Jacob's 8P24 - Literacy Blog

Growing up, creative writing was always something I enjoyed. My Papa, Dad and I are all massive  hockey nuts and we loved reading hockey blogs and talking about the NHL, more specifically, the leafs. I was fascinated by the fact that someone was paid to watch hockey games and then write about anything they wanted from it. This was a job I would’ve paid to do and it was from that moment on, that I understood the importance of doing something you love and backing your work, in this case, writing, with something you’re passionate about, in this case, hockey. Additionally, I knew I lacked confidence in my knowledge, but always thought I was a smart person. For this reason, in school, I always loved writing assignments because I could write down and express all my thoughts without fear of being called out for a wrong answer in front of the entire class. I remember this fear of judgment was so prevalent for me, a teacher asked to read an essay of mine aloud as an example of good writing,

Reading in school was something I always struggled with, but not for reasons you might think. I didn't have any processing or cognitive difficulty and was actually quite a good reader. My issues were something I feel were not too focused on (in terms of addressing) when I was in earlier grades. Firstly, I came from a family of very avid readers which always made me feel weird...I loved (and still do) the idea of sitting down and reading book, more than I actually like doing it. I could never sit still or focus for too long on what I was actually reading and would find myself thinking about something else, leading to re reading the same paragraph time and time again trying to remember what I just looked at. I think this was a combination of attention issues on my part as well as a lack of finding material that drew me in and kept me interested. I say the latter because there were a few books growing up that gripped me and I couldn't put down, but not often. That is why, in today

Media Literacy In the past, when thinking about school, most people think about reading, writing, math, and other generic aspects of fundamental education. Although today all those same qualities have remained consistent, some things have changed and advanced. Even from when I was in elementary school, computer rooms, gamification of math concepts and even calculators were new, advancing and becoming a tool to help further understanding and engagement. When looking at technology as a whole, it is consuming and taking over our current generation like nothing ever before. It has become common and almost expected that most children have some form of technology at their fingertips at almost any moment. It has been stated that the average kindergartener nowadays, is presented with up to 70 different media messages daily. Furthermore, most teens spend at least one-third of their whole days engaging in media. So clearly as educators this gives us a great opportunity, for increased engag