This week’s guiding questions:
What are some literacy issues in the US?
What are the causes of those problems?
What are some solutions to literacy problems in the US and in the world?
What is your literacy story?
Activity 1: This week’s topic is: literacy issues in the US. What are they? Can you list 5 or more without looking them up? Next, google this topic and see what comes up. Is your list similar to what you found online?
It’s difficult to pinpoint all the literacy challenges that we face in this country (hence the title of this week’s unit). Before we dig into literacy practices in different cultures and communities, let’s survey some of the problems out there. Here are 6 issues that I found. If you would like to add another one, with a source that explains it, please let me know. Here, out of the 6 soures, read/ watch 5 (or 6 if you’d like).
Activity 2: Read “This Type of Illiteracy Could Hurt You.” This is a piece from the New York Times. If you haven’t claimed your free account yet, you can do so here.
Activity 3: Watch “The Illiteracy-To-Prison Pipeline,” a TEDx Talk by Brandon Griggs.
Activity 4: Read “The Relationship Between Incarceration and Low Literacy.”
Activyt 5: Watch “How America’s public schools keep kids in poverty” by Kandice Sumner.
Activity 6: Watch “Tackling American’s Illiteracy Problem.”
Activity 7: Watch Face the Issues with LVR on Childhood Literacy.”
Activity 8: Take Quiz 1 on Blackboard.
Activity 9: Write your literacy narrative. Submit the final product on Blackboard by the end of week 3.
Literacy Narrative: 2-3 pages
Part 1: Brainstorm your ideas here by replying to one or more of my questions.
Part 2: keep on reading.
Your task is to write a personal literacy narrative of a specific moment that represents the literacy practices associated with your community.
For example, your community may be your family, your neighborhood, your school, your church, your friends, etc. You can choose to write your paper chronologically (e.g., childhood, adolescence) or thematically (e.g., when you discovered your passion for books, when you realized you hate reading and why).
I encourage you to explore possible tensions that arise from participating in literacy practices of multiple communities. For example, how are the literacy practices different from your home to your neighborhood? From your college life to your social life?
In previous semesters, some students submitted narratives about their lives. While interesting to read, this is not the task here: instead, the heart of this narrative is you and your relationship with literacy (so mostly reading and writing).
If helpful, check out a sample literacy narrative here or by going to essays-sample essays.
This essay is worth 4% of your final grade.
