My Journey To Literacy In American Schools

The article by Erika Christakis, informs future teachers and parents how preschool today may not be benefiting their children as much as they thought. She talks about how preschool has changed drastically over the years as well as kindergarten. She states that “kindergarten may be the new first grade”. Her statement shows how children today are expected more then they were years ago in all grades, especially preschool and at such a young age. Many think this is helping our children or will benefit them in the future if they know more as a child but this may not be the case. The article talks about multiple studies done throughout America to children are learning and how school curriculum changing affects children. A studied showed that children

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

It was sixth grade and an advanced English class was chosen. I was discouraged because I actually enjoyed reading and writing but found out I wasn’t smart enough to be in that class. However, I would say that seventh grade was my favorite year of English. We still had vocabulary, which I wish we still did because I always have boring essays because I don’t remember the words we learned. I wouldn’t say that I disliked reading yet in middle school. I’d even say the most exciting part of middle school would be reading The Hunger Games with Mrs. Young, especially since she was kind of a nerd and got overly excited about all of our

5th grade is what set my attitudes towards writing back and I still dislike thinking about it. One thing elementary teachers get wrong is that kids who are that young only do what they like to do. You should not force a kid to do something. You have to bait them by using their wants against them. Luckily I passed English in the end. The only thing 5th grade helped me out was put my imagination on to paper. After 5th grade I hated anything having to do with English. I could only write about topics I wanted to write about. I took a break from writing and I read more. I picked up a book called “Deltora Quest” and I got interested in it. I only found this book because my teacher made us pick a book we wanted to read and write a paper about it. I did not look forward to writing it but I prefer doing that instead of writing a paper about a book we have to read because it is easier to work with. In 8th grade instead of picking book we had to write assessments about biography books I had to write a book about Amelia Earhart. Even though I did not like it, I still told myself “It is what it is” and wrote about my character. My teacher was really strict about what she wanted. Even though I followed the rubric I still got a B-. You can probably tell I did not like the teacher and long story short she got fired two years later. Before I was done with middle school I thought I could have a break

     Preschool is something very important for toddlers. Preschools were established in Europe around the late 1800’s. They were later introduced to the United States in the 1920’s. According to the Encyclopedia of careers and vocational guidance 9th edition “preschools expanded rapidly in the united states during the 1960’s”.

Literacy plays a huge role in my daily life. Every single day I read and write. Whether it’s writing an email or reading a text message, class assignment, discussion board, etc. My literacy journey is unique because I have had different experiences. As a result, this is how my literacy journey has let me to be the reader that I am.

One of the most eye opening experiences of my life occurred in the second grade. I would have never thought that doing one simple assignment in elementary school could change my whole perspective on literacy. My understanding of literacy was sparked when I had read my first real book. I remember sitting down on the vividly colorful carpet day dreaming about playing Mario Cart on my Nintendo 64 while everyone was obediently listening to the teacher read a book out loud. It wasn’t that I did not know how to read or listen, I just didn’t care. Reading to me used to be tedious because I did not understand the purpose of it. I did not grow up with the luxury of my parents reading to me because they weren’t literate in English, so I had to figure out for myself why literacy is vital in everyday life. My ongoing learning experience with literacy can be traced back to one simple visit to library.

The first teacher that I fully understood what writing meant was freshmen year in high school. My teacher was Mr. Landuyt and he explained to us that writing is for our own personal benefit. At that moment I realized that writing is not just for a grade to keep our parents happy. The most successful thing I have ever written was a short story that I wrote when I was a senior in

Fernando Cardenal, serving as the National Literacy Crusade Coordinator, and Valerie Miller, a CNA advisor, outlined that the literacy campaign would not just eradicate illiteracy, but create an identity of a “new man [and a] new woman” for Nicaraguans. Through the CNA, the Sandinistas hoped to introduce young Nicaraguans to the difficulties and hardship endured by Nicaragua’s poor rural population. For many of the brigadistas who volunteered, the 1980 literacy campaign served as their first experience with the other side of Nicaragua’s population, a side that remained unseen and not thought of by many under the Somoza regime. The life that brigadistas lived in during the CNA significantly altered their perspectives on society, both politically and culturally. The Sandinistas did in fact succeed at redefining the concept of the Nicaraguan experience for its youth.

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

In sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, I was blessed with a wonderful English teacher, Mr. Trucano. Many of my classmates felt he was strict and maybe a little OCD, but I felt different. Mr. Trucano developed his own system for teaching English. His system came every easy to me and brought enjoyment. I was learning college level English at sixth grade. For three years, I learned how to structure and edit sentences, create outlines, write papers and so much more. However, three years were not enough time for him to teach me everything there was to English. I discovered high school would not compare with Mr. Trucano since I had not learned anything new.

Throughout my first year as a middle school Language Arts teacher, I have developed a theoretical understanding of what I believe are the necessary components to providing a meaningful and generative environment in which students develop and expand literacy skills. The teaching of literacy needs to include a balance of reading, writing, speaking and listening activities, and needs to be a social endeavor that provides a variety of instructional strategies to meet the needs of all diverse learners. My teaching strategies, beliefs and personality that I bring to my classroom can be characterized as a blend of two types of philosophical theories: social constructivism and relational teaching and

Literacy is defined as being literate, that is, being able to read and write in a language. My personal experience with literacy began at an early age, at the age of 4 when I began to sit and read words and letters in the back of my mother’s car. Soon enough, she would bring me a magazine called “Majed” which, in the 90’s, was a popular magazine. With this, I began even more interested in reading and writing and reviewed every word in the magazine associated with each of the short pictured stories. It was the first memory I deeply recall of literacy and it was what laid the foundation for my personal love of reading and writing. The methodology used for this is an interview. There are three interviews which are analyzed and brought together in the form of a narrative. This narrative serves to better explain the emotions and thoughts that the interviewees had about the idea of literacy.

Literacy pedagogies have a developing and complex history in education, intertwined with social and cultural change and evolution. Each change has paved a new path for more significant approaches and strategies, which cater to diverse learners allowing them to create meaning and communicate more effectively. These literacy pedagogies brought out by the changes in education have both strengths and weaknesses. As such, educators need to explore and understand the four knowledge processes portrayed by Kalantzis, Cope, Chan and Dalley-Trim; didactic, authentic, functional, and critical literacy approach (2016), to be able to consider how they can influence teaching and learning so they are able to make informed decisions with regards to their students’ literacy learning. Teaching is becoming increasingly complex; this is particularly evident in the area of literacy. This paper will explore the four literacy pedagogies, their limitations and their strengths, and how they have impacted literacy learning within the Australian educational context.

Fourth grade, one of my most memorable school years of my life, it was there where I changed my study habits and made an important life decision. I stopped applying myself in school and I decided to never be like my mother, to never have a job that would take me away from my family. Elementary was the same as everyone, the best of times of my life, school wasn’t much of a bother, I had no worries and lunch was the best. When it was time for me to even start, my family moved twice that year , so when I actually started I went in with my brother and it was with him that I noticed a difference between his ability to learn and mine. He always struggled with school, but I always found school work easier and hardly ever had difficulty. I recall in first grade my teacher would read these series of books called Junie B. Jones and wow, how I was hooked, the whole class would beg her to read more and more. Once I went to second grade I, like other students would continue reading the Junie B. Jones series but little by little I noticed that fewer and fewer kids would read. I can’t be for certain if it was all the books I would read, but whenever I had a vocabulary test I would remember them and never had a quick review right before the quiz, the point is I was good at school and my teachers could tell. Call me a narcissist, but I loved teacher conference because my teachers would always talk so highly of me and I could’ve never help it a smile would always come across my face no