c. Definitions: Literacy
It is useful to get your student teachers to start to think about what literacy means.
Ask them to work in groups, to provide a definition of literacy to share with the class. Encourage them to use documents like the National Curriculum, the Primary National Strategy, the Primary Framework, dictionaries, related readings and their own experience. Share and discuss definitions.
It can be useful for everyone to keep the resulting definition to refer to, and perhaps to modify, at various points in the course. It’s also worth getting student teachers to think about whether literacy is changing.
You could ask your student teachers to work in groups, to discuss both the truth and also the implications for early schooling of the following statement:
Young children inhabit a complex world in which electronic and digital media play an important role. The communicative practices to which they are apprenticed include many traditional forms, but these exist side by side with new and rapidly developing practices which blend print, audio and visual media.
(Merchant, 2005, pp. 198-9
Ask them to note down relevant points and report these back to the class.
You might wish at this stage to insert some of the points listed below.
Feedback Points
- The traditional forms of literacy will always take centre-stage in the primary classroom; teaching reading and writing will be the focus and greatest challenge for all Early Years teachers. These are also the most challenging tasks for the children your student teachers are going to teach.
- The definition of literacy presented in the National Curriculum and the Primary National Strategy has been challenged by the new digital technologies. This challenge is particularly important for Foundation and Early Years teachers. Recent research suggests that emergent literacy can be more broadly defined to include children’s experiences before school, including: the narratives of family and the media; the early ‘techno - literacy’ of computer games, mobile phones, video/DVD and TV as well as the more traditional access to books and writing materials. Many three year olds have access to a home computer as well as TV and video/DVD and return home from nursery school to switch on their favourite interactive web site.
- Print literacy, which tends to dominate in the classroom, draws on the existence of the multiple literacies existing outside the classroom. Student teachers will find it useful to refer to the New Sheffield Report, (2005) Digital Beginnings: Children's use of popular culture, media and new technologies.
 
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