Students At A High School Literacy Level example essay topic

Literature takes relevance in everyone's lives. The amount of relevance literature takes in one's life is dependent on how much they make it a part of their life. Literacy is a major key in being self-sufficient and succeeding in life. This is why it's very important that children develop strong literacy skills early in life.

In our California school systems we are becoming more and more challenged in teaching and helping children develop these literacy skills because of our population becoming increasingly diverse. After developing strong literacy skills one can then become increasingly literate and develop critical thinking skills. Most students at a high school literacy level begin to read literature and write papers that require them to use more critical thinking skills. In this I say most students because like I mentioned previously our population is becoming increasingly diverse and may students seem to slip though the cracks and make it though school without developing strong literacy skills which creates a block for them to begin using critical thinking as a tool. This is why I believe that development of literacy skills should still be a large part of high school literature.

Students must first be able to understand what they are reading before they can begin to think critically about a piece of literature. I believe that freshman and sophomore students should focus on development of literacy skills and increasing vocabulary. Then these students should be slowly worked into forms of literature and text and how they are presented. When introducing them to texts and their different form students will then see how the development of literacy skills is relevant to their lives. They will realize that these skills are important in their everyday life activities.

If they have then developed these literacy skills and developed a sense of what literature is then at their senior level, begin to introduce them to classic pieces of literature and text. Explain and describe how literature and texts come in all different forms and that some is preferred over others depending on what one likes. When introducing critical thinking, choice of texts is an important factor because when introducing the students you don't want to put anything to confusing in front of them. In choosing text it's important to choose something that will be enjoyable for the students and something that they will be able to relate to on a some level. Students at this level now have some understanding about social problems in our society and can relate to or have opinions about these problems. There for, when choosing a text or texts that have common social problems that the students can relate to will give them a sense of literature being relevant to their own lives.

High school is often a time when students are finding out who they are and the differences in society. A large issue often arising in high school is body image with both males and females. This topic is everywhere you look and often-young adults acquire eating disorders and obsessions with image while in their high school years. A common concern with image is weight; most people want to be thinner than they are and many will do almost anything to look the way they think they " re "supposed to look". For example in a short story by Raymond Carver called Fat a waitress describes a man on appearance. She says, "This fat man is the fattest person I have ever seen; though he is neat appearing and well dressed enough.

Everything about him is big". This description of him is very descriptive but this woman describes him so vulgarly that you can assume that she must not be as heavy herself or she wouldn't describe him the way she did. Judgment is so quickly place on someone by his or her appearance. If a class were to read some of Raymond Carver's short stories they would be able to find this theme in many more of his stories. For instance in his story Nobody Said Anything, a young boy who comes across the site a woman and thinks to himself, "She was thin and had little pimples around her mouth. Her hair was up in curlers.

But she was sharp enough. She had a brown sweater with nice boobs inside". Society as developed out minds to think this way. On the site of someone we judge him or her whether it be consciously or not. Using a common theme in texts to define a social problem that relates to the students would be extremely effective.

Finding books with common themes isn't too difficult, especially if you use a rather broad theme. The example I was talking about, body image, is a great one for the high school level because young adults tend to be very conscience of this topic. In the book White Noise by Don DeLillo body image is also a major theme. For example, the main character Jack describes people in his town very descriptively, he says, "Blacksmith is full of obese adults and children, baggy-panted, short legged, waddling".

My main concern in this process would be that the students might not be mature enough to talk about social concerns such as this. If I was to teach a course to high school students I most likely wouldn't use these particular texts for them because they may be a little advanced for them. I used these texts merely as examples to show how many themes in texts are concerning social issues. In Flannery O'Connor's short stories there are also many reoccurring themes based on social issues.

Once again the theme of Body Image also arises in her stories. In her story Parker's Back, Parker the main character says, "who in God's name would marry her?" And a large barefooted women with wide gap-toothed face appeared in the door". Parker places judgment on this woman and the man that married her because of the way she looks. Students will notice different themes and develop different opinions when reading these stories. Classroom discussion of the texts is very important because something in the text might have stood to one student and not to another. The students may agree or disagree on a subject but no matter what hearing other students opinions will cause them to think about the subject again and how they feel about it.

In conclusion, it takes time to become an effective critical thinker. The first purpose literature should serve for students is to help them develop strong literacy skills because without these they will struggle through many literacy demanding obstacles. Then after developing these skills they will be able to analyze texts and see how many of them represent societal problems that society has already been though or is going through. Showing students how texts all around them present societal problems and changes that occur in day to day life will help them see how literature is relevant to their own lives..