In the past, teachers that teach subjects other than English have been a bit 'hesitant' to fully embrace teaching explicit reading strategies to their students for fear that it might take away from the content specific to their subjects. Many think that teaching reading strategies will slow down their pacing, or even overpower the themes and big ideas of their curriculum.
If executed properly, though, integrating specific reading strategies into the content areas should AUGMENT the curriculum, and in no way take away from it. And the benefits far outweigh the risks. Would a strengthened ability to read help a student to decode a word problem in math? Would it allow him more confidence in piecing together information on a DBQ in social studies? And would it aide her in making meaning from a complex lab report? The answers are all obviously yes, but we sometimes forget just how much reading plays a part in a student's success in all areas of an integrated curriculum.
Because of this reality, it can NOT just be up to the ELA teacher to teach reading. It is the onus of every teacher in a student's academic life to teach that student to read in very specific, strategic ways; ways that will help that student read through the lens of that content area. Do bioligists read differently from cartographers? Are journalists asked to navigate different texts than engineers? Of course! The only thing that reading has in common across all the differing areas of a curriculum is its direct impact on a student's relative success.
If reading is a necessity in each subject, and if each subject's reading is different, how can we make sure that the ENTRY POINTS we are accessing reading through fit the material and the nature of the subject? Since the teaching of reading is such a complex and dynamic process, we have to be ordered and precise in how we lead students through it. Introducing students to reading in science is going to look vastly different than it would in social studies. The same goes for the difference in student populations: low-performing students need different entry points, like phonics work and decoding, than do higher performing students, who might be ready to think about comprehension and metacognition.
So the question is, then, what are the most pressing needs of students in the different subjects we teach, when first learning how to read in them? How should they be led into this process?
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A lot of teachers around our building are already incorporating reading instruction into the content areas. The challenge is now sharing and systematizing those practices.
I think that our students need our teacher teams to be on the same page and to deliver meaningful PDP (pre/during/post) strategies in the classrooms--across the content areas. Then teachers can analyze student work, plan together and deliver high-quality instruction.
In order to effectively integrate reading in the Science classroom and support our students' needs, Science teachers need more support and guidance on how to teach reading skills in the Science classroom. Grade-level interdisciplinary planning and professional development can help facilitate this process.
Mr. Spevack-
When you say "sharing"--do you mean teaching strategies? Sharing student work samples? Please clarify.
I think that students will need to develop their science vocabulary. I think that utilizing read alouds to model how to use context clues to figure out meanings would be quite beneficial and is often not done in a science classroom.
Students need to know how to access the documents, texts, vocabulary in ALL their classes. The most pressing need now, as I see it, is giving students tangible tools to use to do this. It is one thing to say "make an inference" to a student reading a class novel, but how do we show students what making inferences looks like? How do we build our students' understanding of a text- so they can ultimately make inferences - by using the PDP strategies? Right now, students are not being given the strategies in all their classes to be able to master the frameworks of Vocab, Focus, Organization, etc.
I think that because a large number of our student population is raised in a home by a parent who speaks another language other than English, vocabulary introduction is key to teaching reading at our school. Many times I am surprised that many students do not understand word meanings. I can count on two hands the times I've heard that some other students "broke" their paper". I think that all teachers must assume nothing as far as prior knowledge before introducing any reading passage or introducing any reading strategy.
To clarify, sharing might entail teachers visiting each others classrooms and instructional experts modeling reading strategies during content meetings.
I believe it is important that students really need to understand what they are reading inorder to answer extended responses correctly. Incorporating simple things like vocabulary, graphic organizers,modeling answers and highlighting relevant key words are strategies that we can incorporate on a daily basis. This is something that is being done by many teachers at this point.
I believe after the Math Exam, math teachers will be open to any and all suggestions.
The fact that teachers from different subject areas are having this conversation is a very good sign for the school. The 'conversation' is just as important as the 'coordination'.
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