Taylar Byrne

3 April 2015
UWRT 1103
R.A Brown
Literacy Project
When you ask people what is literacy, they will probably give you
an answer similar to literacy is the ability to read and write. Which is
correct. The definition of literacy is the ability to read, write, and speak.
There is also another, lesser-known form of literacy called
contemporary literacy. Contemporary literacy is the ability to preform a
task with enough comfort that you feel at ease in sharing it with
another. For my literacy project I choose to have Samantha teach me
how she journals, and reads her Bible, a form of contemporary literacy.
I had the chance to sit with Sam one afternoon, and she showed
me her process of how she reads the journal. First, she picks out a
scripture for the day, and writes what she will be reading at the top of
her journal. What she picks to read, kind of depends on how she feels.
For instance, if she needs help with having strength or love she will
read a scripture about that. Then she will read completely through the
passage one time. After she finishes reading, she asks herself
questions about the passage, and writes them down in her journal.
She will read through it again, this time stopping to underline verses or
anything else that stands out to her. She also highlights the words that

pertain to God, words like He, Him, Holy Trinity. Then she circles
prepositions because, the prepositions help understand the
relationship between sentences. Sam also puts squares around verbs
that stand out or are important. Samantha also uses sticky notes to
write down how it relates to our culture now. Another thing that she
uses sticky notes for is to write down additional information that she
had to do research to find out what it meant so she could understand
the scripture better.
Religion and reading the Bible are important parts of Sams life.
She believes that reading scripture is a way to learn more about Jesus
through Gods words. I was thankful to have the opportunity to sit with
Samantha and learn her way of journaling and reading the Bible.