Math? Literacy? Equal Parts?

This reading by Leigh Hall entitled “Teachers and Content Area Reading: Attitudes, Beliefs and Change” has opened my mind to thoughts that I have not given a lot of weight to before. This paper brought to the front of my mind a lot of questions I had about literacy in the mathematics classroom. I came into this class wondering what if anything I could do in the math classroom to support literacy efforts amongst my future students and that was the focus of a couple paragraphs in this paper. Similarly to the Study by Bintz, I found/ find myself wanting to blame the teachers who came before me for the lack of literacy skills of my students. But after reading this varied content, it is as much my problem as it was theirs and my job is to do the best I can for the students I have. The idea I picked up and have seen through the education courses I’ve taken so far, is to meet your students where they are and to help them each grow. The goal is not 100% on a test or passing the most recent version of standardized tests but rather to see growth in a variety of areas throughout the course of the year. Sure, I want to see them pass the class, but did they finally learn what a fraction was? Or did they have a light bulb moment in relating fractions and their corresponding pictures? These are necessary goals and benchmarks to measure student achievement. How this relates back to literacy goes back to the core of the student.  Have they learned new strategies to combat their illiteracy, have they gained new confidence reading in front of their peers? These little things are ones I can execute in my future classroom. I can use the strategies in this class to guide my teaching to push students to be better readers and comprehenders of difficult texts. I also really enjoyed the part where one of the studies showed students having to tutor a student in literacy in their grade level and content area. I feel like this practice forces pre-service teachers to create relationships with other students and provides for them (us) the application that goes along with the process.



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Resource Blog #3: LDC

It is interesting that this week’s topic is assessment. I took a class on assessment this
summer and it is where I learned about the resource I chose for this blog post. This
site is called Core Tools and is a resource from the Literacy Design Collaborative or
LDC. On this site, LDC provides a platform for teachers (users) to post lessons
complete with standards (from the common core and a variety of states’) as well as
aides to the content (including worksheets and powerpoints), and they provide rubrics
and some examples of student work to help guide your (the teachers) grading. This
website gives the user the opportunity to save particular lessons to their own
personal library for easy access later. The lessons are also scored by the LDC
and given marks such as exemplary, good to go or unrated. This is based off the
previously listed tenants and others. Teachers can also search for content based
on grade level and content area. This resource is best for English and history
teachers but does provide some information for math and science teachers as well.
This resource is free! Some of the content covered on the website consist of
information that one would not normally classify as something covered by the core
four, for example: academic integrity and plagiarism. These topics are not normally
covered exclusively in lessons but are usually glossed over, these topics can be great
to be able cover difficult topics and cover them in depth with the “why” versus just the
rule. I like this website because it is easy to use and provides me with a lot of different
resources and rubrics to use if I see fit. The literacy materials included with the lessons
are articles from journals and various other content which help teachers to get away
from textbooks. 

 

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Resource Blog #2: Thinking

https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonders/list

Wonderopolis provides resources for activities for teachers and directly relates them to
the Common Core standards, which most of our state standards are based upon. I liked
this resources because the activities provided were mostly hands on, which is great for
our middle school students. These activities provided opportunities for the students to
create new things, work with others, and succeed through doing instead of class notes.
I found the articles that went along with the activities similar to a script and can provide
teachers with the appropriate background knowledge needed to ensure the successful
teaching of said lessons. These pages also provide additional resources and
background knowledge on the topics. These lessons are great for cross curricular
study as well and are organized in such a way that you can search by subject or just
by topic interest. These topic pages also provide vocabulary words which are good for
learning new words and helping students relate vocabulary to real life contexts as well
as the content they are trying to access. The main purpose of the website as a whole is
to answer questions. As we know our students often ask random questions, such as
how many light bulbs does it take to light up the empire state building or how are
imaginations form. These readings and activities could be the basis for entire units or
could even be used as a start up activity or intro activity to a new topic. I think students
would really enjoy these activities because they are a short read and provide students
with the needed vocabulary with definitions to create connections for themselves to
previously learned materials. I also like the opportunity for students to post their own
wonderings and to be able to comment on posts that they have questions about.

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Synthesis Blog #2: Importance of Teaching Reading Strategies Through Multiple Content Areas

This chapter seemed to surprise me because as a potential math teacher I came into
this program without thinking much about reading throughout the different content
areas. One of my favorite quotes from this chapter was “they have difficulty focusing
at the start of the period and are easily distracted, particularly when they don’t
understand something” (p. 277). This made me stop and think because often times,
my first thought is that these kids do not want to learn not that they can’t but rather
that it is a conscious choice not to. But after reading this chapter it came clear to me
that these students are more often than not the ones I need to focus my I found the
strategies listed very helpful and very basic which is perfect for all of the learners in
the classroom. I felt like there really was a different access point for all students
regardless of their strengths, any special needs concerning literacy (dyslexia, etc.),
or interest level in the material at hand. I feel like after reading this chapter and the
previous one, it seems to me to be a worthwhile use of my time to teach these
different strategies and show the students how to use them in the classroom. I
believe that by using them in the classroom students will be more engaged or at
least be able to be more engaged. Students have minds of their own and it will be
very difficult to reach all of them but I will try and these strategies will support my
efforts in doing so. 

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