Creating Communites and Learning Literacy

After reading the second prompt I realized I was a part of many communities. I am a part of my family, my circle of friends, my school and the classrooms with other students, my floor, and my job serving as a hostess at a restaurant and being a teacher’s aid in a summer school program for special needs children. Each community has a different idea of the level of literacy needed and the needs depend on the type of people, education level, and activities I am participating in. In her article, Heath explained the two different types of literacy as oral and traditional. Oral literacy is being passed down to generations by word of mouth and traditional literacy is more a school education of learning to read, write, and communicate with others. In the story we read, the town of Trackton predominantly uses the method of oral literacy to communicate with each other and their children. The community I have chosen to discuss in this blog is my summer job of the summer school program for children with special needs. This job requires me to in cooperate the oral and traditional literacy techniques as well as patience and good communication skills.
The rules for literacy in my summer program are simple. The teacher, teacher’s assistant and teacher’s aide all work together to get the autistic group of eight to ten year olds to feel comfortable in a new routine of classroom activities after a month and a half of summer. These children have a difficult time memorizing letters, numbers, focusing on the task in front of them and writing their names. As their teacher, one needs to be able to read the assignment, provide the necessary instruments and explain the task to the student. Sometimes the student will not understand the assignment and the teacher needs to think a little outside the box to explain in it a different way. Rewarding the student with a story after they complete the task is good motivation.
In Heaths description of Trackton, young children are not read to and learn to recognize logos and signs. Learning how to read is recognizing words and remembering how they sound. Since a bit part of these children’s struggle is to recognize and remember things, one of the most important tasks is to stay with the student and orally help them complete the assignment. One skill necessary for this community is the ability to slowly sound out letters and provide examples that they can easily recognize. For example, when teaching one my favorite boys, Selvin, to write the letter “A” in capital and lower case letters, I had him practice by writing words that started with that apple. Selvin wrote the words apple, ant, ape, and answer.
Like the Trackton community, my summer program community uses a lot of oral literacy. The difference between the two uses of oral literacy is significant. Although I use oral literacy, it is being put to use for writing in school, which a more traditional role of literacy. In Trackton, the community revolved around oral literacy because they did not have a solid idea of traditional literacy with writing numbers and letters which affected the way they communicated to each other. In Trackton, their way of communication works for inside their community but to outside it can be confusing and seen as incorrect sentence structure and verb tense. In my community, a basic understand of reading and writing is necessary to teach the children how to read and write when different approaches are needed.