I'm with Stefanie with the basic definition of literacy. When I first hear the word, I automatically think the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. However, after this initial thought process I then think back to my TE 301 class where our TA drilled the meaning of literacy into our heads using the literacy project. Many of you might recall this as the huge novel we spent countless hours on during the semester. After this project, I realized that literacy can mean a variety of things from phonological or phonemic awareness to concepts of print (even just reading from left to right, top to bottom of the page).
I was unable to attend class last week because I was sick, however I did learn from previous classes and the readings assigned. The article that stuck out the most to me was the Leland article. There was a part in the article that said "There are four resources or types of knowledge that are essential to the process of becoming a truly literate person: decoding practices, text-meaning practices, pragmatic practices, and critical practices." Based on a portion of literacy which is reading, I think that this is a great way to look at different types of literacy knowledge and to realize that there are all sorts of ways to read a book. Like this teacher did, I believe it's important to go beyond the textual concepts but to build on the awareness of critical literacy as well.
I also wanted to relate to the Cambourne article which stated a variety of ways for students to become enthusiastic about learning literacy. I think that the conditions of learning shown in this article is what my classroom will mimic in the future. These conditions show a positive classroom community where the students can walk away from the class and have learned something and be excited about literacy. I believe that the most important part of teaching is developing that safe environment for the students to feel comfortable and voice their opinions.
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Kali, I really liked how you brought up TE 301! That seems like so long ago that I forgot about all the literacy learning we did in that class with our literacy reference project. A crucial point that you added to your definition of literacy, which I neglected was both phonological and phonemic awareness. I believe that these are important points to be included in the definition of literacy as well as sound-letter-awareness and fluency. Sound-letter-awareness is important because it a progressive process that deals with phonics and decoding. Fluency is important in the definition of literacy as well because once a fluent reader, one can identify letters, sounds and words and they are able to understand what they are reading automatically.
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