Content-Area Literacy
What’s Next: Possibilities for Literacy and Content Area Learning (NWP Radio)
Summary:
This NWP Radio show captures the conversation among planners, presenters and participants in the 2010 National Reading Initiative Conference in New Orleans. The conference captured learning from NWP sites engaged in the National Reading Initiative. Of particular interest to teacher leaders looking at the reading/writing connection and disciplinary literacy, the conference examined the intersection of adolescent literacy and content area learning by addressing the following questions: What is a text and what should we know about reading and writing texts in different disciplines? What does strong interdisciplinary work look like? What is discipline-specific in reading and writing? How can writing project sites and schools organize to work toward deeper understanding and new practices?
Listen to the Show
Duration: 1 hour
Excerpt
One of the things that I think was exciting about this conference that pulled everything together was what Elizabeth Birr Moje did at the beginning of the conference in her keynote, because she pulled all of those strands together in her work….
She showed us how some of our traditional reading strategies based in disciplinary knowledge can work, but only if all of the other conditions in the situation are right to start with. And students have to be engaged.
Download “NWP Radio—What’s Next: Possibilities for Literacy and Content Area Learning”
Also Recommended
See all
Disciplinary Literacy: Why It Matters and What We Should Do About It
Why should we help students learn how to read, write, and speak in different disciplines (e.g., science and social studies)? Watch this keynote address to meet Elizabeth Birr Moje who believes that when students learn the literacy particular to each discipline, they gain access to advanced learning opportunities. Moje positions disciplinary literacy as a social justice issue and offers rich questions that could serve as writing prompts and lead to challenging, substantive discussions.
Read more
A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for English Language Learners in Secondary School
This article documents a longitudinal research study conducted by members of the UC Irvine Writing Project in partnership with a large, urban school district in which 93 percent of the students are English language learners. Over an eight-year period, 55 secondary teachers implemented a cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction designed to make visible the thinking strategies that experienced readers and writers access in the process of constructing meaning. An important resource, this would be useful as a text for study in a professional development program or for individual teacher research. The project “was not just an abstract research study; it was a concrete attempt to level the playing field for specific EL students in a large urban school district through sustained, ongoing collaboration with a dedicated and committed group of teachers...” The consistency of positive outcomes on multiple measures strongly points to the efficacy of using this approach with EL students.
Read more
Foster a "culture of creativity" with these 826 Digital Resources
This holiday season, explore curated lessons from 826 Digital that spark creativity in young writers and their teachers.
Read more