Post #11 – Lit. Bingo!

After roaming around campus in search of concepts that appeared in our readings, my group and I discovered several literacy concepts hidden around Cal. The first one we discovered was “A Social Justice organization in Berkeley.” This one came really quickly to us because we all agreed that UC Berkeley Boalt School of Law was one massive institution for social justice in policy reform. Next we also uncovered the bingo selection that reads “3 Examples of Non- English languages in the linguistic landscape AT CAL.” To find this we ventured of into the Free Speech Café. There we found several newspapers with the titles in different languages. Also, we found that ornamental obelisks and Sather Gate had writing in Latin. Thereafter we also checked in the box that reads “A compelling example of working in the ZPD at one of your group members mentoring sites.” One of my group members mentioned that she worked with a student at St. Martins on a math assignment. She mentioned that as a tutor she helped the student figure out a long math problem. She helped the student by explaining step by step as they went along. However, when my group member mentioned that she stopped and let the student try to figure the problem out, the student struggled.

Thereafter we also marked “An extreme example of the narrative character of teachers student relation in your experience.” I provided my example from middle school. When I was in the 8^th grade I remember having a teacher that would only read to us from the text book. She rarely allowed the students to talk about the material or even work in groups. I remember that she would simply read us a paragraph form the book and then make us work on a worksheet that was related to the paragraph she wrote. I remember that I dreaded that class, but fortunately that class only lasted one hour a day. Finally the last one me and my group check was “An example of literary in theatrical performance form a mentoring experience.” One of the group members shared that literacy and performance are deeply intertwined. She said that many students that perform must memorize certain lines in a play. Through this constant reading and rehearsing is where many students get the most exposure to literacy. My group member mentioned that the students may at times also remember poems by heart first by reading the piece then by practicing it over and over again.

Through this experience I discovered several hidden forms of literacy. I also discovered that there were many different ways of acquiring information, such as “banking” “performing” “scaffolding” and “narration.” Overall, this assignment opened my eyes to the world of literacy I hadn’t noticed before.