VIDBE-Q Volume 68 Issue 4
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data regarding its effectiveness and provides suggestions for how it can be
implemented with students.
In yet another wonderful contribution to the journal, DeWald explores how
literacy fits into O&M. She introduces two important aspects of O&M which are
supported through literacy: informational literacy and environmental literacy.
Language and literacy are requisites for gathering and retaining information.
Information literacy is used in planning routes, communicating directions, writing
down directions, addresses, and/or contact information, and reading signs,
schedules, or maps. DeWald defines environmental literacy as "competent or
knowledgeable about a particular area." Expanding upon her ideas of
environmental literacy one can make a direct link to broad language skills such as
meaning making and depth of knowledge between and within topics. On the
surface, learning positional and directional concepts and naming places, objects,
and familiar places is a part of environmental literacy. However, with further
development one can begin making connections between and within concepts,
using language to define, describe, and explain things. Depth of knowledge is
demonstrated by these connections and the sophistication of how one understands
the world around them. For example, DeWald discusses the concept of a
"sidewalk." By going beyond the simple definition of a sidewalk, an O&M
specialist may provide additional facts such as sidewalks separate houses or
