my idea of literacy

I thought that yesterday's discussion of literacy was really intriguing. After learning about different aspects of literacy in TE 301, I felt that I had a pretty good idea of everything that went into it. We talked a lot about phonetics, comprehension, fluency, etc. I did research on these topics and could talk about each one of them and their importance. But after reading the Cambourne article and hearing the comments of my peers in our class, I realized that there was much more to literacy than I thought I knew.

Many of our classmates' definitions started out describing literacy in a more technical way. We said what literacy was, whether we decided to look at it generally, or specifically. However, almost everyone ended their definition by hitting at a overarching outcome of what it means to be literate. These are things that I had never thought of including in my own definition. I, like some others, thought of literacy in terms of its parts. What knowledge did a student have to know in order to be literate? Now, however, I have started to look at literacy in more of a package form. Not only what constitutes literacy, but also what occurs because of it, both to the individual and the world as a whole. In addition, the Cambourne article really opened up my eyes to what literacy means to a teacher, rather than just a student, as I thought about before.

First, I like to think of my own definition as a combination of the ones we heard in class. Technically, I think literacy involves the understanding and application of the written and spoken word. This includes all of the aspects I have learned about before- phonetics, comprehension, fluency, etc. It also includes the ability to give meaning to nonverbal as well as verbal clues.

But the definition of literacy expands beyond that. To me, it also includes what a student can do, or the world that is opened up, due to literacy. Literacy gives a person power. It becomes a tool to obtaining the power to learn from others, and spread knowledge to those around the world. It is a means to reaching a goal (the goal will undoubtedly change depending on someone's situation).

Finally, my definition of literacy speaks to the responsibility and obligation of teachers to give students the opportunity to reach their goals through literacy. Looking at Cambourne's article proved to me that teachers have a lot of work when it comes to promoting literacy. The different conditions are like steps or rules that teachers must follow to ensure that their students become literate. For example, the first condition mentioned is engagement. Teachers have to hook their students from the beginning, and get them excited to read and write from an early age. They must also instill the importance of literacy in their students from the beginning. If students have a genuine understanding of what literacy is, why it is important, and all that it can do for them, then they will have more motivation and a better chance of succeeding. Each of Cambourne's conditions is sort of an instruction- what teachers could or should be doing in their classroom to promote literacy. I like how we described each condition in class by giving an example, or a situation that depicted what the condition would "look like". We wrote these in terms of what the students would be doing- learning from a teacher's model for example- but what stood out to be is that the teacher would have to be fostering that student activity. Each one of those student's behaviors are a result of what the teacher would set up in the classroom community. I hope to be able to successfully use the knowledge I have gotten from Cambourne's conditions, and my appreciation for literacy to help build strong readers, writers, and communicators within my students.