Meaning Of Literacy Essay

Growing up, the meaning of the word literacy has greatly changed for me over the years. I had not the slightest idea of what literacy really meant. When I was still just a child in elementary school, I believed literacy was basically just reading. I remember having to take online reading tests and my teacher would refer to them as “literacy tests.” How well we did on these tests, determined what our reading level was going to be for that specific point in time. Our reading level is what determined which library books we were able to check out. Since we took these tests very frequently throughout the schoolyear, it helped our teachers keep track of our progress and growth as readers. It is understandable as to why this is the way I understood literacy as a child. I wasn’t taught much during my younger …show more content…
I don’t recall which UIL event I participated in as a third grader, and I didn’t do UIL as a fourth grader because I switched schools, and didn’t feel quite comfortable and was also very timid. Fifth grade was the year I was drawn back to UIL. However, this time I was not participating in a writing event, I was participating in a speaking event.
In my younger years, I would constantly be told by my parents, “Adamari, you’re such a drama queen!” Knowing that overreacting was something I did, I decided to apply it to a UIL event, oral reading. Oral reading is reading a selection of poetry aloud to your judges. I took great interest in this event. In the beginning I was so fascinated by all the poems I was able to choose from. The University Interscholastic League says:
Reading literature out loud provides opportunities for students to analyze the text, to grow and to develop as a performer, to communicate a message to an audience and to perform an artistic creation. The oral reading competition should be an extension of the classroom literary and language arts