“Curricular Literacy” is synonymous with “understanding of a subject”. In American Studies, success in Curricular Literacy meant realizing the causes of the Dust Bowl and that John Steinbeck was an indisputably great writer, whereas in Political Studies it was knowing the differences between the words “inflation” and “visage” (which, by the way, are vastly different). New Technology High School bolsters the curricular literacy of its students in a number of ways, but generally employs project based learning as its primary teaching method. The New Tech Curriculum is rigorous-the work being difficult to adapt to because of the broad content knowledge that is demanded from students. I believe myself to be exceptionally strong in “curricular literacy”, especially in English, History, and Business classes. I do, however, struggle with the content in Math classes, particularly in Algebra 2.
Example 1) “The Iowa Equation” is an example of my Curricular Literacy in Scientific Studies. Because I normally struggle in that class, I am particularly proud of this piece, which I did during our study of population trends.
Example 2) Example two is the first section (an excerpt) of the questions we were assigned in Political Studies on the novel “1984” by George Orwell. I did not answer these questions in modern English, but rather chose to show the highest possible degree of Curricular Literacy by using the fictional language Newspeak in my answers. Responding to these questions in Newspeak (which, in 1984, is a vernacular created by the government to paraphrase and control communication) was one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my entire life. I not only had to carefully read the book to identify useable words, but study the composition of the language to see if I could invent new words while remaining within Newspeak’s grammatical parameters. This is by far my best (and favorite) example of Curricular Literacy.