Critical Literacy Narrative

Basic literacy is the ability to read and write, my literacy skills began to develop while I was a small child. It all started with the bedtime stories my mother would read to be. It wasn’t until I got to school that it developed even more as teachers began to teach me how to read and write. I feel that in order to be successful you need to learn how to read and right, that’s why I took pride in learning it. I’m glad that I learned that at a very early age. I notice that to get a good grade on my writings I had to write how my teachers wanted me to write things. In the long run it did pay off because I got good grades on my papers. Obviously you can see that I had to

From the time when I was a little boy, growing up in Graves County, Kentucky, I have had problems with my reading and writing. Things never seemed to click for me, a trait that the teachers attributed to a mild case of dyslexia mixed with a healthy dose of attention deficit disorder. I knew, however, that no disorder was the cause of my distaste of reading and writing. Rather, there was nothing really interesting surrounding me that would grab my interest in the classroom. The teachers I encountered never took any interest in what their students wanted to read or write; they developed assignments based on what the curriculum, a course of study developed by some politicians at the Board of Education, told them to

I Remember that time I had that one page essay assigned back in my 5th grade English class and I thought to myself, “How on earth will I possibly write one page on something I hardly know anything about or share little to no interest on”. Well that 1 page essay is not looking so terrible now that college is here and the minimum amount of pages for most essays is up to 3 pages. Writing has been something that has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was first introduced to it in my preschool days, it wasn’t anything too insane, mostly just single words with a picture of whatever the word was above it. But for the amount of time writing has been in my life the one concept that truly defined literacy for

Learning to read and write as a child is an experience that all can relate to. The average child learns to read and write at the early ages of three and four. Developing literacy at an early age is crucial to academic development as well as to performance in life. Early development can be just what a child needs to stimulate their minds, which in turn is assisting in the evolution of their future. The early and latter stages of development in a child’s literacy journey are the makings for their reading and writing skills. It also plays part in their analysis of obstacles as well as their developed or problematic literacy future. A child

When I first took a look at my first assignment for English Composition I – Write a Literacy Narrative. The first thought it came to mind was “ESL” (English as of Second Language). I started to reminisce about my first year as a freshman in High School. It was the fall of 1985; I just had arrived from Colombia as an exchange student. On the first day of School, I reported to the front office, still not knowing what to say or what to do. I was completely lost and scared; the nice lady at the desk looked at me with a smile and started to talk. I did not understand a single word of what she was saying at that time, except “Hello”. After a few minutes of silence and staring at each other, I gave her a piece of paper that my

Literature is everywhere. No matter where you are, you’re exposed to it. It is on your phone, in the paper, on the McDonald 's receipt in a wad under your car seat, it is even on the billboard signs as you drive down the interstate. With literature getting so much coverage there is no question of where such heated debates come from. It is hard to have an argument or sometimes even a conversation with a person using ONLY literature. Sentences can have the same words, but handed to different people and they may interpret the sentence in two polar opposite directions. Debates take on a huge problem when they are done solely through literature, unfortunately I found that out the hard way.

Since I was very young, I have had a strong passion and fascination with words, an interest that was especially encouraged by family and developed through a variety of mediums. Like most babies, my first word was rather simple: “Da-dee” (“Daddy”). When learning my alphabet and numbers, my mom would play popular kid shows of the time, including “Sesame Street” and “Arthur,” on television and on audio tapes in the car. In addition, I enjoyed singing along with various Disney tapes and childhood favorites, such as Barney, Raffi, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. “I suppose you could say I was the ‘gatekeeper of my children,’” Mom recollects. “Without a doubt, I preferred for them to listen to musical tapes that were both educational and fun and believe it or not, if we listened to a tape plenty of times, I would actually start to sing along, too!” she laughs. When I was able to start formulating short phrases and sentences,

Throughout my childhood, the idea of having a college education was greatly stressed. As a result, it was my duty as the next generational child, to excel in my studies and achieve a life of prosperity and success. Learning became the basic foundation of my growth. Therefore, my youth was overtaken by many hours spent reading and writing what was known to be correct "Standard" English. I first found this to be a great shortcoming, but as I grew older, I began to realize the many rewards acquired by having the ability to be literate.

Throughout my childhood, the idea of having a college education was greatly stressed. As a result, it was my duty as the next generational child, to excel in my studies and achieve a life of prosperity and success. Learning became the basic foundation of my growth. Therefore, my youth was overtaken by many hours spent reading and writing what was known to be correct "Standard" English. I first found this to be a great shortcoming, but as I grew older, I began to realize the many rewards acquired by having the ability to be literate.

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

My literacy journey had begun earlier than most kids, according to my mother. I started reading in kindergarten, with help with the BOB books and the PBS show Between the Lions. I don’t know when I had started writing exactly, but I remember clearly writing short stories about my cat Stormy in 3rd grade. At that time we had to write weekly short stories, and I only ever wrote about my cat. In 4th grade, I had started exploring writing more; I would write plays for me and my friends to practice during recess. Most of them, I’m happy to say, were actually educational, so my teacher had even let my friends and I perform one about early-American settlers in front of our whole class.

Although I hated to see her go, I knew that I would never branch out and meet new people with my mother present. As we said goodbye, the tears swelled up in her eyes and it seemed like the harder she tried to prevent the tears from falling; the faster they streamed down her cheek. Eventually my mom got back into her car and began the long trip home. There I was, alone in the middle of the street outside of my dorm. I walked back into Cowden, up the flight of stairs and into my dorm room in a trance.

Functional literacy pedagogy in the twenty-first century classroom would have students looking at the content of text and how different people write for different purposes and linking this understanding with the curriculum and using frameworks to reproduce these types of texts using appropriate vocabulary and grammar. Teachers would do this by first modelling the expected type of writing by breaking it down into smaller components so that students can see all the elements, then completing a joint construction with students which assists students to complete the task individually (Kalantzis et al, 2016, p.161-164).

Every night, as I sat on the table with my younger brothers assisting them with their homework, I hear a familiar sound at the door. As she walks her heels click, and I can hear her searching her bag for her keys, the next thing I know the keys are in the lock and as it turns me and my younger brothers’ jump. We run to the door and indeed we scream in unison “Mommy’s home”, one by one she gives us a hug and a kiss. My mother asks us how our day was, and if we finished our homework, she then looks to me and said “did you cook and assist your younger ones with their homework”; I replied “yes mom”. As I warm the food, I take my mother’s purse, jacket, and shoes put them away and prepare the table for her to eat dinner. As I glance at the

“Put on your clothes so we can get to school,” my mother said as she was putting my brand new school supplies in my pink Hello Kitty backpack for my first day of preschool. With so much excitement contained within me, I rushed to put on my white polo and khaki pants. I grabbed onto my mom’s hand as we walked to Southwest Christian Academy, which was only a block away from where we had lived. We walked into this classroom, and I sat in a small blue chair as my mom talked to my teacher. The room was filled with people I had never seen before in my life and speaking a language that I did not understand and only heard on PBS Kids shows such as Dragon Tales and Teletubbies. Suddenly my mom just said bye and left the classroom. I was in a room filled with strangers by myself and this is where it all began.