Eldren Sparks

Professor Relerford

English 104

11 November 2017

Chef Sparks

Literacy has been known to be defined as your ability to. As society evolve how we

define certain concepts does as well. Education Albert gave literacy a more modern definition,

defining it as the ability, confidence and willingness to engage with language to acquire,

construct and communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living. Not knowing how to do this

simple task can be very detrimental. Almost every task in your day requires you to be literate,

whether its something as small as hitting stop on your alarm instead of snooze or as important as

making sure you got paid correctly for the number of hours you worked. Being illiterate has

proven to bring other negative things along with it, for example 85% of kids who go through

juvenile court are illiterate. This is why school is mandatory until at least 16 because it is where

we learn these abilities that are so important to our life. We judge our success in school and if we

can continue to the next grade, from an end of grade assessment that consists of stories with

questions that test your ability to understand useful vocabulary, purpose of material and use

critical thinking skills. It also contained math problems dealing with: money, scenarios and

simple adding/subtracting. The end of grade assessment is just another indicator of the

importance of being literate. Although we learn how to be literate in school there are still other

activities that we engage in that make our literacy skills better. My favorite activity that I also

learned literacy skills through is cooking.

 Cooking just happens to be a part of my DNA. On my dads side of the family, everyone

that lives in North Carolina, has a food related job. My Dad and two uncles all work at a

restaurant while my grandma caters out of the house as a side job. On my moms side of the

family everyone loves to cook and bake. Even before I could cook, there were things that I did in

the kitchen that improved my literacy skills. My parents would let me watch every step they

made while in the kitchen. If my mother had thawed out some chicken, and grabbed a pan to use,

she would ask me questions such as Why do you think Im using this particular cookware? and

thats one thing that developed my context clues. I figured that if she was baking, she would

have a baking sheet but since she had a frying pan, I knew that it went on the stove for frying or

heating. This is just one-way cooking improved my ability to comprehend before I even actually

did any cooking myself.

Once I actually started cooking I used my literacy skills constantly, which in turn keeps

these skills fresh. When cooking everything that you do comes from your meal instructions or

recipe and how successful your dish turns out all depends on how well you read and comprehend

the recipe. First you must make sure that you collect all the correct ingredients, which is a simple

test of your reading comprehension skills. Then you must put the ingredients together correctly

and many literacy skills are used in doing this. First you broaden your vocabulary because you

must know terms such as cut-in, whip or dice. Both reading comprehension and math skills are in

use when measuring things out. You must read the recipe to figure out the amount needed and

then get the correct measuring tool; sometimes it may ask for an amount of something that you

will require you to use your measuring tool several times to fulfill the needs of this recipe. Once

you do all your preparing you must still make sure you are paying very close attention to

directions because how you cook your meal and how long you cook it are also very important.
 Once my family finally let me cook on my own, I was better than expected but obviously

I wasnt an expert. One of the first meals I cooked on my own was a simple homemade pizza.

The idea for the pizza had come from my afterschool camp counselor. Once I learned this recipe

for a quick way to make my favorite food, I had to show the world. I decided that I wanted to

make a YouTube video showing off my new favorite dish. Throughout the video many literary

skills are constantly being used just by doing something as little as reading the oven controls and

setting it at the right temperature. The plan was to continue making cooking videos but sadly

there was only one episode. Looking back on it, I am glad I made that video because I can look

back at my growth with my literacy skills and get a good laugh.

Above is the video that is mentioned in paragraph 2

 As I continued to improve as a cook my literacy skills improved. In the kitchen, everyone

comes across the issue of producing a bad product. Personally, I try to fix or remake anything I

mess up and to do this means, that I have to problem solve to figure out what needs to change to

make my product a success. That is another literacy term, being able to see what went wrong and

approaching it in a new way. The more interested I became in cooking, I began buying cook

books for the kitchen to test out my skills. I challenged myself by reading over the directions a

few times and not looking back once I started cooking. By doing that, my memorizing skills

were improved, and I learned the importance of chronological order. This habit became

beneficial because it let me know what needed to happen before anything else was to occur.

Later in life, I used order to write essays, such as starting with a thesis statement, giving

background, citing information and concluding paragraph. Order is a way to construct meaning

in all aspects as life, because you prioritize what is most important.

In conclusion, cooking overall is a great activity that can teach you many different things!

It has helped me learn and retain several literacy skills. needed to end with. It is recommended

that all individuals engage in cooking. Since cooking is an activity that can build such a wide

range of traits, it is highly recommended that parents get their kids in the kitchen at a young age.

There are many areas that cooking can help you improve in such as mathematics and literacy.

The skills learned in cooking are important to the development of youth. It helps build traits such

as confidence which related back to our modern definition from Education Alberta. Reading

comprehension is key to cooking because you must read and then act upon the cooking

directions that are given to you. As well as helping me become more literate, the process of

cooking is actually entertaining. It is something my family does together to bond and something

they take a lot of pride in. Lastly but most importantly is the finished product. Who doesnt love
to eat? Cooking makes the brain, heart and stomach happy.
 Works Cited

Cooking with Kids in Schools: Why It Is Important. EXtension,

articles.extension.org/pages/73371/cooking-with-kids-in-schools:-why-it-is-important.

Eldren Makes Pizzas. YouTube, uploaded by Bronwyn Lucas, 30 January 2008,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v081WbOug1I.

Lake, Rebecca. Shocking Facts: 23 Statistics on Illiteracy in America. CreditDonkey, 12 May

2016, www.creditdonkey.com/illiteracy-in-america.html.

Literacy and Numeracy | Literacy. Government of Alberta, education.alberta.ca/literacy-and-

numeracy/literacy/everyone/what-is-literacy/.