Building Literacy At The Outlier Disciplines

As a future teacher of a fast-changing generation that searches restlessly for new interests, I believe that old and new must meet to keep the basic values of a balanced literacy. Focusing on prior knowledge, collaborating with colleagues, peers, families, and community, creating connections with our surrounding, and empowering students’ learning style throughout the process of gaining knowledge of reading and writing. Foremost, my personal philosophy of teaching literacy is based on constructivism and sociolinguistic, where hands on experience and guidance are priority in an informational world. To facilitate a child’s acquisition of literacy skills , as I plan for literacy instruction for my future classroom, I will take into consideration

Common Core State Standards define expectations for students in four strands under English Language Arts: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language. The goal is that all students will demonstrate mastery in these areas as they become college or career ready. Further, the Common Core highlights the capacities of the literate individual. In the world of special education, too many students in high school struggle with literacy. There are Intensive Reading Clinic courses available to students with mild to moderate disabilities in Long Beach Unified School district. Of the various curriculums used in these classes, the LindaMood Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing program has gotten positive feedback from students and teachers.

This critique is on the evaluation program of Freedom School Partners Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools. This evaluation report was composed in October of 2013 by Dr. D. Bruce Taylor, Dr. Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo, and Dr. Crystal Glover members of The Center for Adolescent Literacies at UNC Charlotte, North Carolina. This is the fifth evaluation of The Freedom School Partners Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools. The main purpose of this evaluation is to analyze the outcome of this summer program on a student’s reading accomplishments while attending a Freedom School Partners in Charlotte. Ten of the nineteen Freedom Schools were chosen for evaluation.

Pea Ridge High School (PRHS) has long prided itself of being a high achieving school in academics; it is number six in the state for the 2013-2014 school year. Since the implementation of the Common Core Standards, PRHS has found itself having to reteach educators to use the literacy standards because most in the non-literacy/math disciplines still use the Arkansas Frameworks. Not only has the literacy standards been an arduous task to implement in the literacy areas, the high school struggles with the concept of teaching literacy in the areas that are not necessarily considered literacy areas.

For this assignment, I completed a survey to assess my school’s literacy program by using a survey that was adapted from by Patty, Maschoff, & Ransom (1996) to analyze the instructional program and the school’s infrastructure. To be able to answer my survey, I needed to go colleagues of mine in the English Department and to my administration to help with these questions. Being a math teacher, we hardly ever discuss the literacy and the students’ acquisition of it in our department meeting during staff development days. Since I am not truly current with literacy acquisition in education, I am hoping to understand more from this process so I can help all my students. I want them to be able to read texts related to math and find

The following essay looks into Appalachian population literacy crisis. The literacy crisis in Appalachian starts in home and schools, and the students were drop out school instead of graduation. Firstly, let us look at the literacy conflict between home and school. According to Baghban, the nature of conflict between home and school was that educators’ attitudes toward low test scores and parents did not see education as path of success. As reader can see, the conflict between home and school affects children success in school and literacy skills. Furthermore, the Appalachian population has gap between students’ home and academic lives, and Baghban propose a strategy that would bridge the gap between students’ home and academic lives. Overtime students could see the that print has meaning, and as results the students has higher chance to comprehend the text.

In the article Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content-Area Literacy written by Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan, they argue that “disciplinary literacy” should be the focus of middle and secondary school settings. The purpose of the study is to reveal how content experts and secondary content teachers read disciplinary texts, make use of comprehension strategies, and teach those strategies to adolescent readers. However, in different content areas different comprehension strategies work for the adolescents.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) reform affects not only the structure of the general education, but also the instructional strategies used to improve student achievement. However, according to statistics from Issues in K-12 Education Case Study Document 2 and research from the National Center for Education, African American, Hispanic, English Language Learner (ELL), and economically disadvantaged students are consistently reporting significantly lower mean CCSS test scores ("State Profiles.net", 2016). To address the issue of achievement gaps with marginalized populations, I am proposing a plan that includes revising the use of 21st Century technology in the classroom, providing correlation of professional development to meet the needs

Everything we learned about literacy in elementary school was a lie. I remember taking a reading comprehension test each year. I was timed on how fast I could read a selected passage, and time was added each time I made a mistake. My teacher would take my time, evaluate it, and categorize me into a certain grade’s reading level. According to revolutionary educational reformist E.D Hirsch, all of this was pointless. He theorized that literacy is not simply based on ability to read words on a page, but on a background of extensive topics that allows one to understand all texts and draw value from them. To expand the nation’s literacy, Hirsch proposed in his infamous book, Cultural Literacy, that there is a base list of terms and concepts that every student should know in order to be literate. Although the common core has been implemented in 46 out of the 50 states, it is still controversial. While it has positive effects such as uniform state education and better preparing students for college and post high school life, it also has negative effects such as too high an emphasis on testing and a lack of depth and diversity in the material. In theory, Hirsch’s ideas on education are good;but overall, the negative effects outweigh the positives.

DeVries, B. A. (2015). Literacy: Assessment and Intervention for Classroom Teachers (4th ed.). Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb

All of the goal and rationale statements in this Thematic Unit authentically address lifelong literacy goals and align with the common core standards. This Thematic Unit creates a classroom community that promotes life long literacy through the research of current issues. This unit allows students to reflect upon their own personal biases, and how these biases shape our perception of individuals. This Thematic Unit examines how stereotypes associated with certain groups of people, can have harmful affects on individual people who have similar features. Through exploring multiple opinions and perspectives from each other, they will be able to gain a better understanding of how all people think differently and how to work with people who are

What is the common core? “The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) defines the knowledge and skills in English language arts and mathematics that students need for success in college and careers upon high school graduation” (Santos, Darling-Hammond, Cheuk (2012)). The common core was created, “to provide clear academic benchmarks with more concise academic standards for essential learning that will prepare students to be college and career ready” (Liebtag, E. (2013)). The common core standards have then, been introduced and applied to most schools in the U.S, and although it may have its controversies, the major issue, is its effect on ELL (English Language Learners) students. “ELs currently constitute

Laws such as No Child Left Behind puts literacy instruction in the forefront. Therefore, school districts have set curriculums in place to guide students towards a standard to keep them on target as they progress up the ladder of grade levels. The standards of performance rely greatly on reading and writing proficiencies to determine the success level of each child. According to Ippolito et al. (2008), grade four is a critical point for students because it is the point where students transition from learning to read to reading to learn. This important point in an individual’s education life is where adolescent literacy becomes unique and challenging. At this point literacy is not just about decoding words, but it encompasses evaluating and dissecting ideas in written form for the author’s intended

· An Elementary Literacy Plan has been proposed and principals are giving feedback over the summer. This plan outlines goals that include an action plan based upon:

The integration of literacy into content areas is not always well received by educators. For some this is unknown waters in