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.
Response: sounds like your students are really taking a liking to reading. My students have rebelled against reading our new novel. I don’t think that every student really grasps the idea of highlighting and color coding a book, though I remember doing the same to my books and I still do. How much does it help? I wonder sometimes if I write in my books and highlight and put flags everywhere to make myself feel like I’ve read. But then what proof is there that I’ve actually read and understand the reading? I guess if I’ve created an organizational system for the information in the book, then I have comprehended the subject matter, but I’ve gotten really good at using and understanding the layout of a text book. I wonder if I just know how a book is supposed to be structured and simply highlight, mark, flag etc. based on the general system that I know is there. I don’t know if some students have figured that out yet, but I bet that many have.
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