The view from our lanai.

In this week’s show:
Aloha from Hawaii!
Thank you to Liana Honda (President Aloha State Council for Literacy)
Dedication to Denny Taylor and my Literacy colleagues at Hofstra University
CLIP is Charles Cadenhead’s Podcast Pickle pick of the day for Tues., Nov. 14!

Podcasts Mentioned:
Mostly News, Desperate Husbands, Podcast Pickle, Just One More Book.

Music:
Little Rock Getaway and Radio Hula By Bryan Tolentino

Thank You
Wayne Serebrin from Manitoba, Laura Amato and Ceil Candreva from New York ,Kathryn Bomer from Texas, Andrea and Mark from Ottawa and Just One More Book, Annemarie from Ontario, Lisa from Georgia, Debbie Goodman from Hofstra University in Long Island…I love you too…I really did enjoy my Day with Debbie Goodman tour and…Alan Flurkey be nice to Debbie!.

Finally, mahalo to Liana Honda for the station ID.

Let me know where you are:
Click on ‘Join the CLIP Frappr Map’ in the menu bar.

Post a comment:
Click the comment button below or leave a voice mail by clicking ‘leave me a message’ in the menu bar or by calling 206-339-CLIP(2547) or e-mailing at clippodcast@gmail.com

Produced by:
Andy Bilodeau

Everyday Texts and Popular Culture _ CLIP19 Transcript

Aloha! CLIP 19 is coming to you from the beautiful island of Hawaii. Thank you so much to Liana Honda for inviting me as a featured speaker at the International Reading Association’s Regional Conference being held here for the next few days.

Intro

Today I thought I would focus on critical literacy and everyday text and I’d like to dedicate the show to my friends at Hofstra University in Long Island, NY. I had a fantastic weekend talking with them about critical literacy and podcasting. I especially want to thank Denny Taylor for inviting me to work with her and her colleagues who have constructed such a caring and passionate community of scholars. And of course many more thanks are to follow later in the show so keep listening.

I also want to share some news with you. The CLIP podcast was selected by Charles Cadenhead of Mostly News and Desperate Husbands Podcast as the Pick of the Day for Tuesday, November 14 on the Podcast Pickle, a very popular podcast directory. Thank you Charles for the honor!

Liana Honda Station ID

Midtro

When I use the term everyday texts I am referring to texts that are spoken or written, sung, drawn, painted and so forth… as part of everyday life. These texts can be so common that we do not carefully take notice of them. As a result we can be less aware of the kinds of messages about our world ,which they convey. Since these texts are not natural representations of the world they can be interrogated, deconstructed, and analyzed to uncover different views of the world they could represent. In doing so we are able to make visible the lifestyles and social identities that are constructed through what is presented and how it is presented creating space for the redesign of such texts.

The everyday text I will focus on is the Fruity Peel-Outs box, which are candy fruit snacks for children. Sheets of sweet, sticky, pliable candy come rolled up in individual packages ready for children’s consumption. The work I will describe was done with a group of pre-school children between the ages of 3 and 5 when one of the children in the group brought a box of Fruity Peel Outs to school. This of course brought immediate interest to others in the group as they began calling out things they noticed on it. Capitalizing on this interest and re-calling the work done by Comber and Simpson (1995) on analyzing cereal boxes I asked them to pass the box around and had each child name one thing on it that they noticed. While they did this I kept a list of all the items they mentioned. Andre started. “I spy with my little eye Mickey Mouse!” Rola followed, “I spy with my little eye some fruit!”. They continued in this fashion integrating one of their favorite games, ‘I Spy’ into the textual analysis I was attempting. For me this was a reminder of possibilities for the ongoing creation of curricular spaces for critical literacy as we moved back and forth between my capitalizing on their interests in the popular snack, and their capitalizing on the activity I had initiated by integrating, into the naming activity, the game ‘I Spy’.

What is difficult in creating these curricular spaces is resisting over-schooling the children’s topics and co-opting their interests thereby diminishing their pleasure with it. These spaces therefore need to be negotiated carefully with attention paid to the interests of all participants, especially the children.

We continued our activity by talking about what kind of work each piece of information could accomplish and discussing who might want that information and why. Part of what I talked about with the children was the ways in which word and images work together and apart to produce differential effects for the reader.

Emily noted, “I want the information about peeling the Mickey Mouse shape”. She continued by saying she liked the peel outs better than other snacks because of the Mickey Mouse shapes in the fruity candy. Miguel suggested that his father would want the fruit because “that’s yucky good for you”. Apparently his father only lets him eat ‘good’ snacks. Once we had established that various texts and images are desirable to different groups of people and for different reasons, we continued by talking about how , in particular, the words and images work. We began to unpack the linguistic features on the box analyzing the effects, on the reader, of the words, pictures and symbols. I did this with them as one way to begin identifying the cultural values being promoted and presented, for whom and in what ways. For instance in a society that is bombarded with informational text on the nutritional values of food it is no wonder that Miguel is drawn to the ‘health aspect’ of the peel outs.

To do this work I discussed with them what they thought were good ideas and bad ideas for texts and images to be included on the box if they were to be re-designed. Following were some of their responses.

Andrei: Andrei thought it would be a good idea to include images of fruit and kids to show that the fruits are good for the kids. He thought it was a bad idea to have anything having to do with dirt or garbage because that isn’t good for kids.

Geoffrey: Geoffrey also thought it would be a good idea to include fruit because his mom would buy them if they were good for him. He thought it would be a bad idea to have a person’s name like “Geoffrey” because then “other kids who aren’t Geoffrey won’t think they should buy it”.

Emily: Emily drew her family to represent something good that would make them buy the Peel-Outs. She said “people like to be happy and this is happy”. Emily puts on offer a lifestyle as a conceptual frame for selling fruity peel outs. She referred to her design as “the same as on T.V.” referring to recent television commercials and print ads that portray family and peer activities and people doing enjoyable things together as a concept for selling by using very subtle branding of these products. So clearly, different communicative processes are thrown in the mix.

Miguel: Miguel drew a picture of bees to represent a bad idea stating, “If you are allergic then aha – you’ll be scared to death to buy this”. He also puts on offer a particular lifestyle that promotes well-being and safety.

I’ve included images of the children’s drawings on the CLIP homepage if you’d like to take a look.

Hilary Janks (1993) notes, that identifying discourses, which are at work in texts, is an important part of reading critically and interrogating texts. Already, the children through their selections of good and bad ideas are making visible the discursive life styles (namely health, safety, and happiness) or ways of being that would lead someone, in particular adults in their lives ,to buy or not buy the Peel-Outs.

Following this we talked about how language works on consumers, such as themselves. We discussed how words, images, and symbols on the food packaging work to position the ‘buyer’ of the product as a believer, someone who puts faith in what the product claims to deliver. In doing so we touched on the feelings and emotions that are encouraged and promoted through combinations of words and images. We also discussed the notion of temptation and how consumers might be tempted to buy particular products or goods and the role that such elements as font style or color might play.

Having done some deconstructive work we turned our attention to re-designing and creating our own versions of the Peel-Out boxes. To do this I gave the children the option of using a black-line representing the front section of the box.

The children then took their collection of good ideas and used them to re-design the Peel Out Box. Following this they considered in what ways words they choose would or would not help sell the product. Emily felt that words would not be helpful if it was on the box but words would be helpful in a television commercial. Without hesitation the children stood from their chairs and began acting out their good ideas.

While acting out their ideas we talked about the use of music and what kind of music would work or not work – how loud or how soft it should be and why, along with what effect different kinds of music would have on the viewer and on selling the products. More and more learning was generated as we further deconstructed the Fruity Peel-Outs box looking at other areas of the curriculum and talking in the language of science or math from a critical literacy perspective.

We also went online to take a look at the website of the company that manufactures the Fruity Peel Outs. While on the site we discovered a comments page. Deciding on whether or not to submit a comment resulted in another flurry of discussion and activity where the children debated over what to say in their comment. During this debate we talked about how the size of the comment box limits what you can say in terms of the number of words you can use as well as the communication system through which to convey your message. Specifically the children talked about how it would take ‘so many words’ to have to explain the designs they created and that having such a small box to submit their comments was very limiting.

So imagine the potential, the learning, and the literacies that were constructed. Certainly not the kind of literacies that stems from mandated prescriptive literacy programs. Also imagine how much more accessible a curriculum that incorporates the use of everyday text and print would be for a linguistically and culturally diverse group of learners. One of the advantages of using popular culture everyday print is that the texts used can and should be negotiated with the children based on what is interesting and intriguing to them and using textual materials available in their lives.

Thank You
Before I go I want to say thank you to the following people for contributing to the show, participating in the show, commenting on the show, contacting me regarding the show, or pinning my frappr map;

Wayne Serebrin from Manitoba, Laura Amato and Ceil Candreva from New York ,Kathryn Bomer from Texas, Andrea and Mark from Ottawa and Just One More Book, Annemarie from Ontario, Lisa from Georgia, Debbie Goodman from Hofstra University in Long Island…I love you too…I really did enjoy my Day with Debbie Goodman tour and…Alan Flurkey be nice to Debbie!.

Finally, mahalo to Liana Honda for the station ID.

Emily’s Idea

Andrei’s Idea

Geoffrey’s Idea

Miguel’s Idea

Tags : Hawaii, International Reading Association, Liana Honda, Literacy Conference, podsafe music