Education 284 has given me a new outlook on literacy and its importance in my classroom and in the lives of my students.

Before I enrolled in this course, I thought that literacy was simply reading and writing. However, as I started to investigate by reading books and articles that focused on literacy, I learned the true meaning of this critical word. Literacy involves not only reading and writing, but analyzing and understanding complex texts. Literacy allows us to examine and evaluate the world around us. It also helps us to make rational and informed decisions.

 Literacy includes all texts. Being that we are in a Technological Revolution Age, technology is a literacy that is becoming all the more important. As a teacher, I will make certain that my students become aware of their literacy development. I believe the outline given by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman in the book Subjects Matter (page 252) will help me as a teacher to make certain that my students have a deep understanding of their own literacy development.

•  Kids should read a wide range of materials in all classes (Spanish).
• Students should read for the same purposes as literate adults, both for information and pleasure.  A sense of purpose is a key to reading success.
• Students need to read a lot; volume, quantity, and practice count.
• Students should read plenty of books and articles written at a comfortable recreational level, not frustration level.
• Kids need genuine choice of reading materials:  at least half of what they read should be self-selected, based on interest and curiosity.
• The classroom should become a reading community, a group of people who regularly read, talk, and write together.
• Teachers must help students develop a repertoire of thinking strategies to handle challenging texts, and guide students to be increasingly aware and in charge of their own thinking processes.
• Students should engage in frequent interdisciplinary inquiries, projects, and where possible entire interdisciplinary courses to explore topics in depth.
• Students of all ages need to hear powerful writing in performance ≠ reading aloud by the teacher and other students, dramatic interpretation, audio books, etc.
• Adolescent students need opportunities to connect with the adult literate community, starting with teachers as readers who generously share their reading lives with kids. 

Students need to have reading comprehension skills and the ability of recognize structure and ideas taught wile reading complex texts. Because literacy is "social" more than "cognitive", Book Club is an activity that I will definitely implement in my own classroom. By sharing thoughts, ideas and interests, students become critical listeners and thinkers.