Final Synthesis Blog Post

Over the course of this semester, the tools and strategies we have discussed in class have made me realize how important it is to embrace literacy in every classroom, regardless of subject or grade level. There is no detriment to doing so, and it creates more well-rounded students capable of tackling problems inside and outside of the classroom. This course’s offerings, from the insightful class discussions to the textbook which dives into real-life examples of how to best embrace content area literacy to so much more, have made me recognize what I can do, as a content area teacher, to mold my students into better readers--and therefore better students.

Even though textbooks may not be the best method in the modern classroom to transfer information to students, the textbook for this class was incredibly helpful in developing an array of literary strategies to use in my own future classroom. The textbook was chock-full of strategies to use before, during, and after reading or analyzing text, and class assignments such as the strategy lesson and text set helped me become familiar with these strategies so that I feel comfortable applying them in the future.

For me, the most important aspect of the class was the strategy lesson, because it allowed me to collaborate with others in my primary subject area and begin to act out the initial parts of both lesson planning and getting up in front of class and trying a new strategy. As was always mentioned in class, the best teachers aren’t scared to try something new, and if it doesn’t work out, make changes in order to positively adjust for the future. By trying out new lessons and receiving glows and grows from our peers, we could understand what it was like from a more critical outside perspective to try these literary strategies.

Speaking of perspective, this class provided a unique opportunity to see a class from both a teacher and student lens. Our in-class discussions, ranging from our personal opinions on intra-content literacy to how it can best be taught, provided meaningful insight from different personalities and allowed us to really think through how we can best provide literary opportunities for our students. On the other side of the spectrum, participating in book clubs from a student perspective allowed us to walk through the entire process, have fun in a group activity, and then critically think about what went wrong, what could be changed, and how to create more impactful and efficient book clubs in our own classrooms. Think alouds put us in our teacher roles, so that we could walk through the process of digesting text in real time with our students, in order to provide positive and thoughtful examples on how to analyze and work through text, no matter how difficult or easy it may be.

The most important factor in this class to my future classroom, however, would have to be our blogs. Combing through everybody’s blogs was a unique and interesting opportunity to react to what other students had to say about textbook chapters, certain reading strategies, or incredible resources they had found. The resource blogs are a great… well, resource, for the future, because they are a plethora of free and useful modes of learning that captivate student interest and drive learning inside and outside of the classroom. The resources found over the course of this class will remain a valuable stockpile of educational materials for any educator to utilize in their class.

Overall, this class has shaped my opinion on what it means to be a teacher who embraces content-area literacy and wants the best for their students, regardless of the content area that the teacher is involved in. It is crucial to build a strong base of reading skills for students so that they can thrive in any setting--and that base should be supported by teachers everywhere, not just the ones teaching English.

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