Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cassidy Hines
Introduction
For this project, I decided to examine the
literacies of my 14 year old sister, Hannah. She is a
freshman in high school this year, and I am very
interested in the differences between how she
uses literacy and how I use literacy. There are only
6 years in-between us, but there has actually
been a huge change in the development of
social media and how it is used in education
within that time. Computer and internet program
use in and out of the classroom is much more
common now than it was when I was a freshman
in high school, so the differences in how different
literacies take place and how those literacies
interact are extremely interesting to me.
Academic Literacy
English
Language Arts
Worksheets
Vocabulary
Required
Historical Texts
Writing
Mathematics
Science
Open and
Closed Tasks
Required Use of
Academic
English
Mathematical
Vocabulary
Translation of
Mathematical
Language
Measurement
Scientific
Vocabulary
Translation
between
Science and
Mathematics
Use of all other
subjects
English
High School English
Language Arts has
an emphasis on
vocabulary,
worksheets, and
required Young Adult
Literature. This form of
literacy depends on
vocabulary that has
been established
throughout the
school years blended
with knowledge from
everyday life.
Required Historical tests in Language Arts requires knowledge from the past
years of schooling combined with a certain historical knowledge and
appreciation to fully engage with and understand the text.
Writing
Writing combines all knowledge that a person
has picked up throughout the years. It
includes the use of Standard English with a
combination of other variables. Writing may
use a formal or informal tone, and it may be
personal, research based, creative, or a
combination of these and many other forms.
It may also be an open or closed task,
meaning that the teacher can decide to
make the prompt more open or closed
ended.
Mathematics
Mathematics,
especially algebra,
requires the
understanding of
letters, numbers,
symbols, and the
combination of all of
these factors. This is an
interesting balance
that is taught in high
school math courses
and can be very
confusing in the
beginning. At some
points, mathematics
also requires the
integration of
standard and
mathematical English
language when story
problems are present
in the curriculum.
Science
Music
Music, artists, lyrics,
and songs play a
great role in the life of
todays teenagers.
Lyrics are often much
deeper than they
seem at first sight, and
they require a certain
type of literacy and
feeling to transpose
words into meaning.
Artists also play a huge
role in todays society.
They are often seen as
role models and
important in the lives
of todays teens.
Social Media
Twitter
Instagram
Snap Chat
Twitter is a form of
Social Media
targeted at
communication
between larger
audiences of peers as
opposed to single peers.
Text Messaging
This example of text messaging shows the
differences that the younger population uses
when communicating one on one with others.
Hannah (grey messages) uses many messages
with a lack of punctuation and capital letters to
portray her feelings and ideas. This directly
contrasts the proper grammar and capitalization
techniques that I (yellow message) use in my
replies to her. The message below also shows the
abbreviations for common phrases that have
become integrated into popular culture.
Writing a Card