Teaching Maus Has Had a Positive Impact on These Students' Literacy Learning

Martha's students clamored for her to read Maus aloud to them as they followed the text; as soon as she stopped they pleaded for her to continue

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This confirms Ivey's (1999) observation that reading aloud is "a powerful practice for promoting literacy appreciation and development" and shows "reading is pleasurable and worthwhile" (p. 375). This also has been helpful when the students first ran across the various sound effects that are featured in this graphic novel: the utterances of ach, snrk, snf, and tsk all came alive for the students upon hearing Martha vocalizing them.

The teacher read-alouds also highlighted the nonstandard English used by Vladek. These advanced level ELL students immediately recognized this non-standard usage, either upon hearing or reading it.

This led to a class discussion on language use and the notions of standard versus nonstandard language. Although they were amazed that one could actually write broken English in a (graphic) novel, the students also knew from firsthand knowledge that this representation was true to reality: several observed "that's how he really talks."

Indeed, seeing this affirmation of diverse ways of speaking in print cannot help but resonate with ELL students' identities when they may be positioned in schools as others.

Reading about Art Spiegelman's quest to know more about his family's history in detail, several students now want to find out about their parents' previous life experiences--which confirms one aim of the critical literacy tool kit; that of the use of personal stories to connect the personal with power relations in society.

Every student identified with the smuggling scene in Maus; many related it to their own experiences crossing the border via coyotes--paid smugglers.

Teaching Maus has had a positive impact on these students' literacy learning. They have told Martha that this is the first time they have been "turned on" by history. At the time of this writing, her students are fully immersed in the story and will probably finish it on their own. Martha reports that all the students now want their own copy of Maus.

She hopes this will lead to their reading more graphic novels on their own. They also now have the background from reading Maus to continue reading other books on the Holocaust--in fact, Martha plans to have them read about Anne Frank next. Afterward, she will have the students write an essay on how different genres deliver the story of the Holocaust.

This will be their introduction to literary analysis. The students' final project will be to recount their own family narratives using multimodal representations of text, images, and sound aided by computer software.

For those ELL students who already read graphic novels on their own (usually in the library because they are expensive to buy), this practice enables them to meet and interact with native speakers who are avid graphic novel readers.

For those who now know an important graphic novel, this may gain them entry into this social network that transcends ethnic and linguistic divides. Claiming membership in a community defined by love of these novels can help facilitate the transition of ELL students into mainstream classes.

Teaching Maus Has Had a Positive Impact on These Students' Literacy Learning

By: endeavor

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