Practice: Teaching literacy

Practice: Teaching literacy

The topic of this post can be understood in various ways. During my studies at University of Warsaw  I found you can't precisely translate "literacy" to Polish. That may be the reason why most English teachers from Poland don't understand the term. It may seam if they teach the language they should not have any problem to understand the term. Unfortunately, some of them do.

In Polish literacy is defined as ability to read and write. That's extremely short. As I finished my first degree in special pedagogy I was taught for two years what these abilities are about. Without attending those lessons I'd perceive those as natural and easy to gain. Apparently, it's the opposite way. There are pedagogical therapists who are qualified to work with students with special needs or disabilities. When it comes to teaching a new language it's almost the same as when children learn how to read and write for the first time. That's why linguistic teachers should know as much as possible about teaching literacy.

How to evaluate teaching literacy

On my practice I tend to observe the lesson and look for elements of pedagogical therapy. One of its element is teaching literacy or specific elements of the issue. As far as I know simple reading or simple writing is not a good exercise, and these I see very often on the lesson. Still, there are some activieties beneficial but probably not intended and realized by the teacher.

After each history lesson students leave the classroom with full and complexed note from the topic. The note is completely given by the teacher but created in cooperation with the students. There are usually from three to five separate points, each written in easy language, length just right to understand and comprehend the sentence. I'd call it teaching literacy. The students are guided by the teacher. They speak about the topic using specific examples from the history (almost always shown by the pictures). Then they relate the topic to their personal experiences, with major help of the teacher. Afterwards the teacher begins to form the note on the board by putting the topic with capital letters on it. And very smoothly they together formulate each statement. At the end children copy the note to their notebooks.

Not always is teaching literacy so easy to spot. The above example is one of few visible and easy to evaluate. On my practice I tried to observe it on the maths lesson. Most suitable situations of all was the day when lesson's topic pertain to charts. The teacher explained the question few times while students got the worksheet in front of them. It looked almost as if she was showing a new type of a tool to communication. Children had to read the information from the graph, not from a couple of sentences as they usually do. Then they had to answer few questions about it, so there was the element of writing as well. The teacher talk to the students a little about the context of the graph and quality they can get from it.

Here, in my opinion it was too little time. It seemed to me as if the most important element was missing: put the activity into context and make it meaningful and close to the children. That's also the element left out by majority of teachers (issue I mentioned in the first paragraph).

I realize teaching literacy is highly difficult, as most of us, teachers, wasn't taught it as well. That means we need to learn it first and understand it fully. Only then can we start to learn how to teach.