Course Description:
The purpose of this course in not to teach you how to each your students to read. Rather, this course is designed to help you begin to become accountable to your future students by ensuring their comprehension of the material in your content area. Field experience is required and most of the course is conducted off campus. The focus of the course is practical application of the following objectives for the intellectual and social development of students age 11-19:
College of Education Objectives: Students will be able:
Content Literacy Rationale:
Language is the basis of transmitting knowledge from human to human, so the ability to read is arguably the most important skill one can obtain in order to progress through a successful educational career. However, simply reading text does not guarantee full understanding of the meaning or writers purpose and position. By the time a student reaches middle school, reading plays an integral part of everyday educational routine. In every subject, student's ability to read critically can make or break their understanding in that entire subject area. Content literacy is not something that students actively think about and assess themselves through. However, unknowingly, it has been the core foundation for all of their knowledge. In high school English literature classes, content literacy is a necessarily skill to even begin to grasp the basics of rhetoric and the new ideas presented in books, movies, poems and media. Further practice and examination of literature and media outlets help to develop this skill. Through researching expert’s definitions, opinions and studies, I have recognized and embraced the true importance of establishing content literacy as soon as possible and working to raise every student's abilities regardless of their current level.
Summary of Course, Field Experience, and What I l Learned:
ED228 introduces strategies for standards targeting lesson planning and offers hands-on experience in a middle/high school. From the start of the semester, students learn about the importance of content literacy in every subject area. In order to grasp the significance of content literacy, our class researched issues and troubles that students have with reading and internalizing texts that inhibit them from gaining content literacy. From there, discussion about strategies and methods to work with student's strengths allowed the opportunity to illuminate the silver lining of all student's current educational potential. Common Core Standards offer a useful outline and the strategies recommended by educational experts work to meet and exceed these baseline standards while also fitting student's needs. After research, discussion and lesson planning practice, we were paired with a middle school student to assess and develop their current level of content literacy.
Before meeting the student that I was going to tutor, I received his SRI scores and a grade report from the school which indicated that he was in special education and his reading skills were significantly behind his grade level, which caused him to struggle in every one of his classes. Because of this, I focused my tutoring sessions on reading skills and content literacy acquisition. My student had a strong interest in football, so I tailored lessons on the sport ranging from how it's filmed, to the pads players wear and what injuries they prevent. In doing so, I pushed him to use unfamiliar vocabulary that ranged from anatomy to media production. Chall's Stages of Reading Development recommend that students read increasingly complex texts in different forms to further their competence in content literacy. In conjunction with reading, I also asked my student to work across the multiple intellegences to fully engage his mind and help him make connections. Interpreting passages in drawings, casual conversations and written assessments gave my student a lot of opportunities to self-assess, and me, the data to monitor progress and continue lesson planning in the most strategic and efficient way.
Before this class and without a full understanding of their significance, Common Core Standards seemed like a burden and lesson planning appeared routine and monotonous. However, recognizing Common Core's ability to encompass student's needs and important content literacy skills has given me the ability to creatively engage students in interesting content while also backing instruction with accepted pedagogical strategies.
Work Samples:
(Lesson Plans)
#1
#2
Student Background and Assessment
Top Ten Strategies:
Carousel Strategy
Choral Strategy
Developing Persuasive Writing
History or Story Frames
Exit Slips
Inquiry Charts
Making Connections
Read Aloud
Write Alouds
5 Reading Strategies
The purpose of this course in not to teach you how to each your students to read. Rather, this course is designed to help you begin to become accountable to your future students by ensuring their comprehension of the material in your content area. Field experience is required and most of the course is conducted off campus. The focus of the course is practical application of the following objectives for the intellectual and social development of students age 11-19:
College of Education Objectives: Students will be able:
- To articulate an understanding of why content specific reading strategy instruction is important at the middle/secondary level. (Standard 7)
- To practice strategies and methods designed to enhance students’ learning in content area classes through reading, writing, listening, and speaking. (Standard 7,2)
- To utilize and articulate choice of appropriate instructional strategies for differentiating and evaluating reading and writing tasks and instruction to meet the needs of all learners, especially those with special considerations. (Standards 1,2,3)
- To plan, implement, and reflect on content area lessons that include literacy learning components designed to help students better comprehend text while recognizing how curriculum is developed, how ideology influences curriculum and how different models/designs influence instructional choices. (Standards 3,4)
- To identify and value the role that all personnel play in the development of young adolescents in support of their learning. (Standard 6)
- To identify support resources, persons, structures, and systems of the importance in the community that impact the education of young adolescents and to identify resource persons, structures, and systems within communities and schools that should serve as support to students but can unintentionally marginalize students. (Standards 6)
- To connect knowledge of YA development and their changing relationships to family and community to instructional choices while also recognizing diversity of the family and community backgrounds as an educational asset. (Standard 1,5)
Content Literacy Rationale:
Language is the basis of transmitting knowledge from human to human, so the ability to read is arguably the most important skill one can obtain in order to progress through a successful educational career. However, simply reading text does not guarantee full understanding of the meaning or writers purpose and position. By the time a student reaches middle school, reading plays an integral part of everyday educational routine. In every subject, student's ability to read critically can make or break their understanding in that entire subject area. Content literacy is not something that students actively think about and assess themselves through. However, unknowingly, it has been the core foundation for all of their knowledge. In high school English literature classes, content literacy is a necessarily skill to even begin to grasp the basics of rhetoric and the new ideas presented in books, movies, poems and media. Further practice and examination of literature and media outlets help to develop this skill. Through researching expert’s definitions, opinions and studies, I have recognized and embraced the true importance of establishing content literacy as soon as possible and working to raise every student's abilities regardless of their current level.
Summary of Course, Field Experience, and What I l Learned:
ED228 introduces strategies for standards targeting lesson planning and offers hands-on experience in a middle/high school. From the start of the semester, students learn about the importance of content literacy in every subject area. In order to grasp the significance of content literacy, our class researched issues and troubles that students have with reading and internalizing texts that inhibit them from gaining content literacy. From there, discussion about strategies and methods to work with student's strengths allowed the opportunity to illuminate the silver lining of all student's current educational potential. Common Core Standards offer a useful outline and the strategies recommended by educational experts work to meet and exceed these baseline standards while also fitting student's needs. After research, discussion and lesson planning practice, we were paired with a middle school student to assess and develop their current level of content literacy.
Before meeting the student that I was going to tutor, I received his SRI scores and a grade report from the school which indicated that he was in special education and his reading skills were significantly behind his grade level, which caused him to struggle in every one of his classes. Because of this, I focused my tutoring sessions on reading skills and content literacy acquisition. My student had a strong interest in football, so I tailored lessons on the sport ranging from how it's filmed, to the pads players wear and what injuries they prevent. In doing so, I pushed him to use unfamiliar vocabulary that ranged from anatomy to media production. Chall's Stages of Reading Development recommend that students read increasingly complex texts in different forms to further their competence in content literacy. In conjunction with reading, I also asked my student to work across the multiple intellegences to fully engage his mind and help him make connections. Interpreting passages in drawings, casual conversations and written assessments gave my student a lot of opportunities to self-assess, and me, the data to monitor progress and continue lesson planning in the most strategic and efficient way.
Before this class and without a full understanding of their significance, Common Core Standards seemed like a burden and lesson planning appeared routine and monotonous. However, recognizing Common Core's ability to encompass student's needs and important content literacy skills has given me the ability to creatively engage students in interesting content while also backing instruction with accepted pedagogical strategies.
Work Samples:
(Lesson Plans)
#1
#2
Student Background and Assessment
Top Ten Strategies:
Carousel Strategy
Choral Strategy
Developing Persuasive Writing
History or Story Frames
Exit Slips
Inquiry Charts
Making Connections
Read Aloud
Write Alouds
5 Reading Strategies