Charles Thurston

English 1101

Literacy Ethnography

Some of my earliest literacy’s where

developed when I was in first grade. When I

was in first grade I lived in Hingham, MA

and went to a school called Foster

Elementary School. Reading, writing, and

math where the first literacy’s that I

developed. Fortunately my mother kept a

box of my old school work from first grade

and kindergarten. I looked through these

things and picked out some key examples of

how my literacy’s where developed.

Reading was highly encouraged by my

teacher. We read in school and were highly

encouraged to read at home as well. I found

a reading log from winter break. The log

was for our parents to read to us each night

over the break and write down the titles of

the books they read to us and the dates that

they read them on.

Date: Title:

12/21 Twelve Days of Christmas

12/22 A Crickets Carol

12/23 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

12/24 Twas the Night Before Christmas

12/25 Oh Say Can You Seed

12/26 I Spy Fun House

12/27 20,000 Baseball Cards Under The Sea

12/28 Tweetle Beetles

12/29 Freddie’s Spaghetti

12/30 I Can Read With My Eyes Shut

12/31 (None)

1/1 Batman

Even when reading was not assigned by the school, my mother and father would still

read to me every night and teach me how to read. After they would read me a book I would try

to read it back to them. My parents would help me each time I did not know a word or did not

know how to pronounce something. If I did not know a word they would explain what it meant

to me so I would be able to understand what I was reading. If I did not know how to pronounce

a word they would teach me how to sound it out so I could figure out how to say other words

on my own.

Another source that helped me learn to read was a magazine that my school used to

help teach. It was called Scholastic News. In this magazine we read about different things that

where in each magazine each time it came out. At the end of each magazine were questions

about the information in the articles to help us learn the information.

The next literacy that I began to develop was writing. I had a few papers that taught me

how to write. I was first taught to right by copying words. We were given papers with words

on them and we had to wright the word next to it. This was practice for learning how to write

words and also helped us learn the words. Next we started learning how to spell using vowels.

We were given work sheets with words that were missing the vowels and we had to right in the

correct vowels. This is how I first started learning how to use letters to make words. The last

thing that we did was writing whole words. We listened to words and had to write them down

and spell them correctly. On an assignment that I found we had to spell four sets of words with

three words in each set. The words in each set were all similar rhyming words to make it easier

for us to learn how to spell.

The third literacy that I learned was math. I started the development of my math

literacy by learning numbers. The first way I learned numbers was by writing them down in

order. I have a worksheet where were given some of the numbers between 1 and 100 and we

had to write in the rest of the numbers in order. This helped me learn my numbers and how to

count. The next thing that I learned was how to add. I first learned to add by using symbols. I

would use a symbol to represent a number. I would draw out the number of symbols for each

number in the addition problem and then count the total number of symbols. The total

number of symbols would be the result of the addition. For example if I was adding two

numbers I could represent the first one with a square and the second with a triangle. Say the

problem was 3+4. I would draw 3 squares and 4 triangles. I would then have a total of 7

shapes drawn so the answer would be 7. The next thing that I learned was how to use a chart.

I have a worksheet that was a pictograph with “Days of the week” on the y-axis and “Number of

penguins studied” on the x-axis. We had to read the chart and answer questions about it.