For last week's Learning Module, I viewed a podcast on adolescent literacy. I was pleased to learn of one school's efforts to help their students reading in the content areas. As a teacher, I see my students struggling everyday with reading and even understanding how to process their information in the textbook. The school formulated a professional learning program that allowed the teachers take charge of teaching the students reading in the content areas.
I realize now, upon reflection, that schools do, in fact, stop teaching reading to students in the elementary grades. This is very disturbing. When students matriculate to higher grades, the requirements for reading and comprehension change drastically. Children are initially faced with phonics, pronunciation, and basic comprehension in elementary school, and then when they arrive to the middle grades they are required to understand the layout and advanced content within textbooks without any assistance in how to approach this vastly different type of literature.
In the podcast from last week's Learning Module, the teachers of this school were empowered to teach their students within each lesson how to approach reading. Many teachers believe this task should be left to the language arts teachers, but I disagree. Language arts teachers are experts in their content area just as are science or math teachers. We should not expect them to teach our students how to read science or math textbooks or publications. the reading in the content areas should be left to those who are experts in that area.
I agree with you, Whitney. The content area teachers must teach and encourage students about the reading within their own discipline. But what a task!
ReplyDeleteAfter our first few reading classes, I decided to try something in my classroom. We were starting new material and I took a day to overview and introduce, make some major points, and use some pre-questions to assess background knowledge and incite interest. Then there were four pages for the students to read, two you-must-read pages and two if-you-have-time pages. The next day we discussed the reading starting with interpreting the diagrams. I used my document camera and smartboard to model how I would take a page of text and create simple notes. We did this for two sections of the textbook. I wasn't simply doing it, but we were working through this together. I introduced the activity carefully, because I knew some students would feel as though this activity was simple and droll. After class, I was surprised that several students stopped to say, "Thank you. That was so much more helpful than a powerpoint."
Over the next few days, we practiced our "new" skill in class and I wondered. Why didn't I do this at the beginning of the year? What must I change about my teaching practices to be a better reading coach? How can I do this and still address my content?
When we took a notes (open-notes) quiz several days later, two very bright and intelligent students stayed after. They did so to tell me this: "When you started talking about taking notes, I thought you were crazy. After seeing everyone's notes, I think we should do this again." The exercise had revealed weaknesses I didn't expect and strengths I had not anticipated. The students abilities were not always matched with successful reading and notetaking. I was surprised.
I know there is much more I can do with my classes. I plan to address different styles of note-taking next. I'm convinced that we, the subject teachers, must focus on content reading. Learning to do this better is the next step and I'm grateful to have a class to discuss this. What happens when teachers don't have training about how to better teach reading?
In one of the modules from the other week, I also viewed clip that talked about many of the same literacy problems that students face. In the clip, it was stated that once children learn the basic fundamentals of reading, the textbooks begin to emerge and student start to submerge in a feeling that is overwhelming. There is such a huge difference between a novel and a textbook. Also, when children begin reading they are able to choose from a wide variety of books. As they progress through their school career, their choice of books becomes one and only one textbook. Would students read more of their content textbooks if they were given a choice of different styles of textbooks that covered the same material in each?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that each content area should focus on literacy and not just the English teachers. In order for students to be sufficient readers, they must start to read across every content area.