Yesterday I was going through some of my old teaching materials. I found an assignment that I've used for over 10 years called "Exploring and Explaining Your Process." This assignment asked students to make sense of a mathematical procedure and explain it in complete sentences. By being able to articulate the procedure, students are sure they understand what they need to do. Furthermore, research has shown that by teaching someone else how to do something you are able to strengthen your own understanding of the content. I share this story because it shows that literacy in all content areas isn't new. It shows that utilizing literacy strategies like writing about math or discussing math is beneficial from both a literacy standpoint and a content understanding perspective.
The question is, what makes sense for YOUR content area? What can you include in your classroom that makes you a better teacher for your content while increasing student literacy skills? Literacy and content are not mutually exclusive and when you can find that overlap where it makes sense to integrate literacy, students will benefit. Consider your unit plan. Where does literacy fit? How are you using student discourse to introduce or discuss a new idea? How are students using writing to summarize their thinking, reflect on their learning, or explain their process at the end of the unit? Where can you integrate reading to help students acquire new knowledge about the unit? How are students asked to reason within your content? Literacy isn't one of those things that has to be in every single lesson, but if you look at your unit plan and it isn't present in many of the lessons, re-evaluate your plan and look for more opportunities. Additionally, reflect after the unit on how it went, what you could do better next time and how you could modify it to better align with your content or student needs. In doing so, you will be able to increase both student literacy skills and content knowledge simultaneously.
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AuthorTeachers and instructional coaches integrating literacy into classes. Archives
March 2017
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