Blog Post #8: Semester Wrap-Up

1) How have your notions of literacy expanded this semester? What counts as content area literacy that you have not previously considered? Coming into this class, I had a one-dimensional, traditional view of literacy. Literacy, at the time, meant reading books, particularly novels. I did not consider multimodal texts as literacy. Nor, did I consider other forms of literacy, such as blog posts or podcasts.

2) What have you learned about adolescents as literature beings? What do you know about how and what they read, write, watch, listen to, consume and create that you didn’t know before? Being in field has expanded my understanding of adolescents as literature beings. I found out that they really enjoy reading graphic novels and anime. I previously did not consider these genres as educational, but that has changed after taking this class and my field experiences. I found that a lot of the students will not read a traditional novel. Or, if they do read it, they will not really engage in the reading other than to do the assignments that go along with the reading. However, whenever we found a graphic novel version of the novels we wanted them to read, they were very engaged. The majority of the students in my class like to listen to rap music, particularly XXXTentacion, and consume social media, particularly Snapchat.