"A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades." <[email protected]> on Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 11:19 AM -0500 wrote: >Secondly, I find myself focusing on the specific strategies for adolescent >literacy outlined on pages 6-7 and focusing on: > - motivation > - comprehension > - critical thinking > - assessment >Again, what are your thoughts and reactions here? Where are your schools >particularly successful? Where do your schools need to be strengthened? >Are there other specific areas of strategies to promote adolescent >literacy which your schools are doing well and which aren't mentioned in >this article?
Hi! As I look through the article, I find - of course! - my school doing some things really well, needing reinforcement in others. I think that critical thinking is probably our greatest strength. Looking at their suggestions, we probably incorporate two and two-halves of their four. My instinct is, we still have several days on this discussion, so I won't do a whole long multi-part analysis straight off. I want to focus first on something this group has touched on before, teaching literacy across the curriculum. I think my school is actually pretty up to speed on realizing that literacy instruction needs to happen across the curriculum even though the specifics will vary from discipline to discipline. We're certainly well aware that kids need to be learning vocabulary in all classes, and vocabulary learning techniques that work in one class will work in another. However, I also think more cross-discipline awareness of the "Mosaic of Thought" strategies would probably strengthen our instruction further by giving us a common framework and vocabulary. I think there are teachers who would be happy to give more strategic instruction if only they knew how. How does this compare to your schools' experience? Has anyone had success with using the "Mosaic" or other strategies across the curriculum? Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
