Collaboration, Creation, Innovation: Students and Teachers Collaborating to Use New Literacies in the Classroom

• In Event: Transformative Teacher Research: Teacher and Student Empowerment

Abstract

This paper focuses on fifth grade students’ and two teacher-researchers’ experiences with new literacies. Analysis of student work, including digital bins, PowerPoint presentations, and blog responses, revealed benefits of using a new literacies approach to reader’s workshop. We explored how students used digital texts to create, co-construct, and learn new information and observed students utilizing new literacies as participatory and collaborative spaces. Three themes emerged: generating, experimenting, and rethinking. This research extends notions of new literacies to include the under-researched fifth grade student population and reader’s workshop.

Authors

• Sonja Renee Cherry-Paul, Columbia University

• Dana Johansen, Greenwich Academy