Personal Literacy History

My Personal Literacy History

         When I try to recall my first memory of literature two things always come to mind. The sign for the Woolco department store and a story of a pig that was apparently 'much too small' to help her family members with their chores.  Before I was even one year of age my mother swears up and down that I was able to read.  Truthfully I never really used to believe her but after my years of post-secondary education and classes in psychology I understand that my mom was never trying to 'showboat' her daughter. That I really was identifying materials such as the Woolco sign. I concluded that it must have been due to the letters and colours that appeared on the large advertising signs, and the relationship I had developed with the store and my mother.  

It is reasonable to conclude that I associated that sign with the occurrence that my mother would be taking me to the Woolco store. That is why I believe I encoded that information into my long-term memory.  Needless to say, Woolco was one of the first words I said as a child.  
It truly is a remarkable thing... That our brains just filter out and store information based on the emotional connections our experiences with language create.

          

Click the link to learn more about Woolco!

The strongest memory I have of reading an actual book (most likely the first full book I not only read, but comprehended the contextual events), would be reading a book to my mother titled You Are Much Too Small.  

Click the link to learn more about You Are Much Too Small!

This book was about a little girl pigglet named Totty. Totty wanted to be a 'big girl' and help her family members with their chores and household responsibilities and who was consistantly rejected for being 'much too small'.  I can remember having to read that book every night to my mom for awhile, sometimes even more than once just to make sure I was getting enough practice in.  Eventually after I had learned to read that book cover to cover and had run through all my old books for younger children, my mother began to bring me to the local library so that I could begin to select my own books to read.  My mother strongly believed that I should be reading for personal growth and for entertainment purposes.  I think this was because my mom is and always has been a very avid reader.  You never see my mom without a book in her hand, and now you never see her without a Kobo (a tablet that stores electronic copies of books, and can be used to rent electronic copies of books from local libraries) in her hand. 

          I seem to have gotten a bit distracted in the telling of my story, maybe as I, you too, also think it is one of the downfalls of being linked so heavily to electronics; there is always so much to see and so much to tell that your brain often must leave one topic to start exploring another.  As I return to my story of my adventures within literature, I am sure I had checked out many books before I stumbled across Grandma and the Pirates,

Click the link to learn more about Grandma and the Pirates!

but this is the next book that stands out in my mind as something that I was engrossed with as a child.  I must have borrowed this book over fifty times from the local library by my school.  I loved that book.  I loved that book so greatly that eventually my mother had to restrict me from checking the book out anymore because I had grown much too old to be reading it for personal growth.  I'll never understand why my mother never purchased that book, as one time she disclosed to me that even the librarian had told her she would be better off just purchasing the book, because she had paid late dues for that book so many times that she could have just purchased it.

          When I think about why I loved this book, I remember that it must have been because the premise of the book surrounded a young girl's relationship with her grandmother.  Again, I found a personal connection to this text, one could argue due to my close relationship with my own grandmother, or to the causes of my love of pirates, adventure, and fairy-tales.  Nevertheless, the connection to the text is what made me want to read it over and over again. That book became part of my identity a piece of my constructed culture to revisit whenever I needed to; a place to connect with adventure.

          Not too long after I started to develop an interest in mystery stories.  I started reading mysteries at a young age, there has always been something about a Who-dunnit style mystery that I just cannot resist and let pass me by.  The first was in grade three with the story Invisible INC. #1- The Schoolyard Mystery.

Click the link to learn more about Invisible Ink #1 School Yard Mystery!

These types of stories are always filled with clues and subtle ques that slowly unearth until the reader can come to this moment of clarity and start anticipating the reveal. Now that is not to say that every case I have read I solved before the end, but that is the beauty of a mystery, when you've been bamboozled you're not upset that you've guessed wrong you marvel in wonder of the game that has caught and surprised you. It opens your mind to the realms of probability, the perspective differences we all can hold.


When I reached pre-adolescence I had moved on to mystery novels for young teens, The New Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley  being one of the main ones. These two being a year older than I was were the two 'icons' I watched and associated with while growing up. 

Click the link to learn more about The Case of the Creepy Castle!

      

  

By the time they started reading these books I had become obsessed with mysteries. I was even playing mystery themed video games like  Midnight Rescue! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6aTL6WMQA4

 and 

Reading Blaster 9-12 http://www.thestrong.org/online-collections/nmop/1/45/109.10089

Reading came easy tome becauseI wasalways engrossed in the things that interested me greatly. Even though I was playing video games and they were designed for educational purposes, the ones I played that were not were also filled with words and problems solving activities. But reading the quests and instructions in my game did not seem to me as a child that I was expanding and training my mind to understand language and the contextual connotative meanings that that come along with it; but I was. Not only was I developing my language skills but again because of the emotional connection that lay beneath my actions I was learning without forcing myself, I was developing through my nature.


    As I grew my taste in literature had begun to expand yet again and I moved onto classics like Sherlock Holmes (who did not see that coming)

Click the link to learn more about Sherlock Holmes!

and twisted crime mysteries like Grave Sight.  

Click the link to learn more about Grave Sight!

      

However, the reason I was reading these texts was not because of some grand and factual message waiting within the text; it was for pure enjoyment.  I liked the stores that I was reading and the games I was playing.  I was engaged in the adventures, I was visualizing the environments and the characters within it, I was placing myself within the realm of another, and I was devoted to understanding it.  I was invested in comprehending every attribute of the characters  and their actions within the text.  This absorption I have within texts I am reading and the personal investment I put into the literature, is with no doubt in my mind, what helps me to encode the information and decipher the contextual meanings.

          It is the emotional connection to the texts that make me want to read them over and over again.  It was not the moral or factual messages the authors and creators intertwined within the text.  It was personal investment that kept bringing me back to those books; it was the fact that I enjoyed what I was reading.  

I believe that it is extremely important to integrate personal reading into the Language Arts curriculum.  When students are writing reflections about personally selected material they will have more of a desire and more of an understanding on how to reflect about what they are reading.   In turn I believe that this will help them develop an understanding of media literacy, the intended audiences of their materials, the inferences the authors made within the text, and the theoretical concepts and references that are present within the print. It will positively aid in their ability to decipher their thoughts into print. After time they will begin to subconsciously evaluate the materials that they are selecting, which is the ultimate reflective goal one should have; subconsciously participating in a constant analytic evaluation of the world.

Further Reflection

        

        
          Presently speaking, I have branched out in regards to my textual mediums; I now read internet blogs, newspapers, video games, novels, applications, and even movies with subtitles.  As i am sure it is quite obvious all of the things that I'm reading are item and mediums of my own choosing.  Not every piece of literature I have read in my life taught me about world affairs or has related to curriculum knowledge.
what it did teach me was how to read for contextual understanding and how to describe (reiterate) to others what I was reading.  I chose my materials and therefore I had an invested interest in understanding the text.  It is not possible to integrate everything a child reads into their class work but I believe that a child will have more success in developing their textual analysis skills if they are practicing using materials they are personally invested in.

Audio Texts

After writing this personal literacy history it inspired me to revisit one of the book series I enjoyed as a young child, Harry Potter. 

Click the link to learn more about Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone!

I chose to re-read the entire series that had captured my imagination and heart so intensely, that to this day I am still effected by the deaths of one, Serious Black, and Albus Dumbledore. As I am a current student I have limited time for personal reading, so I chose to listen to the audio disc version that has been performed by Jim Roth. I went to my local library and was delighted to find that they had the audio-disc versions of all of the novels. Integrating audio versions of text is a great approach to use when trying to differentiate student learning. It is a medium that can be used for students who need assistance and guidance in reading and for those whose intelligence prefers to learn through verbal than written.

          By listening to the audio version of the texts I have been able to reach the sixth book in the series. Everyday I listen to new chapters while I drive to school, work, and when I have time to sit and relax. The audio version brings the books to life in a way that reading silently does not. The book becomes alive like a play and I found myself anticipating the next time I would be able to listen to the next installment. This method was a very effective approach to ensuring that I was still able to learn from these pieces of literature. If I was studying this text within the classroom I would still be able to write reflective journals, an analysis of the narratives within the text, or as I am write not write a persuasive argument (although mine is targeted to using audio-texts). 

        It could be argued that using audio-texts does not allow students to memorize and identify the spelling and visuals of a word, but after using audio texts for the past month I would rebuttal with how the audio verision has helped me develop an understanding of drama within the text. The audio version of the text enhances the characters tones and feelings, it brings it to life in a way that I believe I missed when I had originally read it in its concrete form. Nevertheless, I truly believe that every teacher should ensure that students are provided with the choice of medium they would like to use when studying literature. As the main goal should be to have the students involved in understanding the contextual meanings within the literature and not the memorization of what the vocabulary words look like.

Blogging

        

          I have chosen to present my year long reflection of my personal literacy history in blog form because I believe blogging has become a form of writing that I believe students should be practicing at school throughout every grade level. Within the Language Arts Ontario Curriculum 1-6 it is stated that all grade levels are to "produce a variety of media texts for specific purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques" (Ministry of Education 105), and our society has become technology focused. Daily and weekly blogging is a way for students to have their ideologies shared with the outside world. By allowing students to create a produce written texts about things that interest them, or knowledge they want to share with others, it will give them incentive to care about what they create. As stated by Joe Jerles in Blogging in Elementary School: Why, How, and What Teachers Can Do To Encourage Writing "students prefer technology-based assignments and are found to use more words and expanded vocabulary when expressing them in blog posts" (Jerles 85). I have enjoyed creating this blog entry, and have put a lot of effort into the thoughts that I am sharing and the design of the blog by using visual aids and weblinks. Jerles articulates that when students discover that their "audience is much wider than the classroom or teacher, their motivation to write changes [they] became more involved and motivated" (86). I was inspired to put effort into my work because I plan on sharing this blog not only with my professor but with my friends as well. I do this in hope that it inspires them to revisit the adventures they experienced with the literature they read in their youth. As I have been inspired to begin my own journey of listening to audio recordings.

Works Cited

Boegehold, Betty Virginia Doyle., and Valérie Michaut. You Are Much Too Small. New York: Bantam, 1990. Print.

Doyle, Arthur Conan, and Sidney Paget. Sherlock Holmes. New York: Knopf, 1996. Print.

Gilman, Phoebe. Grandma and the Pirates. NewYork: Scholastic, 1990. Print.

Harris, Charlaine, William Harms, and Denis Medri. Grave Sight. Runnemede, NJ: Dynamite Entertainment, 2011. Print.

Jerles, Joe. "Blogging in Elementary School: Why, How, and What Teachers Can Do To Encourage Writing." National Teacher Education Journal 3rd ser. 5 (2012): 85-88. Print.

Levy, Elizabeth, and Denise Brunkus. The Schoolyard Mystery. New York: Scholastic, 1994. Print.

The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 Language. Toronto: Ministry of Education and Training, 2006. Print.