Currently in some schools, there is a "every teacher a teacher of reading" philosophy in play, but that kind of teaching is harmful in the long run. Experts from different fields read their texts differently, so, the math teachers and history teachers look for different things in their texts. Advanced literacy instructions should be embedded within heavy content-area classes, like math, science, and history. This should be focused on especially in middle school and secondary school, the ages when the child is growing up and needs to focus on gaining literary skills.
Reading is seen as a kind of "basic" skill, which can be adapted to all kinds of texts. Basic skills evolve into more advanced skills, for example, learning to read to analyzing what you read. Basic skills are learned early. But, because of failure to push literacy importance in school, as you move along the continuum of literacy learning, what kids learn becomes less useful. Like, in Kindergarten, kids learn words that are common "of, is, the". These words are used everywhere, from books to newspapers. Later, they learn words that are not of such use to them, words with less general applicability.
Even though todays job market requires reading for all jobs, but, today kids read worse than a generation ago. Reading test scores are lower today than in 1992. US students read worse than there European counterparts. To fix this, teachers must first build basic literacy skills, basic decoding, understand the text must be meaningful and recognition of words that are used frequently. As student progress pass basic, usually in upper-elementary grades. Here students will learn how to decode multisyllabic words, learn to respond with less common punctuations, and know the meaning of larger vocabulary words. Finally in middle and high school, students begin to master specialized reading routines, and language uses. These skills are less generalizable. A high school student who can read a English book well may struggle in reading a math book. To fix this issue, many school are looking for teachers with expert literacy certifications in liberal arts and sciences. The key to the fix, is a literacy curriculum that guides students to meet the demands of reading and writing in the disciplines that has been provided by concepts of content-area reading.
I think the reading suggests an even bigger picture issue. These inequities in the job market come from a lack of literacy ACROSS cirriculums. But, these ideas must be shared in schools. While I agree with you and the reading that teachers must teach literacy in their specific subjects, I think there could be a better front across the school that could ensure and create a literacy goal for all students before graduation. It is easy for a math teacher to say in life when you read some research think about the numbers. It is harder to take it one step further and think about where those numbers come from. What and who they actually represent. (These are not necessarily hard hitting questions that are difficult to come up with, but in the contextual sense how can we go further?) How do you read a text that incorporates many different ideas across subject/content areas? Who will ensure this from students. -Kiley
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the idea of having a goal across curriculums to have the students reach a specific goal before graduation. This would mean that teachers across the school would have to work together, but would just benefit the students more.
DeleteHi Patryk,
ReplyDelete"Like, in Kindergarten, kids learn words that are common "of, is, the". These words are used everywhere, from books to newspapers. Later, they learn words that are not of such use to them, words with less general applicability."
It's true that literacy instruction becomes more specialized as students progress through schools, and I remember the reading addressing this as well. I'd like to point out that this phenomenon is not just limited to reading. I think that learning becomes inherently less generalized in any area as we learn more. In early math lessons, we learn things as general as numbers, which will of course continue to be used throughout a math education, with an increasing amount of specialization required. To borrow the example of physical education from this week's Wickens et al reading, a kindergarten lesson might look like teaching the students what the difference between running, walking, and skipping is. This is clearly general knowledge that they will need to build on, but that doesn't make the more specialized knowledge that comes later in that subject less worthy.
I think it's not that later knowledge is less worthy, it's that later knowledge can't be used as widespread as what is thought in the beginning.
DeleteHi Patryk,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the importance of literacy was ignored in school. Indeed, just like what is mentioned in the Moje’s article that a number of teachers assume that it is not their responsibility to teach reading but to teach content in their disciplines. It seems that they do not think literacy is that important and necessary in all subjects areas for students. Even if it is, it is the task of English teachers. I think to some degree, it is because teachers’ lacking of recognition of integration of literacy in the subject areas while teaching, students today read worse than a generation ago and have much difficulty in reading some professional texts or materials in some particular subjects.
I also agree with the fact that teachers do not really believe in the importance of integrating literacy into their classes, and because of this, studies show that this generation reads worse than the generation that came before.
DeleteHi Patryk,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the post - I found it pretty provocative. It seems that you object to the idea of every teacher as a literacy teacher, but that later on you promote the idea of literacy instruction which addresses discipline specific needs. I may have misunderstood, but if seems like you are arguing for a Literacy discipline unto itself. While I wholeheartedly agree that teachers who are only paying lip service to their responsibilities as a literacy instructor are doing students a disservice, I think that it would be inauthentic to teach discipline specific literacy skills outside of the context of said discipline. Particularly in higher grades, I think that we would be missing an opportunity to demonstrate that literacy is integral to the learning and practice of disciplines.
You also take issue with generalized knowledge and discipline specific knowledge, seeming to argue that the decoding skills and tier one vocabulary learned in elementary levels is more useful to students because they can see their value on a daily basis. Of course those foundational skills are essential, but I would argue that the literacy skills learned in higher levels - those of critical thinking, analysis, argumentation - are just as essential and generalizable, if not more, in the professional marketplace.
ReplyDeleteHi Patryk,
I really enjoyed reading your post, I agree that to fix this issue it is important to have expert literacy liberal art and science educators to help with these students with literacy. It reminds me of the Canegie project and their mission to improve and support the circulum framework. This can be benefical to not only the student but the teachers as well.