For this assignment, I completed a survey to assess my school’s literacy program by using a survey that was adapted from by Patty, Maschoff, & Ransom (1996) to analyze the instructional program and the school’s infrastructure. To be able to answer my survey, I needed to go colleagues of mine in the English Department and to my administration to help with these questions. Being a math teacher, we hardly ever discuss the literacy and the students’ acquisition of it in our department meeting during staff development days. Since I am not truly current with literacy acquisition in education, I am hoping to understand more from this process so I can help all my students. I want them to be able to read texts related to math and find information that will be useful to them during the year. From the survey, I found out some important detail of my school’s literacy instructional program and the infrastructure and what my school does that is outstanding and what it needs to improve on. My school would be considered adequate with both the instructional program and the infrastructure portions of the survey. This is a good start for our campus, but I would like to see my campus become a more outstanding when it comes to literacy. I would like my campus to continue to use technology to help students improve their literacy and have teachers continue to integrate new technology into the literacy program as well. According to Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan, “Digital and visual literacies are the next wave of communication specialization” (2008). I would also like my school to continue to promote its few outstanding characteristics and work on fixing the characteristics that definitely need improvement. The biggest strength... ... middle of paper ... ...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. Works Cited Gomez, L. M., & Gomez, K. (2007). Reading for learning: Literacy supports for 21st-century work. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(3), 224-228. Jones-Kavalier, B. R., & Flannigan, S. I. (2008). Connecting the digital dots: Literacy of the 21st century. Teacher Librarian, 35(3), 13-16.
“What counts as literacy, how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape, and what value we should ascribe to the new forms of communication that continue to emerge and evolve online? (Jenkins, 2009)"
“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man,
IRA. (December 2001) Integrating Literacy and Technology in the Curriculum. Retrieved May 3, 2004, http://www.reading.org/positions/technology.html
Finding a definition of literacy is not as easy as it sounds. The Webster definition says that to be literate is to be” able to read and write.” But to some researchers, this definition is too simplistic, leading to multiple models of literacy. Most Americans adhere to the autonomous model, which falls closest to the standard, dictionary definition. Believers in this form say that literacy is a cognitive activity that students learn like any other basic skill. It has a set of proficiencies that one must master in order to be capable of decoding and encoding text (Alvermann, 2009; SIL International, 1999). A competing theory is the ideological model, which claims literacy is intrinsically linked to culture, and therefore what constitutes a “literate” individual is ever-changing. Society is the largest influence on literacy, according to this thought, and it is affected by politics, religion, philosophy and more (Alvermann, 2009; SIL International, 1999). These two are just the tip of the iceberg. For example, some studies recognize “literacy as competence,” which is a “measure of competence to do a given task or work in a given field,” (SIL International, 1999) such as being computer literate. Although more researchers are recognizing and exploring multiple literacies, the one that most influences American schools is the autonomous, cognitive model – the ability to read and write. For many, it seems a simple task, but millions of adolescents are struggling or reluctant readers, and there are many reasons why young readers have difficulty with reading. XXXXXX------NEED HELP WITH THESIS STATEMENT HERE PLEASE—(This paper will focus on the effects of low reading skills, some of the possible causes of reluctant and struggling readership...
Literacy, as a concept, has been evolving during the last few decades, presenting itself as a more complex term to comprehend. The deeper understanding of this notion has made the process of learning it, a bigger and more elaborate challenge.
... learning literacy desirable to the student, which obviously increases learning. The United States has to move toward implementing better literacy-directed learning in our school’s classrooms. In the long-run, this will help the U.S. compete on the national level with other countries.
For my community involvement project, I volunteered at Memminger Elementary School for a program called “Reading Partners.” The program focuses on helping children build strong literacy skills to carry with them into their academic careers. It requires the tutor to read to the student that has been assigned and in turn the student reads to the tutor. The program assists in teaching the students valuable reading skills. Being able to read is critical to a child’s educational success. The program works with more than 100 schools within seven states. The program is geared toward students of low-income families. The statistics for children’s literacy in the United States are astonishing. “In 2011, just thirty-four percent of the nation’s fourth graders in public school could read proficiently” (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). The program itself has had exponential success. Principals and teacher have reported that “Reading Partners” has helped increase students’ reading levels. During my time at the program I accumulated twelve volunteer hours.
Children today are growing up in a digital world where their surrounding environments are rich with popular culture, leading teachers to reconsider and respond to new pedagogies for teaching literacy in the classroom (Beavis, 2012; Hall, 2011; Petrone, 2013; Walsh, 2010).
Allington states, “It’s time for the elements of effective instruction described here to be offered more consistently to every child, in every school, every day” (Allington, 2012, pp 14-15). When these six elements are included into daily literacy instruction students are able to make gains in their reading and writing abilities.
The interview artifact attacehd to this standard shows I understand literacy knowledge can be explained and changed over time, icluding practices and strategies. The interview I completed exhibits my ability to communicate with other professionals about the historical underpinnings of literacy instruction and that research is always being conducted to update instructional strategies to better the way literacy is instructed. My membership to ILA shows I understand the importance of the role professional judgemnt and learning theories play in education. I use my membership to frequently update my own teaching practices by researching the latest findings. These artifacts corrilate to the teaching practice that education grows and changes over
Literacy embraces reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Integrating all of these into a literacy program is key. Teachers must provide endless and ongoing opportunities for their student to read, write, listen, and speak.
Kovas, Y., Voronin, I., Kaydalov, A., Malykh, S. B., Dale, P. S., & Plomin, R. (2013). Literacy and
Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach. (5th ed., pp. 12-286). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
...ating technology provides students with opportunities to succeed in reading and writing. As an educator, and possibly a future literacy educator it is vital to teach students that learning is not something that only happens in school. Learning will happen every day for as long as one lives. Learning happens at school, at home, at a sporting event, at the mall, or on the computer. Learning happens everywhere. It is also important to teach students reading is everywhere and it will follow them the rest of their life. As educators, we need to help students enjoy reading and develop a love for it that will last forever. It is our role to therefore provide the best instruction possible and use assessment that allows children to succeed. Most importantly, as life long learners ourselves, we need to strive to make sure that our students become and stay life long learners.
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