This was the response from a math teacher when I told him about
my new job description as an instructional coach charged with helping spread
literacy across the content areas.
I just listened. I hadn’t even started the role and honestly
couldn’t articulate what literacy would look like in a math classroom.
But what he said struck me: “Math has its own language.” What an
interesting and poetic way to describe math.
Here was a person arguing against the idea of literacy in the
math classroom, yet the literacy piece was inherent in his response. If a
subject has its own unique language, then the students must learn how to use
it, and wouldn’t reading and writing be a natural part of that?
To this day, I don’t know if having students write an essay in a
math class is the golden ticket to meeting our literacy goals. But isn’t explaining
how you arrived at a particular answer part of the learning process? Isn’t learning
to breakdown a problem (possibly by writing your thoughts on how to solve it) a
way to solidify understanding?
Literacy for Life
One thing we can all agree on is that
if students aren't able to read or write effectively, they aren't going to be
able to learn the content. In fact, they aren’t going to be able to do a lot of
things effectively.
Think about all of the information through
which we navigate daily that requires reading and writing, such as reading and
responding to emails, paying bills, analyzing data, reading contracts, writing
lessons and sub plans, reading maps and signs to get somewhere...oh wait, we
have SIRI and GPS, I retract my last example; you get my drift though.
For this reason and more, we will be focusing on literacy
strategies to improve student comprehension on the January 6th staff
development day. All content areas will walk away with two literacy strategies that
will help students be able to engage in a text/problem and then write about
their understanding.
Writing is Thinking put to Paper
Annotating is the fancy ELA word for writing your thoughts as you
are making sense of a text or problem. Annotating isn't a finished product, but it’s a check on whether a
student really “gets” something. If a student can’t get it, they won’t be able
to solve the problem or write the essay. They will be stuck.
Although annotating is an informal type of writing, it’s
extremely valuable.
I wonder how many of us do it naturally. I know that I have to
underline, highlight, or make notes of things as I read, especially if they are
dense or technical. But many students don’t naturally do this for multiple
reasons.
1. They
don’t know how. Maybe they learned somewhere along the way, but it hasn’t stuck
with them.
2. They
don’t think it’s valuable to understanding. “I got this Miss. I don’t need to
take notes.” But the final product reveals that they did not get it.
3. It
makes their brain hurts. If writing is thinking, then annotating is forcing us
to think as we engage with something. Students push back, and we must push
through this if we are to see gains in achievement.
How can we encourage students to value
annotations? It starts with you. We will discuss this and more on January 6th.
So Now What?
You are the experts in your content area, and we need your help
getting this right.
For our literacy day on January 6th, you will be grouped by content. Molly Koch, Wesly
Guzzetta, Dusti Rhodes, Laura Lensgraf, Erica Robinson, and I will be rolling
out literacy strategies that we think will be helpful for increasing student
thinking.
We have tried to make them specific to your content area, but in order for
the strategies to be truly successful, we need you to take them and make them
your own. We need willing experimenters, Literacy Scientists so to speak, to
implement strategies for a sustained amount of time--not for a day or a week—and
let us know how it goes.
Department and team planning will take up the afternoon of
January 6th, and we are asking for teams and departments to continue to
include weekly writing in their lesson plans, and also include reading
strategies, such as annotation, when they assign reading.
Have a well deserved
holiday break with your family and friends, and I look forward to seeing you in
January!
