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

Typically, people think of reading when they see a novel or a short story, but I think of reading when I’m out on the baseball field. When I hear the word “reading”, unlike most people, I think of a green grassy baseball diamond at night, with the lights lighting it up, filled with fans in the stands. Believe it or not, I read all the time on the field. I read the ball coming off the bat when I’m playing in the field. When I hear the “ding” of the metal bat and hard, rubber ball colliding, I know that there is a chance I could make a great play. I can see the ball getting bigger and bigger as in approaches me. I read the ball coming out of the pitcher’s hand,

I 've loved to read and write ever since I was taught my ABC 's for the first time. It 's been a huge part of my life in a lot of different aspects. I learned how to read when I was three years old because I went to a daycare where I was the youngest kid and the only one who couldn 't read. Reading and writing just stuck with me after that. After I started reading better than my older daycare-mates, school was ready for me to conquer. The school put me with older kids right away and I was in English class with 3rd graders when I was in kindergarten. It helped me out with making friends and I always got along with older kids better

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

Bullies may grow up and lead a life of ultimate rebellion or crime. These students start off with bullying and advance into acts of vandalism, theft, and alcohol and possible drug abuse. Left unchallenged, the bully will never understand that their behavior is inappropriate. The bully will grow up, victimize, and start a family of budding, pint-sized oppressors. Bullying is a learned behavior. Whereas, the victim may live a life of depression and anxiety. The victim may never reach their full potential because of fear and uncertainty. The victim has a difficult time making and keeping friends, and seeks to stay clear of confrontation. The victim loses his/her control or voice and lives in the shadow of the aggressor. Over time, the victim may begin to miss class, fake illnesses, and believe that he or she deserves bad treatment. In the end,

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 sophomore year at Central High School did not start out the best. I was recovering from an awful grade point average, awful for me at least, I was sitting the bench in a sport that I had lost interest in, and overall I just did not enjoy school anymore. I personally did not see the point in coming to school at all. It took some time, but I finally started to get my grades up, my season had ended for football, and I knew I was not going back. After everything was starting to go my way I started thinking, “What am I going to do next?”

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.

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).