ERDG 605: Practicum: Adolescent Literacies and Multimodalities, 5-12
Program Requirements and Prerequisites: Required course for students in the Literacy Specialist 5-12 and B-12 programs. This course is
typically only offered in the spring semester. Prerequisite: ERDG 610.
Practicum: 15 Hours.
Course Description: Exploration of adolescent literacies across contexts and modes. Students conduct inquiries with adolescents to develop and
assess educational contexts for multimodal literacy learning. Topics include: youth creative practices; using new technologies to enhance literacy
learning; teachers as researchers. Students in the literacy programs must receive a B or better in practicum courses before being allowed to take the
capstone class.
Attributes
 Literacy as Social Practice**
 Equity
 Generate Productive Learning Communities**
 Engagement*
 Reciprocal Relationships Across Modes of Communication**
 Strategic Teaching to Promote Self-Extending Learning*
 Assessment of Literacies and Their Development
 Research Based Professional Learning*
Attributes (continued)
 Respectful Representation of Students, Families and Communities**
 Critical Literacies*
 Disciplinary Literacy/Knowledge Building
 Data Based Decision Making
 Technologies and Digital Media**
 Materials and Resources*
 Prevention and Intervention
 Standards*
Core Content
Possible Assignments
 Adolescents’ literacies across contexts: school, Inquiries into Adolescents Literacies Across
Contexts and Modes: Interviews and
community, online
Representations
 Adolescents as Resources: Masters students
 Learning with and from adolescents
explore with adolescents their interests,
talents, passions, and strengths.
 Adolescents as Readers of the World: Masters
students talk to adolescents about the range of
ways they understand and engage with texts
out-of-school and across modes/platforms.
Through interview, students investigate the
Possible Readings
Gustavson, L. (2007). Youth learning on
their own terms: Creative practices and
classroom teaching. New York: Routledge.
Kinloch, V. (2012). Crossing boundaries:
Teaching and learning with urban youth.
New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Gainer, J. & Lapp, D. (2010) Literacy
remix: Bridging adolescents' in and out of
school literacies. Newark, DE: International
Reading Association.
readerly identities students are constructing
out-of-school, as well as the range of ways
students read schools/classrooms.
 Adolescents as Writers of the World: Masters
students explore the variety of writing
adolescents pursue out of school, across
multiple modes.
 Developing and assessing contexts for
multimodal adolescent literacies
 Multimodal Representation: Masters students
represent what they have learned from their
students in a digital, multimodal format of
their choice (e.g., Glogster, Storybird, Comic
Life)
Digital Remix Project
Course participants design a literacy-rich learning
context with youth with the ultimate goal to
create a mini-movie. Course members spend 3-4
sessions collaboratively exploring and responding
to a different text each week (e.g., a poem, short
story, newspaper article, photograph, or media
clip); these texts correspond to each semester’s
theme or inquiry. Masters students assist youth in
choosing one of their responses to remix into a
mini-movie. At the end of the semester,
adolescents present these mini-movies to a
community audience.
 Teachers as reflective practitioners
Assessing Student Work through Descriptive
Review
Masters students read, describe, and respond to
the adolescents’ work using descriptive review
processes (Carini; Knoester; Simon).
Ito, M. et al. (2010). Hanging out, messing
around, and geeking out: Kids living and
learning with new media. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Beers, K., Probst, R. E. & Rief, L. (Eds.).
(2007). Adolescent literacy: Turning
promise into practice. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Fisher, M. T. (2007). Writing in rhythm:
Spoken word poetry in urban classrooms.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Fine, M. et al (2004). Echoes of Brown:
Youth documenting and performing the
legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.
New York: Teachers College.
Christensen, L. (2009). Teaching for joy and
justice: Re-imagining the language arts
classroom. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking
Schools.
Muller, L. Ed. (1996). June Jordan's poetry
for the people: A revolutionary blueprint.
New York and London: Routledge.
Wilber, D. (2008). iLife: Understanding and
connecting to the digital literacies of
adolescents.
In K. Hinchman & H.
Sheridan-Thomas (Eds.), Best practices in
adolescent literacy instruction (pp. 57-77).
New York: Guilford Press.
Muhammad, G. S. (2012). Creating spaces
for black adolescent girls to “Write It Out!”
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy,
56 (3), 203-211.
 Learning with and from adolescents to inform
in-school pedagogy
 Teachers as reflective practitioners and
literacy leaders
Learning from Youth Creative Practices to
Inform In-School Pedagogy
Drawing from fieldnotes, artifacts, and interviews
across the semester, masters students analyze
adolescents’ perspectives on their creative
practices, literacies, and learning across in and
out-of-school contexts. Masters students create a
multimodal representation of how what they have
learned from students could be incorporated into
in-school pedagogy.
Position Statement
Students write a position statement stating their
beliefs about adolescent literacies, the kinds of
literacy engagements most beneficial for
adolescent literacy learners, and the practices
they would support in their role as a literacy
professional.
Haddix, M. & Sealy-Ruiz Y. (2012).
Cultivating digital and popular literacies as
empowering and emancipatory acts among
urban youth. Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy, 56 (3), 189-192.
Ma’ayan, H.D. (2012). Critical media for a
text-saturated world. In H.D. Ma’ayan,
Reading girls: The lives and literacies of
adolescents. (pp. 43-54), New York:
Teacher’s College Press.
O’Brien, D. (2006). “Struggling”
adolescents’ engagement in multimediating:
Countering the institutional construction of
incompetence. In D. E. Alvermann, et al.
(Eds.), Reconceptualizing the literacies in
adolescents’ lives, 2nd Edition (pp. 29-46).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hull, G. A. (2003). Youth culture and digital
media:
New literacies for new times.
Research in the Teaching of English, 38 (2),
229-233.
Vasudevan, L. (2006). Making known
differently: Engaging visual modalities as
spaces to author new selves. E-Learning, 3
(2), 207-216.
Gainer, J. S. (2010). Critical media literacy
in middle school: Exploring the politics of
representation. Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy, 53 (5), 364-373.
Wissman, K. (2009). Reading and becoming
living authors: Urban girls pursuing a
poetry of self-definition. English Journal,
98 (3), 39-45.
Rudd, L. L. (2012). Just slammin!
Adolescents’ construction of identity
through performance poetry. Journal of
Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55 (8), 682691.
Curwood, J. S. & Cowell, L. L. H. (2011).
iPoetry: Creating space for new literacies in
the English classroom. Journal of
Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55 (2), 110120.
Practitioner Research and Descriptive
Review Readings
Cochran-Smith, M. and Lytle, S.L. (2009).
Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for
the next generation. NY: Teachers College
Press.
Carini, P. (2001). Starting strong: A
different look at children, schools, and
standards. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Knoester, M. (2008). Learning to describe,
describing to understand. Schools: Studies
in Education (5) 1, 146-155.
Simon, R. (2013). “Starting with what is”:
Exploring response and responsibility to
student writing through collaborative
inquiry. English Education, 45 (2), 115-146.