Future Literacy Areas

Summary of chapters: Tompkins, E Gail. (2014). Literacy for the 21st Century A Balanced Approach

A literacy rich environment is essential for any emerging reader. Emerging literacy reflects "children's natural growth and awareness of print in the environment" (Genisio & Drecktrah, 1999, p. 227) and therefore the environment has to contain suffient enough manifestations of this print and other literacy material presented in an attractive way without overwhelming the child. "Clearly, literacy-rich environments are of value. They allow children to practice literacy behaviours and language in ways that make sense to them" (Roskos & Neuman, 1994, p. 264).

In Sponsors of Literacy, Brandt argues that individual and group literacy stem directly from sponsors in the form of role models, educators, media, and many more sources of language and communication acquisition. Brandt claims that sponsors, through intentional or unintentional actions, influence an individual’s ideologies and relationship with literacy. Through the interviews which Brandt conducted in the 1990s with people of varying literary and sponsorship experiences, Brandt discovered that an individual’s access to literacy opportunities: libraries, computers, or traditional education, had a monumental impact on their career, ability weather political or economic upheavals, and capacity to function profitably in society. Sponsors distribute

Content area teachers can implement strategies and scaffold learning when planning and designing instruction so that students will actively engage in literacy. According to Dobbs, content area reading instruction includes: the information present in the text, and the instructional plan teachers use to help students understand the content (2003, p.3). Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz explain that in order to plan instruction effectively, teachers must be aware of the explicit and functional dimensions of content literacy. The explicit aspect of content literacy involves the development of skills and strategies that enable students to comprehend what they are reading. Functional instruction focuses more on the application of strategies needed to derive knowledge from a variety of sources of information.” (2014, p. 134). Forget defined literacy as “listening, thinking, reading, and speaking in such a way that information and ideas are processed and communicated to the benefit of self and society” (2003, p. 5). Content area teachers need to plan and design lessons so that students will actively engage in literacy. Forget goes on to discuss that poor performance in schools can be do to a lack of basic literacy skills. Therefore, teachers need to implement the skills and strategies found to be successful in literacy to ensure

Professor Deborah Brandt’s research article “Sponsors of Literacy” is about the importance of the sponsors. According to her, sponsors are the ones that provide the sponsored the access to literacy. Brandt interviews about 100 people and through those interviews, Brandt makes three main points regarding sponsors. The first one is about how different kinds of sponsors can produce different kinds of performances. The example that Brandt shows to the readers is the difference in the background of Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez. Branch is able to be exposed to the more powerful sponsors, while Lopez cannot. The second main point in this article is that economic and political can cause a rise in literacy

Celestine’s (pseudo name) school is located in the country side, on the sleepy town of Plant City, Florida. From what it looks like a scene from a children’s book, the main building sits perfectly between beautiful strawberry fields. Celestine’s school is Title 1 by cause of 88% of its students being on free or reduced lunch. The school has approximately 807 students, but its population fluctuates due to migrant and low income families attending. Plant City is known for its farming community and the Strawberry Industry, which it draws families to the area for seasonal work. The Elementary school serves pre K to Fifth grade students and has a population made up of 50% White students, 45% Hispanic students, 3% Black students, and 2% Two or more races. The school has a large ESE population which are served in both, self-contained classrooms and within regular education classrooms through inclusion.

6.2 Develop a plan for improving own knowledge, understanding and skills in literacy, numeracy and ICT. Make a table like below and fill in training you could do, you can use past training to start and go into future training you would like to do if you want. I may just be training you have had on use of interactive white bopard or how to make power points

Purpose – how will this experience meet the needs and interests of the children? How will this experience contribute to the child(ren)’ emerging literacy skills

Explain how this vocational arena impacts society at large, and how this vocation is strategic to Christʼs kingdom. Please explain why you believe your chosen field is under-represented by Christians and tell us how you plan to impact your field for Christ

Educators are charged with not only teaching the content of their subject, but also responsible for creating a learning environments that fosters communication, engagement, and reflection so that the students will be prepared for their future careers and learning. Creating a classroom that fosters reading and writing is one way to engage students while promoting that they reflect on the material and communicate their understanding or misconceptions of the content. In order to form a literacy-rich classroom educators need to increase the amount of time students interact with all forms of print and literacy and the classroom environment is an essential key to setting the precedent and model behaviors that will make students more successful and capable of high level learning. (Tyson, 2013)

Creating a literacy-rich environment is one of the key elements of supporting children’s literacy development. Literacy-rich classrooms tend to look quite different than the traditional classroom, covered in pre-made posters and arranged with individual desks in rows, and instead, allow for teachers to design their classrooms with their students’ needs in mind. According to an article on the Sadlier School’s blog, all elements in a classroom must be meaningful, intentional, purposeful, and engaging when creating a literacy-rich classroom. This means that classroom design is created in a way that it provides frequent opportunities to be exposed to text via environmental print, instruction, and hands-on learning as well as encouraging communication and collaboration (Sadlier School, 2017).

“Emergent Biliteracy” a term described by Iliana Reyes that refers to the ongoing, dynamic development of concepts and expertise for thinking, listening, speaking, reading and writing in two languages. In addition to her first definition, she also states how children’s use of cultural and linguistics competencies help them establish meaning with parents, siblings, peers, and teachers in their environment. Through exploration of different perceptions, resources, and social interactions she is able discover the ways in which 3 four year old Mexican American children from Northern Arizona develop and strengthen their bilingual and emergent biliteracy development in Spanish and English.

Content- area literacy uses listening, speaking, reading, writing to gain information within a specific discipline. It does not just apply to core classes such as English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. It can also be applied to Physical Education classes. The truth be told, Physical Education in essence is a science that incorporates physical activity (movement), biological, and social sciences. Physical Education has texts that are written in the content of health and wellness topics that rely heavily on the use of visuals such as graphs, charts, and pictures. Content- area literacy improves physical education students performances because it requires them to plan, reason, strategize, and reflect on health and activities. They also have

Emergent literacy is used to describe how a young child interacts with books and when reading and writing, even though they could not read or write in the usual sense of way. Emergent literacy is a process that takes place over the timeframe from birth until a child can read and write in what we think to be a standard sense. The key to term literacy is the consistency of all parts of language: speaking, listening, reading, writing, and viewing. Some people believe that, up until a child starts school he/she will first learn to read and then learn to write. The process to learning to read and write has to start early in a child's life. Right away they have contact with different types of communication from the start.

During the last 3 decades, increased attention has been focused upon the effects of emergent literacy in an early childhood education environment and children 's later knowledge (Roberts, Jurgens, & Burchinal, 2005). It was once believed that children learned to read and write only when they entered elementary school and received specific instruction. However, most research now indicates that a preschool environment is critical in the development of a variety of cognitive and linguistic skills and that it is an important factor in early literacy development (Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans, & Jared, 2006; Rashia, Morris, & Sevick, 2005; Weigel, Martin, & Bennett, 2006). Research has shown that home experiences need to