The fact that I am blogging about what it means to be literate in our society brings a whole new dimension to the idea of literacy. In class we have defined being literate as having the ability to partake in America's democratic society through an informed understanding of our words, text, and vocabulary. After discussing the importance for being literate in class, I tried to think about what it would be like to not understand the world around me. I tried to imagine needing to buy groceries and not knowing how to find the grocery store or having no idea which bus would take me there. I tried to picture myself not being able to read what ingredients I needed to make a meal for my family or how to pay for my groceries when I was finished shopping. It is hard to believe that there are children and even adults in America who can not read and write and here I am blogging about the topic; a type of literacy that is in a sense futuristic.
"It is difficult for a librarian or teacher to convince children to question society's attitudes. But if a child can be shown how to detect racism and sexism in a book, the child can proceed to transfer the perception to wider areas." For me, this quote really defines the process it takes to be literate in today's society. However, I would make a few minor adjustments to the statement; I would add that children are rarely persuaded by adults, but are rather more influenced by their own discovery of knowledge. I would go on to argue that children who come to their own understanding of information, have ownership, and therefore are more likely to apply what they are learning to their lives. The last week has really made me realize that being literate is less useful when you do not apply it to your success and advocacy.
The Teale and Sulzby article brought up many great points about literacy being not only a learned cognitive skill but a sociopsycholinguistic activity. Children began exploring their literacy abilities at a very young age. The article points out that children must be taught steps of information that cam build upon more information, especially when it comes to literacy. As children grow up and become more and more sophisticated learners literacy should be an area in which they build upon. Before learning letters children can connect sounds to words and things. When they start to learn letters they will add these to what they already know about how words sound and what words look like. They will eventually connect letters to form words and words to form sentences and so on. If children were taught each of these steps individually they may never make a complete connection in their thinking and therefor a child could never be able to complete a piece of thoughtful writing even if they knew about words, sentences, and paragraphs.
I also really enjoyed some of the ideas that were discussed in the Teale and Sulzby article for ways to bring literacy into the classroom in a fun manner. I have seen a number of these activities done in classrooms including the mailbox idea as well as the dramatic play areas. One of my favorite examples of bringing literacy into the class was in a 5th grade class I observed during my undergrad. The was an area in the room called the debate center. It included a bulletin board, an extra student desk, paper and pens in the desk, and different news paper clippings covering the bulletin board. The activity was for the students to rotate through the center when they were finished with whatever they were currently working on and have a chance to debate on a topic of their choice. The teacher would cut out newspaper articles that seemed interesting or relevant to the students and the students would journal about the article. Most article were either for or against something and the students had to take a side and explain their reasoning. After each student wrote on an article that interested them, they hung their writing on the wall with a tack behind the original article. When I observed the class I noticed that some of the students spent most of their time reading other peoples opinions and others felt very passionate one way or another, and wrote very expressive responses to the articles and to the other people writing on the same topic. In the class weekly meetings the articles and responses would be discussed. I was very impressed with how this method was able to get the students to read, form their own opinion on a subject, and express their opinion in a intelligent manner. Overall, I am excited to see what this quarter can add to my collection of tools and tricks when it comes to making kids literate.
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