Connections in the Classroom - Literacy across content

Connections in the Classroom - Literacy across content

This past week I've been working with students on increasing their reading comprehension and studying skills not just in their ELA class, but in all of their content courses.  I was told by many of the teachers that the students have been having difficultly really grasping what they are reading in class.  So each morning, my co-student teacher and I have been working on helping students improve their reading skills with different studying skills.

We've been teaching them strategies such as graphic organizers, note-taking, sticky notes, and highlighting ideas and knowledge that they need to know when they are reading.  A lot of the students have taken more of a liking to high lighting.  To me, this was relate-able because during my own grade school years, my teachers encouraged my peers and I to write in our books and to constantly make notes and highlight.  When I was in my AP Lit class, my books were practically color coded.  However, this helped me comprehend novels and what i was reading better so I applied to to ALL of my content courses. 

So this week, I've been encouraging my students to use highlighters and other comprehension skills to help them understand all of their content courses. 

Also, I had the science teacher approach me and ask if I was going to be teaching dialogue in the next week.  She's in luck that I am, because she wants to collaborate with me and use dialogue in one of her science projects.  Therefore, it will be interesting to see what goes on in the next few weeks and how the students will improve in their content courses besides ELA. 

Learning Station Success

Throughout this week in my first placement, I am happy to say that a lot of our activities have greatly reflected everything we have been reading about in class lately.

This week we changed up the system in my host teacher's class and decided to start teaching the students using learning stations. We split up the class and have the students rotate from their social studies student teacher, to reading with me, and then to Mr. Smith and his performance task station.  The students have all said that they LOVE the idea of the learning stations.  They love the idea of how they get more individualized time and they feel like they are learning more effectively.

I've honestly never seen my students so motivated before and I think it's because they have the chance to just spend time with the teacher individually and get to express their opinions without the fear of talking in a big group.  They hate having to speak in front of one another in a larger group, but love the idea of talking amongst their groups at the stations.

This week we've been focusing on the idea of making connections in readings and so far the students have really been able to catch on.  It's been amazing the ideas and connections that they are coming up with and how they are connecting the book to things that they have read or seen lately.  Sometimes I wonder who replaced my students and put these eager learners in their place!

I think my biggest questions now though are:  since we have found out what the students like and how they learn best and are motivated - how do we keep this up?  What are some ways to keep them motivated and to "spice" up the learning stations?