Week 1 - Approach to Literacy

"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" 

There are different ways in which I use text to enhance my own learning experience as well as that of my colleagues and of the developmentally disabled population I work with. 

In my position I share text through central postings within our organization to reach out to the the other Day Hab Coordinators at the other Group Day Habs. We find that by keeping an ongoing (b)log (really a Blog within the company) and having the ability to comment on each others experiences within our own Day Habs allows us to come together as a team to find the best solutions and answers to many of the same issues we are dealing with in our own class rooms. It wasn't until we started this that we realized that by (b)logging each day we can come together with creative ways to deal with these situations as a team even though we are separated by many miles. Not only does this enhance our ability to become more effective teachers it gives our individuals the best chance of finding a solution that will work for them. As stated in the article by David Huffaker "Blogs can be an effective tool for teachers, using blogs to document, reflect, plan and mentor." 

I also use text in stories (picture books) to help the individuals find their own ideas in developing ongoing sagas and adventures created from their own imaginations. Using an enlarged copy of a picture book with text we project it on screen and staff read the story to the group. We then take turns discussing what they think this particular group of sentences is saying about the picture that is shown with it. Later on down the line I will project a picture by itself and ask the group to come up with simple sentences about what they think is happening in that picture or what they would like to happen. After we finish that I then add the text to the picture and on screen they can see what they came up. They are always so amazed when they realize that what they are looking at is something they created and really no different then what we discussed from the page taken out of a published book. It is really quite wonderful to watch.

Reference

Huffaker, D. (2005). The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom.
AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98