Week 2 Blog, Literacy Definition and Ideal Literacy Environment

The deeper that we delved into talks about the possible definitions of literacy, the more I realized that my own definition would probably continue to shift and change as the semester goes on. For now, however, I would say that literacy is the ability to adequately use, produce, communicate, and interpret the written word in all of its forms. A true test of literacy is to give someone text they've never seen before, say a newspaper article, and see if they can read it, communicate its main points orally, and then write a letter to the editor. Obviously, this isn't the only test, but it could be a basic one. The more I think about types of literacy, the more I think about types of literacy that people with disabilities have. For example, a visually impaired student needs to learn how to read Braille, an audio impaired student needs to learn to read and communicate with signs, and a dyslexic student needs to learn to interpret and write symbols that probably look much different to him then they do to us.

To continually confuse myself, I started to think about societies that do not have written words. In fact, a majority of languages in this world do not have an alphabet and cannot be found in any written forms. Are these societies illiterate? Is that even politically correct or culturally sensitive to say that? If we have students that come to us from a society that does not have a written language do we call them illiterate in their society even if they can fully communicate and function with numbers and symbols? I know this is a rare case for us living in a western culture, but it does make one wonder about the purposes of literacy and its full definition.

I therefore feel that my definition of literacy has definitely broadened since this week's class period. Before I did the reading for this week, I thought literacy was just reading and writing. Now I know that it involves many different skills including developing the kinesthetic abilities to produce communicable written word, such as typing, or signs, such as sign language.

As far as my ideal literacy learning environment would look like, I'd cater it to the level of a fourth grade classroom, because I would like to work with this age level. I think I'd want to have an area just for reading like a small library in the classroom. I'd make sure to have word walls, dictionaries, thesauruses, and rhyming books. I'd encourage poetry writing, maybe by having a poetry corner with some student work displayed. This would encourage playing with words and rhyming. There would be journal time and planners. Finally, I'd want to highlight an author or issue each two weeks and offer literature for students to read about this topic in the classroom. Obviously these are a lot of goals/dreams about my ideal environment, but I really want to make sure that my students love reading and writing and that they learn the skills necessary to succeed.