Disciplinary Literacy- Math

Synthesis:

Chapter 7

The chapter begins by explaining current perspectives and approaches to literacy instruction in a math classroom.  The first problem is that literacy coaches lose site of the roll a content area teachers plays.  Content area teachers have a job to develop area expertise.  Yet it’s important for these teachers to focus on general print literacy.  The goal of literacy in mathematics is to support student learning in that area.  The second problem, is that literacy educators assume that math teachers only teach computational fluency.  The last misconception is that reading print text or incorporating any general literacy instructional strategies is appropriate for mathematics classroom.  

The second area the chapter talked about was reconceptualizing literacy instruction for mathematics classrooms.  The term literacy must be broaden to truly understand literacy in content areas.  “Text- like” objects play a roll in constructing meaning in math.  Text includes patterns, symbols, drawings, spoken word, graph, or series of gestures.  When the term literacy is broaden, it includes all objects that are created and interpreted when learning.  When the term literacy encompasses these aspects, the math room then becomes a literacy rich environment.  

The last section of this chapter discusses creating and sustain collaborative environments between literacy and math.  Literacy instructors need to approach math teachers as learners, not as experts.  The teacher should have a desire to learn from the math teachers.  It’s important, as a literacy specialist, to reach out to experience math teachers.  Do not single out young or struggling teachers.  When the expert math teacher and literacy coach work together, they will have a better chance of helping the struggling teacher.  The next area when working with teachers is to sustain these relationships.  Literacy and math teachers need to develop a shared purpose.  They can come up with goals together.  When working together, work from each others strengths.  These teachers should work together to plan lessons and instruction.  Getting content area teachers and literacy teachers working together with help the common good of a student.   

Chapter 11:

The teacher, Ariadna, wanted to help her students learn new mathematical concepts and language.  She implemented a design that would help her students learn more that just computational fluency.  The first step she had students explore new concepts while using their prior knowledge they had with math.  Then she has them use their new terms and prior terms they've learned in writing, orally explaining.  After this she has students to produce definitions and to work problems of their own.  They apply the new knowledge in expert ways.  By using this outline, teachers can teach math beyond the computational boundaries.  Students are applying what they are learning in other forms.   By helping students learn math in other ways will explained their knowledge.  When students orally explain and write the material takes on different forms of  meaning.  

Response:

Text to Text:

These text go to gather well.  I feel like one is more of an explanation of how literacy and math teachers can work together.  The other chapter gives a practical way to incorporate literacy in the math classroom.  I really enjoyed the idea of expanding the literacy definition.  By broadening this term, you realize how much literacy is already in content area classrooms.

Text to World:

Students/content teachers need to be incorporating reading/literacy in their own rooms.  Literacy is everywhere in the world.  By giving students literacy strategies that apply to their discipline area, they will begin to make new connections wit the material.  

Text to Self:

The chapter that talked about how literacy and math teachers can work together was very helpful.  Since I will one day be a reading specialist/literacy coach, I will need to know how to work with everyone in the school.  I like the section that talked about how to talk to a math expert.  Come as a learner, not someone who tells them how to do their job.  I think this is important to remember for everyone.  Always be read to learn something.  Don't assume you understand and know it all.  

Questions: 
!.  This is not really a question, just something to ponder.  Since I've been in the elementary schools, I feel it's easier to be a literacy coach in that environment.  It kind of intimidates me, the idea of going into a high school and being the literacy coach.  Besides high school having a lot of teachers, I think it would be hard to foster an open collaborative environment within the school.  Unike elementary, it's pretty easy to all work together.  What are you thoughts?  

Re: Disciplinary Text

Synthesis:

Chapter 10 Hinchman Thomas

This chapter focused on reading and writing across multiple text.  In our modern world it is important for students to explore reading different text from multiple view points.  Students can acquire knowledge through newspapers, tv, websites, billboards, books, and magazines.   Students need to be taught how to decipher through the plethora of information they receive and decide if it is reliable.  Another important strategy is to teach students to read across varies text genres and write about the similar topic, yet in different modes.  

One of the strategies mentioned  was a process including: sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration.  This is a process historians use to comb through information.  With this method, students learn to find information, think about what the information is saying, and find similarities and differences.  

There can be issues when using multiple text.  Text complexity can become an issue.  Teachers also struggle with deciding how many text to use.  Lastly, decide what instruction is appropriate based on the content area being taught.  

Students are reading multiple text everywhere.  They know how to do this instinctively,  but as teaches we must instruct them how to do this properly.  They need to understand how to read with a critical eye.  Students must also understand how different text types go together.  With teachers help, students can learn strategies that will help equip them with a successful future.    

Chapter 12 Hinchman-Thomas

This chapter was about reading challenging text in high school.  The beginning of the chapter focused on how students have trouble reading, with interesting, complex text that is picked for them.  Yet outside school, they are reading higher level text for enjoyment.  This is important for teachers to remember.  Students will not always get the choice though.  The chapter then goes on to explain the 6 types of skills needed to make sense of text.

1. Semantic knowledge-  Semantics is making sense of the words.  First and for most students have to have an understand of     

            what they are reading.

2.  Mathematical Knowledge- Math has it’s own special language.  Understanding and mastering those specific terms will help 

             with comprehension.    

3.  Historical knowledge- Having knowledge of past events, data, people, and social and political issues and conflict.

4.  Geographic Knowledge- Know about countries: location and facts.

5.  Discursive Knowledge-Knowledge that the construction of texts is tied to the domain in which they are written and to the 

             purposes doe which they were originally written.  

6.  Pragmatic Knowledge- Recognition that text can be questioned.  

Motivating students comes from using interesting text.  One reason students may find disinterest in text is because of the tone the book is written.  Taking this in to account and implement different text forms can help.  Another way to build engagement, is develop semester units over topics they find amusing.  Take into account the beliefs students come to school having.  This can make a difference in how they interpret readings.  The chapter then goes on to explain 6 teaching practices that engage students in reading content specific readings: (1) problem framing, (2)whole group knowledge, (3) scaffolding, (4) questioning, (5) visualizing text, and (6)summarizing and synthesizing ideas within and across text.  

It is important for teachers to take into account the above ideas.  There are ideas that can used across curriculum to help motivate and keep students engage in higher level text.  Students who develop the skills and excitement to read higher level text will be more successful through their schooling. 

Chapter 5 Jetton-Shanahan

This chapter discuss the 3 approaches to literacy instructions. A functional Literacy approach teaches students to be successful in school and life.  Cultural Literacy focuses on teaching morals and values.  A progressive literacy approach teaches students to read and write based on themes and topics that interest them.  The author argues on to suggest that these approaches need to be questioned.  If literacy is only approached these ways, literacy becomes dull.  More strategies and instructional practices must be incorporated to allow students to use higher-level thinking skills.  The current ideas on literacy suggest it should be a layered approach.  The researcher, Kucer, explains 4 dimensions of literacy: cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, and developmental.  A challenge that come with teaching reading in literature comes from text selection.  Another challenge comes from teaching writing.  Do teachers stick with teaching to the test or engage students in a rich multimodal world?  Last challenge mentioned is teaching to a class of digital consumers.  With all these challenges and more, teachers are bombarded with a multitude of advice and research to syphon through and decide what works best for their students and them.  

Response:

After reading these chapters, I felt I had a realization of how hard teaching high school must be.  Since I am early childhood teacher and we have our own set of challenges, I never gave much thought to higher level grades.  With our ever changing digital world, teachers are having to decide how to interact with this generation.  At times having to learn a whole new skill set to teach them.  The chapters from Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, focused on reading across multi texts.  This chapter was insightful.  I thought it suggested a lot of good ideas and backed it up with research.  I also like how it touched on different content areas and how to teach within those.  I thought ch. 12 had some helpful suggestions on teaching difficult text.  The different types of knowledge would be helpful when teaching high school students.  Those categories seemed to be things that wouldn’t be talked about unless you made an effort to include them in your teaching.  But without them, text would be dense or meaningless.  The last ch., chapter 5, had really good examples on how to include the ideology suggested.  It made the approaches realistic.  

Question: 

1. If a high school teacher chose not to use the canonical text, what are some good adult literature books they could replace the classics with?

Re: Text Complexity

Synthesis:

There are there components of measuring text complexity: quantitative, qualitative, and reader and task considerations.  Quantitative measures take formulas, word repetition, sentence length, and syntax into consideration to determine readability.  Using quantitative measures are not always accurate.  Teaches must take into consideration the level and also the content within the book.  A book may be at a child's level, but contain subjects not suitable for their age.  Qualitative measures use four areas in determining complexity: levels of meaning, text structure, language conventionality/clarification, and knowledge demand.  There are many resources of determining qualitative measures in the book.  Another important aspect for determining text complexity is considering the reader and task.  This includes student motivation, stamina, verbal reasoning, general reading ability, English proficiency, and prior knowledge.  When considering text complexity teachers must also remember to have student "deliberately practice."  If never given the opportunity to practice, their text complexity will never have the opportunity improve.   Feedback is essential when practicing.  Students need to know if they've met goals and task.  Feedback is a simple way to build intrinsic motivation.  

Disciplinary text seem to be an area of difficulty for students.  It is important for teachers to teach comprehension strategies and instructional strategies.  Yet there is a difference between the two.  In this chapter the author explains there is a difference between the two strategies.  Reading strategies need to be explicitly taught.  Reading strategies are taught through instructional strategies.   Teaching comprehension can be done through several models: DIME, KWHHL, RAP, and SRSD.  Teachers can also use word maps, paragraph frames, and reciprocal teaching.  Online text is a great way to help with comprehension.  Students can find word meaning in certain programs.  Text can lead to other text to help with understanding.  Yet, the sheer volume of information on the net can be overwhelming.  Rich classroom discussions are helpful with students in create meaning.  

Response:
Text to Text
These articles over text complexity seem to fit with the last few weeks of reading.  Text complexity is yet another component of reading.  Just like comprehension, it's equally as important.  When designing lessons teachers need to consider text complexity so that it pushes children and helps them grow.  If text is too easy or hard it can effect children's progress.

Text to Self
This weeks reading was a good reminder of helping students pick books on their level.  The section on determining text complexity is a good reference.  I thought it had several helpful tables and resources that will be helpful when determining students reading level.  Keeping student interest in mind is vital, yet you can't always let me them pick the books they want.  It's good to help guide them.  I think working together to pick out books would help motivation and engagement.

Text to Word
Teaching students how to read different text is important, not only for school, but for life.  Students will encounter a plethora of different text types in their lifetime.  Reading different text also helps in developing a love for reading.  When students are exposed to many genres and levels of reading, it prepares them for their future.

Questions

1.  Why is there such a difference in text complexity from elementary to middle school? and middle to high school?   I don't understand why it isn't a smooth transition.