DISCUSSION BOARD READING RESPONSE
FOR GROUP 2
Reading your reflections and interactions about the readings is the only direct way I have of assessing the quality of your understanding of — and engagement with — the assigned readings. See the expectations on the discussion guidelines on the Website under "forms and docs"
For Day 1
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Group
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Initiators
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Summarizers
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Responders
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Illuminators
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1
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Kathleen
Brinton
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Audrey
Bjerum
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Andrew
Johnson
Megan
Petersen
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Yimu
Zhou
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2
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Rachael
Bird
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Danielle
Cattrysse
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David
Hamilton
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Sara
DeBoer
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3
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Joseph
Nowariak
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Kathleen
Holloran
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Kaitlin
Stein
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Christopher Yost
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In the comment section directly below this post please discuss the assigned readings for Day 1 using the assigned roles indicated in the above table.
Reading these two distinctly structured articles was a good example of why it is important to continually teach literacy throughout school and not simply rely on elementary school teachers to teach reading. Despite the fact that both articles contained much of the same information and were used to support each other, the authors went about relaying the information in very different ways. The informative text of Adolescent Reading from the IRA broke down its information in a very concrete-sequential order, providing headings, subheadings, and examples for each point they had about what adolescents deserve, while the Delbridge article was written as a narrative that appealed more to the reader’s emotions and experiences. As our students grow, it is important that we, as teachers of middle and high school students, continue to develop their literacy skills so they are able to read, comprehend, and analyze different types of text such as these in order to make them successful students in all content areas.
ReplyDelete1. We know that all content areas require students to read. What each content area expects them to read varies greatly from one to the next, however. How would you teach literacy skills in your content area? What types of literacy strategies would you teach to match the text structures in your content area? It will be helpful to think about the kind of information that is important in your content area, the kinds of questions that need to be asked, the types of text your content area uses, and how these texts are structured.
2. I am also curious to hear about the different types of literacy plans you have observed in your field experiences or in other teaching capacities. As the IRA article pointed out, it is important for entire schools to create a “culture of literacy” in which reading is promoted in every classroom and is treated as a school-wide initiative. Did your school (personal school experiences, field experiences, other school experiences) have a literacy plan that was promoted school-wide? Please describe and evaluate it.
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DeleteThese two readings really emphasize the importance of literacy in all content areas. I found this website: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/21825/. this website talks about literacy and how many students come to school with a lack in literacy skills. The website looks at research done, particularly with special education. I liked this website because it gives information on a literacy-rich environment. The website gives strategies and purpose of a literacy-rich environment. They also give ideas of themes that you can use when incorporating a literacy-rich environment. I also liked that it gives materials you would need and the role of the teacher and the classroom design for the literacy-rich environment. The article also talks about the evidence of classroom design, evidence of the teachers role and evidence of on classroom materials. I also really liked how they also discussed multicultural implications. The website also gives materials and training. The articles we read discusses how a lot of content teachers do not feel prepared for teaching literacy in their classrooms, and this website discusses these trainings. I thought this website can help give you another general idea of incorporating literacy into the classroom. You could take bits and parts to then apply it to your content area.
DeleteAnother website (http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/building-language-literacy-through-play) that I found was about building literacy and language through play. My mom works with brain therapy in the elementary school and they stress "play" in children. They have found that students who haven't played or even just crawled, lose out on some developmental skills that will affect their learning. So I really liked this article because of that. The article helps us see what we could do for play, they give ideas on what to do. During play, students are talking, acting out roles, and acting out certain roles. This gives students a chance to talk to each other, communicate and use words. this also gives students a chance to listen, they are listening to their teacher and listening to their classmates because they are listening to what they are saying and then responding. They are getting practice using literacy with real life situations. The article also talks about how you can then raise the level of play to help increase their literacy level.
When I was in school, I don't recall a ton of literacy in my other content areas. They didn't point it out, but there was literacy in the other content. We would read in the content areas but it was reading the book on the subjects and we would then be tested on them. We didn't do a lot of writing in the other classes, this was left mainly to the English class. In my observations, I haven't seen a lot of incorporation of literacy into the math class. My school did have a reading time set up for each day. I think it was 20 minutes and we were able to read whatever we wanted to. This helped build literacy in a general sense within the whole school.
Another article I wanted to look up was how we could use literacy in different content areas. I found a website that deals with literacy in math and science. I feel these are subjects that are difficult or don't have literacy developed in them as much as other classes. The website is: http://ohiorc.org/orc_documents/ORC/Adlit/InPerspective/2009-02/in_perspective_2009-02.pdf. The website looks at how you can incorporate literacy through a few methods. The first one is through problem solving, they use a few strategies to help students with attempting problem solving questions. A few examples are : SQRQCQ, k-n-w-s, a three level guide. Another method is through inquiry. So it is important for the teacher to find good readings that will use inquiry in science. The students will explore, explain, expand and assess. Another method is using a newspaper in your lesson. Here the students are finding information on science or even math in the newspaper. They then write a paper on that article (what they liked, what they didn't like, what they learned etc.). The website has a lot of information on it, but it then goes into more ways that you can incorporate literacy into your classroom. I think a lot of the things they talk about can be used in other subject areas as well.
DeleteFrom the readings, I found that it is important to have literacy in all content areas. Rachael also found this to be true from the readings. I thought these websites helped emphasize this from our readings and I thought these websites help give ideas on how we can do what the articles we read about want us to do.
These two texts combine well to give prospective teachers a basis for understanding the importance of literacy inclusion in their curricula. Personally, I found the approach of the Delbridge article to be more intriguing and more effective at getting the message across. On the other hand, the Adolescent Reading Position Statement from the IRA could be a great tool to use for evaluating the curricula of many teachers within a school. For example, teachers could be asked to evaluate their own classroom practices as they relate to each of the eight subcategories of the position statement.
DeleteRachael,
You asked about how we would teach literacy skills in our own content areas. I am very fortunate because my content area lends itself easily to reader development. As a Spanish teacher, one of my main objectives is to help learners develop their reading skills in Spanish. Especially at the beginner and intermediate levels, a primary goal is to give learners the tools to become critical thinkers when reading texts in Spanish. This goal directly relates to one of the many student strength areas described under section eight of the position statement.
To think critically within a language requires complex use of the language and a developed understanding of the grammatical and syntactical rules of the language. An additional advantage in my content area is that many of the textbooks used contain specific sections within each chapter that are dedicated to helping students develop and improve their reading strategies.
In response to your second set of questions, I have yet to be in a secondary school that has a clearly outlined and widely supported literacy plan. The high school I went to as an adolescent seemed to require a minimal amount of reading in each context area. Students had the option to take Advanced Placement courses from outside institutions - which required more reading - but few did. As far as I could tell, our school did not make any extra efforts to promote a culture of literacy beyond those necessary to meet the basic requirements on standardized tests.
The case was the same in my field experience this year. Students within the classroom I joined were rarely-to-never encouraged to read in Spanish and I was never informed of any school-wide initiative related to improving literacy. Granted, during my time there I did not investigate to see if there was such an initiative in place. I did spend more than three full weeks there, however, and never heard mention of any such plan. Actually, as I reflect more, I recall teachers complaining that the time students were giving for “reading time” each day consisted of about 15 minutes during a given class period in which students were to be “left alone” to read anything they wanted. As the teachers described, often students chose not to read during this time and the teachers were not allowed to give them required materials to read.
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One strategy for increasing literacy school-wide would be to require teachers to provide students with a minimum of three texts (articles, for example) related to each new concept or chapter they teach. These texts would need to be from sources other than the textbooks and may or may not be testable material within each class.
What other strategies or policies can you think of that would help a school increase literacy across the board?
At my school, we had a block of reading time. We were on a a,b,and c lunch times. The reason why we had these was because the time was divided up between lunch, 5th hour and the 20 minutes of reading time. We had to be reading something, if we weren't reading anything, the teacher gave us something to read. I really enjoyed this part of the day because it gave me a chance to read and escape from all the stresses that day. So I think this would help with any school do incorporate reading time into the daily schedules. Another thing could be just to push the teachers to include literacy in their unit at least once. At Le Sueur, the teachers have coaches, and with these coaches they make goals. This could get something that they have to include in those goals.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to begin this summary with a great point Rachael made that many readers might not have picked out. Just the fact that we, as college graduate students, have had continuous literacy education allows us to read these two very different pieces of writing. The informative text from the IRA breaks up a great deal of information in a very organized fashion, with headings and subheadings. The Delbridge article is written in narrative form and hopes to appeal to the reader's thoughts and emotions. I thought this point of being able to recognize and adapt to different pieces of a writing was a great one to start with, Rachael. As middle school and high school teachers, it is our job to continue our students' literacy education so they can read, comprehend and analyze different pieces of writing as they progress through life. I thought Rachael's first point really hit that "analyze" skill.
ReplyDeleteAs a group, we then began to discuss how we can continue literacy education in each of our content areas, as well if we had heard of any school-wide literacy plans throughout our own schooling or in our field experiences. Sara provided a few very helpful websites about helping students that lack literacy skills, literacy in special education, and literacy improvement tactics in the science and math classrooms. I particularly like the website on science and math classrooms, since this pertains to mine and Sara's content areas. In math and science, it's so important for teachers to educate our students on how to read these different texts. Science and math textbooks deal more with problem solving and inquiry-based learned, and these are the skills we must focus on through our teaching and other assigned readings. David gave some great tactics to help improve literacy skills in his Spanish classroom. He stated that his main goal was to help students strengthen their reading and writing skills in the Spanish language. "To think critically within a language requires complex use of the language and a developed understanding of the grammatical and syntactical rules of the language." stated David. David also included that many Spanish textbooks have separate sections within them set aside to help students focus on their reading skills. This might be something to look for in future textbooks we use in our classrooms.
Finally, as a group we touched on the existence of any school-wide initiatives that we have observed during our schooling or in field experiences. It seems to be a trend that most of us haven't seen much effort put into these school-wide literacy plans. David stated that he hasn't seen any literacy plan set into stone. Many schools try to set aside 15 to 20 minutes throughout the day dedicated to "free reading time" (myself, Sara and David observed this trait in schools). I found it interesting that David observed many general education teachers found this free reading time a waste...that it took away from teaching time. I would concur with David in this and have actually observed these opinions from both students and teachers in my field experience. I think the problem with this free reading time is that schools don't put enough emphasis on creating this "culture of literacy". This literacy education plan must be made a school-wide initiative, rather than 20 minutes that is set aside for students to converse.
Overall, I think our group did a great job of giving some real-life examples, pulling some great material from the reading, and finding some note-worthy websites for future use.
Thanks everyone!
Dani
Sorry for the delay, but I had a little blogging snafoo. I entered a post last night, but I'm not sure if I didn't enter that picture password thing or what, but the post didn't stick! I realized it this morning, and thank god I had my work saved. Anyways, for the little delay! See you tonight!
DeleteBravo Group 2! This is so very well done.
ReplyDelete