Literacy in the content areas

¶ … lessons were observed, one of which made some use online lesson plan activities, the other two of which used class discussion and individual exercises. One used group activities. The content areas that were addressed were reinforcing or reactivating prior knowledge, writing, and assessing reading comprehension.

Reinforcing or activating prior knowledge

The lesson "Sniffy and Fluffy have an Adventure" was a computer-based assignment that was meant to reinforce or reactivate already existing student reading and informational knowledge. This is important for students because it instills confidence within students as readers and encourages them to decipher meaning through assessing words in context. The lesson is designed to show students that they know more than they think about reading. The lesson also reinforces certain computer skills, like reading on a screen, reading in sequence, and using a mouse.

The story takes the student through various steps of a story about a frog and a fish. The lesson plan's subject matter thus draws upon student affection for animals as well as tries to build their skills and confidence as readers. "Once upon a time there lived a frog that lived upon a very soft lily pad," reads the first frame of the computer-generated story. This is followed by a series of multiple choice answers. "The frog: a) lived in a pond; b) ate bugs; c) had many friends; d) liked to sing. The children must use their preexisting knowledge and the knowledge that is given to read the options and select the fact that the clues in the first sentence warn the reader that the frog lived in a pond. The other options are meant to be tempting for the student, as the student is likely to know that frogs eat bugs and sing, but the clues of the first paragraph hint only where the frog lived. This encourages students to draw upon their knowledge that lily pads are located in ponds, but not to add things to the story that are not there, like the frog's unstated but assumed affection for bugs or singing. This type of lesson is also useful in preparing students for the type of assessment they may encounter on standardized tests.

Although the fun subject of the lesson, its interactive quality, its effective use of technology, and its reinforcement of skills critical for success on tests as well as in reading indicate that the lesson has many strengths there are some weaknesses inherent in the assignment structure as well. First of all, an interactive lesson plan on the computer does not engage the student with one another, which is one of the purposes of the real world classroom environment. The students could have been assigned to use the computer terminals in pairs, which would have made the lesson more effective. Second of all, students are likely to spend a great deal of time using the computer at home. Even for students from less technologically astute homes, encouraging a more kinesthetic and imaginative engagement with a text seems wise.

It might have been better to have used this recognition setting initially, and then reconvened as a class to do more fill-in -- the blank answers together. However, the lesson plan did accomplish its objective in the sense that students who did select the incorrect answer, for example, those students who selected 'eat bugs' because frogs eat bugs, without closely reading the passage, did receive extra help from the teacher, who circulated around the room and answered student questions about their responses.

Students also seemed more technically fluent in using the computer at the end of the day, although most of the students already seemed to be fairly well aware of how to operate the school computers.

Written assignments

One key component of student literacy is being able to use the written language to express personal ideas about life or a written work of literature. Journaling and writing creative responses to reading assignments is obviously one way to help students engage in this type of creative activity. However, it is also important to encourage students to leave their expressive comfort zones and engage with new forms of wordplay and written expression, like poetry. In one lesson, the teacher used writing to reinforce student's understanding and appreciation of poetry and encourage written expression. The lesson plan involved the use of metaphors, similes, and onomatopoeias.

First, the teacher explained what these devices are by citing different examples from cliches familiar to the student, like soft as silk. She also explained what onomatopoeias were by using examples from comic books, like "Pow!" when there is an explosion in an adventure and "woof!" when a dog barks. Then she read a variety of poems with examples for the children to hear. The teacher paired the students up with worksheets that asked students to come up with metaphors and similes for different familiar objects. This followed with a section that listed many familiar words, and the children had to circle which words were onomatopoeias and which were not 'sound words.' Then there was a list of different sentences, and the student had to identify if they were metaphors or similes.

The teacher went over the worksheet in class, and students were able to share their findings, and debate whether certain phrases were metaphors or similes, or if certain words were in fact onomatopoeias. The teacher gave the final assignment, to produce a poem on a subject of the student's own choosing that made use of onomatopoeias, metaphors, and similes. The students began to work on their poems in class and were instructed to finish the poem at home. The next day, they would read them aloud in class to one another.

Students seemed engaged in the assignment, especially thinking up creative ways to use similes and metaphors. The one weakness was that when students were paired to work in groups, sometimes their discussion would go off-track, or they would try to come up with a funny phrase that was not a simile or a metaphor. While making mistakes is part of the creative process, the teacher could have circulated around the room better during the group phase of the assignment, to make sure that students stayed on track. or, the teacher could have used a more directive way of pairing the students together, such as pairing stronger students with less strong readers, or simply trying to avoid allowing friends to work together.

Assessing reading comprehension

Assessing reading comprehension is a critical part of teaching, given that most standardized tests revolve around the use of student reading comprehension in some form, as well as the fact that students must use this skill everyday, in tasks as simple as reading a newspaper to reading the ingredients or directions on a label. In this lesson plan, students were asked to identify 'facts vs. opinions' in an essay that the teacher read to the class. Students were shown a copy of the essay on a clear transparent overhead and the teacher highlighted facts with a yellow erasable marker and opinions with a pink marker. The students debated in the classroom whether certain sentences were facts or opinions. Then, the students were given various photocopies of readings from everyday life, like sections from novels, newspapers, and advertisements, and asked to identify certain phrases as facts or opinions. The students were given worksheets to do at home that identified certain phrases within a reading passage as a fact or opinion.