“The Challenge of Content Area Literacy”
We need to teach students to read to learn. This means teaching students how to read a
variety of texts over all disciplines.
Elementary schools don’t have such a deficit in this area because the
teacher usually is responsible for teaching all subjects. Elementary school teachers usually integrate
subjects. However, once students reach
the secondary levels, those teachers are so pressed on time and the obligation
to teach a certain curriculum in a short amount of time that they stop teaching
reading and learning strategies. They
stick to simply teaching that information.
These teachers also consider themselves experts of their discipline, and
begin to only teach the facts. Children
from decades back used to spend more time reading for pleasure than kids
today. When children enjoy what they are
reading, they become engaged and motivated.
Children today spend a lot of time learning from digital media. We need to find ways to tie literature in
when children are playing on the computer or ipad. I definitely feel this is a wonderful
idea. I found STAR Fall to be a
wonderful website to help early learners learn to read and understand
phonics. Science teachers can pull from
scientific journals and educational magazines, for example. This article points out that we can help
students relate to the text by helping them access prior knowledge and relate
previous experiences. We can help
children understand non-fiction by helping them determine the point of the
piece, as well as the text structure and organization. Graphic organizers and KWL charts are good
ways to help children remain engaged during a reading.
“Making Reading Relevant for All Adolescence”
Not enough time is set aside during the school day for
students to read books that are related to their interests. High-stakes testing has made it difficult to allot
any additional time to leisurely reading.
This has had a negative effect on students. Students who read for enjoyment usually
perform better academically and perform higher on tests. As teachers we can incorporate modern, young
literature into the daily curriculum.
Many modern pieces of literature still have the same premise as other
older, classic works. The premise of Romeo and Juliet is the theme of many
teenage novels. Teachers can encourage
extended learning by having students compare and contrast related pieces. I found this to be especially true based on
my own experiences in high school. I
found many pieces by Shakespeare to be written in a type of jargon I could not
understand. It would have been much
easier to understand if I could have read a book based on the same premise in
modern literature. I could have accessed
prior knowledge and have better understood what Shakespeare had written.
Sources
Bean, T. W. (2002). Making reading relevant for
adolescents. Educational Leadership,
34-37.
D’Arcangelo, M. (2002). The
challenge of content-area reading: A conversation with
Donna Ogle.
Educational Leadership. 12-15.
