Play and Literacy

I thought the readings for this class were interesting in that they both get to the heart of what makes a good reader, or a good decoder of information. As educators, it seems we have defined what qualities good readers possess, but we are still up in arms as to how to instill those activities. Personally, I struggle with motivating reluctant readers/students and that is one of the reasons I am interested in this class. I was happy to read in Brock's articles about situations where students were very engaged in their activities. Both of the situations were highly reliant upon the learning community and the social dynamics of those communities. I have noticed this phenomenon in different learning tracks in middle and high school. Though I have not yet had the opportunity to teach students in the "high track" classes, I have had the opportunity to observe and speak with many high achieving students about their work. From what I have observed, the material in the high track classes is never exponentially more challenging than the material in the "regular" track classes. In fact, during my student teaching experience, the material was the same, only with tighter deadlines and heavier writing loads for the higher track kids. I was struck, though, by the types of learning communities that existed in each track. In the higher track, the kids joking generally tended to be centered upon the material being discussed and in general there was a great social importance placed upon being able to speak intelligently about the material being studied. I found this to be different from the regular track classes I taught in which I was constantly trying to get the kids to stay engaged, to stay focused on the material we were working with. I would constantly try to make the text relevant for them by having them discuss the human side (big questions) that the text was posing. In higher track classes, the students did that on their own; in fact, the difficult part was getting them to come back from their extrapolations and relate it back to the material at hand.
Obviously, community expectations are very important. In a community where "appearing intelligent" is valued, where achievement within the parameters set forth by the teacher means social acceptance, learning and teaching is easy. I suspect that this is why so many teachers want to teach "the smart kids". But if, as in my experience with "the regulars", the exact opposite of intelligence is socially valued by the community , then learning and teaching becomes infinitely more difficult. We find ourselves trying to make our activities "more engaging", which is to say, to make them something that the students can not only succeed in doing but also feel motivated to continue to do so by the response of their community or affinity group. Ideally, we would be able to create communities like the "high track" communities at all levels, and I wonder why we haven't been able to do so thus far. Perhaps games and play are the answer.