In the average English classroom students are taught how to write essays and analyze texts, but there's more to literacy than that. As I discussed in my first post, literacy can take a variety of different forms. Analyzing texts is an important part of any English class but text can go beyond just novels and essays. You can analyze lyrics, poems, spoken word performances, movies, art, advertisements, graphics, the list goes on and on. It's important to have this open, all-encompassing view of text and literacy so you can go beyond the stereotype that reading and writing are the only things that apply to literacy. A person could be literate across all kinds of disciplines/topics. Your students could be literate digitally, whether it be with video, social media, editing software, etc. or they could understand how to read music or they could be a painter who might understand images more than words. That's why you should try to give student's creative options when assigning projects. Obviously every assignment can't be done through every medium, but there's more wiggle room in an English classroom usually than there would be in other disciplines classrooms. English teachers should be able to think about texts and literacy in creative ways and then be able to channel your students creative sides by re-conceptualizing their ideas of literacy and text as well.
One of my favorite literacy types is digital literacy. This video talks about literacy and focuses on digital literacy:
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