Writing Yourself a Better Future

This week the articles focused on teaching reading and writing for the 21^st century and preparing our students to be able to succeed in life. The articles Adolescent Literacy: Learning and Understanding Content and Reading in the Disciplines: The Challenges of Adolescent Literacy turned to the transition of students sometime between fourth grade and sixth grade to “reading to learn” as opposed to learning to read.  The Common Core requires teachers to take the time to have the students not only comprehend the materials, but also learn to compare, analyze, evaluate, and even question the credibility of what they are reading. There is a need for students to be able to achieve true literacy and not just regurgitate the information taught in class.  The student must get to the point so that they can ask questions and find out answers on their own.

With many Americans unable to handle basic literacy needed to tend to their own health needs it is imperative that educators teach them how to read to learn so that after they have left the classroom, they can continue to learn.  Teaching reading skills and content is not enough, if the student cannot do more with the information.

Students have to understand the content literacy of the subjects that they are learning in order to truly learn.  For instance, in science classes, tables and charts may be hard to read and prior knowledge of math may be needed.  The student may come in with some knowledge, but by the teacher engaging the student the teacher can find out what the student does not understand and help build the science vocabulary, mathematical skills, and other obstacles preventing science literacy.  The following circle is a good example of how teaching a science student how to read to learn is accomplished:

In science, many experiments may disprove a hypothesis.  This idea needs to be applied to a student’s learning of literacy throughout life.   Students need to question everything.  For example, with the increase of the usage of the World Wide Web and sources such as Wikipedia (where anyone can contribute to the articles) the problem is exponentially worse for even the interested reader.  They need a broad frame of reference to draw upon into order to digest new information.  When thousands of sophisticated readers of the magazine The New Republic believed in the articles written by Stephen Glass, they felt that the information came from a reliable source. 

It was much later that news professionals with expertise in fact checking began to question the information that was published.  Knowledge of Nevada area codes, the look of websites, and the customs of hackers were all details that the professionals had prior knowledge of that helped them to uncover Glass’s fraud.   Most American readers would not begin to question an article from a well-regarded publication. This is a sad statement.

In addition to preparing the students to read to learn, the students will be ill prepared if they cannot communicate in writing. In Write Like This, the article focused on the problem of our education system not preparing students for the job market and the real world.  It suggests the use of Modeling and Mentor Texts to instruct students so that they can learn to express themselves adequately for their future careers.  As a science teacher, I would not only encourage my students to use writing to explain what they learned from scientific experiments, but I would also teach them how to use charts and tables to explain their findings.  This skill is useful for a student planning to further their career in the sciences, but it can also be a useful persuasive practice for students entering the real world.

This blog is a great example of reading to learn and writing.  We are asked to read the articles, compare them, and think about them.  We then find supplemental resources to help us better understand the material.  We use the material in writing a blog to communicate and share with others.  Professor Kushner, your assignment is a resource that should be added to explain this week’s lesson.

"Why Do I Have to Learn This?"

            One quote that stuck out to me from the Gallagher reading was “Writing well is not just an option for young people- it is a necessity.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. Students will encounter the need to write and verbally express themselves constantly in the workforce. So it is imperative for educators to prepare students with the writing skills they need to not only exist in the real world but to thrive in it as well.

            Gallagher points out that many students leave school without proper writing skills due to the overemphasis and sheer amount of content. I can remember having similar experiences in high school. One class that stands out particularly was my AP psychology class. My teacher had taught at my high school for many years and already achieved tenure. So, essentially he knew as long as he showed up for school and “appeared” to be teaching something he wouldn’t be reprimanded. Throughout the school year he’d hand out work sheets to my class that correlated with the textbook. The entire class copied answers directly from the textbook in most cases. More and more content kept getting “taught” with no real attention to the details. We’d cram definitions and vocabulary the night before exams and forget it almost simultaneously when we turned in our scantron sheets. Ironically enough we only had multiple choice question assessments even though there is an essay component to the AP exam. Needless to say I did not perform very well on the AP psych exam and it was not entirely my fault. I wish my teacher had given me more opportunities to write and express my knowledge of the content. Not only would I have done better on the AP exam, but I’m sure it would have bettered overall abilities as a student. So I agree with Gallagher’s notion that the overarching obsession with content quantity is shadowing the more important skills that students need to obtain.

            The idea of providing students with real world models and connections should be a priority for educators. We need to get them interested in writing. As a future science teacher I can especially see the importance and value in this concept. Sometimes content can become too abstract and the student feels no relation to the subject. They’ll sit in class thinking “I’m never going to use this stuff so why do I have to learn it?” 

Teachers need to know that students are going to wonder this question and have lessons prepared to answer it. In a previous class I’ve taken we had to make lesson plans, present them to our peers and then have them guess our objectives. I think this activity can be useful with students as well. Perhaps at the end of each lesson or unit give students the opportunity to guess the teacher’s objectives. This puts them in their teacher’s shoes and gives them a different perspective on the content. This can be a great gauge for educators as well because them they can see what points students think are important and taking away from lessons. So instead of having writing and other assignments be a chore, students will have a better grasp of why exactly the teacher is having them do it and why the information is valuable to them. Teaching students to be invested and motivated in what they are learning is key.