The Meaning of Literacy

When I was younger, I had the impression that literacy simply meant being able to read and write. As I grew and continued my education, I began to grasp and add more ideas to my interpretation of the word. Before discussing and completing the readings from last weeks class, I had a much different definition of literacy than I even do now. I had written down that I thought literacy was a word that included: reading, writing, understanding a text, and speaking. I had also added that by being literate, you were creating opportunities for yourself to suceed, as well as being able to function in today's society. While I still agree with my thought process at the time, I feel that my group came up with a much more rounded and complete way to explain the meaning of literacy. We decided that the best way to describe literacy is "the ability to read, write, listen, comprehend, speak, problem solve, and communicate, in order to participate in a multicultural, technological, and ever-changing society." At first I had left out various significant ways of communicating, all of which are significant with literacy in Language Arts (espicially the oral and problem solving aspects).
My ideal literacy learning environment would include a wide variety of things. First of all, I would like to think that there would be immense amounts of open communication. I feel that the first step in begin able to become a literate being is understanding a text, or idea, and discussing it with your peers or teachers. Depending on the age of the students in the classroom, a lot of reading (often if not always from topics that interest them) and writing would be happening in various ways and through different activities. If it was a lower elementary class, I would like to see a lot of work with phonetics and letters take place; story telling and role playing of different texts would also be beneficial. Overall, I think that there are many different ideas and aspects that need to be put together in order to create the most positive literacy atmosphere possible. These different aspects will have to be, for the most part, created and designed around your specific classroom of learners.