Day+1

Hello Everyone.

On this page you will find the files that we will use on the first day of class. We will be develop a working definition of literacy and begin to formulate our ideas about good readers and poor readers. We will also discuss the importance of content literacy in today's educational environment as well as common assumptions about content learning and how those assumptions do a disservice to our students.

ACTIVITY: ICE BREAKER ACTIVITY: CLASS NORMS

We will actually be using many of the strategies you will see in this course to help us comprehend and discuss many of the readings that are offered on this wiki. This serves several purposes. First it is hoped you will become more comfortable and familiar with the strategy (Learning by Doing!) and begin to think of ways that it might be useful in your own practice. Second, I find these strategies really helpful to not only become more engaged with the reading but to be a springboard for discussion as well. Plus, it serves as a time management benefit so you do not have to spend all your time completing readings after class and can focus your energies on your assignments.

For this task, we will use an anticipation guide to help us with the reading below. An anticipation guide is typically a before reading activity. However, I have slightly modified it so that it can be used as an after reading activity to reinforce, clarify, and support concepts. Anticipation guides are generally used to get students to think about key concepts before they begin reading. DISCUSSION: WHY CONTENT AREA LITERACY?

After we complete our initial introductions and review of the syllabus please refer to the linked video below. There is no need to play this during class (if all goes well with projection equipment) but I wanted to provide you with access to the video if you'd like to view it again or use it some way for your own purposes. media type="youtube" key="zDZFcDGpL4U" height="360" width="640"

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Making a Case for Effective Content Area Literacy Instruction
Throughout the course you will participate in activities that use various helpful strategies to improve student comprehension and vocabulary development. For the readings below you will use the "Say Something" strategy. The strategy interrupts the student's reading of the text to think about the reading by pausing to make a statement that makes a prediction, asks a question, clarifies a selection, makes a connection, etc. Task: Break up into groups of two or three and choose one of the articles below. One article is focused on elementary teachers while the other is focused on secondary education teachers so it might be best to organize yourselves with that in mind.



DISCUSSION: SHARE WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED FROM THE ARTICLES. WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE STRATEGY? WHAT ARE ITS STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES?

Below is the Power Point Presentation that will aid our conversation about content area literacy, assumptions about content learning, and good and poor readers.



Jigsaw Activity
You will find three articles below that inform our thinking for the rest of this class. You will use a comprehension strategy that you can use with your students at various grade levels. Groups will be assigned an article to read. Each member will complete the first part of the chart "Questions" that will be answered by another member of the group. You then present your thoughts on the following questions to the class.
 * 1) What was the article about and what implications does this have for practice?
 * 2) What did you think about the comprehension strategy and its usefulness in regards to your teaching?