the investigation” and the potential for learning. This new language game or revision of an old language game opens up the possibility for discovery.

Bringing things closer to a closeHow - then - does all this relate to literacy, you may ask? Well, it relates to the central issues of comprehension and composition. Even if one has learned the “basics”, such as decoding and grammatical competence, there are many higher order linguistic issues to attend to if one is going to read and write for the diverse purposes in life.

As James Paul Gee more simply reminds us, “We have to worry about what texts students have read and how they have read them, not just about how much they have read and how many books they do or do not own (though, of course, these are important matters).” (Gee, 2003, pg 30-31)

Because,

“After all, we never just read "in general", rather, we always read or write something in some way. We don't read or write newspapers, legal tracts, essays in literary criticism, poetry, or rap songs, and so on and so forth through a nearly endless list, in the same way. Each of these domains has its own rules and requirements.” (Gee, 2003, pg 28)

As Wittgenstein would also,

PI 156: The use of this word [to read] in the ordinary circumstances of our life is of course extremely familiar to us. But the part the word plays in our life, and therewith the language-game in which we employ it, would be difficult to describe even in rough outline. A person, let us say an Englishman, has received at school or at home one of the kinds of education usual among us, and in the course of it has learned to read [basically] his native language. Later he reads books, letters, newspapers and other things.

In closingOn that note, I’d like to end. This essay has been written in the spirit of the original definition of the French "essai" - coined by Michel de Montaigne - which means to try/attempt/trial ... to seek new ways to explore and/or articulate relevant issues. I hope this digression is of some benefit/use. On behalf of The Literacy Bug and until next time, please enjoy and explore!

ReferencesBernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Burbles, N., & Smears, P. (2010). The practice of ethics and moral education. In M. Peters, N. Burbles, & P. Smears (Eds.), Showing and doing: Wittgenstein as a pedagogical philosopher (pp. 169 – 182). London: Paradigm Publishers.

Cavell, S. (2005). Philosophy the day after tomorrow. In Philosophy the day after tomorrow (pp. 111 – 131). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Garver, N. (1996). Philosophy as grammar. In H. Sluga, H. and D. Stern (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein. (pp. 139 - 170) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gee, J (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. London: Routledge.

Gee, J. P. (2003). Opportunity to learn: a language-based perspective on assessment. In Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, Vol 10, No. 1, pp 27 - 46.

Phillips, D. (1977) Wittgenstein and scientific knowledge. London: MacMillan Press.

Smeyers, P., & Burbles, N. (2010). Education as initiation into practices. In M. Peters, N. Burbles, & P. Smeyers (Eds.), Showing and doing: Wittgenstein as a pedagogical philosopher (pp. 183 – 198). London: Paradigm Publishers.

Stern, D. (2004). Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001a). Tractates Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. London: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001b). Philosophical Investigations. 3rd Edition. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Wittgenstein, L. (1967). Zettel. (G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright, Eds.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Translated by D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

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Once again I feel the desire to return to the inspiration for The Literacy Bug: the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

By this stage, it lies in the distant past that this website was once known as Wittgenstein on Learning, but despite the passage of time Wittgenstein’s influence remains ever present.

The man was preoccupied by how we are able to express anything whatsoever through language. And in his flawed masterpiece Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein presents us with a conceptualisation of language which encourages us to be amazed by our ability to transfer pictures of the world through our utterances. From this perspective, a function of language is to express propositions of the world to one another. That is, language is powerful because we can use it to propose states of affairs to one another through a system of sounds (to which we attach shared meaning). By propositions, we can take it to mean “sentences on the world”.

Through the lens of the Tractatus, each proposition (or sentence) paints a picture of a state of affairs, and that state of affairs is open to consideration and contemplation (as long as the speaker and the listener share some form of language). In other words, language permits people to generate, communicate and examine possible states of affairs, whether real or fictitious ... declarative or speculative ... true or false. I can convey and receive pictures through language, and there is no necessity that I am able to experience these pictures directly for me to understand them and draw meaning from them.

The Tractatus is flawed only in the sense that our human language consists of a greater variety of propositions than merely descriptive sentences. We tell jokes. We ask questions. We talk about abstract things. We create rules and so on. Even these paragraphs - the ones you are currently reading - are valuable in that they present a picture of abstractions - languages, propositions, sentences - that may influence your future perception of “how certain things work”. In Wittgenstein’s own words from a later work,

"This picture has a double function: it informs others, as pictures or words inform -- but for one who gives the information it is a representation (or piece of information?) of another kind." (Philosophical Investigations, 280)

If we take a moment to consider descriptive sentences, there is an elegant and meditative quality to the acts of writing and reading. In the acts of writing and reading, we are builders. We are builders of experiences. We are speculators on cause and effect. We are builders of how our concepts are meant to fit together. In writing, we may chisel out an unfolding picture as we lay sentence after sentence onto the page with the aim of describing how something occurred or how something works. We must have the patience, motivation and care to find this recording process beneficial and - in fact - important to how we live our lives. That is, we must find some value in recording an observation for ourselves and others to return to. In reading, we must find some benefit in encountering and constructing a mental image of a state of affairs as we come to navigate texts. Some texts may be more accessible, whilst other texts may be “harder to crack” because they are more difficult for a particular reader to generate pictures from them.

Implied in all of this is a substratum to language: our ability to experience, perceive, notice, visualise, critique and represent aspects of the world or possible words. And whilst we have all read mechanically (focusing merely on decoding) at least once in our lives, we have also had to reread a section of text to get a proper image of what we failed to grasp in the first place. And if I am to demonstrate my comprehension, I’d be compelled to represent my understanding in some way (either in words, images or schematics). And we share these representations with others to determine whether our understanding of a text is shared by others. Have we extracted the right image?

So … amidst The Literacy Bug’s recent focus on the alphabetic principle, I feel it is important to splash a bit of paint on the purpose of our reading and writing, since the acquisition of literacy is a means to an end - not an end in itself. We want learners to become dexterous with the written word so they can discover, debate, and develop knowledge of the world, of themselves within it, and of people around them. And the learners should be deeply motivated to do so, and it is our role as teachers - in whatever capacity we serve - to foster this compulsion to examine, express and explore. This sentiment is elegantly captured by Mr. Stanley Cavell,

"The pupil must want to go on alone in taking language to the world, and that what is said must be worth saying [and writing], have a point (warning, informing, amusing, promising, questioning, chastising, counting, insisting, beseeching, and so on) … If it is part of teaching to undertake to validate these measures of interest, then it would be quite as if teaching must, as it were, undertake to show a reason for speaking [writing and reading] at all." (Cavell, 2005, pg 115)

So … please imagine, explore and enjoy! The path to discovery involves many patient moments of illumination.

References

Cavell, S. (2005). Philosophy the day after tomorrow. In Philosophy the day after tomorrow (pp. 111 – 131). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001a). Philosophical Investigations (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001b). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. London: Routledge.

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In this entry, we are proud to present a range of resources that have been in development for quite some time.

These include:

• An “Elements” Checklist,
• A Guide to Sound-Letter Correspondences,
• Phonemes Cards,
• Graphemes Cards (letters and letter combinations),
• Common Onset & Rime Patterns (e.g. b + ack = back),
• Morphemes Cards (prefixes, suffixes and roots),
• High Frequency Words Cards, and
• A Guide to Sentence Construction (types, structures and features)

Please note that the “Elements” Checklist includes information on each of the above (phonemes, graphemes, morphemes, etc), as well as additional notes on reading multisyllabic words and vocabulary development.

All together, the resources are designed to provide reference materials that help one better understand the elements that contribute to word and sentence construction in English. They do NOT describe the activities that a learner can engage in to master these elements, though. As a result, these resources are not particularly helpful on their own, but they can be helpful when planning and reflecting upon the linguistic features that leaners need to master over time.

So ... please explore and enjoy! And remember, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Even if a learner is making progress with mastering the structural aspects of literacy - such as learning to decode words, spell words and write grammatical sentences - there is still a lot of work involved in making meaning from and with the printed word.

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It is with great pleasure that we share another Activity Presentation. This time we explore Word Sorts.

Word Sorts is a simple way to encourage learners to develop an understanding of the predictable patterns when reading and spelling English words. In short, each word sort activity requires learners to examine a set of words, and to sort (or categorise) these words into common patterns whilst identifying exceptions to the rule. This brief activity is designed to be done daily (or regularly) as learners "study" different sets of pronunciation and spelling patterns. In doing so, learners explore how to blend and segment various consonant and vowel sounds in simple to more complex words.

By guiding learners from simple to complex structures, teachers can help learners make logical sense of word reading and writing in English. The Word Sorts (or Word Studies) can easily be organised in such a way that the resulting program is consistent with an evidence-based phonics sequence. Over time, students come to master the patterns of English phonology, orthography, and morphology, so they are equipped with the skills to rapidly and accurately read both known and unfamiliar words.

Rather than prolong the introduction, it is best to allow the video to speak for itself. The following video presentation provides a demonstration of this activity along with some essential points and resources. Grab your popcorn, because it is a bit of a long one. (NB: The video can also be found on YouTube at https://youtu.be/HCvYgHk6ODc.)

Ultimately, we want children to decode with confidence and notice the patterns within printed words. As Mark Seidenberg observes, “for a beginning reader, every word is a unique pattern. Major statistical patterns emerge as the child encounters a larger sample of words, and later, finer-grained dependencies.” (Seidenberg, 2017, 92) “Readers become orthographic experts by absorbing lots of data … The path to orthographic expertise begins with practice practice practice but leads to more more more.” (Seidenberg, 2017, 108).

After you watch the video, we encourage you to download resources that are mentioned in the presentation:

• Activity Sheet
• Presentation Slides
• Elements Checklists

You can also access the Word Sort - Activity Cards, which have been organised into key developmental stages.

• For Letter-Name-Alphabetic Stage (to be mastered between 4 to 7 years old):

  • Sorts: http://bit.ly/2-Letter-Name-Sorts
  • Lists: http://bit.ly/2-Letter-Name-Lists

  • For Within-Word Pattern Stage (to be mastered between 7 to 9 years old):

  • Sorts: http://bit.ly/2-Within-Word-Sorts

  • Lists: http://bit.ly/2-Within-Word-Lists

  • For Affix-Suffix Stage (to be mastered between 9 to 11 years old):

  • Sorts: http://bit.ly/2-Affix-Suffix-Sorts

  • Lists: http://bit.ly/2-Affix-Suffix-Lists

  • For Derivational Stage (to be mastered between from 11 years old and older):

  • Sorts: http://bit.ly/2-Derivational-Sorts

  • Lists: http://bit.ly/2-Derivational-Lists

We encourage you to check out the book Words Their Way by Donald Bear and colleagues. It's a highly regarded educational resource with a thorough discussion of activities, developmental expectation and assessment tools.

Buy on Amazon

• Bear, S., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2014). Words their way: word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th edition). Essex: Pearson.

Also, please visit our Mastering the Code presentation, including the presentation slides. This presentation and its associated slides provide background research that will help you better understand the purpose of the activity.

We hope the activity is a valuable addition to your practice. We welcome your feedback and ideas, so please stay in touch.

Thank you for your time. Please explore and enjoy!

References

Bear, S., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2014). Words their way: word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th edition). Essex: Pearson.

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: how we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it. New York: Basic Books.

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It is with great pleasure that we add a new type of resource to The Literacy Bug: Activities.

And the first cab off the rank is Analysing Spoken Words. The following video presentation provides a demonstration of this first activity along with some essential points. (NB: The video can also be found on YouTub e at https://youtu.be/8DVPbK0HSyY.)

Ultimately, we want children to notice the patterns within their oral language (e.g. in their words), so they are equipped with the fundamental skills upon which they can build more formal literacy (e.g. sound-letter correspondences).

As Mark Seidenberg attests, “spoken words [need] to be treated as consisting of component parts, [which is a skill that] we now consider [as] an ordinary, teachable aspect of learning to read: phonological awareness. (Seidenberg, 2017, p. 63)

After you watch the video, we encourage you to download the following resources, which are mentioned in the presentation:

• Activity Sheet
• Demonstration Slides
• Teaching Resources (including key equipment)
• EXTRA: What do I hear? and what might I see?
• EXTRA: Phoneme Cards
• EXTRA: Grapheme Cards

If you would like further background, please visit our Mastering the Code presentation, including the presentation slides. This presentation and its associated slides provide background research that will help you better understand the purpose of the activity.

To wrap up our thoughts, over time children need to develop the ability to:

• Learn rich language;
• Hear/isolate words within sentences (or the speech stream);
• Focus attention on words;
• Detect/isolate syllables within words;
• Detect/isolate sounds within syllables/words;
• Begin to recognise the possible sounds within their language(s);
• Correlate their developing understanding of sounds with their emerging knowledge of sound-letter combinations;
• Focus on the meaning of words; and
• Focus on the use of words in rich, meaningful sentences.

We hope the activity is a valuable addition to your practice. We welcome your feedback and ideas, so please stay in touch.

… And please note ... the activity can be done partially or in full, depending on the age and ability of the learners. … And it can be incorporated into many aspects of daily practices, whether this is around book reading, in the sand pit or with general word play. These and other bits of advice are discussed in the above video and associated resources.

Thank you for your time. Please explore and enjoy!

Reference

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: how we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it. New York: Basic Books.

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Today, we share "Mastering the Alphabetic Code" which is available below as well as on YouTube at https://youtu.be/dA4nt3rxTYM.

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This video is a presentation that outlines the key elements involved in learning to “master the alphabetic code”, such as phonemic awareness, phonemic knowledge, letter-sound correspondence, orthographic patterns, morphological patterns and automatic word recognition and construction skills.

It emphasises the need for teachers to develop scaffolded activities that provide learners with the skills to succeed.

The presentation slides can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/Mastering-the-Code. We highly recommend that you download the slides, since they contain many resources mentioned in the video. Please be patient during download. It's a large file, at least in PDF terms (20MB).

Please explore and enjoy! And send us a message if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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Photo by BrianAJackson/iStock / Getty Images

There is a niggling concern that I always have when I become too preoccupied with "the basics" of literacy, including components like phonemic awareness and phonics. Sure, these skills are essential, and it’s relatively simple to measure progress in such areas, but I can't help but think, "this isn't the hardest part about literacy, though. We still need to integrate this knowledge into more complex and more ambiguous acts of communication."

I have witnessed many learners who develop such basics, but who still go on to struggle with reading and writing. At the risk of sounding unfair, they often struggle with the patience, stamina, concentration, guidance or even time to become a strong(er) reader/writer - all of which comes through opportunities to manipulate the script.

It reminds me of this little picture that Wittgenstein once painted of someone who had learned to deliberate over a task, “every now and then there is the problem 'Should I use this bit?' — The bit is rejected, another is tried. Bits are tentatively put together, then dismantled; he looks for one that fits etc.. So I sometimes make him say 'No, that bit is too long, perhaps another one fits better.' — Or 'What am I to do now?' — 'Got it!' — Or 'That’s not bad”' etc. ..." In particular, the act of writing resembles this inner dialogue. It's not a straightforward linear task.

At the culmination of this passage, Wittgenstein rightly states, "thinking gives [the learner] the possibility of perfecting his methods." Learning to read and write effectively is a bit like this inner dialogue. Actual reading and writing involves quite intricate acts of problem solving. The learner needs plenty of practice chewing over texts and creating them, particularly after they have gained momentum with the basics.

Wittgenstein presents us with an similar image of teaching that seems to suggest how one initiates another into ways of working, “if a person has not yet got the concepts, I shall teach him … by means of examples and by practice. -- And when I do this I do not communicate less to him than I know myself. In the course of this teaching I shall show him … get him to continue an ornamental pattern uniformly when told to do so. -- And also to continue progressions. And so, for example: I do it, he does it after me; and I influence him by expressions of agreement, rejection, expectation, encouragement. I let him go his way, or hold him back; and so on. Imagine witnessing such teaching. None of the words would be explained by means of themselves; [they makes sense in the context of the practice ... of apprenticeship].” (Philosophical Investigations, #280)

Consequently, this places experience at the forefront of learning. In other words, the learner requires the practical experience to integrate component skills into meaningful, literate act(ivitie)s. In doing so, the learner becomes adept at manipulating the script, and the mentor teacher provides the learner with opportunities to exert this knowledge in engaging ways. Therefore, “the teacher’s role is to help the child by arranging tasks and activities in such a way that [advanced tasks] are more easily accessible.” (Verhoeven and Snow, 2001, pg 4-5)

This gradual initiation relates to something I mention in the recent grammar/sentence presentation. That is, the rules of grammar do not tell me why one sentence should precede or follow another, nor do they tell me anything about what should be the content of my ideas. They may help me formulate and re-formulate a sentence with greater ease - and this is of value - but this in itself does not dictate the logic or content of my communication. Often the sequence of my sentences is guided by convention, and convention is shaped by the expectations of my audience. And I must have had enough experience with this audience to have a sensible understanding of my idea and how to express this idea.

As Ray Monk (1999) would say, “the reason computers have no understanding of the sentences they process is not that they lack sufficient neuronal complexity, but that they are not, and cannot be, participants in the culture to which the sentences belong. A sentence does not acquire meaning through the correlation, one to one, of its words with objects in the world; it acquires meaning through the use that is made of it in the communal life of human beings."

A similar sentiment led Newton Garver (1996) to express the following comment.

“If Wittgenstein and Saussure agree in using ‘grammar’ descriptively, they disagree about ... other matters. One is that Wittgenstein’s grammar has to do with uses of language (discourse conditions and discourse continuation) rather than forms and their combinations (morphology and syntax) ...

"Considering uses rather than forms is a deep rather than a superficial departure from classical linguistic methodology ... Studying uses of language makes context prominent, whereas the study of forms lends itself naturally to analysis.” (Garver, 1996, pg 151)

Maybe I am stating the obvious. Perhaps, I am not making a strong point here. But I write this against the backdrop of the proposal to introduce the Year 1 Phonics Check here in Australia. Whilst I have no objection of teachers getting good data on what their students can and cannot decode, we should always keep our eyes on the prize, which involves the integration of this knowledge into meaningful acts of reading and writing. I often ask, “how can I create opportunities for learners to integrate their skills into meaning making? How do I support and motivate them to take risks and challenge themselves?” We should always offer students opportunities to “use their expanding knowledge of language and their growing powers of influence to figure out [how to read and write] texts.” (Wolf, pp 131)

There you go. I’ve had my say. It’s not a critique of anything. Just an observation.

References

Garver, N. (1996). Philosophy as grammar. In H. Sluga & D. Stern (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein (pp. 139–170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Monk, R. (1999, July 29). Wittgenstein’s Forgotten Lesson. Propsect Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ray-monk-wittgenstein/#.Uo_n_pHqvGY

Verhoeven, L. and Snow, C. (2001). Literacy and motivation: bridging cognitive and sociocultural viewpoints. In Verhoeven, L. and Snow, C. (Eds.), Literacy and motivation: reading engagement in individuals and groups (pp. 1- 22). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers

Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Philosophical Investigations (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Wolf, M. (2008). Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain. Cambridge: Icon Books.

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After the previous update, you'd definitely be correct to believe that the last video presentation was the final in a series. And it was. Yet, today, we share a new print presentation that stands on its own. Today, we share "The Sentence: Features, Types and Structures" and the slides for the presentation are available from http://bit.ly/2-The-Sentence.

This most recent presentation is - in fact - an older presentation that we chose to revisit and update. The topic - grammar - may not spark excitement in the general audience, yet for me it is something of a secret passion.

As a follower of linguistic philosophy, I am fascinated by the logical structure of the sentence. It is fascinating to know that a sentence is able to convey any meaning at all. I am fascinated that a sentence can be a "statement about the world ... that one can contemplate, admire, reject or refine.” (Fish, 2011, p. 2)

As a writer, I appreciate balance and economy. I appreciate it when a sentence is able to deliver its message with style and grace.

As a teacher of English language learners, I know that teachers need to provide plenty of practice for their students to scan and understand a variety of sentences. This requires gradually helping learners handle sentences of increasing complexity in structure and content.

We welcome you to this presentation. One day it may become a video presentation, but for now it is a print one. As mentioned above, the slides are available for download at http://bit.ly/2-The-Sentence. We highly recommend that you download the slides, since the slides serve as a mini-textbook on the topic. When downloading, please be patient. It's a large file, at least in PDF terms (15MBs).

I must acknowledge something before I finish, though. This presentation does not address Halliday's functional grammar. Whilst we have become very familiar of this work since drafting the original presentation, we refrained from incorporating functional grammar into the updated version. We'll leave any exposition of Halliday's work to another day.

Please explore and enjoy! We hope we have done the topic justice. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to send us a message.

Reference
Fish, S. (2011). How to write a sentence: and how to read one. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

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This podcast summarises a range of resources that can help teachers better plan and monitor for effective literacy teaching and learning. We encourage visitor to download the presentation slides and resources at http://bit.ly/2-Planning-Monitoring-Resources

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This is a presentation that explores the changing nature of literacy across the various stages of literacy development. In so doing, we discuss how instruction must change as learners consolidate core skills and prepare for new skills and expectations. Teaching routines for the various stages of literacy development are also discussed. Please explore and enjoy! Presentation slides are available for download at https://www.theliteracybug.com/s/Teaching-Routines-Stages.pdf

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This is a presentation that provides advice on "How to plan and monitor effective teaching and learning". It emphasises the need for teachers to develop scaffolded activties that provide learners with the skills to succeed. Presentation slides are available for download at https://www.theliteracybug.com/s/Planning-Monitoring.pdf

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The presentation explores the many components of literacy development, the stages of literacy development, and the dual-demands of "code-based" and "meaning-based" practices. To be exact, it sets out to meet the following objectives: (a) to explore the components of literacy development (e.g. oral language development, phonemic awareness, etc); (b) to explore the stages of literacy development (i.e. the gradual, cumulative nature of literacy development); (c) to understand the difference between code-based skills and meaning-based skills; (d) to understanding the four levels of processing texts / reading text; and (e) to appreciate that learners are active participants as the makers of meaning, the constructors of knowledge and members of communities.

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“Literacy can be seen as dependent on instruction, with the corollary that quality of instruction is key. This view emphasizes the developmental nature of literacy — the passage of children through successive stages of literacy, in each of which the reading and writing tasks change qualitatively and the role of the instructor has to change accordingly.”

— (Chall, 1996 as referenced in Snow, 2004)

Regular visitors to The Literacy Bug will be very familiar with the above quote. We refer to it just as much as we refer to another of Catherine Snow's observations, "[in] a developmental theory, literacy is not a single skill that simply gets better [with age] ... Being literate is very different for the skilled first grader, fourth grader, high school student, and adult, and the effects of school experiences can be quite different at different points in a child’s development.” (Catherine Snow, et al, 1991, pg 9) In the spirit of these two observations, we plan to add a new section to The Literacy Bug. The section will be entitled Teaching Routines, and it will include advice on the types of teaching activities which suit each of the various stages of literacy development.

As a teaser, the following diagram attempts to isolate lesson cycles that reflect aspects of the different stages of development. As these cycles currently stand, they are skeletal and oversimplified; however, they will be fleshed out in the new, yet-to-be-drafted section. Over the coming two to three months, we hope to establish the Teaching Routines section as a valuable addition to the website. Until then, please explore and enjoy!

References

Chall, J. S. (1996). Stages of reading development (2nd ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic College Publishers.

Snow, C. (2004). What counts as literacy in early childhood? In K. McCartney & D. Phillips (Eds.), Handbook of early child development. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.

Snow, C. E., Barnes, W. S., Chandler, J., Goodman, I. F., & Hemphill, L. (1991). Unfulfilled expectations: home and school influences on literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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I have an entrenched memory of something I experienced in the eighth or ninth grade. One of my friends was taking part in a weekly book club in the library at our school. This weekly book club (or story club, to be more accurate) was being organised by one of our favourite teachers. She was relaxed and casual but asked her students to think deeply about social and civic issues. It’s important to note that my friend was not the best reader, and I was what you would probably call a reluctant reader. I liked the concept of reading, but I often found it an endurance sport. However, since I knew everyone in the group, I thought it was a good way to spend one lunch per week. Have I forgotten to mention that it was a group of five boys discussing stories and none of us were what you would classify as a “strong reader”?

Now, bear in mind, we were all able to read the short stories (i.e. decode and accurately comprehend what we were reading). And the short stories were written in such a manner that we were presented with a controlled amount of challenging vocabulary and other language features. Therefore, we were able to problem solve and discuss new meanings and expressions without becoming frustrated or bogged down. It also helped that these stories were not overly long, and each one clearly probed a moral, social or civic issue, particularly through the confrontation of often adolescent characters. I distinctly remember counting the numbers of pages of each story, though, such was my aversion to reading material that was too long and tedious.

I distinctly remember “THE BOOK”. It was a brown paperback book that was divided up into stories of 10 to 15 pages in length (perhaps classics). It may have had the logo “GREAT BOOKS” on the front. Initially, I thought that I was mistaken about the title of the series until a Google search supported my memory. The Great Books foundation (http://www.greatbooks.org) provides books that are meant “to advance social and civic engagement and help people of all ages think critically about their own lives and the world we share.” The book club may or may not have used the Great Books material, but it definitely was designed to provoke deep discussions about justice, fairness, and individuality, whilst providing a platform for weaker readers to practice deep reading and discussion skills.

In the end, it meant that there were five adolescent boys sitting around a table once a week at lunch who all had a shared understanding of the situation that was presented in the story. We all came prepared. We read the weekly story in advance, because it was embarrassing to let the group down. We didn’t debate what occurred in the story. Instead, we debated our interpretations of the situation(s). And that meant that we interpreted macro features, such as how a character acted and whether such actions were fair. It also meant that we interpreted micro features, such as the choice of words and other details which provided information - occasionally ambiguous - on how a character might have been feeling or how the character might have been motivated to act in a certain way.

These weekly discussions - at times heated - inducted me into deep reading, perspective taking, and evidence-based argumentation. I often had to disagree with a friend, and still respect him as a friend outside of the weekly meetings, even though we were discussing significant issues of moral, social and civic behaviour. I also needed to be in a position to listen and alter my viewpoint of a character or event if someone in the group presented evidence that I initially overlooked and had not appreciated.

Sourced from Olson, C. B., & Land, R. (2007). A cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction for English language learners in secondary school. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(3), 269–303.

You see — here you have a group of students who had all learned to read proficiently (i.e. decode and understand), but who had yet to learn how to read meaningfully and critically. The teacher provided us with a space where we could learn to read more insightfully, discriminatingly and deliberately, which reminds me now of a quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein, “seeing an aspect and imagining are subject to the will” (PI, Part II, xi). We had to learn to work hard as we read. In other words, one doesn’t comprehend merely because he or she can read. One must put effort into navigating the details of a text to find one’s way about. One has to deliberate, and the routines of deliberation are based on experience, practice and guidance in how to engage deeply. One has to ask questions, “where do I begin?”, “what does this mean?”, “am I right?”, “do I agree?”, “do I have the right picture?”, “is anything unclear?”, “do I need to read this again?”, “what am I thinking and feeling?” (See accompanying figure from Olson & Land [2007] for other common ‘mental moves’) This can all be exhausting if one hasn’t had the chance to take a breath and find the time to practice, interpret and discuss increasingly complex information.

Whilst this next bit may be off topic, I am often struck when I have failed to properly read a bank form or government form. I might only pick up my errors either on a second/third reading or with the help of another person. Imagine the person who struggles to read and who struggles to hold attention on key details. It can be mentally exhausting and stressful to navigate complex material if one is struggling and concurrently lacks confidence and guidance. Everyday documents can be technical jungles if one lacks confidence/experience in navigating multifaceted material.

The following passage from Wittgenstein illustrates why it is important that all teaching includes explicit guidance in how we regulate our thinking. This includes teaching that fosters the types of dialogue that govern our activities. As Vygotsky (1978) observed, "every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people..., and then inside people... All higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals." (p.57) In my case, the group discussion with my peers came to shape my internal deliberations as I learned to read deeply on my own.

Let us imagine someone doing work that involves comparison, trial, choice. Say he is constructing an appliance out of various bits of stuff with a given set of tools. Every now and then there is the problem “Should I use this bit?” -- The bit is rejected, another is tried. Bits are tentatively put together, then dismantled; he looks for one that fits etc, etc.. I can now imagine that this while procedure is filmed. The worker perhaps also produces sound-effects like “hm” or “ha!” As it were sounds of hesitation, sudden finding, decision, satisfaction, dissatisfaction. But does not utter a single word. Those sound-effects may be included in the film. I have the film shewn me, and now I invent a soliloquy for the worker, things that fit his manner of work, its rhythm, his play of expression, his gestures and spontaneous noises; they correspond to all this. So I sometimes make him say “No, that bit is too long, perhaps another’s fit better.” -- Or “What am I to do now?” -- “Got it!” -- Or “That’s not bad” etc. (Zettel, #100)

The lunchtime book club was an important part of my growth as a reader. I would still count the pages of the next chapter of my book. I would still often consider reading an endurance sport. However, I became aware of the times when I was “just going through the motions” of reading and when I was reading with my full attention. I also grew to appreciate how important it is to discuss what we read and also discuss what we write. This would became apparent in my later years of high school when I joined a weekly poetry circle at a local bookshop. That - though - is a story for another time.

ReferencesThe Great Books Foundation - http://www.greatbooks.org

Olson, C. B., & Land, R. (2007). A cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction for English language learners in secondary school. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(3), 269–303.

Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (Eds.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Philosophical Investigations. 3rd Edition. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

_____________ (1967) Zettel. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Article 13 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that:

Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalise, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures.”

Often there is a strong focus on preserving the oral nature of traditional, Indigenous languages, and - yet - there is a tendency to overlook the equivalent urgency to protect, capture and foster literacy and literature in the languages of some of the world's oldest cultures.

Today, I am writing with a call to action from The Literacy Bug community. The organisation for which I work - the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation - is one of ten finalists in the Google Impact Challenge. Whilst all ten finalists receive much-needed funding to carry forward their projects, four of the finalist are awarded a grand prize of $750,000 each. One of the grand prize winners is selected via a public vote, which is where you can assist.

I am asking like-minded individuals to vote for the ALNF's Living First Language project. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. If you share a passion for linguistic diversity, literacy and social justice, then please cast your vote in the Google Impact Challenge. Visit the following link to vote: https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/australia2016/charity/alnf. I also ask you to circulate the link to relevant friends and colleagues, whether via email, Facebook, Twitter or other social media.

I have been fortunate to have had significant experience working in and with Indigenous communities in Australia in the areas of Indigenous language and literacy. I regularly hear elders speak of the profound significance that Indigenous languages play in culture, identity, well-being and spirituality. Equally, elders want their children and grandchildren to be literate in their traditional language(s) and English. As an organisation, the ALNF is committed to Twin Language literacy learning when working in remote Australian communities, and we feel that the Google Impact Challenge grant will provide the means to complete development of a flexible, digital platform that Speaker Groups can use to record, collate, develop, teach and share their languages.

Unfortunately, Australian Indigenous languages are in peril. The 2014 National Indigenous Languages Survey reports that all Australian traditional languages are at risk of declining or in a state of decline. National Geographic notes that traditional languages in Australia are declining at one of the highest rates anywhere in the world. The impact is not merely around language, though. There are known positive impacts on educational, employment, health, and mental health outcomes in communities where language status is strong. In addition, the ALNF is well aware that strong early language and literacy learning in one’s Mother Tongue provides a pivotal bridge for formal (English) literacy in school, which is why the ALNF has developed paper-based and digital resources in collaboration with Speaker Groups, which they use to teach their children to read and write in local Indigenous language(s).

The Google Impact Challenge grand prize will enable the ALNF to find accessible ways to incorporate emerging technologies - such as natural language processing and machine learning - to enhance the resources that have already been developed as well as the tools that we can only dream of. Ultimately, Speaker Group communities deserve access to innovative, accessible tools, which allow them to read, write, record, develop, teach and share their languages as living, literate languages within local communities and beyond. It is a challenge that the ALNF is willing to accept.

I hope you don't mind this direct call to action. It is rare for me to allow my personal/professional self to show itself in The Literacy Bug.That said, I think it is important to do so in this case. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like further information, have any questions or have great ideas to support the campaign.

And ... please don't forget to vote: https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/australia2016/charity/alnf

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Can you believe it? We are approaching the third anniversary since the original launch of Wittgenstein on Learning, which has since morphed into The Literacy Bug. For the curious, check out the initial announcement way back on 24 September 2013.

The initial website consisted of the Notes/Glossary/Readings sections and the Why Wittgenstein? essay. I fondly remember such sections as:

• Commanding language & literacy;
• Seeing language & literacy as patterned and meaningful;
• Language & literacy as discursive practice;
• Commanding our sentences;
• Commanding our words;
• On perception;
• Attributes of a reader;
• Construing the self through autobiography;
• Practices defined;
• On practices;
• How do we come to internalise practices?;
• Entering a practice as an outsider;
• Constructing, construing and retaining knowledge; and
• Proposing alternative perspectives to alleviate and liberate.

Even though the above sections are more esoteric than more recent material, they influenced the more applicable sections like:

• Principles of teaching;
• Further principles;
• Five stages of reading development;
• Stages of literacy development;
• Establishing practices; and
• Language and literacy are learned with steady guidance from others.

Wittgenstein-infused essays also served as important milestones in the website's history, such as:

• Why do we do what we do?;
• Understanding the importance of form, meaning and use in language; and
• To undersand we need to be part of the conversation.

Today, the themes of Wittgenstein live on in a more applicable manners. Even though the site's name has changed, the website is still focused on the acquisition of language, the development of literacy, the importance of social interactions, and the scaffolding of ways of seeing, acting and thinking.

Celebrate the anniversary with us. Explore the site. Send us a message. Let us know your favourite part of the resource. Welcome and enjoy!

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Welcome to another episode of The Literacy Bug Podcast! This week I respond to the recent blog entry called “Encoding, Decoding and Understanding (Print) Language”. In the mentioned blog entry, I casually glossed over the importance of oral language comprehension in the role of literacy development. In glossing over oral comprehension, I did not neglect or undermine its significance. In fact, I acknowledge the complexity and significance of language comprehension in propelling the need the encode and decode anything in the first place. In this podcast, I explore that which was left unexplored: the intricate relationship between print processing, language development and cognitive process. Please listen, explore and enjoy! We aim to bring many more episodes in the coming weeks. (theliteracybug.com)

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Following on the heels of the most recent blog entries (here and here), we have another unpublished entry to share from the archives … Unpublished no more, though. Whilst there are some rough edges to it, it is posted here as part of the ongoing conversation

Preamble

Often, when I have had a picture well framed or have hung it in the right surroundings, I have caught myself feeling as proud as if I had painted the picture myself. That is not quite right: not as proud as if I painted it, but as proud as if I had helped to paint it, as if I had, so to speak, painted a little bit of it. It is as though an exceptionally gifted arranger of grasses should eventually come to think that he had produced at least a tiny blade of grass himself. (Wittgenstein, Culture & Value)

Following in the tradition of Ludwig Wittgenstein, I am compelled to grasp a clear view (or perspicuous representation) of literacy. It is a view that is not encumbered by the various forms and instances of literacy. In the spirit of Hans Sluga (2011), the search represents a compulsion to articulate a surveyable representation of an unsurveyable whole. The unsurveyable whole - in this case - is the history of the written word and its current manifestations in print and digital form.

While this might seem an esoteric preamble to an otherwise basic blog entry, I was not comfortable proceeding without a nod to the context to these words.

Literacy FactsHere are the elements of a clear view of literacy in English.

1. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet.

• 21 are consonants;
• 5 are vowels (or 6 if you treat “y” as a sometimes vowel)

2. We use these letters and letter combinations to represent 44 phonemes or English sounds (give or take one or two).

• 25 consonant sounds
• 19 vowel sounds

The clever reader will notice a curious fact about consonant and vowel sounds; there is a greater letter-sound correlation in relation to consonant sounds than there is for vowel sounds. It isn’t as easy to explicitly state the various letter and letter combinations which represent the 44 phonemes in English. These are learned over time, and are analysed from the learner’s growing (print) vocabulary. For more information, please refer to to the charts below.

3. There are also 131 possible graphemes which represent those 44 or so phonemes. There are 74 possible consonant graphemes to represent the 25 consonant sounds, and 57 vowel graphemes to represent the 19 vowel sounds. A grapheme can be an individual letter (like the letter "k") or it can be a group of letters (like the grouping "igh", "ph" or "ea"). And a grapheme can make more than one sounds. For example, the letter "a" can make four different sounds, as in cat, baby, father, alone. The letter "a" makes two sounds in the common word "banana". Can you identify the sounds? The following diagram shows a mapping of the 44 phonemes and all the grapheme which can represent those sounds.

Learners do not recognise all graphemes from the get go. In terms of learning, the following is a recommended order in which children explore the various graphemes in the first three to four years of school.

• Letter Name-Alphabetic (Semi-Phonetic) Stage [typically between 4 - 7 yrs old]: CVC word patterns with the following sequence of graphemes and blends: a, m, t, s, i, f, d, r, o, g, l, h, u, c, b, n, k, v, short e, w, j, p, y, x, q, z, sh, ch, th, wh, st-, pl-, bl-, gl-, sl-, sp-, cr, cl, fl, fr, sk, qu, nk, ng, mp, ck
• Within Word (Transitional) Stage [typically between 7 - 9 yrs old]: CVCe word patterns leading into more complex CVVC vowel patterns and common multisyllabic words: a-e, ai, ay, ei, ey, ee, ea, ie, e-e, i-e, igh, y, o-e, oa, ow, u-e, oo, ew, vowel+r, oi, oy, ou, au, ow, kn, wr, gn, shr, thr, squ, spl, tch, dge, ge, homophones

4. These sounds/graphemes are joined to form syllables. There are six common syllable types in English.

• Closed (e.g. mat or pic/nic)
• Open (e.g. he or ve/to)
• Silent “e” or vowel-consonant-e [vce] (e.g. cape or stripe)
• Vowel team or vowel pair (e.g. pain, head or toy)
• R-controlled (e.g. far or fer/ment)
• Consonant+le (e.g. a/pple or li/ttle)

In an analytic phonics approach, learners analyse known words to gain a firm grasp of letter-sound correspondences and word patterns. In a synthetic phonics approach, learners progressively move through letter-sound patterns of increasing complexity. Both approaches should be systematic, developmental and integrated. In practice, both approaches should be used, though one approach may be more or less dominant or effective.

5. Over time, we notice how …

• The larger a learner’s vocabulary, the more lexical items the learner has to draw on to comparatively see how words work;
• Phonological and phonemic awareness places an individuals in a position to problem solve the aural structure of words, and hold this in working memory for encoding and decoding;
• Morphological knowledge helps a learner refine options by seeing meaningful, regular patterns in words;
• Emerging spelling rules are understood through further practice;
• Eventually, knowledge is built up over countless encounters with words. Some words we just remember. Other words we decode, encode and recognise in context.

5. Word level fluency is not enough to engender reading/writing fluency, though. Learners must also become adept at rapidly interpreting, scanning and generating the grammatical elements in our sentences.

• We must identifying the components of syntax, and understanding how the logic of this syntax allows one to express states of affairs and to understand states of affairs expressed in utterances.
• This includes the ability to track pronouns - for instance.
• The structure of a sentence explains how elements are related to one another (e.g. The cow jumped over the moon). This includes an awareness of the various types of words (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc).
• We need to know the words to extract sense from the sentence. And we often need to grasp the intention/conversation of the sentence to grasp its meaning.

To consolidate: Structural features are mastered whilst an individual is in the early stages of learning language and literacy. Whilst the learner is learning, teachers are directing the learner’s attention to the way in which language is represented in print.

Proceed With CautionIt is here that we need to proceed with caution.

The above (meta-linguistic) knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for full literacy development. It represents the form of our utterances but not their content. Actual utterances have content (i.e. refer to things and are parts of conversations).

Actual statements are also more complex than the formulaic syntax learned in formal grammatical study. Actual utterances include nuances of idiomatic language, fragmented constructions, rhetorical devices and more.

The sequence of statements in a texts are also shaped by a dialogic agreement between “speaker” and “audience” … rather than a formulaic one which is determined by the structure of the utterance on its own. For instance, when Michael Mohammed Ahmed writes in his novel The Tribe (2014):

“Most of my Tayta’s children still live with her in a house that belonged to my grandfather. His name was Bani Adam. Everyday my father reminds me that it was my grandfather's house, he says, ‘We are Baat Adam,’ which means, ‘We are the House of Adam’. The house is in Alexandria. People sometimes think because we’re Arabs, that I mean the city in Egypt, but the Alexandria we’re from is actually a suburb in Sydney's inner-west.” (p. 3-4)

The sequence of the text responds to the imagined needs of an imagined interlocutor rather than a logic inherent in the grammatical form of the text. The text abides by the conventions of autobiography whilst anticipating questions/assumptions that an audience would be making. (Note: Even a recipe is shaped by the conventions/expectations imposed by tradition/context.)

This observation is most pronounced in the otherwise mimetic text - a poem by William Carlos William

“so much depends

upon

”a red wheel

barrow

“glazed with rain

water

“beside the white

chickens.”

Whilst simple on its surface, the poem demands its audience to see beyond the merely descriptive poem. The author would like the audience to appreciate its meditative quality if the text is to communicate as intended. One must recognise how the poem may or may not fit within the tradition of the haiku. (Note: See this as an example of Wittgenstein’s ‘language game’ concept illustrated in the video at the end of this section.)

We get close to a mimetic portrait in Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”, but even “Big Two-Hearted River” requires its audience to be familiar with the general context, the language/vocabulary, and the overtones of Romanticism.

“Nick looks down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as we went into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.” (p. 143-144)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a philosopher obsessed with the difficulties of language, who wanted to help us find a way out of some of the muddles we get into with words.

CodaWhilst the surface code can be teased out as an object of analysis, the content of utterances elicits background knowledge which is so pervasive that any analysis must acknowledge that

“nothing merely physical, such as acoustic blasts or ink marks, or even words and gestures - ‘signs’ of one kind or another - can possibly communicate thought. For such tokens taken by themselves are ‘dead’, and can only be animated, have life breathed into them, by something inner, such as an act of understanding.” (Stern, 2004, pg 136)

Schneider (2014) also notes this implicit and confounding dilemma. Any formulaic, analytic theory of meaning makes only so much progress through a focus on structure alone. Eventually, one must include the imagination/experience/context/shared language of the speaker and the audience as part of the equation.

Formal theories of meaning seek to explain how propositions express a sense, hopefully clearly and unambiguously, through an understanding of the proposition’s logical structure. In such a case, one must have access to the phonetic, orthographic, syntactic and lexical knowledge to be able to decode the sentence and to decipher the picture expressed within the sentence. This process is quite a static exchange. Wittgenstein himself was inspired by Gottlob Frege to contribute to the formalist, analytical project in the Tractates Logico-Philosophicus, but would soon find this pursuit inadequate to explain how meaning is expressed beyond a very limited frame.

Wittgenstein found that meaning - in context - is less static and more elusive. The meaning of an utterance requires an understanding of the utterance’s context, a familiarity with the way the utterance is being exchanged, the intentions of the participants, and the position of the utterance within a “language game” or “conversation”. For instance, the meaning of the phrase “he is a Red” could meaning “He is a communist”, “He is a supporter of the Liverpool Football Club”, “He is a Native American”, or some other derivative. Its meaning is dependent on factors outside of the logical structure of the utterance itself. For another example, let's say someone said, "I really loved Madagascar." The individual could be referring to the place, the film or Madagascar vanilla (as opposed to another type of vanilla). There might be an audience who wouldn't find the phrase ambiguous (they only know one meaning for Madagascar) or it might not be meaningful at all (they have no concept of Madagascar whatsoever), even though they understand the grammar of the sentence and can accurately pronounce each element.

Therefore, actual elements of context, content, purpose, practice, deliberation and cognitive/information processing must be dealt with to leap into meaning. This does not negate the importance of direct, explicit instruction in the structural elements of language and literacy; however, we must acknowledge that formal skills only facilitate communication. They are not the germ of communication.

In the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein A. TLP 3.13: A proposition includes all that the projection includes, but not what is projected. Therefore, though what is projected is not itself included, its possibility is. A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense, but does contain the possibility of expressing it. (‘The content of a proposition’ means the content of a proposition that has sense.) A proposition contains the form, but not the content, of its sense.

B. Z 74: A sentence is given me in code together with the key. Then of course in one way everything required for understanding the sentence has been given me. And yet I should answer the question “Do you understand this sentence?” : No, not yet; I must first decode it. And only when e..g. I had translated it into English would I say “Now I understand it.”

C. PI 496: Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. It only describes and in no way explains the use of signs.

D. Z 91: Ask: What result am I aiming at when I tell someone: “Read attentively”? That, e.g. this and that should strike him, and he be able to give an account of it. — Again, it could, I think, be said that if you read a sentence with attention, you will often be able to give an account of what has gone on in your mind, (e.g. the occurrence of images). But that does not mean that these things are what we call “attention”.

E. TLP 3.141: A proposition is not a blend of words. — (Just as a theme of music is not a blend of notes.) A proposition is articulate.

F. CV: Often, when I have had a picture well framed or have hung it in the right surroundings, I have caught myself feeling as proud as if I had painted the picture myself. That is not quite right: not “as proud as if I painted it, but as proud as if I had helped to paint it, as if I had, so to speak, painted a little bit of it. It is as though an exceptionally gifted arranger of grasses should eventually come to think that he had produced at least a tiny blade of grass himself.

G. PI 291: What we call “descriptions” are instruments for particular uses. Think of a machine drawing, a cross-section, an elevation with measurements, which an engineer had before him. Thinking of a description as a word-picture of the facts has something misleading about it: one tends to think only of such pictures as hang on our walls: which seem simply to portray how a thing looks, what it is like. (These pictures are as it were idle.)

H. PI 533: How can one explain the expression, transmit one’s comprehension? Ask yourself: How does one lead anyone to comprehension of a poem or of a theme? The answer to this tells us how meaning is explained here. Let’s simplify language to the declarative statement that has the capacity to convey the unambiguously.

I. “I shall in the future again and again draw your attention to what I shall call language games. There are ways of using signs simpler than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language … If we want to study the problems of truth and falsehood, of the agreement and disagreement of propositions with reality, of the nature of assertion, assumption, and question, we shall with great advantage look at primitive forms of language in which these forms of thinking appear without the confusing background of highly complicated processes of thought.” (quoting Wittgenstein in Monk, 2005, p 69)

J. “When the boy or grown-up learns what one might call specific technical languages, e.g. the use of charts and diagrams, descriptive geometry, chemical symbolism, etc. he learns more language games. (Remark: The picture we have of the language of the grown-up is that of a nebulous mass of language, his mother tongue, surrounded by discrete and more or less clear-cut language games, the technical languages … Here the term ‘language game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life …” (Wittgenstein quoted in Phillips, 1977, pp 29 - 31)

K. “The pupil must want to go on alone in taking language to the world, and that what is said must be worth saying, have a point (warning, informing, amusing, promising, questioning, chastising, counting, insisting, beseeching, specifying the location of pain, and so on), then is there some question left as to whether the pupil has to find warning, informing, amusing, promising, counting, beseeching, chastising, and so on themselves worth doing? If it is part of teaching to undertake to validate these measures of interest, then it would be quite as if teaching must, as it were, undertake to show a reason for speaking at all.” (Cavell, 2005, pg 115)

References Literary References

Ahmad, M. M. (2014). The Tribe. Western Sydney (NSW): Giramondo.

Hemingway, E. (1995). The Collected Stories (Everyman's Library Classics). New York: Everyman's Library.

Williams, W. C. “The Red Wheelbarrow” n.d. Web at https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/red-wheelbarrow.

Wittgenstein References

Wittgenstein, L. (1967). Zettel (Z). (G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright, Eds.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1974). Philosophical Grammar (PG). (R. Rhees, Ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and value (C&V). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001a). Philosophical Investigations (PI) (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001b). Tractatus logico-philosophicus (TLP). London: Routledge.

Academic References

Cavell, S. (2005). Philosophy the day after tomorrow. In Philosophy the day after tomorrow (pp. 111 – 131). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Phillips, D. (1977). Wittgenstein and scientific knowledge. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited.

Schneider, H. J. (2014). Wittgenstein’s later theory of meaning: imagination and calculation. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons.

Sluga, H. (2011). Wittgenstein. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Stern, D. (2004). Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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In light of the most recent blog entry - Encoding, Decoding and Understanding (Print) Language - I've gone back to the archives to revisit an unpublished piece from the past. Whilst there are some rough edges, it is posted here as part of the ongoing conversation.

Introduction The layout of the diagram to the lower right might seem odd when it starts with “the world” as the notion at the top and "form of life" at the bottom, but this is to suggests that language and literacy are learned in a particular context. And the context determines the language(s) one speaks and it determines what one is likely to speak about.

In the words of Wittgenstein and Tomasello we find:

“When a child learns language it learns at the same time what is to be investigated and what not.” (Wittgenstein, On Certainty #472)

“‘Nothing could seem less remarkable than a one-year-old child requesting ‘More juice’ or commenting ‘Doggie gone’ … From an ethological perspective, perhaps the most astounding fact is that something on the order of 80 percent of all Homo sapiens cannot understand these utterances at all.” (Tomasello, 2003, pg 1)

Let’s say English is a language that is spoken in this environment. And - let’s say - that the word “Madagascar” exists in this world, and I hear the word “Madagascar” uttered in this place of the world. It also refers to a film (that I haven’t seen, but am aware of) and it is a type of vanilla (Madagascar vanilla), which I don’t know much about, either. There is a history to the word, and this history is its meaning. One points to a map to show me where the country is. One offers to watch a film with me. And one shows me a picture of Madagascar vanilla, and - perhaps - I have a chance to taste it. As long as I know that places, films and plants have names, then it is possible that I can know what is being referred to.

Phonological Awareness & Phonemic AwarenessI ask someone to say the word slowly, so I can have a go at writing the word, because if one is going to recognise the printed word, one must first be phonologically and phonemically aware of the word.

When I listen closely, I notice that Madagascar has four syllables:

Ma / da / ga / scar

One must also distinguish each of the sounds within the word:

[/m/+/short a/] + [/d/+/schwa/] + [/g/+/short a/] + [/s/+/k/+/ar/]

Alphabetic Principle, Phonics & SpellingThen I attempt to spell the word based on my knowledge of English graphemes

M = /m/

a = /short a/

—

d = /d/

a = /schwa/

—

g = /g/

a = /short a/

—

s = /s/

c = /k/

ar = /controlled vowel - ar/

I’m pretty confident the opening letter is M to represent the /m/ sound, since I intuitively know that the letter “m” represents the /m/ sound most of the time (94% of the time to be accurate, if you see the chart to the right/above). Similarly, I know the /short a/ sound when I hear it. Whilst the letter “a” represents the /short a/ 96% of the time, I only appreciate this from experience. To make a long story short, I know the word “scar” and intuit that the word ends with the same spelling. I could be wrong, but this is when one’s word knowledge helps one problem-solve new words. That said, I might have spelled it incorrectly, and I might need to consult someone or something (e.g. a dictionary) to see if I am on the right track.

In the end, I heard a word, and I used my phonemic awareness skills to isolate the sounds. I used my knowledge of sounds-letters and my knowledge of words to spell it. If I didn’t have any of these attributes then I could be overwhelmed by the length of the word, etc. But I wasn't. Phew!

MorphologyFor the time being, let’s say I recognise the word and I know that there is nothing quite morphological about the proper noun Madagascar. There are no meaningful prefixes, roots or suffixes which would assist me.

In a SentenceDo we ever really encounter words only in isolation, though? As noted by Wittgenstein,

“If I know an object (word) I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs. (Every one of these possibilities must be part of the nature of the object/word.)” (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, #2.0123)

In this case, I read the following state of affairs:

Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean.

I am lucky. I know English grammar, and I am familiar with all the words - when spoken - but I struggle with the written form of the printed word “island”. I am familiar with the spoken word, which is pronounced

[/long i/] + [/l/+/short a/+/n/+/d/]

But I don’t know about this

[/short i/+/s/+/l/] + [/short a/+/n/+/d/]

But a helpful person informs me that the letter “s” is indeed silent, and the opening letter “i” is a /long i/ syllable. In fact, the printed word “island” is familiar in the end. What a relief?

Sentences in ContextI know the sentence is a descriptive sentence, and I know that it is meant to convey information. I use my background knowledge to place the sentence in context. This sentence comes next:

The population of Madagascar is over 22 million people, and it spreads over 500,000 square kilometres.

I recognise that the emerging paragraph is a geography paragraph and I anticipate that I’ll find out about the capital city of Madagascar, primary industries, natural sites and cultural practices. I know this because I am familiar with this genre of discourse, and I expect and value this knowledge. I intuitively am comparing this with a similar text I read/heard/wrote earlier. The earlier one was about the island of Taiwan, and I am interested to know the differences between the two island contexts. If I didn’t have this previous experience or background knowledge, then I might not be able to read/hear/write the new text as deeply or critically.

Another AttemptLet us look at another set of words. Let’s imagine that a friend shows me a photo of a red wheelbarrow sitting in the rain and provides with the following poem:

“so much depends

upon

”a red wheel

barrow

“glazed with rain

water

“beside the white

chickens.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s by a fellow named William Carlos William.”

I’m not really fussed by the poem, to be honest. And I don’t know why it starts with the phrase “so much depends / upon”. But my friend insists that the poem is meaningful. Even though I know all the words, and I can understand/imagine the scene, I am missing something. So my friend asks me to bring in a photo of something that is significant to me. When we meet again, we both come armed with a photo. My photo is of my late grandmother, and her photo is of a pier jutting out into a river at dusk. She reads out her poem.

“so much depends

upon ...

"the smell of

the river

"of bait, of fish

and blueberries

"on hot summer

days."

And she helps me write mine:

“so much depends

upon

"my grandmother's

photo

"on the mantle

piece

"watching over

me."

We do it again next week, and the week after, and I start to get the point. I find it peaceful just stating something meaningful. My friend and I might talk about the “meaningfulness” of the object in the photo, but these "meanings” or even descriptions are left unsaid in our poems. At some stage, she introduces me to haikus, and I find that I have a new way to relax. Every so often I stop and write or think or say “so much depends upon …” I didn’t understand the point at the start but I do now, and I have started to branch out into other forms/purposes of poetry. I’m really quite surprised. In fact, it takes on a form of meditation or secular prayer. Whilst I still need to draft reports and memos at work, I have another written outlet that extends what I achieve in print. I have learned a new "language game" - so to speak.

ConclusionLet’s return to the opening diagram, and we find the following:

• We live in a world;
• And in that world there are “things”, “concepts”, “phrases”, “relationships”, etc;
• These “things” have words, whether they are physical, like “a rock”, or conceptual, like "kindness”;
• Some of these words are functional and appear in phrases or as single words, like “How are you?” and “therefore”;
• The words are strung together in sentences to express some sense/meaning, and those sentences are strung together as part of a discourse of some kind;
• And we communicate about something in some way to others.

To end, let me present the following scenarios:

• an experienced electrician is wiring up a new electrical system. The electrician knows what everything is called and what everything does, but quivers when someone hands him an installation manual full of words and abstract schematics. “Mate, I can’t makes heads or tales of that thing” as he points to the manual. “I know what I’m doing.” Is it the technical nature of the manual that catches him off guard?
• a philosopher is asked to wire up a new electrical system. The philosopher has no clue about electronics and quivers at the sight of the wires. Someone hands him an installation manual full of words and abstract schematics. After much effort, the philosopher eventually says, “Mate, I can’t makes heads or tales of that thing” as he points to both the manual and the box of wires.
• an average person who is familiar with electronics, but is in no way an expert or practiced, is asked to wire up a new electrical system. She has a strong grasp of literacy and she is able to process information accurately. She knows what NOT to do in relation to voltage and amperage. She is eventually able to get the job done with the help of the manual, a few YouTube videos, and a couple calculated phone calls.

How would you go about explaining what is occurring in each of these scenarios? You may use the following diagram to help.

ReferencesTomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Tractates Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. London: Routledge.

_____________. (1969). On Certainty. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Translated by D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

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IntroductionPlease permit me to be abrupt ... at the start, at least. Isn't literacy merely the encoding, decoding and understanding of language? Simplistic though it may sound, print is the younger cousin of the much older member of the family.

The above schematic addresses this rough relationship between language and literacy. If one is developing the components of language - e.g. phonological, lexical, morphological, grammatical, textual and pragmatic skills - then the learning of “the code” serves to facilitate the transference of the learner’s speech into print, which itself can serve as a platform upon which further literate language can be built. In this case, the code is the interface between language and literacy, and this code requires that learners develop additional skills in order to coordinate and manipulate language-in-print.

From an early age, a child is learning language, but this child will only slowly develop an awareness of print. By age 6, a child will know thousands of words in oral language, but only know a few - if any - when read (Chall, 1996). This rich oral language provides ample stimulus for learners to begin exploring known (oral) words in print. In the coming years, the child’s oral language will continue to be stronger than what he/she can express on the written page. It is only at 13 years of age that your skilled readers are as competent in oral language as they are in literacy. By 15 to 17 years of age, print (finally) overtakes oral language. At this stage, a learner is apt to be better equipped to explore complex ideas on the page than verbally, particularly if the learner has a strong corpus of academic language. Across this prolonged developmental period, learners become increasingly more adepts and fluid in navigating and representing ideas in literate language.

The remainder of this entry will sketch some thoughts that may come to impact how we approach the encoding, decoding and understanding of literate language. I enter into the discussion with a profound appreciation of print’s older cousin, even though we will not discuss the specific uses of language here.

Part One: EncodingWORDS [EITHER AUDIBLE OR INAUDIBLE] ---> DIVIDED INTO SYLLABLES & SOUNDS ---> ENCODED WITH GRAPHEMES ---> RECONSTRUCTED INTO PRINT WORDS [WORDS THAT I RECOGNISE]

Isn't it logical to analyse known words, and harness a learner's phonemic awareness to become adept at anticipating how to spell such-and-such a word which is already familiar to the learner? And - then - provide scaffolded opportunities for learners to monitor their own speech to use this skill in their emerging writing? Can't we leverage oral language and visual prompts as vehicles through which the learners become curious about words, the sounds in words and how these sounds and words are represented in print?

These are my queries in relation to the following possible lesson sequence, which could be considered an analytical approach to language-in-print:

• A known word is uttered orally;
• That word is segmented into syllables and phonemes (evidenced by phonemic awareness);
• The learner identifies the matching phoneme cards (pictured below);
• The learner has a go at spelling the word based on emerging sound-to-letter knowledge (invented spelling);
• That spelling is tested against the word's conventional spelling, which opens up a platform for discussion of common patterns;
• We return to the meaning of the word, and of using the word in context.

If a child can recognise all the letters of the alphabet (26 items), what's stopping him or her from memorising all possible English phonemes (45 items, give or take one or two)? And then using this knowledge to "phonemically spell" words that are part of the learner's oral language vocabulary? Sounds logical to me.

We ask kids to memorise the alphabet. Why don't we ask children to remember and apply all possible phonemes in English?

This is effective up to a point. The learner becomes adept at monitoring external and internal speech, and the learner develops a process to more rapidly represent this speech in print. Over time, the learner will process this information more rapidly as he/she recognises certain words and word patterns as whole units. For the time being, the learner is discovering the language-to-print connection, which is a step toward the writing-to-reading connection.

Part Two: DecodingEventually, the tables are turned, though. It is no longer enough to be able spell words by relying upon the stimulation of internal and external speech. The learner will need to decode words that are presented first in print. The learner will need to derive oral language from print, which will require that he or she recognises regular patterns, such as phonics patterns, syllable constructions, sight words, word families, morphological regularities and more.

By 6 - 7 years of age, a child is experiencing direct instruction in letter-sound relations (phonics) as well as practice in their use. He or she is reading simple stories using words with these phonic elements as well as high frequency words. By ages 7 - 8, direct instruction extends to include advanced decoding skills along with wide reading of familiar, interesting materials that help promote fluency. Meanwhile, the child is being read to at levels above their own independent reading level to develop language, vocabulary and concepts (Chall, 1996). The child should be motivated to extend themselves in relation to both expressiveness and comprehension.

PRINT WORD(S) ---> DIVIDED INTO SYLLABLES & GRAPHEMES ---> SOUNDED OUT ---> RECOGNISED ---> VOICED FLUENTLY [EITHER AUDIBLY OR INAUDIBLY] ---> UNDERSTOOD IN CONTEXT

The sequence when reading words in isolation as well as those in connected text is:

• Do I see the word(s) and attend to the word(s)?
• Do I recognise it/them as one(s) I know? Do I recognise it/them immediately or do I need to decode it/them? Can I begin to guess it/them based on context and other cues? Do I simply recognise it/them or can I also sound it/them out?
• Can I "chunk it/them"? (e.g. identify syllables, onset-rime and graphemes)
• Can I allocate sound(s) to individual letters or letter combinations (e.g. graphemes)?
• Can I refine how the word or words are read in syllables and use my knowledge of patterns to read more proficiently and meaningfully?
• Can I recognise the word or words along with words around it/them (if applicable)?
• Can I re-read the word or words and the sentence (if applicable) with expression and confidence?
• Do I consider the meaning of the word, the current utterance and other potential utterances?
• Can the learner begin to develop a more systematic understanding of how English words work?

As learners firmly grasp the concepts of words, phonemes, graphemes and morphemes, then it becomes more feasible to systematically study graphemes in what would be called a synthetic manner. This would extend to involve further exercises which refine the learner's knowledge of spelling rules, stress patterns and more. For the moment, consider the following order of phonics to be taught in a synthetic manner (source: Bear, et al., 2015):

Letter Name-Alphabetic (Semi-Phonetic) Stage [typically between 4 - 7 yrs old]: CVC word patterns with the following sequence of graphemes and blends: short a, m, t, s, short i, f, d, r, short o, g, l, h, short u, c, b, n, k, v, short e, w, j, p, y, x, q, z, sh, ch, th, wh, st-, pl-, bl-, gl-, sl-, sp-, cr, cl, fl, fr, sk, qu, nk, ng, mp, ck

Within Word (Transitional) Stage [typically between 7 - 9 yrs old]: CVCe word patterns leading into more complex CVVC vowel patterns and common multisyllabic words: a-e, ai, ay, ei, ey, ee, ea, ie, e-e, i-e, igh, y, o-e, oa, ow, u-e, oo, ew, vowel+r, oi, oy, ou, au, ow, kn, wr, gn, shr, thr, squ, spl, tch, dge, ge, homophones

Syllables & Affixes (Independent) Stage [typically between 9 - 11 yrs old]: multisyllabic words, adding inflectional endings, homographs & homophones

Derivation (Advanced) Stage [typically between 11 - 14 yrs old]: focusing on advanced prefixes, suffixes, roots as well as word families (e.g. exclaim, exclamation, exclamatory)

In this model, learners become familiar with letter-sounds after they are supported to navigate sounds-to-letters. Furthermore, one is exploring language well before this or - at least - alongside this study. Upon recognising words from a string of letters and/or sounds, and pictures/intentions from a string of words, then there is hope that learners can process that which has been portrayed within the coded text as well as in the spoken stream. There is hope that one is informing and being informed; is entertaining and being entertained; is greeting and being greeted; etc.

Grapheme / Phoneme Charts

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Part Three: UnderstandingAt this point, it is no longer enough to merely encode, decode and understand basic texts. One needs to encode, decode and understand diverse texts rapidly and accurately in order to read with enough fluency so as to make way for deep comprehension. This requires the learner to coordinate a range of skills, including attention, perception, language knowledge, background/contextual knowledge, phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, word/morphological pattern recognition, sight word memory, grammatical knowledge, knowledge of text types and the ability to anticipate/select language based on this prior experience.

In this case, there is a text (perhaps spoken, maybe written). I recognise language/words in it (at least most of them). I know the context and the purpose of the text. I know what to look for. There are words that I may need to define in context or have explained to me. I can follow the logic/context, though. I can piece it together to make some logical whole. There are certain occasions where I may get stuck. For instance, I might need to clarify unfamiliar language. I might get stumped by a turn of phrase or two. I might lack some background knowledge or experience. I may just miss the point altogether. I may need the meanings of things explained to me. (What should I be thinking when I read this? What is meant/intended here?) Or I might need help sounding out more complex or unfamiliar terms. What I need most is daily practice which can lead to discoveries about the world, about language and about literacy.

When we process literate language, we process surface features for recognition AND we process deeper features to extract meaning. This is portrayed in the above Iceberg Metaphor.

A significant amount of experience is required to read and write in this meaningful manner. Without this, reading is like looking through a muddy window; you need to strain too hard to see clearly; you can only see things in bits, if at all. However, even if the window is clear (e.g. decodable) you still need to know what you are looking at and what you are looking for.

This reminds me of two parallel experiences of "learning to read". This first involved my stuttering attempts to read in a foreign language, albeit Spanish which shares many common features to English. My lack of vocabulary and insufficient grammatical knowledge meant that I regularly lost my train of thought when reading even the most basic of paragraphs, which - if presented in English - would have been easily comprehended, leaving much space to interpret and apply the information. However, in Spanish, I could not confidently interpret what I was reading, because I lacked confidence and clarity in exactly what I was decoding. I lacked adequate language knowledge.

A much different experience involved the poetry of e.e. cummings, a poet I adore but who I needed to learn to read ... or - rather - make sense of. In the case of e.e. cummings, I could easily recognise the language, yet it took time to make sense of cummings' innovations with linguistic and poetic forms. It took time to realise the intent behind his innovations, and to come to appreciate how he wanted me - his audience - to feel, think and envision. In order to better understand this latter experience, please explore the essay "To understand, you need to part of the conversation". In practice, reading requires limited background knowledge in the earlier years and substantial background knowledge and concepts as one progress through adolescence into adulthood.

Conclusion
What's the story, then? Our expectations change across time. That much is obvious.

"Word reading is the best predictor of reading comprehension level in the early years (Juel, Griffith & Gough, 1986); but others skills (e.g. background knowledge, inferring, summarising, etc) become more important predictors of comprehension level as word reading ability develops through experience (Curtis, 1980; Saarnio, et al., 1990). Thus, the relative importance of different skills may change during the course of development." (Cain, Oakhill & Bryant, 2004, p. 32)

There is a time when we are happy that a learner is exploring new words, is using language, is curious about letters and print, and is aware of sounds within words. There comes a time when we expect more, though. We expect learners to spell and read and write and talk more confidently and proficiently. Nothing more, nothing less. And - then - even this is no longer adequate. There comes a time when learners need to process information, organise and communicate thoughts, discuss with peers and synthesise one’s knowledge. We expect more because ...

“... literacy isn’t a single skill that simply gets better with age ... Being literate is very different for the skilled first grader, fourth grader, high school student, and adult, and the effects of school experiences can be quite different at different points in a child’s development.” (Catherine Snow, et al, 1991, pg 9)

Diligence, scaffolding, practice and challenging experiences are required. Nothing more, nothing less.

References Bear, S., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2014). Words their way: word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th edition). Essex: Pearson.

Cain, K. E., Bryant, P. E., & Oakhill, J. (2004). Children’s reading comprehension ability: Concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.96.1.31

Chall, J. S. (1996). Stages of reading development (2nd ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic College Publishers.

Curtis, M. E. (1980). Development of components of reading skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 656–669

Juel, C., Griffith, P. L., & Gough, P. B. (1986). Acquisition of literacy: A longitudinal study of children in first and second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 243–255

Saarnio, D. A., Oka, E. R.,& Paris, S. G. (1990). Developmental predictors of children’s reading comprehension. In T. H. Carr & B. A. Levy (Eds.), Reading and its development: Component skills approaches (pp. 57–79). New York: Academic Press.

Snow, C. E., Barnes, W. S., Chandler, J., Goodman, I. F., & Hemphill, L. (1991). Unfulfilled expectations: home and school influences on literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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I can't seem to shake a preoccupation that continues to surface whenever I try and come to some synthesis of literacy. I am dogged by a persistent dichotomy. On the one hand, literacy is a skill to be mastered, which involves the methodological development of the formal characteristics of language and of the written code. On the other hand, literacy is a creative, communicative practice that calls upon the imagination, the intellect and social cognition, which is much less mechanical and much more about craft, application and growing expertise.

So ... whilst a learner may master the mechanical features of literacy through practice, revision and integration, the applied aspects of literacy require one to negotiate concepts of context, convention, intention, prior knowledge and (possible) meanings, which are not so formally defined.

This integration of form with intention reflects remarks from British philosopher Ray Monk (1999):

"The reason computers have no understanding of the sentences they process is not that they lack sufficient neuronal complexity, but that they are not, and cannot be, participants in the culture to which the sentences belong. A sentence does not acquire meaning through the correlation, one to one, of its words with objects in the world; it acquires meaning through the use that is made of it in the communal life of human beings."

The following "diagram" tries to broach the dichotomy once again. On the left hand side, there are the formal elements of language and literacy. On the right hand side, there are the functional areas to which language and literacy are put to use. And down the centre are quotes which move from a focus on mastery to a focus on application.

Consequently, language and literacy are much more than the mastery of a technique, even though mastery is a significant component of early literacy. The philosopher Rush Rhees (2006) grapples with this temptation to see language as a set of self-contained skills:

"The people who argued with Socrates and Plato may have thought language was just a collection of techniques, and that that was what understanding is: knowing the technique ... For them, the growth of understanding could only mean the growth of skill (efficiency, I suppose) or the multiplication of skills ... A skill would have the sort of unity that a calculus does ... Is understanding just competence?" (pg. 3)

By ending with a rhetorical question, Rhees is expressing some doubt in the idea that understanding is simply a measure of technical proficiency alone. Learning how to spell can be considered to be a technical skill. Knowing how to parse a sentence is also a technical exercise. Yet understanding and communicating are much more complex than technical prowess,

"If you understand anything in language, you must understand what the dialogue is, and you must see how understanding grows as the dialogue grows ... For language is discourse, is speaking. It is telling people things and trying to follow them. And that is what you try to understand ... You understand when it adds to your understanding of the discussion. Or of what the discussion is about." (Rhees, 2006, pg. 7)

At the same time that one is mastering elements of language and literacy, one must be granted opportunities to put these elements into practice, such as through interactive writing, scaffolded discussion, dialogic reading, poetry clubs, anchored instruction, literature circles, the language experience approach and more. In doing so, life is breathed into what would otherwise be cold and lifeless. Whilst it may be convenient to see literacy as a set of skills that are built progressively and mechanically, we must remind ourselves (as Stanley Cavell reminds us),

“The pupil must want to go on alone in taking language [and literacy] to the world, and that what is said must be worth [saying and writing], have a point (warning, informing, amusing, promising, questioning, chastising, counting, insisting, beseeching, specifying the location of pain, and so on) .. If it is part of teaching to undertake to validate these measures of interest, then it would be quite as if teaching must, as it were, undertake to show a reason for [communicating] at all.” (Cavell, 2005, pg 115)

Garver (1996) suggests that the shifting of attention between matters of form and matters of function is no simple act. They represent quite different paradigms.

“If Wittgenstein and Saussure agree in using ‘grammar’ descriptively, they disagree about ... other matters. One is that Wittgenstein’s grammar has to do with uses of language (discourse conditions and discourse continuation) rather than forms and their combinations (morphology and syntax) ...

"Considering uses rather than forms is a deep rather than a superficial departure from classical linguistic methodology ... Studying uses of language makes context prominent, whereas the study of forms lends itself naturally to analysis.” (Garver, 1996, pg 151)

Formal theories of meaning seek to explain how a language expresses a sense through an understanding of the language's logical structure. One must have access to the phonetic, syntactic and lexical knowledge to be able to decode sentences and to decipher the pictures expressed by them. This process is an analytical exchange. In a purely formal account of meaning, the individual would only be required to calculate the exact, unambiguous meaning of a proposition from available signs as long as the proposition was logically expressed and all terms were accounted for clearly and directly.

Meaning-in-context, on the other hand, is less static and more elusive. The meaning of an utterance requires an understanding of its context, a familiarity with the way the utterance is being exchanged, the intention of the utterance, and the position of the utterance within a 'language game' or 'conversation'. Such a theory of meaning must take into account that the subject is a creative, imaginative agent who extends (or projects) new language practices from prior encounters, and that such meaning is framed by the individual's social and discourse practices. Becoming literate also requires that one incorporates the role of “textuality” into one’s life, such as writing lists, emails, letters, notes, poems, etc. And it is bolstered when one experiences positive encounters of meaning making (and learning) with others (e.g. sharing a favourite book with someone you respect).

If I am able to allude to a final theorist here, this dynamic exchange of meaning-making is what Bakhtin (1981) refers to as the dialogic imagination.And it is the dialogic imagination that propels the text (or the logic of a text) forward. In other words, it is an explicit or implicit awareness of the underlying dialogue and associations - made up of questions, expectations, motifs, and conventions - that provide the rationale for the shape and significance of a text. Even as a text struggles to be unique, it exists within the frame of prior conversations and experiences. The more familiar one is with certain activities and conversations - or the text's semiotic domain/context - the deeper one will engage with and comprehend the text (Gee, 2003). If this is done in language that is accessible to the learner, then the possibilities for deep learning are extended even further. In this case, the lower order skills of word/sentence recognition are processed more deeply within the higher order skills of verbal reasoning, prior knowledge and extra-rationale interpretation.

What - then - is the point of this long-winded musing? In one sense, it is the continuation of a long-running discussion of the importance of balancing code-based and meaning-based practice. Those who are familiar with this site will see how this discussion features regularly. On another hand, I would like to return to the statement quoted in the title "the pupil must want to go on alone in taking language to the world." In other words, effective teaching builds skills AND provides rich, motivating opportunities to use these skills in committed acts of communication. This adds something even more elusive to the mix: as teachers, we must inspire learners to read, write, speak, listen, learn and express.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Cavell, S. (2005). Philosophy the day after tomorrow. In Philosophy the day after tomorrow (pp. 111 – 131). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Garver, N. (1996). Philosophy as grammar. In H. Sluga & D. Stern (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein (pp. 139 – 170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gee, J. P. (2003). Opportunity to learn: a language-based perspective on assessment. In Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, Vol 10, No. 1, pp 27 - 46

Monk, R. (1999, July 29). Wittgenstein’s Forgotten Lesson. Prospect Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ray-monk-wittgenstein/#.Uo_n_pHqvGY

Rhees, R. (2006). Wittgenstein and the possibility of discourse (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

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It is with great pleasure that we make this small - yet important - update. We would like to announce that we have categorised some of our recommended references according to Jeanne Chall’s Stages of Reading Development. Regular visitors would be well aware that Chall’s model plays an important role in The Literacy Bug’s approach to literacy teaching and learning. If you are not familiar with Chall’s model, we encourage you to read the linked essay on the Stages of Literacy Development and/or visit thenotes on the Five Stage of Reading Development.

Otherwise, proceed straight to the newly added reading lists. Each list begins with a brief description of the stage.

Stage 0: Pre-Reading: Birth to 6 Years OldIn Stage 0, the child pretends to read, gradually develops the skills to retells stories when looking at pages of books previously read to him/her. The child gains the ability to name letters of the alphabet, prints own name and plays with books, pencils and paper. By six years old, the child can understand thousands of words but can read few (if any). In this stage, adults are encouraged to scaffold child’s language attempts through parallel talk, expanding on verbalisations and recasting child’s verbalisations. Adults are encouraging children to use of two to three word combinations within social contexts, and adults should implement dialogic reading or effective shared reading for young children ages 2 to 5 years. Any instruction (phonics, vocabulary) should be linked to the book reading, and such books should include rhyme, alliteration, and repetitive phrases. In one’s environment, adults should verbally label objects with which children are involved and encourage children to ask questions and elaborate on observations (Westberg, et al., 2006). Click here to explore recommending readings for Stage 0.

Stage 1: Initial Reading & Decoding: 6 to 7 Years OldIn Stage 1, the child is learning the relation between letters and sounds and between print and spoken words. The child is able to read simple texts containing high frequency words and phonically regular words, and uses skills and insight to “sound out” new words. In relation to writing, the child is moving from scribbling to controlled scribbling to nonphonemic letter strings. Adults are encouraging the child to write about known words and use invented spellings to encourage beginning writing, which can be extended through assisted performance. In this stage, the main aims are to further develop children’s phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and ability to manipulate phonemes and syllables (segmentation and blending). (Westberg, et al., 2006) Click here to explore recommending readings for Stage 1.

Stage 2: Confirmation & Fluency: 7 to 9 Years OldIn Stage 2, the child can read simple, familiar stories and selections with increasing fluency. This is done by consolidating the basic decoding elements, sight vocabulary and meaning context in the reading of common topics. The learner’s skills are extended through guided read-aloud of more complex texts. By this stage, adults should be providing instruction that includes repeated and monitored oral reading. Teachers and parents must model fluent reading for students by reading aloud to them daily and ask students to read text aloud. It is important to start with texts that are relatively short and contain words the students can successfully decode. This practice should include a variety of texts such as stories, nonfiction and poetry, and it should use a variety of ways to practice oral reading, such as student-adult reading, choral (or unison) reading, tape-assisted reading, partner (or buddy) reading and reader’s theatre. (Westberg, et al., 2006) Click here to explore recommending readings for Stage 2.

Stage 3: Reading for Learning the New: 9 to 13 Years OldIn Stage 3, reading is used to learn new ideas, to gain new knowledge, to experience new feelings, to learn new attitudes, generally from one or two points of view. There is a significant emphasis placed on reading to learn, and writing for diverse purposes. There is time spent balancing the consolidating of constrained skills (spelling, grammar, fluency) whilst providing ample opportunities to explore topics through reading, writing, speaking, listening & viewing. By this time, the learner has transitioned to a stage where he or she is expected to learn from their reading. Adults should teach specific comprehension strategies, such as comprehension monitoring, using graphic and semantic organisers, answering questions, generating questions, recognising textual structures, summarising, and identifying main ideas and important details. (Westberg, et al., 2006) Click here to explore recommending readings for Stage 3.

Stage 4: Synthesising, Critiquing & Applying Perspective: 13 to 17 Years OldIn Stage 4, learners are reading widely from a broad range of complex materials, both expository and narrative, and are asked to apply a variety of viewpoints. Learners are required to access, retain, critique and apply knowledge and concepts. Learners are consolidating general reading, writing and learning strategies whilst being required to develop more sophisticated disciplinary knowledge and perspectives. These adolescent learners deserve content area teachers who provide instruction in the multiple literacy strategies needed to meet the demands of the specific discipline. In these areas, adolescents deserve access to and instruction with multimodal as well as traditional print sources. (International Reading Association, 2012). Click here to explore recommending readings for Stage 4.

We hope the newly added lists are helpful. If you would like to provide any recommendations or send us a comment, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@theliteracybug.com or use the comment box/link below.

References in this blog entry
International Reading Association. (2012). Adolescent Literacy: a position statement of the International Reading Association. Newark, DE.

Westberg, L., McShane, S., & Smith, L. (2006). Verizon Life Span Literacy Matrix: Relevant Outcomes , Measures and Research-based Practices and Strategies. Washington D.C.

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I have mentioned it before and it is a concept that I will return to again and again; the issue of equality in opportunity to learn. Today, I thought I’d spend some time reflecting on a short story I once wrote that relates directly to the main topic: considering whether all learners have equal opportunity to learn and succeed.

Photo by Ahlapot/iStock / Getty Images

You won’t have a chance to read the actual story. It is stored somewhere so safe that the best minds are yet to uncover it. You must instead rely upon my synopsis. As far as the setting, the story takes place in inner city San Diego in the late 1990s. It is a low socio-economic community with issues common to the time: drugs, gangs, racial tensions and the working poor. I was teaching at a high school in the community when I wrote the story.

The story itself is an appropriation of “Eveline” by James Joyce. In Joyce’s tale, the main character - Eveline - is a young woman who is sitting forlornly in front of a dilapidated house in a crowded street in Dublin. Her mother has passed away, and she left behind a baby girl, Eveline’s sister. Eveline’s brothers have moved out of home, her father is a drunkard, and she is now responsible for raising her baby sister whilst working part-time and avoiding her father’s abuse. Her opportunities are fairly limited by poverty, circumstance and the expectations placed on a woman of the times (early 1900s).

In the story, Eveline is approached by a “fellow” who confesses his love for her, and promises to take her away from this misery and start a new life overseas. We might expect her to rush towards this door of apparent freedom, but she doesn’t. At the critical moment where she is to board a ship bound for the New World, she stands frozen on the docks and she watches the fellow leave her behind. We don’t know if she stays due to a promise she made to her mother - "to hold the house together" - or her fear that she would face another type of servitude as a wife in a foreign land. Eveline’s opportunities are severely limited by complex factors, which serve to paralyse her.

In my appropriation - “Jinicia Sings the Blues” - my main character - Jinicia - is a young African American women - aged 18 or so - leaning on a railing outside her house, watching her younger brother deftly navigate a local game of street soccer. Inside the house, Jinicia’s baby sister is asleep. Her dedicated father is at work, and he works three jobs just to pay the bills. Her mother left the family with another man. And her older brother was shot dead in a gangland dispute a couple years ago. Meanwhile, Jinicia watches her younger, talented brother with a mixture of pride, envy and pity. He is good at school, good at sport and is a born leader. She wants him to dribble the ball down the block and out of the neighbourhood and never look back. She is afraid that the community will eventually swallow him up in some minimum wage job or worse, and that the dream of a scholarship to college will be left unrealised. Jinicia is a clever young woman who wavers between hope and fear, and can’t help battle a deep cynicism. The story ends as she walks back into the house to cradle her waking sister, who she also looks upon with both love and trepidation.

At one stage, I entertained the thought of extending the story. I thought of introducing a character from the other side of the tracks, or across the bridge in the wealthy peninsular community of Coronado. I imagined Jinicia reflecting on the differences in the two worlds. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself from thinking, “would my older brother still be alive if we could have bailed him out of his trouble? would I even worry about my younger brother if our circumstances were different?”

I think the story cuts right to the heart of the Opportunity to Learn issue. Whilst the story might not be about literacy, it engages with an issue raised by Donaldo Macedo, “reading specialists … who have made technical advancement in the field of reading … [must] make linkages between their self-contained technical reading methods and the social and political realities that generate unacceptably high failure reading rates among certain groups of students.” (Macedo, 2001, pg xiii)

If the components of reading development are known (National Reading Panel and others), why is it that success rates are directly linked to differences in socio-economic factors and not to differences in cognitive functioning or personal motivation? (Chiu, McBride-Chang & Lin, 2012) We need to know, “the sociological processes which control the way the developing child relates himself to his environment. It requires an understanding of how certain areas of experience are differentiated, made specific and stabilised … What seems to be needed is the development of a theory of social learning which would indicate what in the environment is available for learning, the conditions of learning, the constraints on subsequent learning, and the major reinforcing process.” (Bernstein, 1964, pg. 55)

As stated by James Paul Gee, “caring about [students’] rights means caring … about the trajectories of learners as they develop … as part of communities of practice, engaged in mind, body, and culture, and not just as repositories of skills, facts, and information.” (2008, pg 105) We must be ever diligent on issues of equity, both in enhancing opportunities and respecting diversity. We must be conscious of the socioeconomic, motivational and neurocognitive factors that are brought to bear on learning. We must be mindful of the impacts of poverty, discrimination and instability. The conditions for success are multifaceted, long and intricate.

References

Bernstein, B. (1964). Elaborated and Restricted Codes: Their Social Origins and Some Consequences. American Anthropologist, 66(6_PART2), 55–69.

Chiu, M. M., McBride-Chang, C., & Lin, D. (2012). Ecological, psychological, and cognitive components of reading difficulties: testing the component model of reading in fourth graders across 38 countries. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45(5), 391–405.

Gee, J. P. (2008). A sociocultural perspective on opportunity to learn. In P. Moss, D. Pullin, J. P. Gee, E. Haertel, & L. Young (Eds.), Assessment, equity, and opportunity to learn (pp. 76 – 108). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Macedo, D. (2001). Foreword. In P. Freire (Ed.), Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy and civic courage (pp. xi – xxxii). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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We all seem to agree that everyone deserves a high quality education; however, I anticipate that there would some disagreement as to what a quality education might consist of.

To be educated is to be equipped with certain knowledge, skills and attributes to navigate/shape/explore/question/participate in one's world, whatever that world is or will be.

Education involves doing, imagining, connecting, collaborating, understanding, accomplishing, discovering, becoming and more.

For a child in a refugee camp or - worse - a detention camp, he or she may become proficient in the skills that are taught within the confines of a cramped classroom or in the shade of a tree, but is this child receiving an education? Is the child discovering the mysteries of physics, the art of the humanities, the conundrums of civic society, the collected wisdom and more. Whilst I do not want to devalue the valiant efforts of educators in the camps (something with which I am all too familiar), I dream of greater opportunities for this child, wherever his or her path may lead.

What does an education mean to you? How is an education denied a life denied?

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I think I have driven myself mad on the topic of literacy. I do not exaggerate. The opening statement is not meant to be a rhetorical device. I mean, I just completed a sizeable pile of notes, diagram and essays which all centre around the following two questions:

• What is the sequence of skills developed across the stages of literacy development? and
• How do we as policy makers, teachers, parents, and community members arrange the right instruction at the right time with the right resources so learners are developing toward rich, diverse literacy practices?

I've also recently finished an online course with eminent literacy academic Catherine Snow, which was inspiring and insightful as well as being challenging for all participants.

So ... every diagram, lesson, assessment and lecture that I view, read or write appears to help resolve the above questions from me, yet at the same time these resolutions do not immediately impact on the lives of learners that I have in the forefront of my mind: the refugee children and indigenous children which I regularly have come into contact with. What we require are daily activities of challenging learning with high support that are based on a keen understanding of the learner’s developmental trajectory.

However, this is easier said than done. As I once read (Spark, 2003), “change is technically simple and socially complex”. Doesn’t that hit the proverbial nail on the head!

So I need to remind myself of something I wrote in the essay entitled Never forget language and literacy are learned with steady guidance from others. In that essay, I told myself that there are no silver bullets, there are no quick fixes and there are no jumping the queue when it comes to the gradual development of strong language, literacy and learning practices. A learner requires instruction that is based on quality teaching with quality resources in quality spaces through quality relationships with a clear understanding of the learner’s needs. Easy! Right?

There is a certain degree of pressure to gain skills in a timely manner. And learners benefit from the time and enabling environments to gain a command of the salient features of language to build confidence in certain familiar uses of language, literacy and also numeracy before being faced with more advanced forms, content and uses. Learning language and literacy are technical achievements. Sure! Right?

But at the same time, Stanley Cavell reminds us that this learning is initially grounded in the compulsion to know and to communicate. First, he stated, ”[we] forget that we learn language and learn the world together” (Cavell, 1969, pg 19). Second, he stated “the pupil must want to go on alone in taking language to the world, and that what is said must be worth saying [and writing], have a point (warning, informing, amusing, promising, questioning, chastising, counting, insisting, beseeching, and so on) … If it is part of teaching to undertake to validate these measures of interest, then it would be quite as if teaching must, as it were, undertake to show a reason for speaking [writing and reading] at all.” (Cavell, 2005, pg 115)

So … these budding learners need to become skilled, practiced, knowledgable, capable, curious, trusting and confident regardless of their age. This goal is technically simple and socially complex. Or as Donaldo Macedo (2001) wrote, “reading specialists … who have made technical advancement in the field of reading … [must] make linkages between their self-contained technical reading methods and the social and political realities that generate unacceptably high failure reading rates among certain groups of students.” (pg xiii)

There are no quick fixes. There are no easy solutions. What is the way forward from here?

References

Cavell, S. (1969). Must We Mean What We Say?. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Cavell, S. (2005). Philosophy the day after tomorrow. In Philosophy the day after tomorrow (pp. 111 – 131). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Macedo, D. (2001) Foreword. In P. Freire, Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy and civic courage (pp. xi - xxxii). Maryland’s: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Sparks, D. (2003). Interview with Michael Fullan: Change agent. Journal of Staff Development, 24(1), 55-58.

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How can one explain the expression, transmit one’s comprehension? Ask yourself: How does one lead anyone to the comprehension of a poem or of a theme? The answer to this tells us how meaning is explained here. Let’s simplify language to the declarative statement that has the capacity to convey unambiguously. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #533)

Reading is not reading if it does not lead to comprehension. Otherwise, it would be known as “word calling”. With that premise, I launch into a brief entry about reading comprehension. It is not comprehensive. Nor is it very technical. Instead, it is a few, common ideas that have been hanging around my head for some time. To help organise my thoughts, I have set out to dispel a few myths that I have heard expressed from time to time:

• Myth #1: Once one solves issues of decoding and the reader is fluent, then comprehension should take care of itself.
• Answer #1: Whilst automaticity and fluency does facilitate meaningful comprehension, learners need ample practice and instruction in order to process, interpret, and respond to the information presented in a texts. Developing readers also need to build a diverse portfolio of knowledge, interests, reading experiences and vocabulary to make sense of what is read.
• Myth #2: You cannot teach comprehension, because you cannot teach thinking. Someone either understands something or he doesn’t.
• Answer #2: Cannot teach someone to think? You have got to be kidding! We teach people to think all the time. We direct people’s attention to significant details. We encourage individuals to imagine. We ask people to draw connections between observations and concepts being learned. We present pictures to people so that we can persuade and inform. Of course we can teach comprehension.
• Myth #3: Comprehension is a singular skill that one completes by oneself.

• Answer #3: To comprehend requires the orchestration of a wide range of skills, whether this involves visualisation, summation, interpretation, comparison, application, etc. Over time, learners are taught to deploy a range of techniques in order to focus on what they read and to make sense of what they read. All of these techniques may not have been made explicit, but this does not mean that they do not exist, that they should not be taught and that they do not become more complex over time.

• Myth #4: Reading comprehension is a general skill. If one is a good reader, then one can read and understand just about everything.

• Answer #4: No! It may appear that a good reader can read anything (as long as the reader can control his or her reading diet). Most of us can’t necessarily choose our reading diet. The ability to read a novel is different than the ability to read legislation or philosophy or a science textbook or a government policy or an electricity bill. Furthermore, our ability to comprehend a given text will be impacted by our background knowledge, our experiences, our context, our educational experiences, our language and our motivation. A physicist might devour Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman. For the novice, is it so easy? Perhaps not.

We become better readers by reading, discussing, re-reading and thinking reflectively and critically. In the context of books, we explore new words, new knowledge, new ideas, new perspectives and more. What we read and how we read are things that change across the lifespan. Please enjoy what you read and explore!

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Even though we are referring to this as the fourth episode of the podcast, it is the first one under the name The Literacy Bug. Originally, in its previous form, the podcast applied Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to the domain of literacy. Since then, the podcast and its associated website (theliteracybug.com) have evolved into something a little less esoteric and a lot more practical; we explore everyday issues pertaining to literacy teaching and learning. Without further ado, we launch into the first official podcast under the name The Literacy Bug. The topic is assessment. I would like to demonstrate how proper assessment practices are essential for effective teaching and learning, because they contribute to targeted, equitable instruction. We hope this is the beginning of many more episodes to come. (theliteracybug.com)

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Wow! It has been far too long since the last update to The Literacy Bug's Journal. I dare not ask when the last update was. Despite the long silence - or perhaps to explain it - we have some significant updates to share with you.

Firstly, a new section has been added to the site, and it is called Developing.In this section, you will find advice on how to help students grow in the various skills that underpin literacy development, such as oral language, phonological awareness, fluency, comprehension and more. At the moment, there is only one page in the new section, and it is called Developing Constrained Skills, which are things like print awareness, phonemic awareness, decoding and spelling. Follow this link to find out more ...

There is also a new page in the Planning section: Using Quality Assessment Practices. Effective instruction is creative, challenging and targeted. This is why strong assessment practices before, during and at the end of teaching cycles are key to informed educational practices. We believe the new page is an essential addition to the site, and it complements the Balancing Instruction and Stages of Development pages very well. Check it out!

Regular visitors will notice that a couple pages from the Essays section have made their way into the Planning folder. They are An Initial Framework for Literacy Instruction and Literacy Development Requires Steady Guidance. Explore these old favourites when you have a chance. An old blog entry has also made its way into the folder: Key Questions to Guide Instruction. Last but not least, two related pages have been updated and we are very happy with the results: Establishing (Literacy) Practices and Why Do We Do What We Do?.

All in all, there is much to explore at The Literacy Bug (and I haven't even mentioned updates to the Recommended Readings and the Recommended Links pages). We hope you enjoy all the new stuff. Please explore!

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There is the old phrase, “everything I needed to know I learnt in kindergarten.” I think this also applies to the themes that weave amongst the earliest books encountered at a young age. Aren’t the vivid animal stories captured in engaging picture books the mere precursors to the worlds of Kipling which could be the precursor to Thoreau’s Walden, which might inspire one to leap into the polemics of Michael Pollan and beyond? Might the story of friendship in Mac The Apple pave the way for The Bridge to Terabithia and Harry Potter and - the more complicated - Great Gatsby? 

We run the risk of treating themes and topic areas as secondary in the earliest encounters with story. This would be a mistake.

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We've added a page of links that we recommend. We have only included links that provide authoritative, reliable, useful, creative and/or engaging resources and perspectives on language, literacy and learning. Some are hosted by reputable literacy organisations, such as the International Literacy Association, the National Center for Family Literacy and the Primary English Teachers Association of Australia. Please explore widely and enjoy! We hope this list will grow over time, so visit regularly and follow the site's journal where we will announce updates. 

If you have any suggested links that we should consider adding to the site, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The following are a few examples: Click here for the full list.

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I thought I would share CTELL'S 12 PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE LITERACY INSTRUCTION. My eyes scanned over them recently, and it reminded me of their use. (The list can also be found at the Literacy Glossary)

CTELL (Case Technologies to Enhance Literacy Learning) [2004] provides a list of the twelve principles of effective literacy learning that complement those included in the essential pillars for literacy development. CTELL's list include the following:

1. Connecting literacy instruction with the linguistic, cultural, home backgrounds of the learner:
2. Developing emergent literacy skills, behaviours and attitudes;
3. Phonemic awareness instruction;
4. Decoding instruction;
5. Comprehension instruction;
6. Independent reading;
7. Fluency instruction;
8. Integrating reading and writing activities to enhance the learning of both;
9. Encouraging enthusiasm for reading and writing;
10. Using technology wisely with early literacy development;
11. Assessing early and providing appropriate instructional intervention; and
12. Developing teachers’ knowledge, analytical skills and abilities to orchestrate the many facets of language, literacy and learning.
13. Henry, L. A., Castek, J., Roberts, L., Coiro, J., & Leu, D. J. (2004). Case technologies to enhance literacy learning: A new model for early literacy teacher preparation. Knowledge Quest, 33(2), 26-29.

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The following are elements that contribute to equality in the opportunity to learn. In an equitable system, all students would have access to:

• Engaged time;
• Quality teaching, resources and environments;
• Safe environments which students are free from harm and discrimination and that their basic needs are met;
• The material, cultural and economic means to achieve;
• Opportunities to practice and to extend practices;
• High expectations that are shared between the school and the home contexts;
• Suitable collaboration between the home and school contexts as well as with the broader community context;
• Schools and communities which are sensitive to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the student population, particularly when a minority of learners come to classrooms with a home language that is not used as the language of instruction;
• Instruction which is suitable to the learners’ stages of development, and learners have been given strategic skills that help them engage in the current and subsequent stages of learning;
• Learning environment which facilitate high challenge/high support instruction so that diverse students can make suitable and competitive progress;
• Special accommodations that have been made to meet the specific learning needs of all students;
• Content which is engaging, relevant, purposeful and that will build on prior knowledge and that will be consistent with current ways of knowing and be applicable to everyday problem-solving.
• An education that responds to individual affinities/talents so learners are able to capitalise on these interests and learning trajectories;
• Effective support in managing transitions between schooling/learning contexts;.
• Every opportunity to achieve, so that children's resilience is being developed and their motivation is fostered;
• Institutions and society that seek to minimise and mitigate the impacts of social and economic disadvantage; and
• People and institutions who keep “a finger on the pulse” of all students at all times. Progress is monitored, opportunities are made available, and extra support is facilitated, where required.

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"[Engaged reading] is a merger of motivation and thoughtfulness. Engaged readers seek to understand … [They] are mastery oriented and teachers create contexts for engagement when they provide prominent knowledge goals; real-world connections to reading; and meaningful choices about what, when and how to read.” (Guthrie, 2001)

As literacy teachers, we know that literacy development requires the strengthening of word recognition skills, building of vocabulary; guided reading; guided writing; the shaping of discourse (or oral language); the development of knowledge; the establishment of practices and the fostering of literate identities. This occurs in multiple contexts with others for various purposes across time through coherent and developmental instruction, passionate and visionary teachers, quality materials and resources, and a deep respect for the learners’ cultures, contexts and experiences. We want students to learn, be and become through teaching that is developmentally sensitive, culturally appropriate and aspirational in environments which are safe, secure and free from discrimination and inequity.

We must ensure that there is quality instruction at all levels using quality resources in quality environments through quality relationships with quality opportunities that are carried out in a supportive form of life in that complex stream of living.

In relation to the practicalities of language and literacy development, we encourage instructors, tutors and parents to use simple language to describe best practice. In the end, the best teacher should:

1. talk regularly with learners about things for both their oral language development and their knowledge development;
2. read to learners, read with learners, and help learners read on their own;
3. write for learners (shared & interactive writing), write with learners (joint construction), and help learners write on their own;
4. help learners understand phonics, letters, words, and grammar;
5. help them learn about the world and about themselves; and
6. help learners be active in ways that the use language and literacy as tools for understanding, expression and action (Pinnell & Fountas, 1997).

REFRENCES* Guthrie, J. T. (2001). Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading. Reading Online, 4(8). Retrieved from http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/guthrie/ * Pinnell, G. S., & Fountas, I. C. (1997). Help America Read: A Handbook for Volunteers. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

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"In becoming literate, one must acquire skills that are only remotely related to print as well as those that are directly related." (Snow, et al, 1991, p. 5)

Catherine Snow's observation is particularly relevant to managing balanced literacy instruction. In addition to attending to comprehension skills, compositional skills and print-based skills (e.g. phonemic awareness, spelling skills, fluency, etc), such instruction must take into account the learning of the language itself; the situations in which we speak, listen, read and write; what we are actually trying to learn (e.g. cooking, gardening, football, etc); and the desires, needs, preferences, relationships, experiences and knowledge that we bring to the learning.

"[We] forget that we learn language and learn the world together" (Cavell, 1969, pg 19).

Click the link below to read the full entry.

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The time has come! We enthusiastically welcome you to something we have been anticipating for some time … the launch for The Literacy Bug. So … please … say “HELLO” to Ludwig, a little bug who always has his head in a book.

Even though this launch comes with a fair amount of celebration, I must admit that it also comes with a teeny, tiny bit of sadness … not much … just a small morsel of it. I am compelled to remind myself that “we are NOT saying goodbye to Wittgenstein on Literacy or Wittgenstein on Learning.” The core spirit of the old name(s) will remain. It is not possible to severe the site’s deep ties to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. After all, Wittgenstein was deeply fascinated by the diverse ways that language and literacy are used between people in the general course of living, imagining, conceptualising, doing, knowing, speculating, calculating, relating, etc. Perhaps the change of name is just a clever ploy and the discussion will go on as usual. To a certain extent, I think it will.

Nevertheless, exciting possibilities lay ahead. I look forward to expanding the literacy resources available on the site: links to fantastic online resource, lesson plans and ideas, great books for all ages and interests, and tips and tricks to help readers and writers as well as teachers and students. While I will miss having a little corner of the Internet carved out explicitly for the discussion of a certain application of Wittgenstein’s manner of approaching language, I couldn't honestly continue to act under the title Wittgenstein on Literacy/Learning when the conversation was moving more and more into a direct and contemporary discussion of literacy learning and instruction. So I must let the original (2007) premise of website evolve into what we have now and will have in the future.

The truth of the matter is this ... I may - in fact - be allowed to be more Wittgensteinian (without feeling the need to explicitly link observations to Wittgenstein). I may be freed to discuss a range of literature (children’s, young adult and more) with a keen eye on how readers and authors co-construct meaning based on certain shared assumptions. I may be better positioned to marvel at the developmental leaps that learners make as they grow through the various stages of literacy learning. I may be better able to provoke visitors to reconsider how our environments, practices, relationships and politics influence the potential for learners to catch the literacy bug and - thereby - take charge of their intellectual journey.

In the end, literacy is wide ranging phenomenon. What it means to a two year old and a four year old is different to what it means for a ten year old, a sixteen year old, a twenty year old, a thirty-five year old, a fifty year old and more. What it means now is different than what it meant thirty years ago and what it will mean in forty years time. The shape of literacy practice in urban Chicago is different to the role it plays in remote Australia which is different to the texts, contexts and traditions encountered by present-day youth in Cairo. That said, there is the old saying ... the more thing change, the more they remain the same.

Nevertheless, I am getting well ahead of myself. Welcome to The Literacy Bug … a little creature with the capacity to fly, burrow, nest, transform, whiz about and inspire. Please visit the new home page for a fresh discussion of the road ahead and subscribe to receive regular updates. And whilst you are here, stop by the site’s many familiar places: the themed notes, the key essays, the teaching principles, the reading lists and the glossaries. Welcome! Explore and enjoy!

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In an initial journal entry and past discussions, we identified that full literacy development required the parallel development of skills in the following areas:

1. Robust development of oral language in language-rich and literacy-rich environments;
2. Clear, systematic and intensive development of phonemic awareness;
3. Further systematic and progressive development of alphabetic skills, including phonics, spelling and morphology;
4. Wide ranging support of vocabulary development from a very young age ;
5. Expert utilisation of read-alouds;
6. Skilled orchestration of language experiences;
7. Substantial time set aside for fluency practice (include time for independent reading);
8. Attention to ultimate goal of reading instruction: comprehension; and
9. Apprenticeship into the craft of composition; and
10. Ongoing and deepening construction of knowledge (the real goal of learning).

In a subsequent entry, we identified research-based techniques and activities that were found to build competencies in each area. At the end of that entry, we mentioned that we would soon share a selection of readings (e.g. journal articles and books) which explore instructional practices and principles in greater details. This entry fulfils this promise. Follow the "Read More" link for the list of recommended readings.

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The following are types of focal learning areas:1. Word study (including early language and beginning vocabulary development) 2. Vocabulary development 3. Early composition (creating sentences, usually based on some stimulus) 4. Reading practice (for fluency with some comprehension) 5. Reading practice to deploy strategies 6. Close comprehensive reading (and responding) 7. Reading to respond (focus on text type) 8. Writing workshops (with portfolio development and mini-lessons) 9. Writing for a purpose (to real audiences) 10. Facilitating oral language 11. Emphasising oral language in learning 12. Developing skills in specific spoken discourses, genres, contexts and/or registers 13. Academic/disciplinary literacies 14. Anchored learning (instruction) 15. Functional literacy

There following skills areas are developed within and across the above sequences:* language skills; * literacy skills; * knowledge development; * learning skills (how do I learn? how/why do I remember something? how do I defer gratification?, how do I maintain focus?); * social and emotional qualities (including trust, confidence and self-concept); * schemas, routines, habits and practices; * independence and resilience; * interests, identities, expertise and careers; * acumen and awareness of talents/specialisation * deliberation, familiarity and situated cognition (how to attack and solve problems in context? how do I deploy this strategy in context? and to what effect?); * critical thinking; and * cultural and political awareness

We must be mindful of:* time allocated to learning; * the richness of the learning spaces/resources; * the organisation of learning; * the appropriateness and challenging nature of the content; * the available of material conditions and opportunities to practice; and * issue affecting trust, power and access.

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Once again, for those who may be curious about the things I have been reading as of late, the following is a list of articles and books that I have scoured in the past few weeks. Regular visitors might notice that there has been a significant focus on all-things-literacy-related, which is another indication of the impending launch of The Literacy Bug website.

• Allington, R. L. (2002). What I’ve Learned about Effective Reading Instruction from a Decade of Studying Exemplary Elementary Classroom Teachers. The Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 740–747. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20440246
• Allington, R. L. (2006). Fluency: Still waiting after all these years. What research has to say about fluency instruction, 94-105.
• Bear, S., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2014). Words their way: word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th edition). Essex: Pearson.
• Blackwell-Bullock, R., Invernizzi, M., Drake, E. A., & Howell, J. L. (2009). Concept of Word in text: an integral literacy skill. Reading In Virginia, 31, 30–35.
• Brandone, A. C., Salkind, S. J., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2006). Language development. In G. G. Bear & K. M. Minke (Eds.), Children’s needs III: development, prevention, and intervention. (pp. 499–514). Washington D.C.: National Association of School Psychologists. Retrieved from http://udel.edu/~roberta/pdfs/Bear chaptBrandone.pdf
• Christ, T., Wang, X. C., & Chiu, M. M. (2011). Using story dictation to support young children’s vocabulary development: Outcomes and process. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26(1), 30–41.
• Coyne, M. D., Capozzoli-Oldham, A. & Simmons, D. C. (2012). Vocabulary instruction for young children at risk of reading difficulties: teaching word meanings during shared storybook readings. In E. J. Kame’enui & J. F. Baumann, Vocabulary instruction: research to practice (2nd edition). New York: Guilford Press.
• Fisher, D., Frey, N. & Lapp, N. (2011). What the research says about intentional instruction. In S. J. Samuels & A. E. Farstrup (Eds), What research has to say about reading instruction(4th edition). (pp. 359 - 378). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
• Flanigan, K. (2007). A concept of word in text: A pivotal event in early reading acquisition. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(1), 37–70. doi:10.1080/10862960709336757
• Flanigan, K., Hayes, L., Templeton, S., Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., & Johnston, F. (2011). Words their way with struggling readers: word study for reading, vocabulary, and spelling instruction, grades 4 - 12. Boston: Pearsons.
• Goldman, S. R., & Lee, C. D. (2014). Text complexity: state of the art and the conundrums it raises. The Elementary School Journal, 115(2), 290–300. doi:10.1163/_afco_asc_2291
• Hawkins, M. R. (2004). Researching English Language and Literacy Development in Schools. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 14–25. doi:10.3102/0013189X033003014
• Hiebert, E. H., & Pearson, D. P. (2014). Understanding text complexity: introduction to the special issue. The Elementary School Journal, 115(2), 153–160. doi:10.1163/_afco_asc_2291
• Hoffman, J., Sailors, M., Duffy, G., & Beretvas, S. N. (2004). The effective elementary classroom literacy environment: examining the validity of the TEX-IN3 observation system. Journal of Literacy Research, 36(3), 303–334. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3603_3
• Hsueh-chao, M. H., & Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403–430.
• Justice, L. M. (2006). Evidence-based practice, response to intervention, and the prevention of reading difficulties. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 37(4), 284–297. doi:10.1044/0161-1461(2006/033)
• Justice, L. M., Mashburn, A., Hamre, B., & Pianta, R. (2008). Quality of Language and Literacy Instruction in Preschool Classrooms Serving At-Risk Pupils. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(1), 51–68. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2007.09.004
• Kame’enui, E. J. & Baumann, J. F. (2012). Vocabulary instruction: research to practice (2nd edition). New York: Guilford Press.
• Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2007). Breaking down words to build meaning: morphology, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in the urban classroom. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 134–144. doi:10.1598/RT.61.2.3
• Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2011). Morphing into adolescents: active word learning for English-Language Learners and their classmates in middle school. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(1), 47–56. doi:10.1598/JA
• Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 5(11), 831–43. doi:10.1038/nrn1533
• Kuhn, M. R., & Stahl, S. A. (2003). Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 3–21. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.95.1.3
• Leslie, L. & Caldwell, J. S. (2010). Qualitative Reading Inventory (5th edition). Boston: Pearson.
• Martin, M., Fergus, E., & Noguera, P. (2010). Responding to the needs of the whole child: a case study of a high-performing elementary school for immigrant children. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 26(3), 195–222. doi:10.1080/10573561003769582
• McGee, L. M, & Dail, A. R. (2010). Phonemic awareness instruction in preschool: research implications and lessons learned from Early Reading First. In M.C. McKenna, S. Walpole, & K. Conradi (Eds) Promoting early reading: research, resources and best practices. New York: Guilford Press.
• McGinty, A. S. & Justice, L. M. (2010). Language facilitation in the preschool classroom: rationale, goals and strategies. In M.C. McKenna, S. Walpole, & K. Conradi (Eds) Promoting early reading: research, resources and best practices. New York: Guilford Press.
• McIntyre, E., & Hulan, N. (2013). Research-Based, Culturally Responsive Reading Practice in Elementary Classrooms: A Yearlong Study. Literacy Research and Instruction, 52(1), 28–51. doi:10.1080/19388071.2012.737409
• McIntyre, E., Hulan, N., & Layne, V. (2011). Reading Instruction for Diverse Classrooms: Research-Based, Culturally Responsive Practice. New York: Guilford Press.
• McKenna, M. C. & Stahl, K. A (2009). Assessment for reading instruction (2nd edition). New York: Guilford Press.
• McKenna, M. C., Walpole, S., & Conradi, K. (2010). Promoting early reading: research, resources and best practices. New York: Guilford Press.
• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. (2014). Speech and Language Developmental Milestones [NIDCD Health Information]. Bethesda, MD. Retrieved from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/pages/speechandlanguage.aspx
• National Reading Panel (NRP). (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence- based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
• Olson, C. B. (2010). The Reading/Writing Connection: strategies for teaching and learning in the secondary classroom (3rd Edition). Boston: Pearson.
• RAND Reading Study Group (2002). Reading for understanding: toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Reading Education.
• Schmitt, N., Jiang, X., & Grabe, W. (2011). The percentage of words known in a text and reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 95(1), 26–43. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01146.x
• Stahl, K. A. D., & Bravo, M. A. (2010). Contemporary classroom vocabulary assessment for content areas. The Reading Teacher, 63(7), 566–578. doi:10.1598/RT.63.7.4
• Stahl, K. A & McKenna, M. C. (2013). Reading assessment in an RTI framework. New York: Guilford Press.
• Taylor, T. J. (2013). Calibrating the child for language: Meredith Williams on a Wittgensteinian approach to language socialization. Language Sciences, 40, 308-320.
• Tyner, B. B. (2009). Small-group reading instruction: a differentiated teaching model for beginning and struggling readers (2nd edition). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
• Tyner, B. B. & Green, S. E. (2012). Small-group reading instruction: differentiated teaching models for intermediate readers, grades 3-8 (2nd edition). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
• Vaughn, M., & Parsons, S. A. (2013). Adaptive Teachers as Innovators: Instructional Adaptions Opening Spaces for Enhanced Literacy Learning. Language Arts, 91(2), 82–93.
• Walpole, S., Justice, L. M., & Invernizzi, M. a. (2004). Closing the Gap Between Research and Practice: Case Study of School-Wide Literacy Reform. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 20(3), 261–283. doi:10.1080/10573560490429078
• Walpole, S. & McKenna, M. C. (2007). Differentiated reading instruction: strategies for the primary grades. New York: Guilford Press.
• Wolfersberger, M., Reutzel, D. R., Sudweeks, R., & Fawson, P. (2004). Developing and validating the Classroom Literacy Environmental Profile (CLEP): a tool for examining the “print richness” of early childhood and elementary classrooms. Journal of Literacy Research, 36(2), 211–272. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3602_4
• Zucker, T. A. & Landry, S. H. (2010). Improving the quality of preschool read-alouds: professional development and coaching that targets book-reading practices. In M.C. McKenna, S. Walpole, & K. Conradi (Eds) Promoting early reading: research, resources and best practices. New York: Guilford Press.

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On the subject of the value of reading, I can sum up the importance of language and literacy in three words: independence, control, and participation. A person who speaks on his or her own behalf and who is a skilled reader and writer can independently advocate for him- or herself and navigate his or her own learning. And since literacy is a constructive skill (as Wittgenstein's picture theory suggests), the individual learns ways to control and critically reflect on experience.  And the development of language and literacy skills amongst a community of practice allows one to participate in that group, to contribute to that group and to find a valued identity therein.

Language, literacy and knowledge allows one to shape the world around one and they allow for one's perception of the world to be shaped by others. Literacy allows one to access information; construct and organise knowledge; participate in a community of practitioners; adopt the many ways of being readers and writers; and persuade (and be persuaded), inform (and be informed), entertain (and be entertained) … ponder, explore, speculate upon, confirm and represent experience.  

“Learning to read is a developmental process that takes place over time, involves qualitatively different (but perhaps overlapping) phases, and may break down at different points due to the failure to acquire the core skills that underlie the development of literacy (Ehri, 2005; Pressley, 2006; Snow & Juel, 2005; Tunmer & Nicolson, 2011).

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Continuing on from the previous journal entry, the following presents key “activities” that contribute to the development of the core areas of language & literacy development. The activities are mentioned but not defined. An elaboration of the teaching and learning practices will be presented in the future.

ORAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT - Language Comprehension - The Beginnings of Literacy1. Identifying target language 2. Modelling & emphasising the target 3. Interpreting & recasting expressions 4. Extending contributions 5. Utilising pause-prompt-praise 6. Using cues/prompts (visual/tactile/etc) 7. Facilitating barrier activities 8. Employing oral cloze procedures 9. Providing choices and other opportunities to extend language 10. Utilising links to first language for English language learners 11. Overall ... shaping discourse

PHONEMIC AWARENESS - Analysing Known Language - Becoming "Word Aware"1. Clapping syllables (PA) 2. Multi-sensory phonemic awareness / puppet play (PA) 3. Elkonin boxes / sound sticks (PA) 4. Picture sorting / picture blending / picture segmenting (PA) 5. Onset & rime identification (PA) 6. Phoneme isolation & phoneme blending (PA) 7. Phoneme deletion (PA) 8. Phoneme journals / phoneme walls / picture walls 9. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

PHONICS/SPELLING SEQUENCE - Codifying Language1. Alphabet books / alphabet walls 2. Multi-sensory handwriting practice 3. Picture sorting / picture blending / picture segmenting (PA) 4. Elkonin boxes / sound sticks / Say-It-And-Move-It (PA) 5. Spelling journals / phoneme walls / rule records 6. Word sorts (closed / open) (timed / untimed) 7. Word scrambles 8. Word ladders 9. Word hunts (identifying sounds in texts) 10. Make a word (morphological analysis) 11. Use the Words You Know 12. High frequency words / sight words 13. Invented spelling / tracking spelling skills 14. Games (e.g. memory, bingo, board games) 15. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT - Having Something to Talk With1. Incidental learning (see Oral Language Development) 2. Learning from read alouds (see Read Alouds) 3. Personal glossaries / word banks / word walls 4. Word maps / four square maps / power maps 5. Semantic maps (and other brainstorming techniques) 6. Graphic organisers (hanging diagrams, flow charts, Venn diagrams, etc) 7. Clines, timelines and scales 8. Semantic feature analysis 9. Word analysis / morphological analysis 10. Analysis of dictionary definitions and thesaurus entries 11. Games (e.g. memory, bingo, board games) 12. Cloze procedures 13. Possible sentences / use in context / extended discussions 14. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

READ ALOUDS - Encountering Literacy in Rich, Meaningful Ways1. (Where possible) Link Read-Alouds that take advantage of prior knowledge and shared experiences 2. (Where possible) Utilise links to first language for English language learners 3. Read alouds should be a vehicle to (a) address comprehension-related instructions and support vocabulary, (b) target code-related instruction, (c) support oral language and early writing (e.g. path rough story extensions), and (d) be a catalyst to create a supportive book-reading environment. (Zucker & Landry, 2010) 4. (For meaningful reading) Link read aloud questions to the QARS Techniques (Raphael & Au, 2005) 5. (For meaningful reading) Include read aloud questions that prompt readers to summarise, paraphrase, clarify, identify, interpret, predict, and express opinions (Palinesar, 1987) 6. (For picture books) take advantage of vivid, engaging "picture walks" to build a rich platform for shared, guided reading. 7. Focus on bringing the text to life, exploring rich vocabulary (see vocabulary section), engaging in interpretive questioning, and encouraging enthusiastic shared reading. 8. Encourage post-reading comprehension and composition activities, such as summarisng, retelling, analysing, appropriating, representing and/or responding to the text. 9. Encouraging post-reading word and vocabulary studies.

LANGUAGE EXPERIENCES - Encountering Language & Literacy in Rich, Meaningful Ways1. Facilitating a rich, meaningful experience; 2. Emphasising target language in context (see Oral Language Development) 3. Documenting experience thoroughly and vividly 4. Revisiting the experience in a jointly constructed recount 5. Display / reinforce vocabulary through word walls, class glossaries, and similar / further activities (see Vocabulary Development) 6. Use written recount as a tool for fluency and revision 7. Expand written genres to include relevant formal genres (e.g. procedural texts) 8. Use shared experience as a launch pad to expand knowledge by reading related material 9. Utilising links to first language and cultural practices for English language learners

FLUENCY - The oft-neglected skills that helps learners move toward independence1. Practice, practice, practice with texts that are 95% to 98% decodable 2. Use visual and other cues/prompts to assist decoding 3. Use a Vocabulary Assessment Scale to assess unknown words in a text 4. Pre-teach relevant vocabulary to assist with decoding words in context 5. Use running records to document common errors 6. Using word hunts as a pre- or post-reading reading activity 7. Utilising links to first language for English language learners 8. Partner reading 9. Choral reading / echo reading / lead reading / whisper reading 10. Readers' Theatre / performance-based reading 11. Fluency practice with think alouds (for comprehension monitoring) 12. Tape-assisted reading / recording reading to tape 13. Always include brief comprehension questions so attention to meaning is maintained.

COMPREHENSION - Deep, Thoughtful Work1. Remember that "An engaged reader is one who is motivated, knowledgeable, strategic and socially interactive. The engaged reader is viewed as motivated to read for diverse purposes, an active knowledge constructor, an effective user of cognitive strategies and a participant in social interactions. (Rueda et al., 2001). 2. Refer to techniques mentioned in the Read Aloud schedule. 3. Utilise links to first language for English language learners. 4. Utilise elements of the Reading-to-Learn Cycle, including Preparing for Reading, Joint Pre-Writing, Individual Pre-Writing, Detailed Reading, Joint Reconstruction, Individual Reconstruction, and Responding to the Teach (Rose & Martin, 2012) 5. Encourage collaborative teaching g techniques, such as Reciprocal Teaching, Jigsaw Teaching, Book Circle, Reading Workshops, Directed Thinking, and Literature Discussion Circles. 6. Foster the range of comprehension skills: Planning & Goal Setting, Tapping into Prior Knowledge, Asking Questions, Making Predictions, Visualising, Making Connections, Forming (initial) Interpretations, Identifying Main Ideas, Identifying Cause and Effect, Organising Information, Adopting a Perspective (Point of View), Reflecting on Cognitive Processing, Revising Perspective, Seeking Evidence to Justify Viewpoint, Analysing Text Closely, Analysing Style, Taking Stock of Knowledge, Relating the Text to Experience, Evaluating Practice and Forming criticisms (Olson, 2007) 7. Provide specific scaffolding to encourage disciplinary reading and/or concept formation (Goldman, 2012)

COMPOSITION - Diverse, Explorative Work1. Utilising links to first language for English language learners 2. Emulating the themes of modelling, joint construction, guided construction, independent practice, and reflective practice. 3. Understanding the diversity of purposes (e.g. describing, recounting, narrating, analysing, explaining, etc), and apprenticing learners into competence at the sentence, paragraph, textual and pragmatic levels. 4. Understanding that any act of composition involve (a) building the field/content of the message, (b) deconstruction the mode of communication, (c) deconstructing the situation/context/audience of communication, and (d) cycling through joint construction, guided construction, independent practice, conferencing, publishing and reflecting. (Martin, 1999) 5. Understanding the writing/composing is multifaceted skills that requires time and guidance. 6. Understanding that writing is a social practice that involves goal-orientated action to purposefully participate in an activity system (or community of practice). 7. Using Writing Workshops and Writing Portfolios approaches can provide learners with opportunities to practice in a range of genres. 8. It is also important to see how experience in writing can be a vehicle for deeper reading ... and visa versa. 9. Recognise that a written task is always an ill-structured task, since a written tasks always requires one to interpret and deliberate over content, context, purpose and audience. 10. Overall ... shaping discourse.

REPRESENTING & REMEMBERING KNOWLEDGE - Isn't this what education is for?1. Remember that “our knowledge forms an enormous system. And only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it.” (Wittgenstein, 1969) 2. Using graphic organisers and progressive brainstorming as tools for representing knowledge. 3. Organise and categorise information through information grids. 4. Make explicit the disciplinary questions that guide inquiry in important semiotic domains. 5. Provide learners with ample opportunities to retrieve and apply important knowledge and concepts (e.g. pause-prompt-praise) 6. Provide “message abundance”. In other words, reinforce knowledge in a range of media and contexts. Learner should be able access knowledge through a rich reservoir of experience. 7. Foster interests and budding expertise, which is particularly important as children transition into adolescence (Alexander, 2005) 8. Deepen knowledge by adding to a learners' expertise and by providing opportunities for learners to render, process, represent, and extend their knowledge in many, diverse ways.

That's it for us today. In the next entry, we will provide recommended readings in each of the above areas. And - in the future - we will provide examples of integrated teaching and learning. Please explore and enjoy!

References
Alexander, P. A. (2005). The Path to Competence: A Lifespan Developmental Perspective on Reading. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(4), 413–436.

Goldman, S. R. (2012). Adolescent literacy: learning and understanding content. The Future of Children, 22(2), 89–116. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23057133

Martin, J. (1999). Mentoring semeogenesis: “Genre-based” literacy pedagogy. In F. Christie (Ed.), Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness (pp. 123 – 155). London: Cassell.

Olson, C. B., & Land, R. (2007). A cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction for English language learners in secondary school. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(3), 269–303. Retrieved from ://WOS:000244438000003

Palinesar, A. S. (1987). Reciprocal Teaching. Instructor, 96(2), 5 – 60.

Raphael, T. E., & Au, K. H. (2005). QAR: Enhancing Comprehension and Test Taking Across Grades and Content Areas. The Reading Teacher, 59(3), 206–221. doi:10.1598/RT.59.3.1

Rose, D., & Martin, J. R. (2012). Reading to Learn. In Learning to Write/Read to Learn: Genre, Knowledge and Pedagogy in the Sydney School (pp. 133–234). Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.

Rueda, R., MacGillivray, L., Monzo, L., and Arzubiaga, A. (2001). “Engaged Reading: A multilevel approach to considering sociocultural factors with diverse learners”, CIERA Report #1-012, University of Michigan: Centre for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA).

Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty. (G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright, Eds.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Zucker, T. A. & Landry, S. H. (2010). Improving the quality of preschool read-alouds: professional development and coaching that targets book-reading practices. In McKenna, M., Walpole, S. & Conradi, K. (Eds), Promoting early reading: research, resources and best practices. New York: The Guilford Press.

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Previously, we have alluded to the changing direction of this website; it will focus more space on the many dimension of literacy and less space on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In an effort to outline the dimensions of factors contributing to comprehensive literacy development, we would include:

1. Robust development of oral language in language-rich and literacy-rich environments;
2. Clear, systematic and intensive development of phonemic awareness (when suitable);
3. Further systematic and progressive development of alphabetic skills, including phonics, spelling and morphology;
4. Wide ranging support of vocabulary development from a very young age;
5. Expert utilisation of read-alouds;
6. Skilled orchestration of language experiences;
7. Substantial time set aside for fluency practice (include time for independent reading);
8. Attention to ultimate goal of reading instruction: comprehension; and
9. Apprenticeship into the craft of composition; and
10. Ongoing and deepening construction of knowledge (the real goal of learning).

The above areas are not mutually exclusive. Ultimately, they should also be unified by thematic investigation(s).

In this pursuit, we want learners to develop:

1. Cognitive skills (e.g. pattern recognition, memory retrieval) and meta-cognitive awareness;
2. Motivation, attitudes, interests and expertise;
3. Non-verbal skills and talents; and
4. Careers and identities.

Therefore, the developing website will come to include specific advice in such areas as:

• Fostering Oral Language;
• Developing Phonemic Awareness;
• Solidifying Alphabetic Knowledge;
• Extending Vocabulary;
• Utilising Read-Alouds;
• Orchestrating Language Experiences;
• Shaping Fluency;
• Ensuring Comprehension;
• Facilitating Composition;
• Integrating Content Learning;
• Building and Representing Knowledge;
• Scaffolding Action;
• Fostering Interests and Expertise;
• Pulling All of This Together Into Integrated Teaching and Learning.

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Early language learners benefit from rich tasks that provide learners with ample opportunities to hear, see, use and manipulate language in contextualised, purposeful ways. The videos to the lower right provide compelling examples of the multiple learnings achieved through a humble kitchen garden project for newly arrived refugee children at a primary school in an urban Australian community. The project illustrates the potential for deep learning when the learning develops from authentic, engaging experiences.

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I'd like readers/viewers to notice how the kitchen garden becomes a central device to develop language, literacy, culture and knowledge. You should notice how language is reinforced through practical activity, how language is assisted visually in the classroom, and how it is transformed into knowledge through writing.

This is an example of a teaching method known as the Language Experience Approach (LEA), which is a catch-all term for teaching that anchors literacy and language learning in shared experiences. In most cases, the “experience” is a physically, shared experience, but there is a more and more avenues to share experience virtually through video, interactive tools and online content (such as web quests).

The Language Experience Approach emphasises language learning through carefully scaffolded and reinforced language in context and through activity. Teachers and learners diligently document the experience, so the experience can be revisited and developed through further reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing and representing in the classroom.

The following are a number of questions to consider when building language and literacy through authentic, mutual practices. Even though we will elaborated on the teaching method in the future, these initial questions illustrate the significance of a number of essential practices in the LEA, such as scaffolded talk, documenting the experience, revisiting the experience in the classroom, pulling out rich vocabulary, expanding the experience through writing, and using the experience for further comprehension and [content] learning. In this system, the teacher must be adept at orchestrating, sequencing and extending a variety practices (often within a tight timetable).

Before and During the Experience1. What is the experience? Is this an actual or virtual experience? 2. How is joint attention achieved and how is language being scaffolded? 3. How is vocabulary emphasised/reinforced/introduced/recorded during the experience 4. How is the experience being documented (digital cameras, information scaffolds, graphic organisers, scaffolded questions, etc)? 5. How do the instructional conversations that take place throughout the experience build a common discourse and assist learning?

After the Experience

Students benefit from a variety of activities that reinforce language and literacy in the classroom: word walls, flow charts, exemplary texts and further hands-on learning.

1. Are word walls / glossaries / semantic maps / flow charts / storyboards developed from the experience? Are they prominent, accessible and rigorous?
2. How is the documentation used to help the class jointly and/or individually re-construct the experience? Is the sentence cycle used to generate rich, juicy sentences?
3. How is the joint construction phase used to refresh people’s memory and knowledge of events?
4. Can the newly constructed text(s) be used as “familiar text(s)” that can be re-read as fluency practice?
5. Has the teacher selected a portion of words to use for further word study?

Extending the Experience1. Can you link new readings to the shared experience? For instance, now that we have explored the world of the garden, can we explore: * poetry about gardens or which use gardens as a motif; * procedural/information texts about gardening; * stories and/or picture books which takes place in a garden; and * news articles about community gardens? 2. Can the writing be extended to the inclusion of the writing of recognised genres related to the experience? (procedural texts, brochures, etc) 3. How have non-verbal knowledge, expertise and attitudes been fostered through the activity?

Final NoteThe Language Experience Approach (LEA) does not replace systematic, intensive instruction in word study, nor does the LEA replace the importance of regular shared and guided reading of age- and skill-appropriate texts. That said, shared and guided can be incorporated into the LEA. The LEA provides an important avenue for the exploration of guided and extended writing and language learning. Within the LEA, there are many micro-teaching moments which should take advantage of best practice language and literacy methods.

Further ReadingAu, K. H. (1979). Using the Experience-Text Relationship Method with Minority Children. The Reading Teacher, (March), 677–679.

Labbo, L. D., Eakle, A. J., & Montero, M. K. (2002). Digital Language Experience Approach: Using Digital Photographs and Software as a Language Experience Approach Innovation. Reading Online, 5(8), 1–19. Retrieved from http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/labbo2/

Landis, D., Umolo, J., & Mancha, S. (2010). The power of language experience for cross-cultural reading and writing. The Reading Teacher, 63(7), 580–589.

Moustafa, M. (2008). Exceeding the standards: a strategic approach to linking state standards to best practices in reading and writing instruction. New York: Scholastic.

Nessel, D. D., & Dixon, C. N. (2008). Using the language experience approach with English language learners: Strategies for engaging students and developing literacy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Wurr, A. J. (2002). Language Experience Approach Revisited: The Use of Personal Narratives in Adult L2 Literacy Instruction. The Reading Matrix, 2(1), 1–8. Retrieved from http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/wurr/?collection=col10460/1.

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It might sound a bit pompous, but we do like the elegance of the Commanding Sentences quotes/notes on this site. Also, we’d like to say that the notes section is a part of the site that probably does not get as much attention as it deserves. In fact, the collected quotes/notes is where everything started in the first place.

In relation to Commanding Sentences, Wittgenstein exudes a respect for the sentence (or proposition), particularly in his early work. There is a respect for the ability of a sentence to capture, express and shape meaning. In fact, there is also a respect for the time and care that one takes to reconstruct experiences and ideas for re-examination.

“PI 280: Someone paints a picture in order to show how he imagines a theatre scene. And now I say: “This picture has a double function: it informs others, as pictures or words inform — but for one who gives the information it is a representation (or piece of information?) of another kind: for him it is the picture of his image.”

However, the time necessary to attend to our words can be lacking in the stream of language and living. Even though we speak regularly and often, it is important to draw a distinction between sentences and proposition. We speak lots of sentences, but not every sentence proposes a state of affairs worthy of reflection.

“TLP 3.141: A proposition is not a blend of words. — (Just as a theme of music is not a blend of notes.) A proposition is articulate.”

There is something admirable about the time one takes to arrange sentences in such a way that they represent the inter-relationships amongst ideas, events, actors, and more.

If you have the chance, please visit the Commanding Sentences notes/quote section. To help guide you, the following represents the logical sequence of the categorised quotes:

• Introduction: We start with the recognition that a sentence has the capacity to “communicates a situation to us”;
• Picture Theory: That in a proposition “a situation is, as it were, constructed by way of experiment”;
• Decoding/Projecting/Processing: However, a proposition stands in need of decoding and processing, since “a sentence is given [to] me in code together with the key”;
• Reasoning: Every sensical sentence expresses a sense but it is up to us to determine “its truth or falsity” and to decipher its purpose/intention;
• Making Meaning: It is up to use to determine the meaning of a sentence, and “some sentences have to be read several times to be understood”;
• Discussing & Discourse: To understand a sentence, we must also appeal to the conversation it is part of, because if you are to “understand anything in language, you must understand what the dialogue is, and you must see how understanding grows as the dialogue grow.”
• Linguistic & Intellectual Turns: We come to develop a rich set of grammatical forms that allow us to make intellectual moves, since a “discipline in form is a discipline in thought” (also see Building knowledge through discussion); and
• Action: We apply these sentences to get things done, since “speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form”. Therefore, “reading and writing in any domain … are not just ways of decoding print, they are also caught up with and in social practices.”

I welcome you to explore and enjoy!

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Some may downplay this announcement as merely routine site maintenance. In actual fact, an update to the site's glossaries and reading lists is news that significant progress has been made to the very foundations of the online resource.

Firstly, progress is finally being made to the Literacy Glossary. This resource is a work-in-progress. A core list of 70 terms/concepts will be part of the initial list. These terms/concepts will be added over the coming weeks. A further announcement will be made once the Literacy Glossary is fully drafted.

Secondly, there is a range of additions that have been made to the Literacy-Related Reading Lists. In the Contexts of Literacy Instruction section, I have added readings related to the Language Experience Approach (LEA). LEA is an pedagogy whereby shared experiences (e.g. gardening, going out bush, cooking, etc) become the basis for interactive writing exercises which - in turn - produce texts that serve as sources of further reading practice. Teachers and students can use digital photography and information scaffolds to document experiences, and this documentation can be used to recreate, recount and extend upon the shared experiences. Teachers are also encourage to focus on particular words for word study and vocabulary exercises. LEA is an effective teaching technique for younger students and beginning English language learners. More about the Language Experience Approach will be written in the near future. In the meantime, please explore the readings.

Two reading lists have also been added to the Elements of Instruction section of the readings: Supporting Fluency and Assessment Tools. This rounds out the Elements section. The lists mirror the five pillars of effective reading instruction (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), whilst also including an emphasis on writing and oral language development. Effective instruction must foster the development of phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence (including spelling), vocabulary, oral language, reading fluency, reading comprehension and writing/composing. The Supporting Fluency reading list provides a brief yet comprehensive list of references, whilst the Assessment Tools reading list will grow over time.

Last but not least, word clouds have been added to each of the reading lists in the Elements of Instruction section. The logic of the word clouds will be revealed in a future resource. In the meantime, the following is a gallery of the collected clouds. Please enjoy and explore!

Reference

• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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In a recent Journal Entry, I mentioned that Changes Were Afoot. The change mentioned at the time was quite minor. It involved the mere change of one word. Wittgenstein on Learning became Wittgenstein on Literacy. That was all in preparation for another change, which is being announced today and which will take effect over the coming weeks.

Today, I can announce that the site will have a new name, but not necessarily a new direction. Please welcome The Literacy Bug (http://theliteracybug.com). The change acknowledges that the site has been moving toward a particular focus on literacy. The new name allows us to simultaneously break from an explicit link to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whilst also celebrating this link.

For the general visitor, the new name has a certain attraction. We want people to Catch the Literacy Bug. We want learners to be infected with the desire to gain meaning from print and to codify ideas in the written word. In the interests of free-flowing information, we want to celebrate the proliferation of oral, print and visual literacies.

For the nuanced visitor, the name alludes to Wittgenstein’s famous Beetle in the Box thought experiment. If you permit us to recap the experiment, it goes as follows … There are a certain number of people - perhaps around a table. Each one has a box before him or her. They are told that each one has a beetle in his/her box. The group is - then - asked, “do you know what is in each other’s box?” The group’s response is obvious, “of course, you just told us. We each have a beetle.” What is the point here? Well … because the group share a common language and certain common experiences, then they can understand what has been said without looking inside the “box”, which can metaphorically be taken as either “the mind” or “empirical verification”. Isn’t this the magic of language and - thereby - literacy? We can share ideas, mental pictures, concepts, etc. through the common language that we share.

Sure … we may need to interpret others’ minds to get the point. We may even need to share certain values, concepts and practices. And there will be certain texts that will elude the most literate person if the content lies too far outside one’s experience. And there will be cases where a text will richly provide its reader with new experiences and new ways of perceiving events that will leave an indelible impact on their world picture. Isn’t that magical?

Please welcome to The Literacy Bug. You can visit http://theliteracybug.com and you will be swept back to this site. The site's previous addresses will continue to work (wittgenstein-on-literacy.com and wittgenstein-on-learning.com), and the final version of the new logo is still under development. Enjoy and explore!

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Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images News / Getty Images

We are pleased to announce that a new page has been added to the Teaching Folder. The Establishing Meaningful Practices page seeks to "get to the rough ground" and emphasise the importance of establishing effective practices in home, school and community environments, which are based on quality teaching principles. We are interested in contrasting what may appear as sporadic, isolated activities with those activities that are carefully arranged and which contribute to the development of meaningful literacy skills.

A practice “is something people do, not just once, but on a regular basis. But it is more than just a disposition to behave in a certain way; the identity of a practice depends on not only on what people do, but also on the significance of those actions and the surroundings in which they occur.” (Stern, 2004, pg 166). For some reason, people pray, brush their teeth, complete their tax, hike in National Parks, long for the next dance, etc. Each “activity” is part of - let’s says - religious practices, hygienic practices, economic practices, artistic practices, social practices and more. Each practice is much more than the sum of its parts. For instance, the combination of prayer, worship, scripture, and stewardship amounts to more than a collection of disparate activities. They amount to a form of life, and they rely upon resources, other participants, a sense of attachment, cultural artefacts, instruction (or initiation) and more. Likewise, literacy involves the orchestrations of many experiences which culminate in the fostering of the literate practitioner. Time and space must be carved out in the great hurly burly of life so that the practice can grow, flourish and evolve.

So ... how do we make certain activities part and parcel of the practices of home, school, the community, etc? What are the material and social conditions that make this happen? What role do adults and peers play in establishing the conditions of a practice? Is it realistic that all budding "apprentices" will have access to "teachers" (including parents) with sufficient expertise and wherewithal? Overall, how does something become a practice and, through practice, how does the learner's engagement with the world change?

Please click here to explore the Establishing (Literacy) Practices page in the Teaching Folder.

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I have a question for the regular visitors out there, though I don’t have a prize for the first to answer. Does anyone notice anything different about the website’s logo?

Perhaps, you notice something different about the website’s web address (wittgenstein-on-literacy.com), too.

If you said “Literacy”, you would be correct. Wittgenstein on Learning has subtly become Wittgenstein on Literacy, yet the subtitle for the site remains the same, A Wittgensteinian Perspective on Language, Literacy and Learning. The change acknowledges how the topic of literacy teaching and learning has become a significant, though not sole, emphasis of the site.

Regular visitors might also notice a couple other updates to the site. First, the Why Wittgenstein? essay has become the site’s homepage. Second, the General Introduction page has been updated and is now the Introduction to the Teaching Folder.

In other news, I’ll be working the Literacy Glossary over the next few weeks. I hope to have a draft soon, though I can’t provide a date at this stage.

In the meantime, please explore and enjoy!

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I am pleased to share some recommended readings on a range of literacy-related topics, such as supporting guided reading, assisting English language learners, benefiting from community volunteers, and attending to issues of motivation. At the moment, they are merely reference lists, which I hope to annotate in the future.

The many Language & Literacy Reading Lists (individual links below) include readings canvasing a range of issues that have been categorised into the following: contexts of instruction (e.g. classroom, home, and community setting), elements of learning (e.g. core skills, guided reading, oral language), needs of specific groups (e.g. English language learners), and issues related to understanding and becoming. The aim is to add readings and new categories over time.

For me, at least, literacy is an area that draws together the many strands of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. For instance, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein digresses to make direct reference to literacy as something that stands beyond language, “At first sight a proposition - one set out on the printed page, for example - does not seem to be a picture of the reality with which it is concerned. But neither do written notes seem at first sight to be a picture of a piece of music, nor our phonetic notation (the alphabet) to be a picture of our speech. And yet these sign languages prove to be pictures, even in the ordinary sense of what they represent. (TLP 4.011)”

As has been mentioned before, literate individuals benefit from enabling relationships as well as access to adequate spaces, time, resources and formative experiences that aid and reinforce what it means to be literate. It is indispensable to acknowledge that literate practices are refined in collaboration with others (having people to talk to, to read with and to write to/with). I hope many of the recommended readings help you help others learn, express, explore, discover and challenge. If you would like to suggest a reading to be added to a list, please do not hesitate to contact us. Please explore and enjoy!

Contexts of Literacy LearningDespite popular myth, literacy is developed across contexts and benefits from the involvement of a range of players. Whilst individual classroom teachers do play key roles, there is much to say about the impact of the home, broader school cultures, and peers and mentors.

• Whole School Planning
• Organising Literacy in the Classroom
• Literacy With/In the Family
• Involving Community Volunteers as Support

Fostering Knowledge & PurposeIn the end, literacy is not an end in itself. It is medium through which we receive and expresses messages. We develop knowledge. We conceptualise. We take part in communities of practice. We develop interests and pursue goals.

• Developing Knowledge & Understanding
• Learning in Context
• Motivation, Interest & Expertise

Elements of Literacy InstructionThe National Reading Panel cited five pillars to reading development: phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, vocabulary development, fluency practice and comprehension. To those five, we would like to add oral language development and writing (composing) skills.

• Early Language & Literacy Development
• Vocabulary Development
• Guiding Reading
• Guiding Writing
• Supporting Speaking and Listening

Focus on Specific Ages/GroupsAs mentioned above, literate individuals benefit from enabling relationships as well as access to adequate spaces, time, resources and formative experiences which suitable to their various stages of development. Literacy is not a singular skill. Rather, it changes qualitatively across a learner's development.

• Adolescent & Disciplinary Literacies
• English Language Learners

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For those who may be curious about the things I have been reading as of late, follow the list of articles that I have scoured in the past few weeks:

• Alexander, P. A. (2005). The Path to Competence: A Lifespan Developmental Perspective on Reading. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(4), 413-436.
• Allington, R. L. (2007). Intervention All Day Long: New Hope for Struggling Readers. Voices from the Middle, 14(4), 7–14.
• Benseman, J. (2014). Adult Refugee Learners with Limited Literacy: Needs and Effective Responses. Refuge, 30(1), 93–103.
• Craft, T. E. (2014). The Benefits and Limitations of the Leveled Literacy Intervention System. State University of New York.
• Hammerberg, D. (2004). Comprehension instruction for socioculturally diverse classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 57(7), 684–658.
• Hemphill, L., & Snow, C. (1996). Language and literacy development: Discontinuities and differences. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The handbook of education and human development: new models of teaching, learning and schooling (pp. 173–201). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Justice, L. M., Mashburn, A., Hamre, B., & Pianta, R. (2008). Quality of Language and Literacy Instruction in Preschool Classrooms Serving At-Risk Pupils. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(1), 51–68. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2007.09.004
• Lawrence, J., Rolland, R. G., Branum-Martin, L., & Snow, C. E. (2014). Generating Vocabulary Knowledge for At- Risk Middle School Readers: Contrasting Program Effects and Growth Trajectories. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 19(2), 37–41.
• McNally, T., & McNally, S. (2012). Chomsky and Wittgenstein on Linguistic Competence. Nordic Wittgenstein Review. Retrieved from http://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/view/NWR-1_2012-McNallyMcNally/html
• Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2010). Language-Game. In The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the Language Sciences (CELS) (pp. 417–419).
• Moyal-Sharrock, D. (unpublished). Wittgenstein on Forms of Life, Patterns of Life and Ways of Living. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/9866115/Wittgenstein_on_Forms_of_Life_Patterns_of_Life_and_Ways_of_Living on 5 January 2015.
• Neuman, S. B., & Gambrell, L. B. (2014). Disruptive Innovations in Reading Research and Practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 1–6. doi:10.1002/rrq.93
• Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4), 360–407. doi:10.1598/RRQ.21.4.1
• Walls, T. A., & Little, T. D. (2005). Relations Among Personal Agency, Motivation, and School Adjustment in Early Adolescence. Journal of Educational Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.97.1.23

Please explore and enjoy!

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Academia.edu provides a great way to stay abreast of key researcher in diverse areas of interest. The following provides links to some key Wittgenstein scholars (and selected papers) on the emerging network:

• Ray Monk (currently with the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: the Duty of Genius): http://soton.academia.edu/RayMonk/
• David Stern (currently at the University of Iowa with a focus on the Philosophical Investigations): http://uiowa.academia.edu/DavidGStern/
• Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (currently at the University of Hertforshire with a focus on language learning and On Certainty): http://herts.academia.edu/DanieleMoyalSharrock/
• Talbot J. Taylor (currently at the College of William and Mary with a focus on language development and acquisition): http://wm.academia.edu/TalbotTaylor/
• William Child (currently at the University of Oxford with a focus on Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of the Mind): https://oxford.academia.edu/WilliamChild/

Please enjoy and explore! Over the years, I have gained quite a bit from the writing of each of the academics listed above. Whilst there, feel free to visit my own academia.edu site.

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The following link to a blog entry from Shanahan on Literacy is a welcome addition to the discussion/debate on balanced literacy instruction:

• Unbalanced Comments on Balanced Literacy: http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2014/10/unbalanced-comments-on-balanced-literacy.html

Balancing Instruction The balanced teaching section provides practical guidance to help you foster the range of skills and experiences necessary for robust language, literacy and learning development.

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The following paragraphs and diagrams have been added to the Balancing Instruction page ... Explore an enjoy!The diagrams to the left/below specifically point to the levels of literacy activity that must be developed in tandem: constrained (core) skills, meaningful practices, disciplinary practices, and extended practices. This is consistent with Au's (2002) emphasis on local knowledge (code-breaking skills), global knowledge (comprehension/compositional skills) and affective knowledge (developing interests, affinities and attitudes). An image of an integrated approach to reading is presented in order to remind us that the balance/orchestration/integration of practices presents the greatest challenge for "teachers", whether we are referring to parents in the home or professionals in the classroom.

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Perhaps contentiously, I will argue that a particular home environment provides a better avenue to explore how the multiple conceptions of literacy pedagogy can take shape (Heath, 1983). In some homes, one can imagine how bedtime reading, alphabetic flashcard practice, scaffolded writing instruction and language-in-context practice can occur with fairly fluid orchestration (which is reliant upon access to material and temporal resources). The adult has a regular routine of rich reading of favourite books ( building vocabulary ), time set aside to play with enticing alphabetic games ( enhancing word recognition ), time to write a birthday card to grandma ( modelling of genre conventions ), and an emphasis on language in the act of - for instance - baking a cake ( learning vocabulary connected to valued activity ). Each activity emphasises different aspects of language and literacy development within a social context. Each activity is integrated through the joint intentional activity of the adult & child. In this case, one can see how "a highly verbal and emotionally stable family environment greatly benefits vocabulary and reading." (Zhang et al, 2013, p. 665)

Continue on to the page to explore more ...

Balancing Instruction The balanced teaching section provides practical guidance to help you foster the range of skills and experiences necessary for robust language, literacy and learning development.

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The following paragraphs and graphs have been added to the Stages of Literacy Development page ... Explore an enjoy!Even though developmental accounts of literacy tend to focus predominantly on the early years, there is the need to account for the "long term developmental process ... to investigate how reading develops across the lifespan by building on the vast literatures in developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, expertise, motivation, and domain-specific learning, as well as reading research" (Anderson, 2007, pg. 415). In her article "The Paths to Competence", Patricia Anderson (2007) notes three domains that develop as a reader develops. These domains are represented in the three graphs that appear below, which bear an uncanny resemblance (schematically) to the graphs (in the main page). We've also added a fourth table from Olson (2007) that indicates cognitive strategies that must be fostered over time for mature, rich comprehension.

Anderson proposes the following three changes that occur as readers progress from the beginning (or acclimation) phase through to the competence stages and on to the status of proficient or expert readers:

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• First, the individual's topic/subject-matter knowledge must grow in tandem with one's knowledge of the attributes of reading. Consequently, early guided reading experiences of picture books require children to demonstrate limited knowledge in either area in order to engage in rich, reading on the lap of a caring adult. However, knowledge of reading and topic knowledge become "increasing interconnected as individuals achieve competence" and as individuals are expected to extract and process information more independently.
• Second, in the early stages, individuals are motivated predominantly through "situational interest" such as the people involved (e.g. parents), their enthusiasm, engaging books and resources, etc. However, as time passes, individuals are motivated more by individual interests, such as preferred topics, goals and aspirations, and the formation of identities.
• Third (and perhaps most importantly), readers move from a reliance on surface-processing strategies to the increasing use of deep-processing strategies. Surface-processing strategies include such procedures as "rereading, altering reading rate, or omitting unfamiliar words" to monitor comprehension/attention. These strategies help one stay on task, correct mistakes, and gain a literal understanding of texts. Deep-processing strategies include "cross-text comparisons, creating alternative representations or questioning a source." Deep-processing strategies focus greater energies on synthesing, analysing and critiquing texts.

Continue on to the page to explore more ...

Stages of Literacy Development This section presents a developmental perspective of literacy learning. It highlights the movement from code breaking to meaning making to critical thinking.

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In Philosophical Investigations (1958), Wittgenstein characterized the philosophical remarks that comprise his book as journeyings across a landscape. McGinley and Tierney (1989, p. 250) adopted that representation in depicting reading and writing as ways of traversing a topical landscape:

“After Wittgenstein (1953), we also take the theoretical position that a topic of study is analogous to a landscape about which knowledge is best acquired by ‘traversing’ it from a variety of perspectives. However, in our system, different forms of reading and writing represent the ‘traversal routes’ or cases through which an individual can explore a given content domain. As the combined assemblages of several cases provide multiple routes for acquiring knowledge, we argue that more complex or diverse combinations of different forms of reading and writing provide a learner with the means to conduct a more critical examination of a topic by way of the multiple perspectives or ways of ‘seeing’ and thinking that these reading and writing exchanges permit.”

I am quite confident that I will be using the above quote in the near future to characterise my approach to literacy since it shares the sentiment of A Teacher for All Seasons.

Reference
McGinley, W., & Tierney, R. J. (1989). Traversing the topical landscape: reading and writing as ways of knowing. Written Communication, 6(3), 243–269.

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When one mentions the concept of language game in relation to Wittgenstein, there are four related concepts that come to mind: context, intention, other people and purpose. That is, as one develops into a language, one comes to use language in a range of contexts with learned intentions amongst a community of people for diverse purposes. To be proficient in one language game is only a partial proficiency as it is the amalgamation of language practices that will make up that which will be referred to as proficiency.

There will be certain practices that we assume all members of a community of practice will share. We will call this extensive knowledge (Gee 2008). There will be other, specialised practices that some members of the community will have deep knowledge/experience of and which will be called upon by the general community. We will call this intensive knowledge (Gee, 2008). We encourage individuals to specialise and build up intensive knowledge, so that it can be supplied to others (usually for a price). How else would a comedian make a living?

Therefore, we would like all members of a community to be able to report information, reflect and record, speculate, joke, contemplate, etc. We would like all members of a community to be appreciative of the language practices that help one make decisions, rationalise, etc. However, this does not mean that we want everyone to be Shakespeare, a person who attained an intensive, poetical knowledge for his generation and who was called upon by his community to present for public education, entertainment, etc. Does this mean that we leave poetic practice to Shakespeare? No, extensive practices are expected across the population even if certain individuals attain intensive practice. Across the community, there is a need for extensive practice in the contemplative, speculative, political and aesthetic function of poetry.

As noted by Ken Hyland, “the last decade or so has seen increasing attention given to the notion of genre and its application in language teaching and learning. This is largely a response to changing views of discourse and of learning to write which incorporate better understandings of how language is structured to achieve social purposes in particular contexts of use” (Hyland, 2007, pg. 148).

Reference

Gee, J. P. (2008) A sociocultural perspective on opportunity to learn. In P. Moss, D. Pullin, J.P. Gee, E. Haertel, and L. Young (Eds). Assessment, equity, and opportunity to learn (pp. 76-108). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(3), 148–164. doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2007.07.005

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Anyone curious about what I have been reading? Well, here is a list of articles that I have scoured in the past couple weeks:

• Biggs, M. A. R. (2004). Visualisation and Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus.” Studies in Multidisciplinarity, 2(1961), 293–303.
• Bowyer-Crane, C., Snowling, M. J., Duff, F. J., Fieldsend, E., Carroll, J. M., Miles, J., … Hulme, C. (2008). Improving early language and literacy skills: differential effects of an oral language versus a phonology with reading intervention. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 49(4), 422–32. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01849.x
• Fricke, S., Bowyer-Crane, C., Haley, A. J., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2013). Efficacy of language intervention in the early years. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 54(3), 280–90. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12010
• Guthrie, J. T. (2001). Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading. Reading Online, 4(8). Retrieved from http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/guthrie/
• Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2011). Children’s Reading Comprehension Difficulties: Nature, Causes, and Treatments. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 139–142. doi:10.1177/0963721411408673
• Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2013). Learning to Read: What We Know and What We Need to Understand Better. Child Development Perspectives, 7(1), 1–5. doi:10.1111/cdep.12005
• May, S. (2007). Sustaining Effective Literacy Practices Over Time in Secondary Schools: School Organisational and Change Issues. Language and Education, 21(5), 387–405. doi:10.2167/le799.0
• Olson, C. B., & Land, R. (2007). A cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction for English language learners in secondary school. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(3), 269–303. Retrieved from ://WOS:000244438000003
• Sailors, M., Hoffman, J. V, Pearson, P. D., Mcclung, N., Shin, J., Phiri, L. M., & Saka, T. (2012). Supporting Change in Literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(2), 209–231. doi:10.1002/rrq.70
• Schmitt, N., Jiang, X., & Grabe, W. (2011). The Percentage of Words Known in a Text and Reading Comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 95(1), 26–43. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01146.x
• Shanahan, T. (2008). Literacy across the lifespan: what works? Community Literacy Journal, 3(1), 3–20.
• Snow, C. E. (2002). Variability in reading comprehension. Reading, 19–28. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1465/
• What, I. E. S., & Clearinghouse, W. (2012). Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers.

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Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought

By Hanna F. Pitkin

“And language is the carrier of the human culture, by which mankind continually produces and contemplates itself, a reflection of our species–being. Language, one might say, is the medium of mind, the element in which our minds dwell as our bodies dwell on earth in the air. In mastering language, we take on a culture; our native language becomes a part of ourselves, of the very structure of the self. Thus language has dual aspects: it is our means for self-expression, for articulating our unique individuality; yet at the same time it is what we have in common with other members of our community, what makes us like them and binds us to them. As a consequence, language lies at the heart of the problem of membership - in a group, in a culture, in a society, in a polity - central to almost every theoretical issue in social and political study.”

— (Pitkin, 1972, pg. 3)

Pitkin, H. F. (1972). Wittgenstein and Justice. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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The following is a quite rough attempt to draft some questions that teachers can consider when selecting teaching methods and materials in a literacy program. The questions ask teacher to reflect upon such items as the developmental stage(s) of learners, the degree of balance in instruction, whether content is suitable, and the adequacy of planing/assessment practices. It is hoped that these questions will be refined and explained in the future. Please explore and enjoy!!

Stages of Literacy Development1. What stage of literacy development would I consider this individual to be at? 2. Upon what evidence am I making this assessment? 3. Is the learner at the age-appropriate level? 4. What factors would account for the learner being at this particular stage? (refer to the component model of reading achievement - cognitive, psychological and ecological factors) 5. What instruction/practices has the individual had previously? 6. What instruction would I recommend for this learner and why? 7. What resources and practice would this include? Are such resources and practice accessible and appropriate? 8. Does the learner have access to safe, supportive spaces with a coalition of supporters and access to quality materials? 9. Am I selecting the most appropriate reading material in relation to content, vocabulary, syntax, motivation and engagement? 10. What other developmental factors must I consider in my assessment? Language skills? Non-verbal cognitive skills? Background knowledge and interests? Maturation? Interests? Relationships? 11. What are my hopes and aspirations for the learner? What are opportunities that lie ahead? What are some obstacles? What are some of the choices that will need to be made along the way?

Balanced Instruction

What are the Focus Areas of Instruction?

1. How is my instruction balancing core aspects of literacy teaching: phonemic awareness, word recognition, orthography, fluency, composition, comprehension, robust vocabulary development, critical thinking, applied practice, content learning, and independent exploration?
2. How are learners developing declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge?
3. How am I focusing on mastery whilst at the same time allowing time for content-based inquiry and exploration?
4. Are my lessons/units based around thematic investigations?
5. Are my lessons/units anchored in real-world interaction and problem solving?
6. Am I able to employ the Language Experience Approach (LEA) to develop language skills, purposeful reading, and non-verbal skills and knowledge?
7. Is my focus on mastery systemic, intensive, linear though the use of spelling dictionaries, phoneme walls and progress practice with suitable texts?
8. Is there ample guided and shared reading practice in order to assist with fluency and accuracy?
9. Is there ample guided and shared reading practice in order to assist with comprehension?
10. Am I regularly investing in vocabulary development through thematic investigations, word walls, word maps and related vocabulary/conceptual development?
11. Is time set aside for reading practice and application of the readers’ cognitive toolkit?
12. Is time set aside for composition with an emphasis on field building, deconstruction, joint construction, guided construction, and independent practice?
13. In the earlier and later years is there suitable time set aside aside for oral language development (which is known to impact comprehension, vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) and print-based skills (which is known to impact fluency and accuracy)?
14. Does my allocation of instructional time reflect a balanced approach?

Content & Contexts1. Is all learning based on knowledge exploration? Through LEAs? Thematic investigations? Close readings? Etc? 2. Am I taking into account learners’ prior knowledge and present explorations when preparing LEAs and thematic investigations? 3. Is the scaffolding provided for content-based learning adequate to enhance deep learning and discovery? 4. Is the learning taking into consideration the context in which the learning will be applied?

In Relationship to Specific Ages and/or Groups1. Must I consider the unique experiences of particular ages or groups, such as pre-school learners, English language learners, those with learning difficulties, or adult learnings with limited literacy and/or English? 2. If so, how does this affect my teaching? 3. How do I take these factors into consideration? 4. What are the literacy needs? language needs? learning needs? non-verbal needs? etc? 5. Why must I continue to ensure that the teaching is developmentally appropriate with high expectations and quality support?

Planning & Assessment

Have I taken into account each level of literacy engagement?

1. Have I taken all the factors above in my planning?
2. Is my instruction evolving as the learners develop?
3. Does my weekly timetable make best use of instructional time?
4. Am I effective in my use of literacy rotations?
5. What evidence am I collecting to make formative assessments on learners’ progress?
6. Am I supported in the decisions that I make? Am I able to collaborate with others?
7. Are my planning & assessment activities fair and adequate?
8. Have I achieved balance in my instruction?
9. Is my teaching structured, challenging and creative?
10. Do I have a clear vision of the pathways for learners?
11. Do I take into consideration individual differences and differentiate instruction accordingly?
12. Does my teaching respond to the cultural and contextual diversity of my learners and the community?
13. Do I consult with a wide range of stakeholders during my planning, preparation, delivery and evaluation?

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Chall, J. S. (1996). Stages of reading development (2nd ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic College Publishers.

Over the past couple months, we have made regular reference to Chall's six stages of reading development, which accounts for reading development from birth to adulthood. For that reason, we have added a specific section on the stages of literacy development to the Teaching Folder of the site. Therefore, it provides us with a platform to explore the way in which pedagogy changes as learners develop throughout the developmental sequence.

If we borrow Wittgenstein’s concepts here, a developmental account of a language/literacy learning progression is sensitive to the way perception (aspect seeing) changes, practices form, attitudes develop, knowledge takes shape and (literate) forms of life take root (or fail to do so). We need to marvel at how learning transpires and how each new act of learning builds from that which came before. We need to be amazed at the small steps and giant leaps that occur. We need to be cautious of stagnation and entropy.

In time, we will address the following sequence of questions for each of the six levels.

1. What does instruction look like at this stage?

2. activities, routines, etc;

3. books and other texts;
4. writing tasks;
5. formal and informal activities;

6. independent activity.

7. What should learners be able to accomplish/engage in?

8. independently;

9. with guidance;
10. jointly;

11. if/when modelled.

12. What would gradual release of control (or apprenticeship) look like at this stage?

13. At the end of the stage, how is the learner prepared for the subsequent stage?

Chiu, M. M., McBride-Chang, C., & Lin, D. (2012). Ecological, psychological, and cognitive components of reading difficulties: Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45(5), 391–405.

1. What would be characteristic age range be for this stage? What support/intervention should be provided if a learner is failing behind?

2. How does one coordinate learning/support if there is a substantial difference between the learner's age and developmental stage? How does one choose content that is both linguistically and age appropriate?

7 How can we use the component model of reading development (depicted to the right) to (a) identify potential assets/deficits exhibited by the learners and (b) to strategise with a multi-dimensional approach to building capacity in each area?

The sequence of images below demonstrates how the balance of instruction and approach alters across a learner’s lifespan. I invite you to explore the Stages of Literacy page. Explore and enjoy!

Stage 0 (6 months - 6 years)

Stage 1 (6 to 7 years old)

p.s. Even though one may be tempted to see skills progressing in a purely sequential manner, I would like to emphasise that each skill domain should be practiced/experienced to some extent at each stage of a reader/writer's development. The following table illustrates a significant point: at any given stage there should be literacy elements that we expect the individual to be able to practice explicitly (e.g. spelling) as well as other elements that individual can participate in with guidance (e.g. prompting or scaffolding a story) or jointly with a peer or adult.

References

Chall, J. S. (1996). Stages of reading development (2nd ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic College Publishers.

Chiu, M. M., McBride-Chang, C., & Lin, D. (2012). Ecological, psychological, and cognitive components of reading difficulties: testing the component model of reading in fourth graders across 38 countries. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45(5), 391–405. doi:10.1177/0022219411431241

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I am pleased to announce progress with the Balanced Teaching page on the Wittgenstein on Learning website. This update includes a comprehensive, referenced introduction for the coming teaching presentations. Select the image and/or link below to begin exploring.

Balancing Instruction The balanced teaching section provides practical guidance to help you foster the range of skills and experiences necessary for robust language, literacy and learning development.

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Component Model of Reading Development: Chiu, M. M., McBride-Chang, C., & Lin, D. (2012). Ecological, psychological, and cognitive components of reading difficulties: testing the component model of reading in fourth graders across 38 countries. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45(5), 391–405. doi:10.1177/0022219411431241

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Welcome to the third episode of the Wittgenstein On Learning Podcast. In this episode, I discuss Wittgenstein's concept of commanding a clear view. Given the amount of time spent recently on literacy pedagogy in the blog (wittgenstein-on-learning.com/journal), some may be surprised at the choice of topic. However, the topic makes perfect sense. Over the past few weeks, I have been committed to gaining a clear view of the topics of language and literacy development. I have taken a reflective stance of seeking an overarching description of my topic. With such a viewpoint, it is easier to "find my way about". In this podcast, I speak about commanding a clear view in a more general way, and I speak about the significant yet difficult task of developing a synoptic view over our knowledge. That said, any such achievement must be balanced with real practice. In other words, a thinker must spend time ommanding a clear view whilst also getting to the rough ground to test and refine one's ideas. Or as Wittgenstein puts it, "thinking too has a time for ploughing and a time for gathering the harvest." (Culture & Value).

iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/journal-wittgensteinian-view/id879917574

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The following four "essays" each tackle the same question: "how do we foster a comprehensive and rich literacy program?" Whilst the essays risk repetition (starting with their descriptions below), they each represent a renewed attempt the explore the same very vexed question. Of the four essays, the essay A Teacher for All Seasons and All Places goes the furthest by taking into account the impact of literacy in the home environment and also speaking about factors that can increase equity in opportunity to learn.

Like previous essays, the following first appeared as Journal entries, but now find themselves revised and updated. (The first - Managing a Balanced Approach to Literacy - first appear in November 2013.) You will find that each reflects the same division of perspectives on language & literacy highlighted in the page titled, Why Wittgenstein? Why not a general site about literacy? Please explore, enjoy and share your thoughts!

Managing a Balanced Approach to Literacy ADDED - 27/08/14 - The best teachers at all levels should be equally equipped to develop and monitor core skills whilst providing rich opportunities for students to read, write, speak and learn in authentic, meaningful contexts. For our present purpose, we will describes the two approaches as follows: skills-based and usage-based. This instruction should prepare our students with the skills they need. Read More ...

A Teacher for All Seasons in All Places ADDED - 28/08/14 - Fostering literacy requires that one is adept at systematically reinforcing the core, constrained skills of literacy (to the point of mastery) so that fluency is attained and higher order thinking can be facilitated, whilst providing rich opportunities for students to gain and express meaning in multiple knowledge domains and modes through scaffolded speaking, listening, reading and writing. Read More ...

A Comprehensive Literacy Pedagogy Would ... ADDED - 27/08/14 - In addition to attending to comprehension skills, compositional skills and print-based skills (e.g. phonemic awareness, spelling skills, fluency, etc), balanced instruction must take into account the learning of the language itself; the situations in which we speak, listen, read and write; and what we are actually trying to learn and achieve (e.g. cooking, gardening, football, etc) in the process. Read More ...

A Framework for Considering Literacy Instruction The developmental nature of literacy is captured in the six stages of reading development presented by Jeanine Chall (1996). Across the six stages, there are three skill domains and six developmental areas to take into consideration when implementing a framework for comprehensive literacy instruction. Read More ...

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This entry comes with a sense of accomplishment. We are pleased to share two (new) essays that reflect important principles from Wittgenstein On Learning. As with many of the essays, both essays initially appeared in the Journal and have been revised and updated for the Essays Section. One essay appeared fairly recently in the Journal (3 July) and it is titled A Framework For Considering Literacy Instruction. The essay seeks to provide a framework for comprehensive and balanced literacy instruction which reflects the developmental stages of literacy and the multifaceted nature of language development.

The other essay is a more expansive attempt to cover its topic. It first appeared as a five-part series starting in January and it now exists as a unified essay that comes in at over 7,000 words (which - in hindsight - is not very much). It focuses on our practices and it is entitled Why Do We Do What We Do?. Taken together both essays reflect upon two principles that underpin the themes on this site: how we come to see (read) in particular ways and how we come to act (practice) with others within a community. Please explore and enjoy!

Why Do We Do What We Do? ADDED - 21/08/14 - Why do we do what we do? How are our days, our months, our lives structured? What determines our practices? If we think back, how much of our daily patterns were determined by the practices we acquired as a child? And what about the practices we acquired later on? These and many more questions draw our attention to the concept of practices, which is a concept that I feel is at the core of human existence. Read More ...

A Framework for Considering Literacy Instruction The developmental nature of literacy is captured in the six stages of reading development presented by Jeanine Chall (1996). Across the six stages, there are three skill domains and six developmental areas to take into consideration when implementing a framework for comprehensive literacy instruction. Read More ...

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Regular visitors to Wittgenstein on Learning may have noticed that the topic-specific glossaries, such as the Aspect Seeing and the Knowledge glossaries, are not organised alphabetically. Consequently, until recently, I have been asking visitors to infer the logic of each glossary from the order of the terms. As of today, the logic is made a bit more explicit. Each of the topic-specific glossaries now includes an introductory paragraph near the top of the page.

For instance, the paragraph for the Practices Glossary is as follows:

The concepts of practice, of cultural practices, of communities of practice, of language games, of rules, and of rule following play particularly important roles in the Philosophical Investigations. It is important to draw a distinction between practices and activities. Activities are actions that we engage in and complete but without the expectation that they are significant or ongoing. Whereas a practice is something that is incorporated as meaningful actions/habits in our form of life which is to be valued. There is also a motivation to refine the practice, and there is a certain status attached to the practice. For instance, art as an activity is a curious things to do; whereas art as a practice takes on a significance that becomes an expressive tool to make sense of lived experiences. Similarly, religion as a practice fulfils a purpose that is unknown to the uninitiated. The practice relies upon there being a community of practice. It also relies on there being individuals who become initiated into that practice and - quite honestly - on there being others who are excluded.

This update is an example of the small updates being made to the site to better explain key themes and concepts. Please enjoy and explore!

p.s. Regular visitors may have missed that the Language Glossary was overhauled a few weeks back. In particular, the glossary now focuses almost exclusively on language, rather than language & literacy.

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"Thinking too has a time for ploughing and a time for gathering the harvest." Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Culture & Value

It is with great pleasure that I announce the beginnings of the Teaching Folder of the Wittgenstein On Learning website. The Teaching Folder is and will be a special section on the site. Its pages will seek to apply Wittgensteinian principles to practical, balanced teaching techniques and examples.

For some visitors, this section might appear to stray away from direct commentary on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is true. This section will be the one that is the most Wittgensteinian and the least Wittgenstein in nature.

In the Wittgensteinian spirit, it will provide teaching advice, strategies, assessment techniques and examples that meander between cognitive and socio-cultural explanations of learning. The advice will straddle structural and contextual considerations as well as individual and cultural perspectives. Over time, I hope the section will provide visitors with ideas that facilitate rich, meaningful teaching that is multifaceted, developmental and experiential.

A few housekeeping tasks have been completed to pave the way. The Topics Folder has been rebadged as the Background Folder, which now includes the Why Wittgenstein? and Initial Notes pages that previously could be found in the Home Folder. The Overview page has been retitled Key Themes and the Essays page has been moved into the Teaching Folder.

There is much work that still remains ahead. Visitors will notice how the Balanced Teaching, Planning & Assessment and Example & Case Studies pages are all currently under construction. Nevertheless, the bones of the skeleton are in place and a bit of flesh has already started to take shape. To receive updates, I encourage visitors to select the link below - "Subscribe to the Journal".

In the meantime, enjoy and explore!!

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From Wittgenstein in On Certainty

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“Wittgenstein is reminding himself that the fundamental consideration in understanding human beings is not linguistic but behavioural.”

— Klagge, 2011, pg 64

Klagge, J. (2011). Wittgenstein in exile. Cambridge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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CENTRAL THESISThe cognitive revolution (exemplified by such work as the work of Noam Chomsky) has exerted a great influence in the fields of linguistics and education. Whilst there is little doubt that this work has contributed significantly to our technical understanding of cognition, language and learning, it has also produced unintended negative consequences by encouraging models of learning that appear overly mechanical, acultural and linear. In contrast, a return to the themes of Wittgenstein re-engages a picture of language and learning within context which is highly dynamic, reiterative, dialectical, interpersonal and ontological.

MISSION STATEMENTThe mission of this site is to utilise the Wittgenstein's philosophy as a catalyst to promote rigorous investigations of teaching, literacy, acculturation and psycho-social development. Key pillars of Wittgenstein's teachings - analytical thought and enactivism - urge us to examine how and why we come to learn what we learn by urging us to critically reflect on the very conditions and expectations of learning. This critical practice should call all educators, citizens and political leaders to be comprehensive in framing learning events which are sensitive to the diversity of socio-cultural practices and diligent in promoting equity in learning opportunities for all.

AIMS* To use Wittgenstein's concept of aspect seeing as a platform to explain how one's perceptual skills (e.g. literacy), knowledge (e.g. historical appreciation), practices (e.g. mechanical skills) and beliefs (e.g. democratic ideals) develop over time in stages through repeated practice, enabling opportunities and guidance from those who are more experienced; * To ask us all to be mindful and respectful of the experiences, rituals, practices, cultural artefacts and "learning moments" that give shape to the ways we live, see, act, react and believe by showing how all learning and language has its form, content, purpose, context and history, all of which may not necessarily be apparent to the acculturated learner or the outsider; and * To understand what it means to ensure equity in the opportunity for all to learn whilst respecting the cultural, social and economic pluralism exhibited within and across local, national and historical boundaries.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE In short, nothing a priori. There are no universals. All is learned. That which is learned becomes the foundation for later learning. Any cultural similarities in learning practices are due to similarities in human needs that are present across time and space. Our learning comes to serve as the framework to our perceiving, interpreting and acting, which will evolve, alter direction, fragment, decay, leap, etc. Therefore, the trajectory for learning is neither determined nor automatic. At the same time, the trajectory of learning is not arbitrary. The trajectory is conditioned through context, practice and the will, and this conditioning is far from simple and rarely pure.

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by Jeanne Chall, Vicki Jacobs, and Luke Baldwin

Recently, I wrote about this book in a journal entry titled A Teacher for All Seasons where I indicated that a literacy teacher must be clear, structured and evidence-based as well as expansive, engaging and creative.  Even though by contemporary standards the title - why poor children fall behind - may appear blunt, the authors' observations about the challenges of coordinating a balanced pedagogy are pertinent today. For this reason, I am including it as a recommended read.

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This is the second episode of the Wittgenstein On Learning Podcast. In this episode, I discuss Wittgenstein's concept of language games. The concept of language games serves as a central features of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Through this concept, Wittgenstein is able to take a more anthropological or ethnographic approach to language by emphasising how language is acquired, developed and justified within contexts. In this episode, I explore (a) how language is acquired in contexts through engagement in various communities of practice; (b) how individuals develop a range of concepts over time that become applied to experience, and (c) how it important for individuals to become critically aware of the discourses that are used to explain and interpret experiences and events. I welcome people to listen to the podcast for more, and I invite comments and questions. (wittgenstein-on-learning.com)

iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/journal-wittgensteinian-view/id879917574

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I am pleased to share six new essays in the Essay Collection. Like previous essays, the new essays are revisions of journal entries that appeared much earlier. Each of the essays - in their own way - explore the topic of teaching (to put it simply) and joy and challenges of it.

To understand you need to be part of the conversation ADDED - 17/07/14 - "If you understand anything in language, you must understand what the dialogue is, and you must see how understanding grows as the dialogue grows ... For language is discourse, is speaking. It is telling people things and trying to follow them. And that is what you try to understand ... You understand when it adds to your understanding of the discussion. Or of what the discussion is about." Read More ...

Vision and Determination: Ideal Qualities for Every Teacher and Learner ADDED - 17/07/14 - Talk of best practices, teaching programs, cycles, and progressions can lull the casual observer into believing that programs on their own bring about result. A program's success is only as powerful as the vision and determination of the teacher delivering it and the learner engaging in it. We should not forget that learning is work, that skills and knowledge can and will be forgotten. Read More ...

Learning as Puzzle Solving UPDATED - 31/08/14 - Learning is often completed collaboratively with others, and features a sense of mutual accomplishment as the learners embark on a journey of discovery, consolidation and confidence. A “constructivist” approach is implied in the principles above as novices can come to approach, learn, master, question and refine skills under the scaffolded guidance of one who is more skilled. Read More ...

Talent is Made Manifest Through Practice ADDED - 14/07/14 - Whilst it can be charming to believe that success can be achieved without hard work and access to expert teachers, space and time, and opportunities, the more accurate picture is quite different. What is required is perseverance, regular practice, access to effective teaching and mentoring, and access to relevant opportunities Read More ...

Initiating individuals into intentional activity ADDED - 14/07/14 - In language teaching, it is important to initiate individuals into intentional activity whilst understanding the need to develop structural competency. The following discussion is influenced by a usage-based approach to language acquisition. It so follows that the individual develops language in an intricate give-and-take navigation with other language users in the pursuit of shared intention and joint construction. Read More ...

What is essential to language & literacy learning? ADDED - 03/07/14 - Literate individuals have benefited from enabling relationships as well as access to adequate spaces, time, resources and formative experiences that aid and reinforce what it means to be literate. It is indispensable to acknowledge that literate practices are refined in collaboration with others (having people to talk to, to read with and to write to). Read More ...

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We often ask, how is it that a Grade 3 student is unable to read? How can we allow this?

“Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and most complicated world.” (Hermann Hesse, Quoted by Wolf, 2008, p 79)

The ultimate goal is education, and we should never underestimate the practical, emotional and deliberative factors which must all align for deep discovery to take place. We must continue to ask the following questions:

• Is there effective teaching? Are there effective spaces for teaching and learning?
• Is there a commitment of key stakeholders?
• What are the opportunities and motivations for practice and application?
• What presents themselves as barriers to education and how do we minimise these barriers?

For quality education to become a reality, there must be coherent & developmental instruction; passionate & visionary teachers, peers and/or caregivers; quality materials, resources & practices; and a respect for the learners' cultures, experiences and pathways. The learner must be "a biologically and socially adept human being ... susceptible to training ... [with] fundamental trust [in] the authority of the teacher ... [engaged in] socio-linguistic interaction ... transmissible ... through enculturation" (Moyal-Sharrock, 2010, pg 6 - 7). We must work to create joint attention in which all participants share a sense of mutual accomplishment within enabling structures.

As mentioned previously, equity in opportunity to learn requires that the learner has:

1. Substantial amount of engaged time on task which is not disrupted by teacher and student absenteeism;
2. Access to quality teaching, resources and environments;
3. A coalition of support including teachers, parents, community members and peers;
4. Safe and secure environments free from discrimination and abundant in high educational expectations;
5. Respect for the funds of knowledge that the learners bring to the learning environments and their cultural way of knowing. This includes a respect for the cultural, social and economic space and the way of knowing particular to it and its occupants, even in an era of globalisation, nationalism and standardisation;
6. Structuring structures that structure structure, which refers to the aggregate effect of supportive environments, financial capital, social relationships and the employment/educational marketplace;
7. Resilience, grit, agency and purpose demonstrated by learners as well as from their teachers and their caregivers; and
8. Substantial opportunities to practice with key opportunities to turn such practice into sustained existence (e.g. jobs, clubs, etc).

However, we must also engage with the antithesis of this ideal. If we supposedly know the essentials for achieving equity in opportunity to learn, why is it that we allow the achievement gap to widen? Do we put this down to lingustic differences, cultural differences, discrimination, inadequate or negligent teaching, or disagreement over the rationales for schooling? (Au, 1998) Are “disadvantaged” learners in environments that encourages complacency, a lack of self-efficacy or a lack of rigour? Are there inadequate learning materials, limited learning opportunities, and ineffective feedback? Are learners in a world full of risks, harms and threats? Do we know the assets that students bring to the learning and are we prepared to provide the opportunities for transformative education?

Therefore, a FOCUS ON LEARNING involves the most deliberate activities, since we know that any learning is only fragile unless reinforced and integrated into further stages of learning. The child (or emerging learner) is not faced with the prospect of developing such complex skills from the get go. There is a progressive, temporal dimension to this learning where the child is supported by others to develop foundational skills which lead into competency which lead to mastery which lead to further disciplinary practice. Meanwhile, the learner is surrounded by others (family, a community, peers, a culture) who exerts their own practices, knowledge, values and ways of navigating the spoken and written word.

What I do encourage is diligence and vision, empathy and expertise, instruction and reflection because "the child's understanding is not achieved in an instance or a flash, but requires multifarious repetition in multifarious context." (Moyal-Sharrock, 2010, pg 6). Learning also requires closure (or reinforcements). "Wittgenstein means to call to mind ... the intimacy with which seeing [and learning] is bound up with our embodiment, expectations, natural reactions, forms of life, and facts about our natural and social worlds.” (Affeldt, 2010, p. 276)

The teacher must be able to recognise this and take into account a range of factors when assessing the suitability of the goals for instruction, of the instructional materials, of the instructional methods, of classroom/instructional management, of community and parental engagement, of the role of home language and multilingualism, and of the forms of the assessment to be used (Au, 1998). A teacher's expertise should be both technical and socio-cultural. As Macedo (2001) suggests, “reading specialists ... who have made technical advancement in the field of reading ... [must] make linkages between their self-contained technical reading methods and the social and political realities that generate unacceptably high failure reading rates among certain groups of students.” (pg xiii)

References

Affeldt, S. G. (2010). On the difficulty of seeing aspects and the “therapeutic” reading of Wittgenstein. In W. Day & V. J. Krebs (Eds.), Seeing Wittgenstein anew (pp. 268 – 288). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Au, K. (1998). Social constructivism and the school literacy learning of students of diverse backgrounds. Journal of Literacy Research, 30(2), 297–319. doi:10.1080/10862969809548000

Macedo, D. (2001). Foreword. In P. Freire (Ed.), Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy and civic courage (pp. xi – xxxii). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2010). Coming to Language: Wittgenstein’s Social “Theory” of Language Acquisition. In SOL Conference 6-8 May 2010. Bucharest.

Wolf, M. (2008). Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain. Cambridge: Icon Books.

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"In becoming literate, one must acquire skills that are only remotely related to print as well as those that are directly related." (Snow, et al, 1991, p. 5)

McKenna, M. C., & Stahl, K. A. D. (2012). Assessment for reading instruction. 2nd Edition. Guilford Press.

Catherine Snow's observation is particularly relevant to managing balanced literacy instruction. In addition to attending to comprehension skills, compositional skills and print-based skills (e.g. phonemic awareness, spelling skills, fluency, etc), such instruction must take into account the learning of the language itself; the situations in which we speak, listen, read and write; what we are actually trying to learn (e.g. cooking, gardening, football, etc); and the desires, needs, preferences, relationships, experiences and knowledge that we bring to the learning. The diagram to the right represents this parallel development of word recognition skills, strategic reading skills, and language and knowledge

A comprehensive literacy pedagogy would be one where developed a mastering of "the code" along with ample and diverse experiences of using language and literacy in everyday practices and in learning. Such a balanced literacy pedagogy would include a focus on:

• creating environments and experiences that foster learning, language & literacy;
• scaffolding reading;
• scaffolding writing;
• developing word recognition skills;
• expanding vocabulary and depth of word meanings;
• encouraging the representation & retention of knowledge; and
• keeping a pulse on a learner's development, interests and motivation.

Such a pedagogy would recognise that:

1. Human language is a practice and it involves practice.
2. That practice involves attending to and mastering salient aspects of language.
3. Whilst spoken language is arguable developed by all, literacy is the acquisition of a code that many take for granted.
4. This development is incremental and moves through stages. Adults must be ever vigilant and sensitive to this development.
5. At every stage it is important to emphasise and model that language and literacy should be meaningful, purposeful and about discovery.
6. The teacher’s role is to help the child by arranging tasks and activities in such a way that they are more easily accessible. The teacher must also ensure that adequate time and space is made available (especially in the great hurly burly of contemporary life). It is important that learners achieves closure.
7. This requires an introduction to the routines, habits and ways of using language and literacy as mediating tools.
8. It is vital that the learner has adequate time and space for this engagement (a) to be modelled for them, (b) to participate in guided practice, and (c) to try out new strategies and skills on their own.
9. We should not underestimate the important role that emotional commitment and attachment plays in the intake, uptake and embodiment of learning.
10. We must acknowledge that all learning is conducted with others in context and is dependent on access to tools and resources.
11. It is important to recognise that there are multiple ways of reading/writing and it is vital to create contexts where a range of literacies can be developed.
12. An individual's reading and writing practices become more specialised as he or she grows into social, community and economic spheres.
13. Teaching practitioners must be aware of the material and social factors that impinge upon an individual's successful development of a range of language, literacy and learning practices.

We must remember, in the words of Moyal-Sharrock (2010), how "acquiring language is like learning to walk: the child is stepped into language by an initiator and, after much hesitation and repeated faltering, with time and multifarious practice and exposure, it disengages itself from the teacher's hold and is able, as it were, to run with the language." (2010, pg 6)

Reference

Cavell, S. (1969). Must We Mean What We Say?. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2010). Coming to Language: Wittgenstein’s Social “Theory” of Language Acquisition. In SOL Conference 6-8 May 2010. Bucharest.

Snow, C., Barnes, W. S., Chandler, J., Goodman, I. F., & Hemphill, L. (1991). Unfulfilled expectations: home and school influences on literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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I have recently finished a convincing argument that alleviates - if only temporarily - my attempts to seek to identify a singular literacy pedagogy. Visitors to this site will be well aware of my struggle to resolve two images of literacy pedagogy, a conflict which is also apparent in the tension between Wittgenstein's early and later conceptualisations of language. These two images are commonly represented by such dichotomies as practice in print-based skills vs (oral) language development (Aaron et al, 2008); word recognition vs (word) meaning (Chall, Jacobs & Baldwin, 1990); formal practices vs informal practices (Senechal, 2006); or constrained skills vs unconstrained skills (Paris, 2005; Stahl, 2011).

In short, fostering literacy requires that one is adept at systematically reinforcing the core, constrained skills of literacy (to the point of mastery) so that fluency is attained and higher order thinking can be facilitated, whilst providing rich opportunities for students to gain and express meaning in multiple knowledge domains and modes through scaffolded speaking, listening, reading and writing. In my earlier writing, I suggested that such a teacher must be both systematic and expansive, that the literacy pedagogy must be both intensive and extensive, that a teacher must be both precise and discursive, and that a teacher must keep a keen ear our for cognitive development whilst building sociocultural capacities and knowledge. To say the least, a teacher must be organised with an awareness of selecting suitable content, with a clear conception of learning intentions, and with the ability to determine if intentions are being met and whether such learning is fostering all the attributes that will equip the learner for future learning.

A literacy teacher must be "a teacher for all seasons" - so to speak - which is clearly on display in the chapter, "Classroom environments and literacy instruction" that appears in Chall, Jacobs and Baldwin's (1990) book The Reading Crisis: why poor children fall behind. Even though contemporary standards may take exception to the bluntness of the title, the author's observations about the challenges of coordinating a balanced pedagogy are pertinent today.

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Across the six stages of reading development (Chall, 1996), I have identified three skill domains and six developmental areas to take into consideration. For the purposes of this outline, I present the three "frames" in the current journal entry.

It is essential that experienced adults “keep the finger on the pulse” to ensure that younger learners are developing the skills, practices, knowledge, habits and attitudes that are required presently and which will be required in subsequent stages.

Learners should have the opportunity to consolidate current skills (that they are expected to complete independently at the current stage) whilst experiencing more advanced skills (that they can complete through the assistance/scaffolding/modelling of an experienced adult).

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Developing literacy presents certain challenges in remote contexts for a range of reasons; however, these reasons are not insurmountable, though they do present significant obstacles.

If I need to start somewhere, I will cite the lack of a literate tradition as one factor to consider. In non-remote contexts, children are exposed to literate behaviour in a range of forms from a very early age. A literate sensibility is reinforced in literate environments. And a literate environment is one which is stacked with literate artefacts (e.g. books, magazines, list on refrigerators) and populated by readers and writers. However, children in remote communities are growing up in environments with few age-appropriate books and fewer role models who exhibit the diverse habits of a literate individual. 

Furthermore - in remote contexts - it is often the case that learners are brought into literacy in a language that is not their mother tongue. If early literacy experiences were about rendering in print that which is spoken, then English language learners face additional barriers to see the relationship between speech, writing and reading. In addition to the language barrier, there is also the cultural barrier. It is understood that readers are better able to engage and understand what they read when they have the prior knowledge/experience/schema to find the reading meaningful, not to mention access to an experienced reader to aid reading. However, it is often the case that the learners are exposed to texts which (a) use an unnatural (or unfamiliar) flow of language and (b) do not connect with the learner’s experiences (or desire to attach meaning). Whilst these texts may provide “exercises in reading”, there is some doubt as to the meaning being extracted from such text. A child might “read” the text, but does the child understand what he or she is reading?

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Some may note that there has been a delay in updates to the journal recently. I must admit that the delay has been due to a brief amount of time spent on some experimentation. That experimentation has resulted in the Wittgenstein On Learning iPhone App. The app isn't spectacular. Instead, I was curious to see if it were possible to create an iPhone app with certain HTML5 and Javascript tools. The answer is "yes". So, I invite you to download the free app and explore some key quotes from the Tractatus, the Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty and Culture & Value. Now that the app is done, I'll happily return to journal updates which explore Wittgensteinian concepts in relation to language, literacy and learning.

Whilst I am providing updates, I have also listed three new Mendeley reading lists: supporting refugee learners, language & literacy development, and place-based pedagogy. The three lists can be considered Wittgensteinian in spirit. It goes without saying that Wittgenstein does provoke reflection on language & literacy development, though I would like to argue that a Wittgensteinian sensibility does provide a sensitivity to the plight of refugees and a reflection on locally based knowledges.

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The podcast will provide a further outlet to present ideas in relation to the impact of Wittgensteinian ideas on contemporary discussions of language learning, literacy acquisition, cultural practices and the development of knowledge. The first episode provides an introduction to the website as well as a brief contrast between the treatment of language (and literacy) in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigation. To keep the contemporary feel, the contrast is applied to Paris's (2005) presentation of constrained skills theory in relation to literacy development. I welcome people to listen to the podcast for more, and I look forward to taking further advantage of the medium as a complement to journal entries and other content on the website. (wittgenstein-on-learning.com)

iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/journal-wittgensteinian-view/id879917574

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A new essay has been added to the Essays and Presentation section of the site:

Equity in Access to 'Quality' Education for Students in Remote Communities ADDED - 04/05/14 - There are distinct voices in the debate who have serious doubts over the ability for remote education to deliver the skills and knowledge necessary for remote children and youth to navigate the national and global agendas that impact upon their local communities. Approaches to the issue reveal deep divides. Read More ...

Some may notice that the essay is a revision of a journal entry that first appeared on the site in November 2013.

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Not too long ago, I was looking for a Reference Manager to help organise readings from past and current research. Whilst quite a number of programs suited the purpose (e.g. Sente, Zotero), I eventually went with Mendeley since the interface was pretty intuitive and it was quite easy to access the reference library on web, desktop and mobile devices.

More recently, I discovered an added benefit: the ability to create/share public reading groups. Consequently, I have created a Reading/Research group that includes all present and future references/readings that appear on this website. The Reading Group is dedicated to sharing readings which are considered to provide Wittgensteinian commentary on language, literacy and learning. This includes the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and those in the spirit of his philosophy (as is explained in site's Introduction).

The Reading Group serves a few purposes. First, the Recently Added Readings linked on this site provides an embedded list of the most recent references added to the site/group (often listed on the linked page before they find their way into the alphabetic or topic lists). Second, the Recently Added Reading page is linked to the research group with Mendeley. If you are already a Mendeley user, I encourage you to follow/join the reading/research group. If you are not a Mendeley user, I invite you to investigate how to sign up to follow the group. Third, I openly encourage people to become members of the Reading/Reference Group, which allows individuals to post comments and their own readings. At the time of writing (22/04/14), the Reading Group was the first one on Mendeley to be dedicated a Wittgensteinian perspective.

To be honest, I first created the public group as a quick way to provide the most up-to-date list of what I have been reading that expresses a Wittgensteinian perspective on language, literacy and learning. If it so happens that a community of followers and members develops, then I am more than happy to curate the group and for the reading group to take a life of its own. Welcome and explore!

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"In his brief life Vygotsky observed that the very process of writing one’s thoughts leads individuals to refine those thoughts and to discover new ways of thinking." (Wolf, 2008, p 73)

A new section can be found underneath the Topics drop down menu. There is now a link for Essay and Presentations. Each of the essays will reflect a Wittgensteinian approach to language, literacy, and learning. In particular, the essays seek to tease out the pedagogical implications of Wittgenstein's philosophy and related theorists and practitioners. At times, the essays will explicitly discuss the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. At other times, the essays will reflect the spirit of Wittgenstein's philosophical themes. (For a summary of the site's interpretation, please see Why Wittgenstein?, the Introduction and Initial Notes).

To get started, you will find a link to the essay, Language and literacy are learned with steady guidance from others. Regular visitors will notice that the essay first appeared as a journal entry on 2 January. The essay has been revisited, edited and revised.

More to come! Please explore.

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The following is a speech delivered by Alan Duncan - UK Minister of State at the UK launch of the Global Monitoring Report on 7 April 2014

"I am delighted to be here today to support the UK launch of this year’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report. Its theme, Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality For All fits well with DFID’s education priorities. The report also rightly reminds us why investing in education is so important for any economy as a whole but also (and more importantly) why it matters for every individual.

"Behind this report is 1 simple stark truth. If all girls completed primary school in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, the number of girls getting married by the age of 15 would fall significantly. Education does indeed transform lives.

"In these brief remarks, I want to reflect on what the GMR tells us about DFID’s 3 education priorities, and then outline where more effort is needed to make better and faster progress. ‘Leaving no one behind’ is 1 of DFID’s priorities and this report presents impressive progress over the last 20 years on access to school. Globally there are 51 million more children in primary school today than there were in 1999, and 6 out of 10 countries have now achieved an equal number of girls and boys enrolled in primary school.

"These are signs of real improvement which is the result of significant domestic and international investment and effort. Good progress can be made when the world gets behind a simple and compelling message as it has done with the MDG focus on access to primary school.

"While we should recognise and celebrate this progress, we know that schooling does not always lead to learning. I don’t think any of us here would be satisfied with a primary school in which our children do not even learn to read and to count after four years in school. It’s the quality of learning achieved for every girl and boy, and not just the length of schooling, which makes education such a valuable investment."

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The learner must be "a biologically and socially adept human being ... susceptible to training ... [with] fundamental trust [in] the authority of the teacher ... [engaged in] socio-linguistic interaction ... transmissible ... through enculturation" (Moyal-Sharrock, 2010, pg 6 - 7)

I will contend that learning and being educated are givens in human experience. We do learn things and we are brought into learning by others. What we learn and whether or not the learning is successful is a different matter. And whether or not the learning is positive is also up to question (e.g. being raised in an environment of crime and learning certain tricks of the trade). So, I am asking people to provide their perspectives on the question, "what does it mean to gain an education?"

What education entails for the nomadic, pastoral lifestyle of the Masai is different from that of other sectors of the world (Semali, 1994). Should the education in an elite grammar school in Paris be different from that of a school in a working class community in Manchester? Should the two schools and the students' home environments prepare learners for different forms of life? Is it fair that formal educational institutions celebrate certain forms of knowledge (e.g. of poetry or Shakespeare), whilst marginalising other knowledge (the art of car mechanics) at the same time?

How is the educational life of a young person in South Korea different than the education life of one in the surburbs of Sydney, Australia? What would be the ideal education to suit Indigenous children and young people in remote Australia?

Please use the comments field/link below to offer you own perspective on what does it mean to gain an education?

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Dr Michael A. Peters is one of the authors of the Book Pick: Showing and Doing: Wittgenstein as a Pedagogical Philosopher. In the following video, Dr Peters speaks about the problems of rationality. In particular, he posits that there is a change in the way that rationality is described from the before and after the turn of the 20th century. He attributes to Wittgenstein a role in this change. Specifically, prior to the 20th century, there was talk of a single rationality (a Western scientific mode); however, in the 20th century and into the 21st century, we must speak of many rationalities, since any mode of reasoning is a byproduct of concepts that are quite familiar to the reader of Wittgenstein. Modes of reasoning are the byproduct of communities of practice, disciplines, discourses, language games, forms of life, etc, which does allow on to reflect on the cultural practices and politics around different ways of reasoning. Please enjoy the video. Dr Peters explains this much better than I.

Uploaded by educationatillinois on 2014-03-05.

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The following is an updated version of a previous post. The post now includes minor edits as well as two new sections. First, I have provide a list of 10 factors that enhances one's opportunity to learning. This list of 10 factors will be expanding in an upcoming journal post. Second, I have expanded the conclusion by including paraphrase on a related journal entry . Please enjoy and explore.

"Literacy can be seen as dependent on instruction, with the corollary that quality of instruction is key. 

"This view emphasizes the developmental nature of literacy-- the passage of children through successive stages of literacy, in each of which the reading and writing tasks change qualitatively and the role of the instructor has to change accordingly." (Chall, 1996 as referenced in Snow, 2004)

What is essential?

Gaining a command of language and literacy over time is the essential bit. In this, I want to keep things simple. The literacy learner acquires alphabetic knowledge. That is, the individual learns that letters are meant to represent sounds, and that these sounds are combined to form words. These words can come to represent aspects or objects in one's environment, experience or imagination. One is better prepared to break a word down into its sounds (or component parts) if the word is familiar to one.  So we have a picture in which objects or concepts in someone's environment or imagination are connected to words uttered by a person which can be broken down into sounds that can be represented by a written system. And this written system is rule-governed.

Individuals should be motivated by the desire to represent or convey observations about objects, which requires one to string words together in the form of sentences (or propositions).  It is essential that the learner is also able to extract meaning from them, as well. In this case, an individual is motivated to report or narrate or recount, and to interpret reports, narratives, recounts, etc. One can imagine a learning experience in which a finite portion of the language is selected that allows one to learn a portion of particular sound patterns, develop a thematic vocabulary, and use this knowledge to read, write and discuss observations in a particular domain.

More advanced language is merely an extension of the earlier practices. In other words, if one develops the cognitive habits of seeking out sounds, understanding how sounds are put/blended together, knowing how words are formed, building a robust vocabulary, forming meaningful expressions, and interpreting expressions with intent, then one is in good place.

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Josh Kaufman is the author of the The First 20 Hours: Mastering the Toughest Part of Learning Anything. Josh specializes in teaching people from all walks of life how to master practical knowledge and skills. In his talk, he shares how having his first child inspired him to approach learning in a whole new way.

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A range of new references have been added to the reading list of Wittgenstein On Learning, particularly in reference to:

• on Wittgenstein,
• language learning,
• literacy development,
• adopting practices and
• issues of equity in learning.

Please explore!

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A range of new terms have been added to the glossaries of Wittgenstein On Learning, particularly in the general, knowledge and practices.

As a summary you will be the following newly added terms in the respective glossaries:

• GENERAL GLOSSARY: affordances & effectivities, information entropy, mindfulness, structuring structures which structure structure, and tacit knowledge;
• KNOWLEDGE GLOSSARY: information entropy, mindfulness, tacit knowledge; and
• PRACTICES GLOSSARY - affordances & effectivities; structuring structures which structure structure, and tacit knowledge.

Please explore!

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I'd like to have one last contribution to the series Why We Do What We Do?, which I hope to edit and present in full in an upcoming essays section to the site. Presently, I would like to bring the series to an end by providing a quote from a journal article that I read recently. I feel it sums up what the series attempts to express, particularly if read in conjunction with an except from a related journal article presented in an earlier blog entry.

An excerpt from Gerrans, P. (2005). Tacit knowledge, rule following and Pierre Bourdieu’s philosophy of social science. Anthropological Theory, 5(1), 53-74.

On Bourdieu’s account of dispositional tacit knowledge, agents learn to agree in practice without explicitly or consciously representing concordance as a goal. Thus the hierarchy of respect in the barrio is reproduced even though each individual is not consciously thinking that the rule which governs his actions is to ‘preserve the hierarchy of respect’. The idea goes back at least to Aristotle’s contrast between learning by habituation and learning by intellectual instruction in the Nichomachean Ethics

Now some think that we are made good by nature, others by habituation, others by teaching. Nature’s part evidently does not depend on us, but as a result of some divine causes is present in those who are truly fortunate; while argument and teaching we may suspect are not powerful with all men, but the soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble joy and noble hatred, like earth which is to nourish the seed . . . The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and hating what is base. (Nichomachean Ethics 1179b-31)

Aristotle’s point is that virtue, which on his account is a form of knowledge, is originally a matter of character rather than intellect. Furthermore, that character cannot be acquired alone. One acquires a character as second nature through living in a society in which standards for virtuous behaviour are embodied in practice. Aristotle’s word for this type of socially embodied representation acquired through practical immersion in a culture is Hexis: Bourdieu captures the same concept by a term first used by Aristotle’s medieval translators: habitus.

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A range of new terms have been added to the glossaries of Wittgenstein On Learning, particularly in the general, aspect seeing, practices and language glossaries.

As a summary you will be the following newly added terms in the respective glossaries:

• GENERAL GLOSSARY: bootstrapping, components of a message, discourse, elements of language, expertise, heteroglossia, ill-structured tasks, inclination, language learning, language/literacy as social practice, joint attention and intention, meaning blindness, practical holism and theoretical holism;
• ASPECT SEEING GLOSSARY- bootstrapping, inclination, and meaning-blindness;
• LANGUAGE GLOSSARY - bootstrapping, components of a message, discourse, elements of language, heteroglossia, ill-structured tasks, language learning, language/literacy as social practice, joint attention and intention, and meaning blindness;
• PRACTICES GLOSSARY - bootstrapping, expertise, ill-structured tasks and inclination.

Please explore!

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“Practical holism ... is the view that [any theory of language] can only be meaningful in specific contexts and against a background of shared practices’. ... Background practices, equipment, locations, and broader horizons ... are part and parcel of our ability to engage in conversation and find our way about.” (Stern, 2004, pg 163 - 164)

To sum up, Hans Sluga once wrote that “human language games are not based on knowledge but on practice.” (Sluga, 2011, pg 107) I have applied this observation to the broad notion of existence or practice. It is not what we know that gives shape to our existence. It is what we do. Our knowledge comes to serve and - in fact - justify why we do what we do and the standards of excellence that we expect from these endeavours. If I am to conclude, then I would say that a practice is something that we do not just once but on a regular basis. Unlike an activity, the participant in a practice attaches a certain level of significance or commitment to the action. In the practice, one comes to acquire certain rules that give shape to the practice. The participant comes to act in accordance with the rules, some which are explicitly stated and others which are acquired through experience and understood as conventions of the practice.

To be fully immersed in a practice requires an understanding of the standards and expectations, the intention behind the activities, and the motivation and significance that underpins the practice. One becomes adept in the practice through experience, and this is assisted through instruction (or guidance) by those who are more experienced. These “masters” set the stage for engagement and they scaffold subsequent engagement and development. This is done in the hope that the practice will be internalised and the participant will “go on” in accordance with the rule. By “going on”, the learner is committed to the practice by adhering to the practice, contributing to the practice and being part of the practice’s evolution. Collectively, one’s practices give shape to one’s form of life within the stream of living. One’s practices provide one with a habitus (or culture), and one’s habitus (or culture) gives rise from one’s practices.

At the same time, we should never forget any single practice or set of practices is open to disintegration or entropy. Entropy is formally defined as "the lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder." Any system must have energy placed into it so that the system is maintained or preserved. If the practices of a cultural system are not reinforced, then the system and the form of life to which that system is attached will suffer and decay. According to the concept of entropy, the natural state of any system is decay unless efforts are made to maintain it.

Reference

Sluga, H. (2011). Wittgenstein. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Stern, D. (2004). Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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In Part Three of “Why We Do What We Do?”, I attempted to provide the contextual conditions which sustain a practice. In other words, I discussed the material and social factors that foster, maintain and extend ways of acting and knowing. At the end of that entry, I indicate that access to practices and the freedom to practice are not equally distributed. 

“The problem requires specification of the sociological processes which control the way the developing child relates himself to his environment. It requires an understanding of how certain areas of experience are differentiated, made specific and stabilized, so that which is relevant to the functioning of the social structure becomes relevant for the child … What seems to be needed is the development of a theory of social learning which would indicate what in the environment is available for learning, the conditions of learning, the constraints on subsequent learning, and the major reinforcing process.” (Bernstein, 1964, pg. 55)

It is on this note that we launch into Part Four of the series.

It is important that any activity system is open to challenge, “it is, I would argue, an important part of the health at least of large, modern societies, that they have within them members who are not truly at home there, who see with the eyes of the ‘outsider within,’ and that such members are in positions to be listened to and to be intelligible.” (Scheman, 1997, pg. 403 - 404)