Literacy Digs!

LIteracy digs is a great way to get children invested in the community and create community involvement while teaching important concepts to children. You can pick any place in the community to do a literacy dig. The Goodwill is a great spot to do a literacy dig. Children can observe the environment and the literacy that goes on there. Children view the environmental print and how the customers interact with it. Children learn about the donation process and how it contributes to the community. They will also learn how donation gives back and who it affects. Literacy digs could be the start of creating a project based learning experience.

What is Literacy?

What is literacy? It seems like a simple question. Merriam-Webster defines literacy as "the quality or state of being literate; especially the ability to read and write" (Merriam-Webster, 2007). Most children would define literacy the same way. Literacy is much more than just reading and writing. Children understand and know more about literacy before they every enter a classroom. Environmental print is all around them. Children know the sign for McDonalds, Target, Starbucks, etc. They reading and recognizing print before they know about letters, blending sounds to form words, and writing. Another form of literacy is wordless picture books. With wordless picture books children are able to read a book and understand what is going on without the stress of sounding out words to read. The pictures tell the story and can depict some difficult concepts that children are able to understand.

Author Shaun Tan uses a wordless picture book to depict an immigrant's journey to a new land and the struggle to survive. Here a deeper concept is easily understood and depicted through pictures. Literacy in the form of pictures goes beyond reading and writing.