I visited a number of places in the community. I visited a lot of food places really close to the area including Quizno's, Subway, and a pizza place. I also drove through a few neighborhoods, all of which were completely different. Some had trailer parks and some had huge mansions on a lake. I chose to go there because I did ask my teacher where in the community children live and go, so she directed me towards a few food places as well as a shopping corner that one of the students' parents owned.
I expected to see people from the community eating, shopping, talking, and living their lives as they would in their neighborhood. Everything was mostly on track for what I would expect. There were teenagers working in the fast food places I went to and children even eating and shopping in the places. I saw children playing and riding their bikes with their friends. In shops and food places, children are going to need to be able to read things such as numbers and percentages because they might need to know if an item is more expensive than another, or if a "buy 1 get 1 free" deal is cheaper than getting a larger size of something.
Relating each of those to literacy is something that I can more easily do with the neighborhoods the children live in- it gave me a glimpse inside the place that the children do have their literacy learning while they are outside of school setting - their homes. I didn't expect the students to live in such economically diverse areas in the same school district.
I am not familiar with that area in particular. Reading about what you saw such as the types of restaurants, shopping centers, etc. sound rather typical of most communities around. The one thing I found most interesting was your trip to the different neighborhoods and what a wide range of homes you found. Just curious, is your school a neighborhood school? It seems that there is a substantial difference in the economic status according to the different types of neighborhoods you encountered. Are these economic differences noticeable within your classroom?
ReplyDeleteTo explain my post more, there is a really large difference in economic status in the community. It is a neighborhood school, right in the middle of the neighborhood where it's district is. There are trailer parks in the neighborhood as well as new subdivisions with newer homes. I think at first glance, there is not a big difference with the children but then when I read their work, that's where I can see the biggest difference. One child would talk about his/her boat that they go tubing on, but then another student finished the sentence, "I wish..." with "I had a house, not a trailer." This is a big indication of the home where each of these children live.
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