considering the community

1. Where/What will you visit? Why did you choose to go there?

The grocery store. Many students probably go shopping with their parents.

City hall and the police station. We want to learn about different event in the city and a little bit about the demographics.

Library. Hopefully the students in our classrooms are spending some time here. There are resources they can use at the library and free events they can take advantage of.

Louie’s Pizza. A well know restaurant around town that we have heard people talking about. We wanted to see what is was like, what kind of food you could order .

The race track. A well know landmark in Hazel Park. Fundraisers were also held there to fund our trip to Mackinaw.

Viking arena. This is a place where kids can take part in sports or go hang out with friends and go open skating.

- All of these are places where our student’s night go.

2. What do you expect to see? Spend some time thinking about common ARCHETYPES and BIASES present in your community.

My expectations of the city are stereotypical of what a low income area would look like. I don’t expect to see BMW in the parking lot or women walking around with Gucci purses.

3. What do you think an "outsider" would see? Does what an outsider might see differ from what you think you will see? If so how? If not why not?

I think an outsider will see the same things that I see. I consider myself an outsider. The community I am teaching in is very different from the one I grew up in.

4. Florio-Ruane (2010) explains, "The ecological view of literacy asserts that reading, writing, and oral language cannot be separated in their learning and in their use to learn subject matter. They are interrelated because they are all part of communication and are meaningful within social groups, contexts, knowledge and activities" (p. 2). Think about the setting/event you will visit as part of your Inquiry 1 investigation, and jot down some notes about the types of interconnections you are likely to see among reading, writing, oral language and other literacies and how they might contribute to communication in that setting.

There are connects between reading, writing and other literacy’s everywhere. When we were at the hockey rink, if a child is at the concession stand the child is going to need to be able to read the menu, know how to add up the prices of what he or she is purchasing to make sure they have enough money and then must communicate to the worker what they want.

5. Think about the connections you could make between and among contexts such as your school, classroom and the community. Literacy can and is found in all of these contexts, though they are not always as "obvious" as they are in our classrooms.

One way that literacy is found in the community is on all the street signs and store signs. Children don’t realize that when they are going down the street reading the signs that they are actually reading. They don’t view this reading the same as picking up a book and reading. Places in the community can always be used in math problems. Many kids buy candy at the local store, they don’t see this as doing math. However, if they are doing a story problem that has the store name and the candy they frequently buy in it , you have just merge their community and everyday life into math literacy.