This semester has really helped me open my eyes to the world of literacy. It has also helped me broaden my idea of literacy as well as my definition of literacy. Literacy seems to be a field that is ever progressing and changing. What I found so interesting was how literacy, much like so many other things, had to fight to keep up with technology in our every progressing world. Technology has also helped expand the definition of literacy and created its’ own field of literacy.
The idea of literacy outside the area of English was foreign to me before this semester. I understood it to be reading and writing. Even when I threw in the idea of comprehension, literacy was still a concept related to reading and writing within an English classroom. I now understand that reading, writing, and comprehension can be related to so many subjects, concepts, and ideas outside of the English classroom or traditional classroom in general. An example would actual be computers. I may throw around terms such as java, C++, HTML5, hexadecimal, encryption, and other computer jargon to someone who is not computer literate, which would make someone say, “It’s all Greek to me.” I may understand computer talk, but I would not understand two doctors or lawyers talking to each other in their “language.”
This all being said, I found it very interesting to start thinking about what this all means to the greater idea of literacy around us and what it would mean to me as a teacher in a middle school classroom. Something I have learned from class, reading, and some videos I have watched is that it all starts with language and comes down to these words. A student must be introduced to necessary vocabulary and taught the words meaning in order to start applying it to the subject and start comprehending the material based on this vocabulary. I also took this idea from my teacher interview. She mentioned how introduction lessons in units end up being heavy vocabulary days. The students must first learn this vocabulary before they can start applying it to the problems. We even start using this vocabulary intuitively later on with the assumption that students have learned it earlier in education. An algebra teacher would be confident to start throwing around works like variable, equation, slope and other concepts that should have been introduced in the previous course. We sometimes take this for granted. Sometimes students do not have a great grasp on these words, which affects their further learning of new material. It would be like walking into an English class that was already diagramming sentences and you were not even really sure how to define a subject and a verb.
My book used for the book review and lesson plan furthered this idea. I have just continually seen where vocabulary can be a hindrance to learning if time is not spent to develop it. This seems to be common in any area that contains some level of literacy. It would be true in any of the above examples I mentioned and certainly in every academic subject. This was not a topic that was necessarily covered as a core concept in class, but it has been continually brought to my attention through readings, videos, and personal experience. I do feel that it is something that is important and something to take in consideration when planning new material for a class. The bottom line is that vocabulary is foundational to any form of literacy and should be an area of high focus.
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