My personal literacy development has been a constant struggle since my arrival in America as a boy with a Spanish-speaking mother and a bi-lingual father. We spoke Spanish at home. As I began school I could only speak a small amount of English and understood only slightly more. I learnt, as young children do, through listening to the people around me and using any visual aids I could to scaffold the gaps in my understanding (Winch, Johnston, March, Ljungdahl, Holliday, 2012). My lack of basic literacy affected every area of my learning with only math classes allowing me to feel slightly comfortable due to the international nature of numerical literacy. I quickly developed the oracy skills required to be able to contribute to social and academic situations but unfortunately developed other ways to hide my lack of progress in other areas. My reading and writing skills were still very poor when I left primary school, I had missed out on a lot of the foundations of these skills and they were never addressed again in my later schooling life. I used many shortcuts like audio books and abridged texts to lessen the amount of reading I was required to do during my time in high school. My reading abilities remained at the same level for many years and it took a wonderful author and a 28 hour flight to remedy this. My vocabulary and comprehension have improved immeasurably in the time since that day and now I love to read and do a lot of additional reading to develop my literacy further. Within the area of written literacy my main difficulties are with punctuation and grammar. It is only now in the past year I have taken the time and had the motivation to improve my writing. After completing a unit entitled Thinking and Writing at Univers... ... middle of paper ... ...unit, the rest of this course and beyond I will need to utilise my personal experiences in literacy development and continue to develop my skills. This will be vital in providing my future students with the grounding in literacy they deserve. Works Cited ACARA. (2012). The Australian Curriculum v3.0. Retrieved March 22nd , 2011, from The Australian Curriculum: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Literacy/Introduction/Introduction Lindsfors, J.D. (1991). Children’s Language and Learning (2nd ed.). Needham, MA: Pearson Education. O’Neill,S., Gish, A. (2008). Teaching English as a second language. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2010). Literacy: Reading, writing and children’s literature (4th ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.
Deborah Brandt (1998) wrote “Sponsors of Literacy”, a journal where she explained her findings of the research she has done on how different people across the nation learned to read and write, born between 1900, and 1980 (p. 167). She interviewed many people that had varying forms of their literacy skills, whether it was from being poor, being rich, or just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy by Victoria Purcell-Gates recounts the author’s two-year journey with an illiterate Appalachian family. Purcell-Gates works with Jenny, the mother, and her son, first grader Donny, to analyze the literacy within the household. Throughout the journey, we learn the definition and types of literacy, the influences of society and the environment, and the impacts of literacy on education from the teacher’s perspective. In order to evaluate literacy in the household, one must study multiple types, including functional, informational, and critical literacy. As the name implies, functional literacy incorporates reading and writing as tools for everyday survival. Informational literacy is used through text to communicate information to others. The highest level of literacy, critical literacy, requires critical interpretations and imaginative reflections of text. In her study, Purcell-Gates strives to teach Jenny and Donny functional literacy.
...ion in Australian schools: national plan for languages education in Australian schools 2005–2008. Retrieved 14, 2011, from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/languageeducation_file.pdf
I have very few recollections of my early years and the exact age I was able to read and write. Some of my earliest memories are vague on the topic of my literacy. However, I do remember small memories, such as, learning how to write my name in cursive, winning prizes for reading, and crying over every assigned high school essay. Over the last twelve years my literacy grew rapidly with the help of teachers, large school libraries, my family, and so on. There is always room for my literacy skills to grow, but my family’s help and positive attitude towards my education, the school systems I have been a part of, and the horrible required essays from high school helped obtain the level, skills, habits, and processes that I use as part of my literacy
...racy skills to function as adults, and we have a responsibility to our students to help them acquire those skills. We need to improve our weak characteristics of our campus and continue to use our strengths to develop new programs that will benefit our students’ abilities. If given the chance to improve my campus’s literacy programs, I would do whatever it took to make it a success and I would use multiple resources to find answers to questions that I could not answer. I would bring all these things together to make an after school literacy program a success.
English Language Learners (ELL) require thoughtful and careful instruction for both reading and writing education. Both of these skills are necessary for a bright future and to be a functioning citizen in Canada. Those that do not possess considerable literacy levels will be effectively 'locked out' from so much knowledge, information and ideas that are part of the culture of society (Christie 1990, 20). Having a low level of literacy usually means acquiring an unskilled job. The relationship between literacy levels and poverty is something that should not be ignored (Gibbons, 2002). Developing literacy skills in ELLs is a daunting task and especially with students that have not developed those skills in their first language originally. Through the Curriculum Cycle and proper scaffolding of writing strategies, this paper will provide a lesson plan that will help develop an ELL's writing skills. It will include many different tools that will help students gain an understanding and confidence of the narrative writing form.
Literature is a key component when speaking of literacy. Teachers need to provide students with endless amounts of practice experiences in reading to build their fluency rate. This should be done with different genres of texts and different levels. Reading a wide variety of literature help children develop rich vocabularies.
Additionally, literacy does not only refer to reading. Literacy also refers to writing, discussing, and becoming fluent in the specific subject area. The original curriculum for my Hebrew reading classes only covered decoding. Yet, as I personalized my classes more, I began incorporating other aspects of literacy, including comprehension, writing, and discussion, and I noticed a vast improvement in my students’ overall learning. With my math students, too, as I incorporated different aspects of literacy related to my students’ personal learning styles, I noticed further
My personal view of literacy is the ability to communicate and interact with yourself and one another. Without the ability to talk to one another, hear one another, or be able to understand what others are trying to say, you will be completely lost in a lonely world. I do not want to be stuck in a dark and quiet world, so I keep myself as literate and have as much knowledge as possible. Literacy is being able to communicate, read, and having knowledge while doing so.
Seely Flint, A., Kitson, L., Lowe, K., & Shaw, K. (2014). Literacy in Australia: Pedagogies for engagement. Milton, QLD: John Wiley & Sons Australia
Research and theoretical development have altered how society views young children’s movement into literacy (What Is Emergent Literacy?, 1997). Literacy relates to both reading and writing; it suggests the simultaneous development and mutually effects reinforcing effects of these two aspects (What Is Emergent Literacy?, 1997). This development is seen as emerging from children’s oral language development and their initial different attempts at reading and
Surprisingly I don’t have many memories of my experiences with literacy. Early on I just remember picking up any book and reading, writing without stopping, and all those parent teacher conferences with my English teachers that became a blur. Throughout my years of school, I’ve come to realize that writing has become a bigger part of me than I had previously thought. I didn’t go into elementary or middle school thinking I was skilled at writing so my confidence came from teachers who admired what I wrote. Their compliments and encouragement lead me to have a better view of my capabilities. My improvement seems to be invisible until I finally notice the progress when I get to my last paper at the end of the semester or year. This semester and especially this class have tested me the most so far. Learning more about literacy has made me recognize who I am and what I can do so, I will move ahead through the ever continuing process.
Swarbrick, A. (2013) Aspects of Teaching Secondary Modern Foreign Languages: Perspectives on Practice. London: Routledge Falmer.
Education Queensland (n.d.) states that “literacy is the ability to read, view, write, design, speak and listen in a way that allows us to communicate effectively and make sense of the world.” The Australian Professional Standards requires myself to seek help with my failing literacy skills and improve further upon my numeracy skills. The reading writing hotline is nationwide service that will provide myself with information about where i can locate nearest literacy classes and provide myself with learning resources. The Queensland Council for Adult Literacy (n.d.) offers the chance to improve my literacy skills and “provides seminars, workshops and
Language, books, newspapers, subtitles on the television and so much more are available to students at a very early age. Levels of engagement with literacy varies from each student’s home environment. It is also the parent’s responsibility to assist children with literacy skills at an early age, and that children learn on different levels. In addition, students that use of both traditional and twenty-first century strategies together may be an effective approach to improve literacy skills to students struggling in reading and