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WEEK 7 - Chris Baugher, Patricia Bankins and Alison Burns - First reading. "This paper investigates how pre-service teacher education can provide a strong literacy foundation for content area teachers. Pre-service teachers emphasized their growing awareness of how literacy strategies can enhance student learning in their specific subject areas." (Orr, Kukner and Timmons, 2014)

This article gives an interesting insight to content area literacy and infusing literacy into science and math classes. I was particularly interested in the different ways the sample teachers incorporate literacy strategies into their teaching. They talk of expanding notions of what learning and assessment can look like in science and math. Teachers must have a solid content knowledge themselves to be able to express "the most useful forms of representation of those [topics to be taught in the subject area and] ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations-in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others. (Schulman, 1986, p. 9)

The article supports this week's activity and Willigham's video on content knowledge improving reading skill. The first section in 'content area literacy" says it all: "Content area literacy is the ability to acquire understandings of, and think critically about, new content in a discipline using reading, writing and multiple other forms..." (Draper, 2002; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Kane, 2011; McKenna & Robinson, 1990) The article as a whole supports and builds upon the importance of not only literacy but also what assessments could look like and what they should reflect. Lastly, "[b]ecause literacy is important in all subject areas, content area teachers can plat a significant role in their students' literacy development" (Alger, 2007, 2009; Draper, 2002; Lind, 2008, Heller & Greenleaf, 2007). Before students can learn the material, we as teachers must become familiar and competent enough in the content to not only explain the ideas but to show them and relate them to the students' lives and prior knowledge.

Many schools struggle when it comes to promoting adequate parental involvement in furnishing early literacy and the emergent reading skills of their youngest students. This is especially the case in many Title I schools, in which much of the student population represents portions of both the low-income and at-risk demographic. In order to help bridge this gap, the San Antonio Public School System has enacted their own Title I "Even Start" initiative, in which parents are better prepared to help instill and cultivate early literacy in their children, through their own education. Through this initiative, the school system is providing parents and students with joint: adult education, early childhood education, parent education, and literacy activities. By strengthening the literacy, parenting, and reading skills of parents, San Antonio is wagering that their student population will soon positively reflect this greater emphasis on emergent reading, early literacy, and family involvement.

This paper presents one step in a multi-step process to improve concurrent support of ELLs' academic literacy development. It explains how literacy can close the gap between ELL's and Native English students. It also explains the process to build up literacy in the classroom, explains the 5 components of literacy, and gives evidence that that without literacy, ELLs are less likely to master content.

It is a video on the how a science teacher Shelia Darjean Banks is incorporating the Common Core literacy standards into her physics course.

Early literacy skills begin developing at a young age, even before kids get to Kindergarten. Therefore it is vital that families consistently read with their children and expose them to text in the home. This article explains the benefits of early literacy in the home and outlines a plan for gaining more parent involvement by creating literacy bags for families to take home and use with their children. The research provided will not only help us to find answers to our exploratory question, but will also give us ideas for action plans that we can put into place in our own schools.

This article discusses academic vocabulary and how it can have an impact on the achievement gap.

This article discusses the relationship between achievement gaps and literacy gaps. As many students enter high school with low literacy skills, they become frustrated and struggle with the vocabulary needed to excel in math, science, social studies and other classes. As teachers, we need to help students to build the vocabulary needed to excel in all subject areas.

This article focuses on a potential root cause for the achievement gap, which the authors identified as the language and literacy gap. When students lack the language necessary to access the material in math, science, or other specialized classes; it can be difficult or overwhelming to try to bridge that gap in the classroom. Teachers need to do a better job of incorporating and explicitly teaching the academic language needed to be successful in the subject area in question. The process can start more general before leading to content specific "jargon," but the important thing is to expose students to the language frequently.

This article addresses the deeper connections between music education and bigger literacy goals. It especially discusses applications for improving literacy outcomes in secondary education students.

This article outlines many of the beliefs we discussed in our data meeting #2. Mostly the fact that children coming from low-income background often come to Kindergarten less prepared than their middle-class peers. For our exploratory question, we want to focus are research on early literacy and the impact of family involvement. This article will be a good resource as we build an argument of the importance of these factors in order to sway parents to do more with their children at home to foster literacy.

The Content Literacy Continuum (CLC) provides five levels of support for teaching reading and writing in the secondary content areas. Created by the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, the continuum enhances and embeds strategies in the classroom, and provides intensive training with support personnel for students reading below grade level.

The article shares a variety of ways to implement Early Literacy Skills into a Pre-K or Kindergarten classroom. The resource provides a number of engaging opportunities for students to choose special times to focus on particular skills in your classroom.

Teachers have long associated the benefits of Pre-K when it comes to preparing the youngest learners with early literacy and emergent reading skills. While some policy makers and families are still resistant when it comes to enrolling their very young children in preschool, there is no longer any confusion when it comes to the potential benefits. This policy brief from the National Institute for Early Education Research out of Rutgers, clearly lists and delineates the benefits of such programs when it comes to early literacy. Clear and well-organized, this policy summary and analysis helps to define and provide examples of both family and educational components that can better provide early literacy skills to children before they ever reach kindergarten.

When it comes to helping children with their first tentative steps into literacy and emergent reading skills, educational theorists and teachers alike have long advocated for greater parental involvement. Realistically speaking, it is parents who represent the first and constant source for early reading, and the encouragement needed to help even the youngest students persist in their very first experiences in reading. This article from edutopia helps to illuminate the fact that parents really need to read to their children in order to better prepare them for success in school and with the continually evolving skills associated with emergent reading. Given the fact that such parental involvement is the number one predictor of success in early literacy, the article does a nice job listing and elaborating on ways in which parents can read both to and with their children.

This article gives proactive teaching strategies to use for all ELL learners regardless of their proficiency level. It even provides a checklist that ELL students can use independently.

"Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners," by Colorin Colorado. Type of post: Strategies (in a sort of blog)…. This is a very good read for ESOL/ELL instructors. For one thing, it discusses some of the reading comprehension skills that can be taught and applied on a daily basis. Among them: * Summarizing * Sequencing * Inferencing * Comparing and contrasting * Drawing conclusions * Self-questioning * Problem-solving * Relating background knowledge * Distinguishing between fact and opinion * Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details Further, the article talks about why reading comprehension skills are particularly important for ELLs: "English language learners (ELLs) often have problems mastering science, math, or social studies concepts because they cannot comprehend the (language in) textbooks for these subjects. ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy, will benefit from explicit instruction of comprehension skills along with other skills." As an ESOL teacher (and support co-teacher), I can definitely relate to this notion. The article also discusses "Classroom strategies: Steps for explicitly teaching comprehension skills." Most ESOL teachers know that a lot of work on comprehension strategies; identifying important vocabulary; effective "partnering"; and other crucial steps mean the difference between having their ESOL students comprehend an important or main idea, versus having them suffer through difficult texts. (Even many so-called "native speakers" are often not good readers, and stand to gain a lot from instructional strategies outlined in this article. [If you took so-called "reading/literacy courses" to receive your teaching certification in any particular state, this will be clear to you.])

"Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners," by Colorin Colorado. Type of post: Strategies (in a sort of blog)…. This is a very good read for ESOL/ELL instructors. For one thing, it discusses some of the reading comprehension skills that can be taught and applied on a daily basis. Among them: * Summarizing * Sequencing * Inferencing * Comparing and contrasting * Drawing conclusions * Self-questioning * Problem-solving * Relating background knowledge * Distinguishing between fact and opinion * Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details Further, the article talks about why reading comprehension skills are particularly important for ELLs: "English language learners (ELLs) often have problems mastering science, math, or social studies concepts because they cannot comprehend the (language in) textbooks for these subjects. ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy, will benefit from explicit instruction of comprehension skills along with other skills." As an ESOL teacher (and support co-teacher), I can definitely relate to this notion. The article also discusses "Classroom strategies: Steps for explicitly teaching comprehension skills." Most ESOL teachers know that a lot of work on comprehension strategies; identifying important vocabulary; effective "partnering"; and other crucial steps mean the difference between having their ESOL students comprehend an important or main idea, versus having them suffer through difficult texts. (Even many so-called "native speakers" are often not good readers, and stand to gain a lot from instructional strategies outlined in this article. [If you took so-called "reading/literacy courses" to receive your teaching certification in any particular state, this will be clear to you.]) Colorado, C. Reading Comprehension Strategies for English ... - LD OnLine. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from http://www.ldonline.org/article/14342/ L

("Week 8" Group Members: Beth and Ruchel) The article explores a study conducted to see the patterns of within-group variability in the emergent literacy skills of preschoolers who are at risk for academic difficulties. The study can be used as a helpful resource to determine the relationships between early patterns of literacy performance and later reading achievement.

Teaching literacy in the high school content areas. Contains research and specific ideas for reading and writing in math, science, social studies, and English. Could be useful for working with students learning to write BCRs.

This article offers strategies to early childhood educators as they are instructing English Language Learners in language and literacy development. Highlights in this article include instructional strategies, explicit vocabulary activities, exposing students to multiple opportunities to speak with both peers and adults, and encouraging language development inside and outside of the classroom. These strategies are helpful in thinking about guiding my ELL students to improve their oral language skills.

Current middle-school standards require students to operate at levels of literacy never before expected of 10- to 14-year-olds. This monograph, written for teachers, addresses literacy development in middle-school students, stressing the crucial role of teachers.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.1.b Support claim(s) with clear reasons and relevant evidence, using credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

This article talks about the use of technology in the classroom to help student in our culture and our society.