Content Area Literacy

How can content area teachers plan and design instruction so that students will actively engage in literacy- and subject-related activities?

The essential literacy strategy goes along with the standards and learning objectives by using context clues to help the student figure out unknown or unfamiliar words. Students will build reading comprehension skills by using context clues for figuring out unknown or unfamiliar words while they are reading. Then the students will perform the strategies individually. The related skills address the use of prior knowledge of synonyms and antonyms during the hook and transition portion of the lesson. The reading and writing connections go along with the learning objectives, because the students will read their assigned book and picking out words they do not understand. The students will have to write the sentence with the unknown word in it, and use context clues to figure out the definition of the unknown word. The central focus for this unit of study is for the students to use context clues to better their comprehension of what they have read in their assigned books. The students will be able to use context clues within sentences to determine the meaning of unknown or unfamiliar words. These lessons deal with comprehending text by using context clues to help figure out unknown words. The lessons build off each other by adding more detail to learning about context clues. As the lessons progress the students will be more independent when using context clues. The first lesson is learning about what context clues are. The second lesson will focus on using context clues to figure

Although my degree is in secondary education, and it has been 30 years since I have been in the classroom, my journey is similar to yours. I began my return to education, as a substitute teacher. From that experience, I recognized that I, too, want to have that license in my “file box” of options.

Kristin had spent a large part of her literacy instruction using comprehension strategies with the children, such as; text-to-text (connections a reader makes between two different texts), text-to-self (personal connections a reader makes between the reading materials and herself), and

The four parts to the resource model are code breaker, text participant, text user and text analyst. Code breaking is decoding or understanding the relationship between spoken and written language. Code breaking is understanding the symbols, sounds, letters and word relationships. In order for students to understand and comprehend what they are reading they have to be able to decode. Decoding can be difficult for students because there are multiple sounds for the same symbol or letter. When students are comfortable and good at reading they read often. When students struggle with reading and decode they avoid reading and stay poor readers. This causes the Matthew effect where good readers get better and poor readers stay poor readers. Text participant is comprehension. Students use their community and culture background to help their comprehension. Students having prior knowledge is essential to understanding. While reading to the class you could ask them to make connections and predictions. A teacher could have a small vocabulary lesson. Text user is using our social norms for the setting. The norms in an elementary class are different from a college classroom or a book club. Depending on the social setting we have different rules and norms for reading. Text analyst is the power at work in a text. When reading a book it is helpful to know to know about the author. It is import to ask questions like whose voice is

Traditional content area literacy, in which each teacher is the master of his or her domain, frequently dismisses the idea of an integrated approach to the teaching and learning of academic content (Damico, Baildon, Exter, & Guo, 2010). This age-old construct of compartmentalized instruction perpetuates the idea of instructional silos, and missed opportunities to make explicit and meaningful connections among the disciplines. However, disciplinary literacy, which goes beyond mere student recitation of content learned, invites and encourages students to practice the lexicon of the discipline while learning the content (2010).

Implementing practice, vocabulary, and content strategies can enhance and further struggling student’s content achievement. Although struggling readers often have a hard time grasping concepts, comprehension, vocabulary, and meaning, “Struggling readers are especially vulnerable to failure with content text” (). In order to build up struggling readers confidence, comprehension, vocabulary, and content text, “teachers' knowledge of content literacy practices is critical” (). The use of content literacy incorporates both “language arts and content material” (). In doing so, students often implement meaningful usage within content literacy and improve their academic achievement. “In order to provide responsive content literacy instruction for

Making text-to-self, world, and text connections gives students the opportunity to activate prior knowledge to help them better understand the current article. The making connections strategy was pre-taught in a mini lesson and modeled by the teacher before the students began the assignment. A

In information literacy, it also have the competencies standard which is to measures the ability of student to used the information. The first information literacy competencies standard is American Association of School Librarians (AASL). The function of AASL is to develop new guidelines for school library media programs and professionals that will contain information literacy standards for student learning. There are three categories in AASL standards which are information literacy, independent learning and social responsibility. In information literacy categories, it contains standard 1, standard 2 and standard 3. In standard 1, the student may literate to access the information efficiently and effectively. They are able to recognize the

Cultural literacy is understanding the culture you are referring to, and therefore essentially understanding the market. For example, there was a successful vehicle produced by GM in the past called the “Chevrolet Nova” When sold in Mexico, the car did horribly. Reason was, GM did not notice the word “nova” in Spanish translates to “no-go” or “does not move” Of course a car named “does not move” will not do well. It is basically the last thing a car buyer would want to hear is a car named after the fact it can’t drive. Needless to say, the vehicle did not do well in the Spanish market. Cultural Literacy is nothing new, and has been a subject of concern for many years. Many doctors and professors have come up with different methods to try to

The paper Information literacy standards for student learning is all about student learning standards they go in detail about each type of standards and the indictor for each type of learning standards. Within the paper they discuss the nine standards of information literacy standards, allow with talking about the nine standards for student learning they include a few indicator for each standards so that a teacher may know if they are hitting on the standards and also better able to tell if there students are also getting the standard they are trying to teach.

In today’s society, people, whether they are an educational student of any level or a professional, use the internet or another type of database search, in order to get information. We live in a world where everyone who has internet has a voice, therefore information literacy is essential, meaning that people have to know how to find the information they are looking for, evaluate them and use them effectively.

Content- area literacy uses listening, speaking, reading, writing to gain information within a specific discipline. It does not just apply to core classes such as English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. It can also be applied to Physical Education classes. The truth be told, Physical Education in essence is a science that incorporates physical activity (movement), biological, and social sciences. Physical Education has texts that are written in the content of health and wellness topics that rely heavily on the use of visuals such as graphs, charts, and pictures. Content- area literacy improves physical education students performances because it requires them to plan, reason, strategize, and reflect on health and activities. They also have

Take a moment to think about this objective. In the last lesson, you learned how to search for new information on various subjects. Once you find that information and analyze it, how do you use your new knowledge to interpret the main text you are studying? You’ve learned a lot about determining the central idea and finding supporting evidence. Would the learning skills you have used to do these things help in explaining how new information contributes to the text you are studying? What other learning skills might help you? Open your digital notebook and describe your strategy and the learning skills you will use to succeed in this lesson.

Children cannot be labeled like pieces of garments; one size does not fit all. Each student who enters the classroom is uniquely made. They come with their own background, intelligence and/ or skill set. The strengths of one student may be the weakness of another. Those factors combined should influence any teacher to make the necessary adjustments to lesson in order to ensure all students are engaged in the learning cycle. During my course, Assessment for Student Learning, I was provided strategies to evaluate student learning higher than the formal paper and pencil test. Not all students test well during a summative paper/ pencil test. It is imperative to give all students the chance to show their true ability and understanding of the material presented in the class. The professor led the course with instruction on various assessment tools, ending with the creation of an assessment photo album. Backwards design is an educational best practice that has been implemented in classroom widely for the last several years. It is logical to design a lesson from the end to the beginning, rather than the other direction. The photo album highlights the intended learning objectives, goals and intended assessment tools. When I used this tool in my classroom, students were well aware of the learning objectives. No one “wondered” what was to be accomplished during the unit. Early in the unit, I performed a diagnostic assessment to gain more