My experience is primarily with secondary teachers and my personal bias is that some HS and MS teachers in content areas think they don't have to teach reading. It's sometimes difficult for me to stay calm when a teacher that says something like, "I teach Biology. I DON'T teach reading!" (deep sigh)
Teachers can really help to engage readers by reading aloud and modeling thinking (metacognition). These are often missing elements at the secondary level. Secondary teachers can sometimes be guilty of just having kids read textbooks silently and then they wonder why the kids "don't get it". So, I think there's plenty of room for teachers to model good reading and then talk about "thinking" during reading with students. I'd like to point everyone to a great source of information on our sister organization Mosaic's website. There is an awesome "Tools" page at <http://www.readinglady.com/mosaic/tools/tools.htm>. You might be interested in the Staff Development items on this web page especially * Ellin Keene's "What To Look For In Instructional Practices" * Metacognition ideas/thoughts from Deb * "Exploring the Cueing Systems" activity by Elouise There are also some great resources at The Literacy Toolbelt website http://literacytoolbelt.tripod.com/. If you click on "Fab Five" there's a nice PowerPoint by Marzano on "Building Background Knowledge". Lastly, I see many teachers with heart in the right place in trying to teach vocab, but making students copy definitions, use the word in a sentence, and complete a "hidden word" game are probably not going to cut it. Our good friend John Norton send out a link last week in MiddleWeb's "Of Particular Interest" bulletin to a site - "Teaching Vocabulary to Adolescents to Improve Comprehension" <http://www.readingonline.org/articles/curtis>. This features excellent researched-based methods with some really nice activities and assessment tools to support the major points of the article. Good Luck, Keith Mack [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.literacyworkshop.org _______________________________________________ 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
