#6 literacy engagement

For one of my literacy engagements, I decided to take a cue from Dr. Webb's syllabus and incorporate the use of technology to support my students' literacy learning. In my AP Government class, the unit we are covering dealt with political parties, and the platforms of the main two political parties. Instead of giving my students lecture notes that would dictate the platforms of the main political parties, I decided to embed YouTube clips from five of the US's main political parties (Republican, Democrat, Green, Constitution, Libertarian) and have the students seek out their own understanding of what each party's platform was.

After each video clip (and during) I would pose questions relating to the specific terminology used by each party's pundits and ask which specific examples of issues found in each platform the pundits pointed out. As well as the potential cleavages that each party might address. By reminding the students of each clip's connection to the themes discussed in the unit, I believe this allowed for each student to gain a better concept of what they were looking for in each clip and allow the students to develop their own analysis in a way that could connect back to the material in the lesson. I showed a clip from Barack Obama's 2000 convention speech. The next clip was from McCain's convention speech, then Lieberman's speech, as well as an interview with the Green Party presidential candidate, one from the Constitution party, and a political rally speech from a member of the Libertarian party. For each clip I required the students to draw four boxes on their paper and write in their own words the platform of the party in one box, the key words used by the pundits in the second box, the potential cleavages addressed by the pundit in the third box, and, in the fourth box, their own personal response/reflection to the clip. My students really took the clips very seriously and asked tough questions after each clip. I think the actual visual element of seeing a party member speak the platform of the party was a lot more effective and made a bigger impact on connecting the unit's content in the mind of my students than if I had just read out the platforms in lecture not format. Some of the speeches were easier to interpret than others, but overall the students really got into it. They asked if we could watch more examples of party platforms from parties outside of the US. Overall, I think the clips really helped put in perspective the varying opinions of political issues in the US and gave a broader overview of real world examples than those just covered in the textbook.