Classroom Strategies

Education 346 Weekly Summaries

Week 1:

• Literacy and student identity develop through situated activities.

• Students contend with numerous factors as they progress through their education and are not simply just a student of X when they are with us

• Teachers need to be mindful of what strengths we can tap from students

• Teachers also need to be mindful of what barriers may be in place for students and figure out ways to support students as they try to overcome those barriers

• Schools must systematically support all students as they develop these literate identities, and be mindful of which voices are heard, in what ways, and by whom…

Week 2:

• Disciplinary literacy becomes more complex and specialized as students progress through school; it is up to their teachers to help them navigate such nuances

• Students also participate in literacy practices outside of school, and may, in fact, exhibit different competencies not demonstrated in class because of various circumstances

• Literacy development can influence identity development

• Challenges are present for many students in learning how to be literate and learning within each of your respective disciplines

Week 3:

• “Content area literacy focuses on study skills…Disciplinary literacy is an emphasis on the knowledge and abilities possessed by those who create, communicate, and use knowledge within the disciplines” (p. 8, Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012)

• Though your ELA/World Languages colleagues are especially attuned to literacy development; they may not know your discipline-specific habits of mind, so you must also help support your students in developing these skills

• Each text consists of a purpose, audience, and reaction

• 6 domains: Disciplinary literacy, vocabulary, discussion, digital literacy, multiple texts, & writing to learn

Week 4:

• “The most important reason to teach vocabulary is to help their students, [content-area teachers], read and write disciplinary texts in nuanced ways” (pp. 61-62)

• Encourage word learning and model this behavior in your teaching but also classroom environment

• Teach students skills and strategies to learn vocabulary

• Be strategic about what words you focus on if you are going to devote class time to teaching them

Week 5:

• “Classroom environments rich in oral language correlate with higher levels of student academic achievement” (p. 87)

• Discussions norms can be taught and should be taught…help students see that it is a reciprocal process

• It is not just the quantity, but the quality of the conversation that matters

• Use questions and talk moves deliberately

Week 6:

• Accountability helps maintain rigor in the classroom

• Discussions are strategically built into the curriculum

• There are many ways discussion protocols can be adapted

• Eliciting student voices is “encouraging”

Week 7:

• Multiple texts enrich students’ understanding of a topic

• Multiple texts may be motivating

• Consideration of text complexity is important

• Eliciting student voices is “encouraging”

Week 8:

• “For a writing strategy to qualify as a writing-to-learn strategy, the act of writing must be used to as a means for students to achieve the instructional purposes we have established for their learning,” (p. 184)

• Writing can be supported across the curriculum

• Each of our disciplines has unique features of writing that students benefit from learning

• For students to be successful, we must teach them the skills that lead to that success

Week 9:

• “What students now need to learn is vastly different to what was required in the not-so-distant past,” (p. 404, Knobel, 2001)

• Carefully consider what is understood as literacy “failure”

• Adopting an adolescent literacy perspective in teaching means going beyond cognitive skills

• Bringing emotions into students’ experiences, talk, and writing may have large payoffs