All too often I hear content area teachers say, "I don't teach reading, I teach ....." As a reading teacher, this is just heartbreaking. I know that I can not reach all of the struggling readers, but they all need to be reached. So in an effort to encourage us all to be reading teachers, I thought I would share a few facts from an article I recently read. The article is called, "Not Just a Content Specialist-The Secondary Mentor Role in Teaching Literacy."
"An estimated eight million students in fourth to eighth grade cannot read at grade level, and more than 50% of these students are not likely to graduate from high school. Most often they are poor and members of minority groups.” Sounds like they are talking about our school directly! So what do we do about it?
“Teachers find that increased focus on text, vocabulary development tasks, and daily links to key themes result in improvement in students’ understanding and use of academic language.” Simple strategies like the vocabulary matrix, question tree and record reduce reflect make a big difference. I understand that sometimes they seem tedious or unnecessary, but they truly are helpful. We need to explicitly teach reading strategies and there is no other option.
Explicit instruction teaches students how to approach the text. One example is that students should utilize pictures, captions, headings and sub headings to help them understand the text. Without explicit instruction in this strategy students might never learn this skill. A few key strategies, Guided Interaction and Modeling and Graphic Organizers & Visuals can be combined to help students understand through examples, guidance and organization. Whenever possible, teachers should model appropriate responses, and strategies. Through universal themes students begin the unit with an understanding of the focus and can then relate the information to that theme. Meta-cognitive reading activities encourage students to dig more deeply into text. All of these techniques will allow teachers to help their students and witness the growth in cognitive ability of their students.
“Content-specific academic language is indeed a second language for native speakers and a third language for English learners.” I think this says it all. Academic language is new to all of our students. Don't be fooled by well developed BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills). Just because a student can carry on a conversation in a social situation, they may not have developed their CALPS (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency Skills). Even non EL students must develop their CALPS and this is where we must set our standard for mastery.
Our students will only develop these skills through a well rounded program that focuses on Literacy. So please join me in working to use reading strategies to help our students access content and develop their CALPS.
