I have provided a video from textbook company McGraw-Hill all about how to improve literacy within any classroom. I'm a little torn on choosing a video from a textbook manufacturer, because textbooks usually are related to some of the most boring experiences in the classroom and sometimes make students feel less motivated to strive to learn. However, the content of the video is good and has some good points. It talks about 7 different ways to positively impact literacy outcome in school: reach all learners, teach relevant content, use evidence based approaches, use responsive tools and platforms to drive achievement, assessment and monitoring to speed along proficiency, use reflective practices to integrate literacy in all content areas, and be a ready teacher.
I think this video is an important resource for content area teachers because it shows different ways to both improve content area learning while also improving literacy. The strategies outlined in the video are general enough to use in any classroom with any subject, but also focus on improving literacy. I especially like the strategy of teaching content that is relevant to the students--it is important to do that in order to keep the students' attention and make sure that they want to learn and improve their literacy skills. The strategy of using reflective skills emphasizes the importance of metacognition in the classroom, where students are becoming aware of their own thinking processes in order to achieve more.
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Thank you for sharing this video. Like you I am very hesitant to explore resources directly related to textbook manufacturers. I have recently come to learn that in our field of education we can not escape them. Companies like McGraw-Hill are literally in everything we do as teachers, from tests all the way to professional development but that is a soap box for another day. :)
ReplyDeleteThese techniques seem easy to implement into my mathematics classroom because they promote inquiry based learning through literacy. I talked some about inquiry based learning in my blog post. It is good to know that textbook companies are also seeing the positive impacts of inquiry based learning. Students helping each other will be key to encouraging literacy and individual learning of content.
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