Recalling my early development in reading and writing it provokes thoughts of pure hatred. Until grade three I had slipped through the cracks of an old fashioned Catholic Education system. One of thirty three students, my feelings were not those of a modern day student in a community of responsible learners (Tompkins, Campbell, & Green, 2011, p. 1). My reading and spelling were well below par. In the summer holidays after grade three my father decided to force me to read. While his intentions were true, the delivery of his form of literacy education mimicked those of an army drill sergeant. The initial lessons were hazy. …show more content…
Many aspects of why, are more clear to me now. The learning experience was far from ideal, yet my spoken word was at a level where it needed to be. Snow, Burns and Griffin (1998) argue that language is an important requirement for literacy. As I read, I was not consuming the literature. The role and importance of diverse contexts were overlooked. We have numerous, different and changing needs that derive from various cultural and language backgrounds (Willis, 2000). The role and importance of diverse contexts allows content-social interaction to be more inclusive (Gee & Hayes, 2011, p. 25). My experience was not an inclusive one. My exposure to literature could be described as vanilla at best. Exposing students to diverse contexts categorised as intimate, peer, stranger, and up or down status communication syntaxes shows the important role diverse writing has on the pre-condition of the cultural process (Emmitt, Zbaracki, Komesaroff , & Pollock, 2010, p. 4 & Gee & Hayes, 2011, p. 33). Exposure to diverse written language is part of a well-rounded education program. My holiday reading boot camp was …show more content…
This is true of assessing literacy. For younger students who need to be engaged in discussion about interests, observe the way they handle literature and discuss with them the contents and ultimately listen to the students read the book (Tompkins, Campbell & Green, 2012, p.75). As students get older assessments should focus more upon meaning making of text, abilities to recall text, understands differences between genres of text (Tompkins, Campbell & Green, 2012, p.77-79). For younger or older students one assessment aspect I never achieved as a student was the enjoyment reading