Social literacy, from the perspective of the social-cultural theory, is more than the ability to

read Read Read may refer to: * Reading, human cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning * Read (automobile), an American car manufactured from 1913 to 1915 * Read (biology), an inferred sequence of base pairs of ...

and

write Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

, and more than mastering literacy skills. Children can learn literacy through social interaction between themselves and children and/or adults in or outside

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...

. Adults can use

book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

s, games, toys, conversations,

field trip A field trip or excursion is a journey by a group of people to a place away from their normal environment. When done for students, as it happens in several school systems, it is also known as school trip in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and ...

s, and stories to develop the literacy practices through fun. Collaborative learning between schools, family, and community can help develop a child's literacy. In addition, given today's technical knowledge, adults can take into consideration how to use

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

in the learning process and to employ it in teaching children how to read and write in a social context. "Literacy practices and events are always situated in social, cultural, historical and political relationships and embedded in structures of power. Furthermore, literacy practices involve social regulation of text, i.e. who has access to it and who can produce it, and such practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices. Moreover, these practices change and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of informal learning and sense-making". For those reasons,

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

s can design multiple levels of literacy activities and practices to fit different students' abilities and way of learning and "provide a

pedagogical Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and Developmental psychology, psychological development of le ...

approach which fosters communities of learners, plan classroom activities that embed meaningful opportunities to engage in the analysis and construction of multimodal texts, and utilize teaching approaches that move beyond the false tension between abstracting the codes of language and learning their application for meaningful purposes".

References

Literacy Sociolinguistics {{sociolinguistics-stub