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How Important is Teaching Literacy in All Content Areas?
August 4, 2010 | Rebecca AlberYou are busy this summer planning and reworking lessons -- adding, adjusting, and tweaking. Here's something to think about, fast forward to fall: We know students do plenty of listening in our classes, but what about the other three communication skills they should be engaging in and practicing daily?
I'm talking about reading, writing, and speaking.
Let's define literacy. It was once known simply as the ability to read and write. Today it's about being able to make sense of and engage in advanced reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Someone who has reached advanced literacy in a new language, for example, is able to engage in these four skills with their new language in any setting -- academically or casually.
Literacy is an Every-Century Skill
If you are a math, history, science, or art teacher, where does literacy fit into your classroom instruction? It's common to believe that literacy instruction is solely the charge of language arts teachers, but, frankly, this just is not so. Naysayers, please take a moment to think about this quote:
"Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives." -- Richard Vaca, author of Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum
With content standards looming, it's easy to only focus on the content we teach, and covering material. We have so much to tell students and share with them. However, are we affording students enough time daily to practice crucial communication skills?
Here's one way to look at it: Content is what we teach, but there is also the how, and this is where literacy instruction comes in. There are an endless number of engaging, effective strategies to get students to think about, write about, read about, and talk about the content you teach. The ultimate goal of literacy instruction is to build a student's comprehension, writing skills, and overall skills in communication.
Ask yourself, how do I mostly convey the information and knowledge to my students? Do I turn primarily to straight lecture, or teacher talk? Or, do I allow multiple opportunities for students to discover information on their own?
Speaking
Students having academic or high-level conversations in small and large group settings does not happen overnight. It takes time -- and scaffolding -- to create a Socratic Seminar setting in your classroom.
In order for our students to engage in academic conversation, or accountable talk, they need plenty of practice with informal conversation in pairs and triads. Use the following strategies frequently for building students' oral skills: think-pair-share, elbow partner, shoulder share, and chunk and chew. Kids need to be talking and not sitting passively in their seats. Remember, Vygotsky believed learning to be a very social act!
For every 5-8 minutes you talk, give them 1-2 minutes to talk to each other. You can walk around and listen, informally assessing and checking for understanding.
Conversation helps immensely when processing new content and concepts. Students also will surely have more fruitful answers to share (be sure to always provide think time when asking questions of students).
Writing
When was the last time your students had sore hands from writing in your class? Just like conversation, writing helps us make sense of what we are learning and helps us make connections to our own lives or others' ideas.
You can't avoid thinking when you write.
Students need to be writing every day, in every classroom. How about adding to your instruction more informal and fun writing activities like quick writes, stop and jots, one-minute essays, graffiti conversations? Not all writing assignments need be formal ones.
If you haven't heard of the National Writing Project (NWP), it's the largest-scale and longest-standing teacher development program in U.S. history. Workshops are offered nationwide (usually through a local university) where teachers of all content areas learn new and exciting strategies to encourage, support, and grow the young writers in their classrooms.
Two tenets of the NWP that I think produce wide gains in student writing: teachers writing side-by-side with students, and creating time on a regular basis in your classroom for writer's workshop that follows a type of writing process that puts the writer in charge (of content, voice, and structure).
Reading
The days of believing that we could hand informational text or a novel to a student and assume he or she makes full meaning of it on their own is a teaching mode of the past. Whether we like it or not, regardless of the content we teach, we are all reading instructors.
Scaffolding the reading by using effective strategies for pre-, during, and after reading, such as: previewing text, reading for a purpose, making predictions and connections, think alouds, and using graphic organizers will support all our students, and not just struggling readers and English learners.
Another onus not only on English teachers, but all teachers as reading instructors? We need to inspire both a love for reading, and build reading stamina in our students (this means eyes and mind on the page for more than a minute!)
But, how do we do this? A high-interest classroom library is a great place to start. If you are a Title I school, there should be funds set aside for classroom libraries. If not, advocate for all classrooms at your school site to have a library, even if it's just a handful of books to get you going.
You can make the investment yourself, or have a book-raiser party. Email all your friends a wish list for books that students have requested and those easy sells (Twilight, Guinness Book of World Records...). Ask them to bring one or two of the books to your cocktail/appetizer party. (Read this Edutopia post for ideas on how to set up and manage your classroom library).
If you are a physics teacher, do all your books need to be about science? Absolutely not! But you might want to focus primarily on informational, non-fiction books. In fact, with the new national standards for English emphasizing more non-fiction text and quite a bit less literature, I say all K-12 teachers need to enhance their libraries with more non-fiction (this can include newspaper and magazine subscriptions as well).
(I'm not going to go into listening as a communication skill, since I think our students do plenty of that already, but here's a great Web site with characteristics of an effective listener you can share with your students and they can practice with each other.)
What role does literacy play in your classroom? What are some ways you weave instruction in reading, writing, and speaking into the content you teach? Please share!
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Comments (66)
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Very well said
I truly enjoyed reading this blog. I am currently studying a Masters in Literacy and I am a certified high school Spanish teacher. I totally agree with this blog. Literacy should be practiced and the only way for students to get the most practice is by having all content area teachers teaching literacy through their content. I was trained as a foreign language teacher to effectively teach Spanish through listening, speaking, reading and writing. We had to include each literacy component in each lesson plan to ensure practice of the language. For instance if I was teaching an introductory lesson on vocabulary regarding "professions", I would provide opportunity for students to listen to the pronunciation of the new vocabulary first. This could be done by showing pictures of the vocabulary such as a doctor taking someone's temperature and have the students repeat the word. This would provide them an opportunity to practice speaking. Later I might ask them "which profession they would choose." After we might read a cultural non fiction story about popular professions or a story about a famous hispanic painter, author, doctor and so on. Lastly, I would have students write about a professional person they admire in each profession or a short essay about their desired profession. One other idea would be to have students write to a hispanic class in Spanish asking a student what career he or she would choose along with reasons for the choice. (a penpal scenario via the internet). Perhaps writing daily lessons including these literacy components for all content areas would help ensure that literacy is being taught. The common core curriculum is guiding teachers to teach, listening, speaking, reading and writing in the content areas. Hopefully this curriculum will produce positive results.
I was pleasantly validated
I was pleasantly validated for the literacy importance that she stressed in her writing. I teach 2nd grade and know that successful literacy is needed in all areas. I agree with the need for reading to be intertwined with writing, speaking, and listening in all content areas. Some form of writing I try to do in the other content areas. For example in math I have them write their facts in a list format. In science I have them journal the information taught that day.
I thought her statistic of having students share every 1-2 minutes for every 5 minutes I talk is an excellent idea. To have them teach to each other, helps “solidify” it in their brain. I have used this strategy with science. I call it the “give one get one” technique. Students have to share something that they have learned with another student and the other students’ idea is returned. I know as a teacher that the conversations that I have with my peers and fellow masters’ students are invaluable. We need time to collaborate and solve problems creatively, just like our students.
Literacy is the connection to understanding the content. Whether it is information reading, statistical reading, persuasive reading, or entertaining reading, we need to know the strategies to make meaning real. I see the importance of teaching literacy in all the topic/content areas.
New Conversations
While reading this blog I thought a lot about my district. It is a large and old school district with many educators that have been teaching a certain way for a very long time. It isn't that they are resistant to change, but they are uncertain of how to go about it. Just like with students we need to give educators time to think, talk, and write about change and how progress can look and work. We have had some conversation about literacy across the content areas. Now with our district's adoption of the Common Core standards, there is no avoiding the practice or reading, writing, and speaking in all content areas. Our school has recently hired an instructional coach to help with this process and hopefully the transition goes smoothly with her guidance.
Before reading, before
Before reading, before writing, before words, there were drawn pictures, drama, sight and sound. These are all forms of literacy. Think about it!
Love it
I totally agree and love this blog. It is so important for ALL teachers to be focusing on reading, writing and speaking. I am a special education teacher and my students struggle tremendously with writing and speaking. They do not get the exposure to it in other content areas. Most of my kids are overlooked in the other content areas because the teachers know that they struggle with reading or writing or speaking. So they think they are helping them by not having those students participate and get embarrassed. However, all kids, no matter special ed or general ed need exposure to reading, writing and speaking across the curriculum.
However, how do we get all teachers in all content areas to respond to this and incorporate more reading, writing and speaking across the curriculum?
classroom libraries
I am seeing more frequent promotions for classroom libraries. In a perfect world there would be funding for these; however, it would be financially difficult in most schools to maintain a good curriculum supportive library and a number of classroom libraries. Why not work with the librarian instead to develop at good central library and use it in conjunction with curriculum delivery requiring reading? A good librarisn can help with reading lists and promotion of materials pertinent to classroom activities. Why do literacy advocates always ignore the school library?
I agree the best way for
I agree the best way for students to learn something is by doing it. I am a high school English teacher, and I have seen it before my very eyes. Literacy is something that must be practiced. I am by no means qualified to teach a student how to read. If they did not learn that in elementary school, I am often at a loss. What I do know helps is reading aloud, whether it be literature or their own writing. In fact, reading their own writing aloud has been one of the most helpful techniques in teaching kids to become better writers. I love your article and cannot wait to share it with my colleagues. If my students were practicing reading and writing in every class, imagine how much more comfortable they would become. It's a vital skill.
What a great article. We
What a great article. We have been using literacy in the content area for a number of years now. I have really been working on accountable talk with my students. Knowing how to read a text or article is key to understanding the content area material. I also incorporate geographic literacy into my classes-how to read a map. For the kids it's a different type of reading, but they learn so much from the maps and appreciate the break from text or article reading.
I think one key to making
I think one key to making this idea succcessful is making sure that your content area teachers buy into the concept. If the teacher is convinced that it will not work, then it won't work.
I really enjooyed reading
I really enjooyed reading this blog post. I gained so much information that I intend to use in my classroom. I recently completed my undergraduate degree. I am currently working on my Master's degree which is adolesent literacy and technology. Reading, writing, and speaking are very important. Speaking is often times overlooked. I think these three skills go hand in hand. Thses skills are also the foundation to a successful life inside and outside of the classroom. some of the strategies that were shared will help to make learning for my students more engaging and fun.