Language, Literacy, and Living: The Women's Recollections

As I read these vignettes about various women and how their lives effected their literacy, their are three major points that I have taken from the life stories of these women:
1) Literacy development has A LOT to do with the home life that one is a part of.
and
2) It is possible that non-literate individuals can be part of a very literate environment.
and
3)Many times, individuals shy away from literacy practices and sharing the products in ffear of being wrong.

1) Developing literacy is one of the most important stages in one's life. If you are not able to read, life will prove to be quite difficult. It is important for parents to be able to spend quality time, validating their children's literacy practices. Whether those practices are reading aloud a book (child to parent of vica versa), simple discussion, providing a print-rich environment, modeling the enjoyment in reading, etc, children need to see that literacy is important within all daily activities and have these activities validated. In many of the stories highlighted in this chapter, parents were either too busy or not educated enough to show an interest in what literacy activities their children were participating in; I find this a bit disturbing.

2) In some of the stories highlighted within this chapter, it can be seen that even though students were living within a print-rich environment, they were still struggling with their literacy development; most of this had to do with the lack of involvement between the parents and children. It is really important that even though students have access to text and literacy-rich materials, they need to the help to get introduced and help sing these materials. This can be done with real-alouds, simple discussion and many other ways. Another way that can be helpful (which was the case with me) was helping your children or students to get engaged in a topic that has meaning to them. It is all well and good that individuals are reading, but if they are not engaged in what they are reading then, they are not learning something, they are just reading the words. Being engaged in what is being read can help to create to avenues of questioning and inquiry along with enjoyment.

3)With many of the first couple of stories, the women explained that the reason they didn't like to share or even engage in literacy activities such as reading and writing in fear of being wrong in front of the "expert" teacher. Many times, even today, teachers concentrate too much on the technical details and not the over-all picture. Being too concerned with these small aspects of reading and writing can discourage many students from even engaging in reading or writing. I think that a great way to help with this is to show students that you, as a teacher, are not an expert but still and learner. A great way to show this, is to model your instruction through scaffolding a strategy for your students. This way, students will see the aspects of reading or writing that they may be struggling with when they try the strategy out for the first time; being much less apprehensive.