So far, during my placement for student teaching, I have witnessed very little effort to incorporate content literacy into the classroom. My host teacher is a very diligent and impressive teacher,but he makes very lttle effort to enhance the lessons with anything that is "extra". While he is very gifted in explaining the content, he does not seem to believe that implementing literacy is very important. I believe that the reason behind this particular teacher's approach is that he believes that the students are very capable of seeking out information for themselves. This teacher has very high achieving students in his classes and, for the most part, the students do perform on a very high level on their own. I do wonder how the class would improve if there was more of an eort to enhance literacy in the class.
While Readicide is a very dense read, it is also very informative. While it is so important for literacy to be improved, it can also be dicsouraging to think about the statistics presented in Readicide. As I consider the daunting task of covering all of the required standards, it is little more discouraging to think about also trying to implement meaningful literacy. I think that what we can take from this book is the importance of working literacy into the content areas as an improvement to our content rather than an obstacle. As daunting a task as it seems, it is important that we keep trying to find ways to encourage an interest in literacy among our students.
I am very interested in learning how everyone's placements have been going. I am wondering if the host teachers are all very similar to mine or if there are some teachers who make more of an effort to implement content literacy.
So far, my progress in my inquiry project has consisted of a literature review. I have simply looked over professional journal articles that pertain to my topic. There are many articles that references vocabulary in general. My only struggle that I have faced so far is the fact that many of the articles do not include strategies that can be easily implemented into Math.
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My host teacher is a bit "old school". The first thing that she does at the beginning of a lesson is to have the students key the vocabulary. This consists of having the students just type the vocabulary words and their definitions on the computer, print it out and hand it in. As far as I can tell, she does not use cooperative groups much or really incorporate any activities to improve content literacy. I discovered that several of the students were having difficulty finding information in the textbook that they needed to fill out a study guide, so my first literacy engagement was to help some of these students by showing them how to determine key words and check subheadings in the text and skim the text looking for key words. I really think it helped a few of the students and that made me feel good. If you can leave each day feeling like you really helped even one student, it makes the day worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you are saying about your host teacher not really trying to incorporate much "extra" in his lessons. My teacher is the same, and honestly I agree with her. It is alot of effort to include all of this "extra" stuff when you are only judged on the EOCT scores. True, we should enhance students learning, but we also want a job. Until schools decide to put more reading in classes then we won't see it.
ReplyDeleteRemember that the EOCT, in addition to testing content, is also a test requiring students to read and think critically when answering multiple choice questions. Continuing to develop students as effective, critical readers only supports test taking. Chante's point is well taken. The reading should enhance the learning of content. Gina's careful kidwatching and intervention to teach text structure is an example of very helpful content area literacy instruction. Now those students may have a chance of understanding as they read and knowing where to look to find answers. I don't think it makes sense to see teaching content and literacy instruction as separate entities. Remember, it's all about showing students how to think about and construct meaning in the discipline-specific materials that you use and giving them opportunities to practice reading for meaning in your discipline.
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