Thursday, March 8, 2012

Supporting Content-Area Teachers in Grades 7-12

Through my work in the Ludlow Public Schools, I've discovered that while most of the sixth grade content-area teachers have some training in teaching  reading and writing, the content-area teachers in grades seven and up tend not to. This is a product of the teacher licensing structure in Massachusetts, in which most sixth grade teachers carry a 1-6 certification that requires coursework in teaching literacy.

As a result, many teachers lack the training to carry out one of the central objectives of the Common Core-- teaching students to read and write critically across content areas.

In Ludlow, I'm working with Curriculum Director Diana Roy and Principal Sheryl Stanton to pair content-area teachers with ELA teachers and provide training in the use of active reading strategies that help students tackle content-area texts. We're finding Texts and Lessons for the Content Areas (Daniels and Steineke) to be extremely applicable and teacher-friendly.

What else is working out there?

1 comment:

L. Dickey said...

I came across an interesting podcast that discussed at study that looked at comprehension development using informational text. The study was conducted at the primary grade level, but has implications for the teaching at all levels, I think. The researchers found that the most effective way to support students' comprehension of a text was to use Directed Reading and Thinking Activities, rather than picture walks or Know/Want to Know/Learned (KWL) charts.
http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/posts/34654