ARTIFACT: My artifact is a powerpoint presentation completed to demonstrate learning from the book by Doug Buehl, "Reading in the Academic Disciplines." This book shares the different abilities and strengths that students bring to each subject and how teachers need to support students to navigate reading in the disciplines. He provides many strategies and charts for teachers to use with students to help them learn how to read through the lens of the subject such as reading like a scientist or historian. I found the self-questioning charts to be very beneficial.
PROFESSIONAL GROWTH: Before this class, I really had no idea what reading in the academic disciplines meant.
During this class, I developed a better understanding of what content reading means. I found the discussion of using text sets to meet expectations of content standards very intriguing. There was discussion of providing literature from different perspectives to address a specific essential question and by providing the different perspectives it created a more interesting discussion. Also, students are more engaged if they have choice of the book they read. I also learned what it means to read like a historian or scientists. I found the self-questioning taxonomies for each subject provided in Doug Buehl's book very helpful in this area.
After this class, in my role as a Literacy Specialist, I have been trying to encourage teachers to look at teaching in the subject areas from a different approach. I hope to help them develop at least one unit a year that take the inquiry approach and provide literature as an option instead of relying entirely on the text. During an in-service, I was able to share parts of my artifact with teachers to create awareness of what students understand about reading in a subject area and what we can do to help close the gap.
STANDARDS:
Standard #1 Teachers know the subjects they are teaching.
Teachers must know their subject area well so they can create meaningful lessons for students and help them understand how to navigate material through the lens of their subject.
Standard #5 Teachers know how to manage a classroom.
This standard was reflected by this class because the teacher must understand the students, their experiences and prior knowledge in order to be able to bring their subject alive for all students.
Standard #10 Teachers are connected with other teachers and the community
I think this class taught us how important it is to collaborate with other teachers. Teachers in secondary education have the opportunity to work together to meet the needs of the students, but reading does not depend solely on the language arts teachers. Teachers in the subjects are responsible for teaching reading in their subject areas, but can benefit from collaboration with the language arts teachers in order to accomplish their goals.
IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING: The knowledge from this class has had an impact on my students since, I now try to bring the content area information into the learning to read process. Students are connecting the information we are working on in intervention to what they are doing in their class. During this class, we learned about the site www.newsela.com. I have been using it to find articles that relate to the content they are learning about in social studies or science. We are using the articles to ask questions, look for context clues, infer, find the main idea and details, look for evidence to support their thinking. My last assessments showed growth of two reading levels for two out of the three students in my seventh grade group.
PROFESSIONAL GROWTH: Before this class, I really had no idea what reading in the academic disciplines meant.
During this class, I developed a better understanding of what content reading means. I found the discussion of using text sets to meet expectations of content standards very intriguing. There was discussion of providing literature from different perspectives to address a specific essential question and by providing the different perspectives it created a more interesting discussion. Also, students are more engaged if they have choice of the book they read. I also learned what it means to read like a historian or scientists. I found the self-questioning taxonomies for each subject provided in Doug Buehl's book very helpful in this area.
After this class, in my role as a Literacy Specialist, I have been trying to encourage teachers to look at teaching in the subject areas from a different approach. I hope to help them develop at least one unit a year that take the inquiry approach and provide literature as an option instead of relying entirely on the text. During an in-service, I was able to share parts of my artifact with teachers to create awareness of what students understand about reading in a subject area and what we can do to help close the gap.
STANDARDS:
Standard #1 Teachers know the subjects they are teaching.
Teachers must know their subject area well so they can create meaningful lessons for students and help them understand how to navigate material through the lens of their subject.
Standard #5 Teachers know how to manage a classroom.
This standard was reflected by this class because the teacher must understand the students, their experiences and prior knowledge in order to be able to bring their subject alive for all students.
Standard #10 Teachers are connected with other teachers and the community
I think this class taught us how important it is to collaborate with other teachers. Teachers in secondary education have the opportunity to work together to meet the needs of the students, but reading does not depend solely on the language arts teachers. Teachers in the subjects are responsible for teaching reading in their subject areas, but can benefit from collaboration with the language arts teachers in order to accomplish their goals.
IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING: The knowledge from this class has had an impact on my students since, I now try to bring the content area information into the learning to read process. Students are connecting the information we are working on in intervention to what they are doing in their class. During this class, we learned about the site www.newsela.com. I have been using it to find articles that relate to the content they are learning about in social studies or science. We are using the articles to ask questions, look for context clues, infer, find the main idea and details, look for evidence to support their thinking. My last assessments showed growth of two reading levels for two out of the three students in my seventh grade group.