Literacy Ethnography
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Transcript of Literacy Ethnography
Charles Thurston
English 1101
Literacy Ethnography
Some of my earliest literacy’s where
developed when I was in first grade. When I
was in first grade I lived in Hingham, MA
and went to a school called Foster
Elementary School. Reading, writing, and
math where the first literacy’s that I
developed. Fortunately my mother kept a
box of my old school work from first grade
and kindergarten. I looked through these
things and picked out some key examples of
how my literacy’s where developed.
Reading was highly encouraged by my
teacher. We read in school and were highly
encouraged to read at home as well. I found
a reading log from winter break. The log
was for our parents to read to us each night
over the break and write down the titles of
the books they read to us and the dates that
they read them on.
Date: Title:
12/21 Twelve Days of Christmas
12/22 A Crickets Carol
12/23 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
12/24 Twas the Night Before Christmas
12/25 Oh Say Can You Seed
12/26 I Spy Fun House
12/27 20,000 Baseball Cards Under The Sea
12/28 Tweetle Beetles
12/29 Freddie’s Spaghetti
12/30 I Can Read With My Eyes Shut
12/31 (None)
1/1 Batman
Even when reading was not assigned by the school, my mother and father would still
read to me every night and teach me how to read. After they would read me a book I would try
to read it back to them. My parents would help me each time I did not know a word or did not
know how to pronounce something. If I did not know a word they would explain what it meant
to me so I would be able to understand what I was reading. If I did not know how to pronounce
a word they would teach me how to sound it out so I could figure out how to say other words
on my own.
Another source that helped me learn to read was a magazine that my school used to
help teach. It was called Scholastic News. In this magazine we read about different things that
where in each magazine each time it came out. At the end of each magazine were questions
about the information in the articles to help us learn the information.
The next literacy that I began to develop was writing. I had a few papers that taught me
how to write. I was first taught to right by copying words. We were given papers with words
on them and we had to wright the word next to it. This was practice for learning how to write
words and also helped us learn the words. Next we started learning how to spell using vowels.
We were given work sheets with words that were missing the vowels and we had to right in the
correct vowels. This is how I first started learning how to use letters to make words. The last
thing that we did was writing whole words. We listened to words and had to write them down
and spell them correctly. On an assignment that I found we had to spell four sets of words with
three words in each set. The words in each set were all similar rhyming words to make it easier
for us to learn how to spell.
The third literacy that I learned was math. I started the development of my math
literacy by learning numbers. The first way I learned numbers was by writing them down in
order. I have a worksheet where were given some of the numbers between 1 and 100 and we
had to write in the rest of the numbers in order. This helped me learn my numbers and how to
count. The next thing that I learned was how to add. I first learned to add by using symbols. I
would use a symbol to represent a number. I would draw out the number of symbols for each
number in the addition problem and then count the total number of symbols. The total
number of symbols would be the result of the addition. For example if I was adding two
numbers I could represent the first one with a square and the second with a triangle. Say the
problem was 3+4. I would draw 3 squares and 4 triangles. I would then have a total of 7
shapes drawn so the answer would be 7. The next thing that I learned was how to use a chart.
I have a worksheet that was a pictograph with “Days of the week” on the y-axis and “Number of
penguins studied” on the x-axis. We had to read the chart and answer questions about it.