My understanding of literacy is continually changing during this class and the project furthered this change. When I arrived at class my definition of literacy was “being proficient in reading, writing and speaking, thus allowing one to understand written or oral language.” However, throughout classroom discussion and reading I realized I was missing a lot of crucial ideas in my definition. Once again, after completing and viewing others New Literacy Projects, I realize I am still missing key ideas. For my project I focused on numeracy and was surprised to learn this is a type of literacy, since many of its topics are what I considered to be mathematics. I think it is essential to understand that subjects can overlap, which is something I previously had not thought about. Numeracy is so important in our society were numbers, mathematical vocabulary, arithmetic, percents, graphs, and other mathematical ideas are increasing. Similar to the definition of literacy my group developed a few weeks ago in class, numeracy also allows one to function in today’s society efficiently. I think this is one of the primary reasons the definition of literacy is continually changing, because different aspects are important in different societies to be able to function. For right now I still like this definition, ‘literacy means an individual's ability to read, write, listen, speak, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society.’ This definition is very similar to the one I brought in to class (http://law.justia.com/us/cfr/title20/20-3.0.2.1.37.0.16.3.html), but has a few modifications that I think are important. I feel like it still does not include all the important issues of literacy, but is a great basic way to define the term.
I believe providing “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners means to know how to teach with multiplies strategies, and having the knowledge to recognize and modify a lesson when it will benefit a student. In my field placement (kindergarten) I see the teacher modifying how she teaches phonemic awareness between the different groups during centers. She has grouped students together that she believes learn in the same way. I have not been able to see if this is effective because I have nothing to compare it too. It would be hard to use Scrapblog with these kindergarteners because they have a hard time with the alphabet games they play on the computer now. However, I think Scrapblog could be used in the classroom as a resource that could be sent to the parents. I think parental involvement is so crucial in the learning process, since teachers are not with the students all the time. As a teacher I may make Scrapblogs for each unit, so parents can understand what students are learning and ways to help. Since all families do not have computers or the digital literacy of accessing the scrapblog I could make copies to send home, along with sending out the email version.
Scrapblog was really fun to explore during this project and will be useful to know in the future. It allowed you so much freedom to develop the pages just as you imagined. I think this was a great way to display numeracy because it allowed me to give examples of numeracy problems, with pictures. I could use this in a future classroom to introduce new math topic/ numeracy because it allows the students to visualize what is happening when I saw a term like “subtract” or “take away.” Also, I think Scrapblog has many other possibilities than numeracy. From viewing other peoples new literacy projects that used scrapbook, I saw how effective it was at presenting environmental and cultural literacy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I had a similar beginning definition. I was also amazed at how much my definition was missing. I am glad that I was not the only one that had such a narrow definition to start with. I did however know how the subjects could overlap due to my work in a Magnet school which key ideas involved learning the other subjects through reading, writing, and technology. What was your previous conception of the subjects in education? How has this changed your idea of how you will teach in your own classroom?
I like your evolving literacy idea that pertains to society. Do you think that if you taught in a different country your idea would change to something similar to theirs? What are some of those important things that you feel the definition that you chose is missing?
I can see the pros from grouping similar thinkers together in a classroom, but I also feel that it deprives them of a kind of knowledge diversity. We focus a lot in class about holding discussions in our own classrooms so that we can get others to understand different ideas. Do you think that they are missing this diversity?
I did really like all the scrapblogs I saw. I think that they could be a really good resource for teachers. Do you think that you could use one to teach your students a subject? You did say that your students are playing video games and working on computers, so they probably are used to working with the mouse and clicking things. I think that with instruction they could click through a scrapblog.
Post a Comment