Double Entry Journal #10

At home, children are exposed to a variety of different forms of language.  Things that parents do, such as telling stories and playing games with their children, ultimately effect them when they reach school.  Children learn the more academic and literary way of speaking, which is essentially by "storytelling".  Another is that, many video games use complex language and vocabulary that is often above their grade level.  The children develop the skills they need in order to play the game and become excited about reading and learning in relation to the game.  These children develop a love of reading and gain more extensive vocabularies.

Leona tells stories in the way that much African American storytelling is done.  She groups her speech into stanzas and uses a lot of repetition and parallelism.  Leona's specialized form of language is not accepted in school because the teacher's are expecting a story that is more step-by-step, not poetic in nature.  It is not what is expected or deemed "proper" for someone her age, and so she is discouraged from telling stories in the way in which she was taught.

Snow et al. (1998) concluded that students living in poverty end up falling behind despite their initial reading skill.  The recommendations then made suggest increasing these children's initial reading skill level through "early phonetic awareness" and "overt instruction on decoding".  These two reports contradict each other because if children in poverty fall behind others no matter their initial reading skill, then increasing their initial reading skill will not help the problem.

Racism and power is one thing that can also make or break a good reader.  If children perceive a school and/or teacher as hostile, they will not identify with them.  The same can be said if their home identities are oppressed.  If this happens, they will not feel they are valued or belong and will not do as well as they are capable of.  Children can fail to identify with the "ways with words" that is taught in school if it seems distant, irrelevant, or frightening.  Also, the varieties of language offered by technologies (the internet, video games, and texting) are more appealing and interesting to them than those they are exposed to in school.