- Instrumental (magazines decorating, crafts, sewing, and family recipes)
- News-Related (newspaper readings about local, state, national, and international events)
- Financial (recording numerals, budgets, expenditures, and loans)
- Spiritual (Bible)
- Recreational ("love novels", folk and fairy tales, "books to make sense of things")
- Educational (storybooks, and tasks at school)
It is not often thought about how much literacy is used every single day in different ways. The one that I would most likely forgot about would be for financial means. Of course as a college student, I have loans and a budget I must keep, but I have never really thought about reading over agreements and amounts for such things to be part of literacy.
Chapter 3 in Classrooms that Work, talked about building a literary foundation for young children, even before getting to kindergarten. Allowing children to pretend read is a critical part of this. I am sure that others like myself think that it is adorable when they see children pretending to read, but probably do not consider how important it is to allow the child to engage in this activity. This helps create a background of knowledge and vocabulary when these children come to kindergarten. This can be accomplished through those that can read teaching children how to print concepts work. These include: letters, punctuation, spaces between words, paragraphs that are formed, and jargon that is used such as words, letters, sentences, and sounds. I feel that parents don't often realize how much of an impact they have on their children as they watch them write out recipes or bills, read magazine or books, or how they make grocery lists. With children being able to observe these activities should also help them learn how to "invent-spell". I am not sure that I agree with this concept as some children may build a weakness for using this and spelling words incorrectly. I noticed that the reading also talked about allowing children to write with and on different utensils/materials. I think this is a wonderful idea so that they do not get bored with writing or reading. Some suggestions for this are using cereal boxes, ads for local stores, restaurant menus, making birthday cards, labeling pictures and name tags, and having a bulletin board in the classroom.
Cunningham, P.M., & Allington, R.L. (2010). Building the literary foundation. (Chapter 3, Classrooms That Work)
-----What other ideas do you have for bringing literacy into the classroom?
I really agree with your point that it is not often recognized how literacy is used throughout each day. I thought it was neat how the articles broke down each way in which the Jones Family used literacy. This made me think back to ways in which my literacy foundation began when I was young and ways in which my family incorporated it into our every day tasks. I also really loved the idea of letting children write on different materials and using different utensils. I hope to keep literacy interesting in my classroom!
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