Final Letter
Dear Students,
Literacy is an extremely important part of our ELA classroom. When you are asked to consider daily encounters with literacy, you may think that it occupies a very small percentage of your day. However, our experiences in this classroom while encourage you to broaden your definition of literacy, and the importance of literacy to your life. Within this classroom we will read and respond to a variety of texts, both formal and informal. Rather than reader novels and textbooks exclusively, we will read magazines, newspaper articles, journals, and much much more. You will learn that the reading process not only includes the thinking that is done in response to the words on the page in front of you, but also the inclusion of your previous knowledge. ELA learners read all kinds of texts, and in order to interpret those texts, they use their life experiences. By drawing upon your experiences and your responses to these experiences, you will be able to make better sense of new characters, plots, themes, and settings that you encounter in your reading. In addition to utilizing your experiences outside of the classroom, I encourage you to pay attention to the experiences that your peers share. In this process, comparing your experiences to your peers’ will provide an explanation for your differences in interpretation. Learning to appreciate other individual’s interpretations of texts is a great way to learn about the reality of your own beliefs. In many ways it is the reading process that informs your initial responses, and your interactions with other opinions that cause you to revise and/or strengthen your opinions. In our classroom I will encourage you to engage in a variety of reading and writing exercises. It will be helpful to utilize this thinking process as we work through these exercises together. After you leave my classroom, I would like for you to be excited about the idea of literacy, and appreciate your literacy as an empowering tool! When you encounter a text in your daily life, I believe it will be rewarding to think about the critical reading and writing exercises that we did in class. Every person can be an expert in English Language Arts by simply reading what interests them, and talking about the ideas that they have about these texts with other individuals. I believe that you will find that writing down your ideas in a journal of some kind will help you strengthen the skills that we have been talking about, and will ultimately enrich your lives! Use this class to explore your own interests, and find out what literacy means to you!
1 comment:
You have several important goals for your ELA students in this letter. I wonder if you could use one phrase that might bring it all together? I always use lifelong readers and writers. I just read Taylor's and she used science investigators... Just a thought. It would be useful to remind yourself and students.... remember, we are authors.... how do authors think? Hopefully you will consider writing this kind of letter to your students and maybe even asking them to write one to you.
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