Blog 1

“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.