Writing Across the Curriculum:
WAC isn’t as whack as you might think!
No matter the subject area, learners cycle through listening and speaking and writing to make sense of and/or share what they have learned. In all learning experiences, a student is a consumer of information and a contributor or creator of the same. For any subject area, then, literacy skills such as these are important components of how students process and demonstrate their learning.
Building skills to communicate through writing can be part of any content area classroom while also being a primary focus in ELA. In their blog article A Range of Writing Across the Content Areas, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey encourage the need for students to “write for a variety of purposes and audiences, including in math, science, and social studies.” They suggest more opportunities for writing experiences will help students think of their learning while refining their writing skills.
One learning strategy to implement writing across the content areas is to use “Power Writing” or quick-writes (a brief, timed writing), prompting students’ reflections on how they understand a key concept. This strategy encourages students to use a content-specific word or phrase in a quick burst of writing. Not only does this help develop student writing fluency over time and practice, but it also develops fluency in their thinking, allowing students and teachers to look at the progression of thoughts. Students and teachers can see fluency and/or gaps in their thought process when their writing is examined afterwards. If students can independently spot where ideas were missed, this can provide evidence of their learning; the opposite can provide evidence of where more learning is needed.
Teachers outside of the ELA content area may find the idea of using writing fluency in their instructional practice a challenge, perhaps even intimidating; however, there are ways to support even the slightest approach to writing in all the content areas. For more suggestions on supporting student writing in any content area — and for a little reassurance to non-ELA teachers — Jennifer Gonzalez talks about supporting student writing in the content areas in her podcast episode 7 Easy Ways to Support Student Writing in Any Content Area. As she discusses, it is not the refined approach to writing skills that is the first (or main) goal, but rather the opportunity for students to learn content and express ideas through writing often, even for short periods of time.
If Everyone is Talking … Listen
For ELA teachers, there are certain strands that tend to pick up the spotlight more than some others. Make sure the kids can READ well! They better understand how to WRITE in a flash! And don’t forget they need to SPEAK clearly and confidently because how else will the world know what they want to say!
Reading, writing, and speaking are fundamental skills that lead students (and all of us, really) to become successful communicators. This is true. But which of the strands can precede all of these in helping our students make sense of the world they are part of? Participate in the world they are part of? Perhaps even leave their mark on their world? Find their own success?
Listening.
And not just the passive ‘I can hear the words coming out of your mouth’ kind of listening. Rather, it is the kind that hits somewhere in the deeper recesses of a mind. The kind of listening which elicits a slow head nod or a moment of reflection. A light bulb AHA! moment. The kind which gives a person pause. This is the type of listening that Greek philosopher Epictetus was likely referring to. It is a type of listening that is becoming ever more relevant to the relationships, daily interactions, and learning of our students; and, yes, even ourselves.
Active listening is a skill that is to be modelled and practised before it will be used proficiently. It is a skill that is relevant no matter the content or subject area. It is a strand of ELA that appears everywhere in the real world which includes our own classrooms.
Want to read more about active listening and how you may be able to bring attention to it for your students and yourself? Edutopia contributor Judy Willis writes about the Value of Active Listening for both students and their teachers. With progress conferences upon us, this may be a worthwhile and timely read for you. Blogger and educational speaker George Couros also shares how his mindset has shifted from the importance of speaking to the valuable currency of listening in a world where it may seem as If everyone is talking …
Chasing the Light
Chasing the Light
We are approaching two years since our classrooms went dark—literally. That feeling when we were told to close up our classrooms. It was strange. It was surreal. And for nearly twenty-four months, it has felt never-ending.
The impact of that sudden end to a school year has been strong and persistent in the time since. It has impacted personal wellness. It has impacted professional growth. It has impacted the way we perceive schools and the everyday activity we experience in them. It has impacted how we feel about the history of what schools were delivering and how we look into the future of what our classrooms can be. It has impacted how we think about what we want for our students, for ourselves as educators and life-long learners. It has impacted why.
These past two years have been characterized by chasing light at the end of a very long tunnel. As we continue to chase this light, we might also pause to acknowledge that it is in darkness when the beauty of light is most appreciated; “The dance between darkness and light will always remain— the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen, the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars.” (C. Joybell C.)
Having found this sentiment makes me think about the sparkle of light that is helping shift focus from learning that is content-focused to learning that is more learner-focused. Katie Martin, author of Evolving Education: Shifting to a Learner-Centered Paradigm, reflects on such bright spots in education in this blog post 7 Bright Spots In Learner-Centered Education.
Making Time for a Literacy Check-Up
In its traditional sense, literacy is the skills needed to functionally read, write, and quantify; with the turn of the 21st Century, however, literacy evolved to include “a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world.” (“Literacy”) We know these are the literacy demands our students navigate in today’s world; meaning now, while they continue to learn in secondary school. We hope they are growing in their literacy long before they reach their post-secondary world.
If our students are to get the best literacy education before high school graduation, we should constantly question: Are we providing the best literacy-building experiences in our classrooms? “Are [our] students the readers, writers, and thinkers [we] want them to be? Is [our] school or system producing graduates who are ready to tackle the literacy demands of our world?” (Edwards and Shiel)
If we are unsure about how to answer these questions, it is time to consider (and re-consider) the literacy environment we are creating for students in our learning community. How are we acknowledging the demands for literacy in our world? How are we encouraging students to acknowledge that demand themselves, not in their future but right now—in their present? How are we providing for the needs of students who are challenged in developing improved skills in literacy?
In her “Cult of Pedagogy” podcast episode Does Your School Need a Literacy Check-Up?, Jennifer Gonzalez interviews literacy consultant Angela Peery, Co-Author of What to Look for in Literacy, to talk about how schools can be sure they are producing the kinds of thinkers and communicators this world needs; both now and in the future. She “offers a complete set of tools schools can use to do a DIY version of the consulting she offers—self-check instruments for determining how they’re doing on all facets of literacy instruction, from PK through grade 12, in all content areas.” (Gonzalez) For more information (and inspiration), this podcast episode is worth a listen and the self-check instruments are available for download; just click the hyperlink above or keep scrolling to see the preview images.
Literacy has never been more important; “... it might be more important than ever for all our children to really just understand, to understand more about the world, to be more literate, to be able to decipher information and understand what credible sources are …” (Gonzalez)
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