Final Synthesis Blog

Before this class, I never really considered literacy and developing literacy skills in the classroom. I thought literacy and reading was covered in language arts, and in classes that were science, math, and social studies content was covered. I thought this because it was the experience I had from as early as I can remember in school to fairly recently, actually. I don’t even recall hearing or learning about things like formative assessment until late in undergrad.

            The two activities that were probably most influential to my developing understanding of literacy instruction and skills in content area classes were think alouds and the book club. I had some prior knowledge of think alouds and had read research of them being implemented more and more into the classroom during my time in educational psychology, but I had never witnessed a think aloud until this semester. The reason I say think alouds were really influential for me understanding literacy in a content area was my experience with reading in contents like science and math can be pretty challenging. I know I would have benefitted from think alouds in some of the science class I took. Think alouds also helped me realize that reading in the different content areas is area is also very different. Clicking through a science text would look much different than clicking through a math or social studies text. The book club was influential because it showed a way of incorporating literacy in content area classrooms over the course of a year. Where think alouds are more of a way of teaching literacy skills, the book club is a way of sustaining interest in literacy, and I hope to be able to incorporate both of these activities into my classroom in the future.

            Some other activities and assignments I thought informative, fun, and engaging during the semester was creating the podcast and doing the strategy lesson. Creating the podcast was so much fun and a really engaging activity. The idea of having engaging activities is something I will carry with me after this class because that is really our goal as educators; to engage our students in the material so they think critically about the material and enjoy the material. The strategy lesson was memorable for two reasons. The first reason was that I just really enjoyed the strategy we discussed and am always appreciative of the opportunity to grow as a speaker and educator. The second reason is that I think the strategy of using post-it notes is such a useful and underutilized strategy. Using a strategy like post-it notes allows students to take shorter notes, but they also practice analyzing a text and selecting the most important ideas and concepts from a task, an important part of improving literacy.

            I want to conclude with a few thoughts I have about universal design in the classroom. The TED talk on the myth of the “average” student resonated with me in that I assumed there was an average student, or at least that there were students performed at an average level. After the video, I realized that it is possible to cater to all students, and it is possible to improve the literacy skills of all students. This semester has showed me why literacy is important in content-area classrooms and how to cultivate in the classroom.  

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