Assignment #1--Literacy Autobiography
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Assignment #1--Literacy Autobiography
Content: You are to write a personal essay describing how an event or person helped shape your developing attitudes toward reading and/or writing. Your essay should center around one remembered event and/or one remembered person. It should not be several small anecdotes (stories) combined into one essay, although you may refer to these in your essay. You may include places, ideas, teaching methods, school experiences, classes, assignments, or anything else from your past that has helped shape your literacy. You will want to make sure that your essay explains how your chosen topic changed you in some way. Tell your story dramatically and vividly, and remember to give the significance of your narrative as well.
“Write an essay about your important experiences with reading and writing, and consider the degree to which written communication has shaped your assumptions, your attitudes, your life. Think about writers and readers who have influenced you, and explore your writing methods and literary tastes. What type of writing do you engage in most often? What are your earliest recollections of reading? You may interview your friends and family members in order to add authenticity to the story of your evolving literacy. Your classmates and your instructor will be your audience. The purpose of this assignment is to initiate a semester-long (maybe even life- long) metalinguistic awareness.”
Format: This essay must be at least 1000 words, computer-generated, double- spaced. Please secure your final draft with a paper clip, rather than a staple. Thank you.
Peer Review date: Friday, February 1. All groups should bring 3 copies of their draft to class, except for Group D, who should bring 4 copies.
Due Date: Monday, February 4.
Directions: For this class, you will compose a Literacy Autobiography with the primary purposes of 1.) examining and reflecting on your own personal reading and writing practices and the familial/cultural/historical values that have shaped these practices; 2.) placing these practices and values into some sort of historical/cultural context so that you and others can better understand the relationships between literacy practices/values and culture/society/history.
The definition of literacy we are using for this class includes the practices of reading alphabetic texts (shopping lists, magazines, books, web sites) and visual texts (e.g., television shows, computer games, photographs), and the practices of composing written texts (e.g., poems, newspaper stories, essays), visual texts (e.g., photographs, pictures, advertisements), and hybrid texts (e.g., multimedia, computer games, etc.). Literacy also includes the social, cultural, familial, and personal values that are associated with such texts.
The audience for your Literacy Autobiography is me and and the other people in this class.
To compose the autobiography, look at the questions below and answer each of them in writing—responding as fully and completely as possible.
Then, create a timeline of your life—online or on paper (e.g., posterboard(s), a homemade book, a scroll)—noting key dates in your life.
On the top side of this timeline, identify the key historical/social/cultural events that gave your life and your literacy experiences shape. Choose those events that have some bearing on your literacy values/practices (e.g., the invention of the WWW in 1991 shaped many young people's reading and writing practices in online environments; the boom of web- based gaming environments in the 1990's changed the reading and writing practices/values of many online gamers; 9/11 changed many peoples' newspaper-reading habits and letter writing habits; the recent stock market recession has been responsible for the loss of many jobs and, thus, for changes in many peoples' literacy practices at work). Illustrate these historical/social/cultural events with appropriate images (and, of course, include a sheet that contains the bibliographic citation for each of the images you use).
On the bottom side of the timeline, identify the key literacy events in your life—focusing on those you mentioned in response to the literacy autobiography questions. You can illustrate these historical/social/cultural events with appropriate images (and, of course, include a sheet that contains the bibliographic citation for each of the images you use).
Here are some tips for succeeding on this assignment:
Respond to the Literacy Autobiography questions as completely and fully as possible. Tell as many stories as possible.
If you encounter a question that asks for material/stories/information you have already given in a previous question, skip it. Just be sure that the question is not asking for new information.
Do some careful thinking about the key historical/cultural/social events that shaped your literacy values and practices—this is hard to do! Think back in your life about the larger events that shaped yours and your family's circumstances—especially your literacy values/practices.
For the top of the timeline, don't just pick any old historical dates; be selective and identify only those that had some important influence on your literacy history.
For the bottom of the timeline, don't pick all the literacy events/happenings in your life—select only the key happenings/events that seem particularly important/salient for your own personal literacy history.
On your timeline, make explicit the connection between your own literacy practices/values (or those of your family) and the historical/social/cultural events that you have chosen to identify.
If you are at a loss for historical material, go online (use you favorite search engine and the key words "timeline" and "historical") or go to the library to find some historical timelines (e.g., the Annals of America in the reference section) to consult for inspiration. Choose timelines that cover the years of your own life.
Here are some online timelines that you may (or may not) find useful: timeline for the Internet
Below, you will find a copy of the Literacy Autobiography questions and the evaluation sheet I will use to grade your Literacy Autobiography.
Literacy Autobiography Questions: Demographic Data
Name:
Your place and date of birth:
Academic Major (if applicable):
Intended Occupation (if applicable):
Nationality:
Race:
Ethnic Heritage:
Religion/denomination (optional):
Immediate family members and ages:
How would you describe your family economic circumstances when you were growing up? (e.g., we had very little money, we were comfortable, we were well off, we were extremely well off)
Parents’/Guardians’ Education and Professions:
Family Literacy Values/Practices
What value did your parents/grandparents/guardians place on reading/writing? At home? At school? What were their thoughts about education? What kinds of reading/writing/computing did they do? What stories did they tell you about reading/writing?
Did your parents/grandmother go to school? To what level? (treat mother and father and grandparents separately) Can you tell us any stories about this?
Did your mother and father/grandparents read at home? If so, what? (newspapers. magazines, the Bible or the Koran or other religious texts, signs, pamphlets).
Did your father or mother/grandparents write on a regular basis? If so, what? (letters, shopping lists, religious documents, community or organizational material).
Can you remember anything that your mother/father/grandparents said about reading? Writing? Education? (deal with each term separately)
How important did/do your parents think reading and writing was? What kinds of values did/do they place on reading and writing?
Early Literacy Practices Values: Note: This project has been adapted from http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~cyselfe/courses/HU2548/LitAutoBio.html
Chris Ervin’s lit auto assignment: Literacy Autobiography For this class, you will compose a Literacy Autobiography with the primary purposes of 1.) examining and reflecting on your own personal reading and writing practices and the familial/cultural/historical values that have shaped these practices; 2.) placing these practices and values into some sort of historical/cultural context so that you and others can better understand the relationships between literacy practices/values and culture/society/history.
The definition of literacy we are using for this class includes the practices of reading alphabetic texts (shopping lists, magazines, books, web sites) and visual texts (e.g., television shows, computer games, photographs), and the practices of composing written texts (e.g., poems, newspaper stories, essays), visual texts (e.g., photographs, pictures, advertisements), and hybrid texts (e.g., multimedia, computer games, etc.). Literacy also includes the social, cultural, familial, and personal values that are associated with such texts.
The audience for your Literacy Autobiography is me and and the other people in this class.
To compose the autobiography, look at the questions below and answer each of them in writing— responding as fully and completely as possible.
Then, create a timeline of your life—online or on paper (e.g., posterboard(s), a homemade book, a scroll)—noting key dates in your life.
On the top side of this timeline, identify the key historical/social/cultural events that gave your life and your literacy experiences shape. Choose those events that have some bearing on your literacy values/practices (e.g., the invention of the WWW in 1991 shaped many young people's reading and writing practices in online environments; the boom of web-based gaming environments in the 1990's changed the reading and writing practices/values of many online gamers; 9/11 changed many peoples' newspaper-reading habits and letter writing habits; the recent stock market recession has been responsible for the loss of many jobs and, thus, for changes in many peoples' literacy practices at work).
On the bottom side of the timeline, identify the key literacy events in your life—focusing on those you mentioned in response to the literacy autobiography questions. You can illustrate these historical/social/cultural events with appropriate images (and, of course, include a sheet that contains the bibliographic citation for each of the images you use).
Here are some tips for succeeding on this assignment:
Respond to the Literacy Autobiography questions as completely and fully as possible. Tell as many stories as possible.
If you encounter a question that asks for material/stories/information you have already given in a previous question, skip it. Just be sure that the question is not asking for new information.
Do some careful thinking about the key historical/cultural/social events that shaped your literacy values and practices—this is hard to do! Think back in your life about the larger events that shaped yours and your family's circumstances—especially your literacy values/practices. For the top of the timeline, don't just pick any old historical dates; be selective and identify only those that had some important influence on your literacy history.
For the bottom of the timeline, don't pick all the literacy events/happenings in your life— select only the key happenings/events that seem particularly important/salient for your own personal literacy history.
On your timeline, make explicit the connection between your own literacy practices/values (or those of your family) and the historical/social/cultural events that you have chosen to identify.
If you are at a loss for historical material, go online (use you favorite search engine and the key words "timeline" and "historical") or go to the library to find some historical timelines (e.g., the Annals of America in the reference section) to consult for inspiration. Choose timelines that cover the years of your own life. Here are some online timelines that you may (or may not) find useful: timeline for the Internet
Literacy Autobiography Questions:
Family Literacy Values/Practices
o What value did your parents/grandparents/guardians place on reading/writing? At home? At school? What were their thoughts about education? What kinds of reading/writing/computing did they do? What stories did they tell you about reading/writing?
o Did your parents/grandmother go to school? To what level? (treat mother and father and grandparents separately) Can you tell us any stories about this?
o Did your mother and father/grandparents read at home? If so, what? (newspapers. magazines, the Bible or the Koran or other religious texts, signs, pamphlets).
o Did your father or mother/grandparents write on a regular basis? If so, what? (letters, shopping lists, religious documents, community or organizational material).
o Can you remember anything that your mother/father/grandparents said about reading? Writing? Education? (deal with each term separately)
o How important did/do your parents think reading and writing was? What kinds of values did/do they place on reading and writing?
Early Literacy Practices Values:
o When did you learn to read? To write? Who taught you?
o Tell us the story of how you first learned to read? To write? o What kinds of things did you read (e.g., comics, cereal boxes, magazines, library books, computer games, etc.) and write (e.g., stories, e-mail) at home when you were a young child? Be as specific as possible about authors, titles, etc..
o An older child? (e.g., plays, songs)
o An adolescent? (e.g., a diary, letters, notes to friends, IM exchanges, music, scripts, short stories)
o Did your parents read to you or have you read to them? If so, please describe these situations.
o Where and when did you read and write when you were a young child? An older child? An Adolescent?
o How did you get access to books? Was there a library near your house? If so, did you use it? When? How frequently?
o Did you have a computer in your home? Did you use it as a young child? An older child? An adolescent? If so, how did you use it at each of those stages? For what purposes (e.g., www surfing, word-processing, programming, computer games, etc.).?
o Who helped you? Hindered you? (include personal computers, computer games, etc.).
o What kinds of things did you read/write online? (e.g., web sites, games, e-mail).
School Literacy Practices
o What kinds of reading/writing activities did you learn/do in English classes in elementary school? Junior High school? High school?
o What kinds of reading/writing did you do for other classes in elementary school? Junior High school? High school?
Current School Literacy Practices
o What kind of reading/writing/speaking activities do you do in college? (e.g., passing notes, writing essays, reading novels) What kinds of reading/writing activities are your favorite? Your least favorite?
o What kinds of reading/writing/speaking do you learn/do in English/Humanities classes? For other classes in elementary school? Junior High school? High school?
o Describe how/why you use computers for each of the following purposes. Identify how often you do each of these activities (e.g., not very often, occasionally, pretty often, frequently). Can you tell us any stories about this:
• reading and writing e-mail or letters (To whom? How often?) • programming (For what purpose? How often?) • doing research on the web (For what purpose? How often?) • downloading music from the Internet (From where? What kinds of music? How often?) • designing web-sites (For what purpose? How often?) • playing computer games (Which ones? How often?) • downloading software from the Internet (What kinds? For what purpose? How often?) • downloading movies from the Internet (What kinds? How often?) • completing multimedia/new media design (For what kinds of projects? How often?) • visiting chatrooms (Which ones? How often?) • contributing to listservs (Which ones? How often?) • doing graphic art designs (For what purpose? How often?) • designing and publishing printed documents (desktop publishing/page layout) (For what purpose? (Which ones? How often?)) • preparing oral presentation slides (PowerPoint, etc.) (For what kinds of projects? How often?) • consulting online dictionaries, thesauruses, language translation software, bibliography software (For what kinds of projects? How often?) • making movies (For what kinds of projects? How often?) • making greeting cards (For what kinds of projects? How often?) • taking digital photographs or the manipulating photographs (For what kinds of projects? How often?) • other (e.g., global positioning systems, CAD-CAM, simulations, language learning, 3-D rendering, etc.—please be as specific as possible) (For what kinds of projects? How often?)
Historical/Cultural/Social/Familial Events That Provided a Context for Literacy
o What important historical/political/social events were happening in your state, country, or around the world when you were a child growing up? When you were a teenager? Please list as many of these as possible—especially those that shaped your literacy practices/values.
o What important family events happened when you were a child growing up? When you were a teenager? Please list as many of these as possible—especially those that shaped your literacy practices/values. Who were your heroes when you were a young child? An older child? An adolescent?
Acknowledgement: This assignment has been adapted from
Hypertext Literacy Autobiography Write an autobiography of your literate life. In other words, tell the story of your literacy. You should endeavor to tell a story that includes the most important and/or memorable events, people, and times (good or bad) that are related to your learning and use of whatever literacies you believe you possess. That means reading and writing (functional) literacy is important, but don’t forget about the other things you know because of your membership in various discourse communities (groups who share similar knowledge and ways of talking/writing), that is, your cultural literacy. Your autobiography should also explain the significance literacy (functional, cultural, and/or critical) has in your life. You may choose to talk about the significance of literacy in general. You may choose to talk about the significance of one type of literacy: functional, cultural, or critical. You may choose to talk about the significance of one example of functional, cultural, or critical literacy such as the importance of reading in your life or the importance of being literate in the discourse community of pro-wrestling fans. You may choose to select one specific event, person, or time and talk about the significance of that event, etc. in your literate life. This autobiography should be written in a hypertext format and linked to pages you create containing quotations from your response papers, process journal entries, class discussions, etc. Paper # l: Literacy Autobiography (3 pages) In this essay you will be exploring your personal literacy. Consider how you became literate. Who or what had a major role in your literacy? Did you have a role model or an inspiration? What effect has literacy had upon you? How do you define literacy and why? Narrow your topic so that you focus on a single event, person, or issue. Your audience will be your class and instructor. The following questions may help you generate ideas and organize your thoughts: What texts have been most important to you? Consider books, magazine articles, poems, songs, stories, etc. What kind of writing do you do? What have you written that is most important to you? Consider letters, papers for school, poetry, short stories, songs, etc. What are your earliest memories of reading and writing? What places and feelings are associated with these memories? Who are the people who have influenced your development as a reader or writer? Think of a time when you felt your literacy was inadequate, when you felt you were excluded because of your communication skills (reading, writing, or speaking). Are you a part of a special subculture (i.e. Star Wars)? How did you become literate in this area? What was your experience in gaining/keeping this literacy? ENGLISH 506: The Teaching of Writing Dr. Joanna Wolfe LITERACY NARRATIVE I
Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created -- Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize Speech
Overview: Write a 5-8 page paper that explores some aspect of your literacy background and or development and describe how this background influences your current philosophies about teaching writing. You should explain how your experiences and philosophies coincide or differ from those of other teachers we have read in this class.
Goals: As with most of the work in this course, the goal of this assignment is to encourage you to articulate and critically examine your philosophies about teaching. Each one of us, whether we are aware of it or not, enters this course with some sort of philosophy about what constitutes good writing instruction. For some teachers, good writing instruction means an emphasis on correct grammar, mechanics and style. For others, like Hillocks, good writing instruction means involving students in making meaning and self-discovery. The purpose of this assignment is to articulate your current teaching philosophy, situate it among the philosophies described by the other authors we have read, and analyze how your own literacy background and experiences have led you to this point.
Getting Started: For this assignment, you'll need to prepare by culling your memories. Try to go back as far as you can to the first time you actually remember writing something -- anything. Think about how and when and where and with whom you learned to read, how you learned to use language effectively (to get something you wanted, to make someone laugh or cry, to change someone’s mind). Think about the kinds of reading and writing you have done at various stages of your life: what did you read and write before you started school? when you were 7 or 8? When you were a teenager? In college? Think about the places where you have written, and the times, and how you felt. You might use questions like the following to prompt your memories: What was reading and writing like in elementary school? In middle school? In high school? What did you write when you weren’t in school?
What did you read? And why? When? Where?
For what purposes did you write and to what kinds of audiences?
How did people react to your writing?
How did your perceptions of writing--yours and other people’s--change over time?
What were the significant events or circumstances in your life as a writer that stand out in your memory now? Why? What teachers particularly influenced your writing development—either positively or negatively? Now that you look back on these experiences, do you perceive them differently than you did at the time?
What philosophies do you think motivated the teachers you have found most (or least) effective?
Content: The format of this assignment is flexible—feel free to experiment with different ways of organizing your narrative. You may want to focus on a single incident in your past, analyzing it in depth and explaining how it has affected your perception of what it means to teach writing. Or you may want to describe several events over a period of time, explaining how these taken together have shaped your current attitudes towards teaching and writing. Feel free to explore both positive and negative experiences (i.e., what you definitely won't do as a teacher). Be sure, however, to situate your teaching philosophy amongst the philosophies described by the other teachers we have read. Do you agree or disagree with them? Why?