Digital booktalk: pairing books with potential readers

Literacy defined Since the early 1900s, teaching literacy has always been like trying to hit a moving target. The only consistency has been that society has tended to group individuals into two broad categories of being literate or being illiterate based solely on whether or not they could read or write (NCREL & Metri Group, 2003). The ability to read, write, listen, and speak have always been a corner-stone in these literacy efforts in an attempt to broadly serve the interests of formal education. Because of outside pressures to increase literacy under these terms, educators have generally focused their literacy education efforts on teaching children how to code and decode words. But over time, the focus of literacy instruction has morphed to reflect changing economic times, social developments, and historical events (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Tyner, 1998). By 1970, the definition of literacy extended beyond merely decoding and encoding printed words to include the ability to reflect on and analyze the world (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). A further major expansion of the term literate took place in the 1990s. In 1991, the National Literacy Act was passed that was designed to ensure that adults have all the skills necessary to function effectively in the work place and at home. Congress (Sec. 3) defined the term literacy as “…an individual's ability to read, write, and speak in English, and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the jo