New Literacy Project - Notes

With our new literacy project we chose to explore two different literacy subjects, environmental and visual. Through this project I have learned many new strategies when dealing with literacy. I have leaned that literacy goes way beyond reading and writing. It also involves speaking, listening and observing. When dealing with visual literacy this is the most evident. Through visual literacy you are able to communicate with students who are either illiterate or who do not speak English. I would find visual literacy particularly useful when dealing with second language learners. Through this project I was able to learn how to use a new online program, flicker.com. This is a program where you can upload pictures, give each picture a title and description as well as organizing your pictures however you would like. This was the first time I used this program and it did not take long to get used to it. I found it particularly interesting how effective visual literacy can be for all levels of education. For our particular project we focused on kindergarten students but we could have just as easily made a visual literacy project for a fifth grade classroom.

The other form of literacy we chose to explore was environmental literacy. The thing that I enjoyed most about environmental literacy is how much you can do with it. There are so many options when it comes to learning about the environment. When I think of environmental literacy I like to compare it to life skills and how to become a part of society. I am a special education major and I feel that environmental literacy plays a big part in their education. The more you can teach them about how to become a contributing part of society the better off they will be. Things such as showing someone how to wash there hands properly are things that many teachers take for granted. I learned that it is very important as a teacher to help your students become one with their environment. While doing this project I found it easy and interesting to use environmental literacy with visual literacy. It is easy to connect with the environment all you have to do is go outside. Overall I found this project to be very beneficial as I learned new ways to teach literacy.