Final Synthesis Blog

When I registered for LLED 3530, I was confused as to why I had to take a course that was in my two content areas. I walked into the class expecting to get some basics on teaching language arts, but boy was I wrong. I remember at the beginning of the semester, Brad told the class that it was his goal to persuade us that literacy instruction was necessary in all content areas. I remember thinking to myself why in the world would I teach literacy in my math classes. I mean I will barely have time to teach all of the content required for the course much less teach students how to read. After reading “Help for Struggling Readers” and learning the reading strategies, I started to feel differently; however, I was still not sure that literacy in a math class was necessary. I did not realize that I was probably using these strategies without even noticing.

Soon after this, Brad taught us about think alouds, and how we could incorporate them into all of our content areas. After practicing my first think aloud with a middle school math word problem, I began to realize just how important content-area literacy was. This was a huge turning point for me in this course. A specific in-class assignment that helped to persuade me was when we looked at questions from standardized tests. After looking over the questions asked on middle grades standardized tests, I became aware of the relevance and relatedness between content-area literacy and standardized tests. If students are unable to understand the questions asked and the answers given, then they will not perform to their full potential. Additionally, the video we watched on differentiation helped persuade me of the importance of content-area literacy. Ms. Maronpot’s students were not able to engage on the same cognitive level of questions, so she had to differentiate her instruction to provide all of her students with lessons that would reach each of them. The strategies she used to differentiate her instruction in her math classroom was proof of the necessity of literacy in the classroom.

Also, learning about of the reading strategies each of my classmates taught helped me to find things I could use in my classrooms to help students with their readings. Specifically, Meghan and I’s strategy on sketching the text was one I could see myself using in my content-area classrooms. I was definitely a reader that when I could see a visual I could better understand what I was reading. Learning about all of these pre, during, and after reading strategies will help me to plan lessons in my classrooms. The assignment that had the biggest impact on my thought on content-area literacy was the universal design for learning.  This assignment required me and a few other classmates to come up with an activity we could use to teach a lesson for each type of student in our made-up classroom. After completing this assignment, I felt that I would be able to create lessons, activities, and units that would support the needs of each type of student in my future content-area classrooms

Overall, this course has taught me how important it is to teach literacy in each of my content-area classrooms.  

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Art and Content-Area Literacies

The three prints above were part of a multi-volume album that illustrates the uniforms and weapons of the Russian army from the early nineteenth century. The first print by Polka is of two privates of the Chevalier Guard. The second print is of privates and sergeant of the Palace Grenadiers. The third print by V. Adam is of Lancer and flag-bearer of the Chevalier Guard. These prints could be used in a social studies classroom to study the history of the change of the Russian army uniforms and weapons. Specifically, it could be used in a pre-reading exercise as front loading with images. It could be shown along with other Russian army uniforms and weapons to show the changes throughout time. After the students have viewed the images, they could talk with their table mates and compare the images. This could be used as a think/pair/share where the students discuss the differences in the Russian army uniforms and weapons. Then, the students would share out with the rest of the class their ideas from the images. This could also be used as a way for the students to create a timeline for the Russian army. They could have print outs of each image and have to arrange them within their table to find the correct order from oldest to newest.  

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Book Club Blog

            I personally do not think I would ever do book clubs in my math or social studies classrooms. However, I think they could be used in a way that could supplement certain topics in both classrooms. I enjoyed the book club we did in this class because it really made me think about ways this could be done in my content area classrooms. My group’s book, Hidden Figures made me realize how these books could supplement our lessons. Hidden Figures had a lot of Civil Rights depictions, which made me think about how I could tie books like this one into my social studies classroom. I do not think that reading whole books in a classroom would be really helpful for the children because they could skip over the important details, or the reason behind why you chose the book. Reading sections or chapters of books would be a great supplement to specific topics. This would give the students a chance to see how the things they are learning about play out in fictional and nonfictional worlds. Also, by not reading the entirety of a book they will not miss out on the details that are most important to the topics that are being taught. I would never have my class read an entire book, but I would for sure use sections of a book to supplement my lessons. This also made me think about how my English teachers would supplement the books we would read with clips of movies to give more of a visualization of certain chapters. This is a great way to supplement lessons without reading a whole book or watching a whole movie.

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