Using Autobiography, Poetry, and Digital Storytelling with Refugee Boys: a Case Study
Abstract: This paper describes a summer literacy program for 70 multi-lingual refugee boys resettled from Africa and Asia to a city in the Southeastern United States. The program offered a curriculum in which the students worked, alongside American teachers, in small learning groups, completing activities premised on specific 21st century literacies, such as the creative manipulation of texts & technologies. The students interacted with high-interest literature written in English & with selected productivity tools. The program culminated with each student producing a digital story—a “transpoemation”—adapted from an autobiographical response to a poem. The students translated their poems through a series of steps in order to create short films. Working with the computer, with their own writing, & with images & music, the students showcased their facility with storytelling, with the English vocabulary they were acquiring, & with visual media, demonstrating their growing academic confidence.
Presider: DeAnna Laverick, Indiana University of Pennsylvania