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Bedtime Reading
My mom used to my favorite book to me every night before bed, This experience is directly related to Principle #1 of the Six Guiding Principles. This engaged reading with my mom socially constructed a relationship for me at a young age. My literacy development was positive and connected to life experiences at a young age. It also added to my oral language development, as hearing the reading so young gave me insight to phonics, sematics, and oral language development. -
Library
My grandmother lived next door to my local public library, so I would often go there with her as a young child. This along with my rich literacy environment gave me funds of knowledge matching the literacy practices in a school setting. This directly relates to Principle #5 which allowed me to use this background practice and knowledge to make sense of texts. It also made reading fun, socially contructing a realtionship (#1) with reading and giving me access to a multitude of texts. -
Elementary Writing
A great deal of the writing that I did in Elementary School was to the government, mayor, local supermarket, and once to the governor of the state in our choosing. With this, my teachers were creating lessons that reflected the ideological model of literacy mentioned in Principle #3, as the writing included a larger social context outside of the school. This also helped the class to see how important literacy is and how it can be used in many different ways in the real world. -
Inquiry
I am from a town known for its historical elements and this created a great deal of unique lesson plans for my teachers. In 7th grade we had to do a large project about the history of our town and the meaning behind all our monuments. We conducted research, had guest speakers, watched videos, and took a field trip. This lesson took a great deal of inquiry and modeled principle number 4 of the Six Guiding principles. This lesson taught me "need-to-know" skills that I would use later in my life. -
High School Literacy
In high school I was in an accelarated english and history class that were blocked together. We would read novels and learn about the literature world that realted to the time period that we were studying in history. This made a huge impact on my idea of literacy. Through this I could see how the power of words shaped the social world or the ideas of those living at that time. I was introduced to multicultural literature in this class and gained a new appretiation of the power of literacy. -
Textbook Reading
As a college student I am constantly reading textbooks for my classes. This demonstrates a use of literacy to achieve a goal, or purposeful literary practice. Textbook reading can be a boring part of literacy, but I like to view my textbook reading from an ideological stance. I am reading things that will teach me how to be an educator and therefore, connected to future real life experiences. This reflects Principle #3: Literacy Practices contain ideologies and values. -
Storytime
I read books to my son several times a day. This is a literacy practice that has meaning and use in my life. Every night before bed reading a story is part of our routine, and teaches him that literacy can be used to achieve goals as mentioned in Principle #2. It is amazing to see how much reading to him develops his language and the meaning of the text. He is learning language through Cambourne's condition of learning be being immersed in the world of talk and use as mentioned in Chapter 2. -
Grocery List
This is a way that I use text to complete a task. Principle #2 of the Six Guiding Principles of reading and writing says that literacy practices are purposeful. It mentions that "we use different literacy practices to achieve different goals" (Flint 12). The goal in this practice is to organize my life. Also, it is something I learned by watching my parents in my young literacy life. It shows how the authentic development of reading and writing is very purposeful, useful, and necessary. -
Email
Email is one of several multimodal literacies that exist in the world today. Multimodal literacy is the "different ways in which meaning can be created and communicated in the world today" (Flint 17). I communicate with my teachers, classmates, and friends through this. For each person I email I must decide what form of language is appropriate. This shows the knowledge I have acquired about linguistic variations within the English language. -
Texting
Texting is a great example of how literacy or language is constantly evolving inside and outside the classroom.This also demonstrates a version of something we do called codeswitching, I text with the appropriate language for the setting and person I am speaking to. I say "whats up?" to my friends, but "what are you doing?" to my parents. Texting is something of high imporance in our culture, and like the email is another multimodal literacy people of our culture are exposed to daily.
