Meaning Making Through Multiple Sign Systems

"In addition to the central role of reading and writing in their lives, they also explore personal understandings through music, art, and dance, often using more than one of these sign systems in a single literacy event (p. 224-5)."

I really liked this chapter because it went along with the "funds of knowledge" that we read about last week. Students all bring different knowledge and past experiences to the table. We as teachers need to be able to tap into those experiences and use them in our teaching. When the text talked about the Native American students, they had backgrounds that had a lot of music, dance and art; using those things to teach them only helps to legitimize and authenticate the instruction being done in the classroom.

The chapters for this week can really be related to Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In this case, the Native American students were musically and body kinestetically learning the best. With literacy being the most important "thing" we teach in school (everything rides on how well a student can read), it is most important that we are able to make learning personal and authentic for each student. If teachers don't do this, their students are going to just be reading the words on the page and not comprehending them.