“…all teachers have to teach all kinds of reading. You give
out instructions for homework, type questions on the computer screen in the classroom,
explain the comments you write on your students tests… [and] students use word
processing to write explanations of how they worked a problem.” (Pearson,
p.56). Reading is in everything we do all day long. I have tried to start integrating other types of literacy assessments into science and social studies through writing projects in place of paper and pencil tests. For one of my units in social studies I have the student write a letter from Christopher Columbus, Queen Isabella, or King Ferdinand to one of the others about the voyages that the King and Queen funded. I have a couple vocabulary activities that I like to do for science and social studies to help the kids better understand the words. One is a vocabulary tournament bracket where all of the words for the unit/chapter are listed on left and the students have to debate which word is better until they get down to one word on the bracket. It's interesting to hear why they think some words are more important than others.
Sometimes I feel like I am teaching communication arts for
most of the school day. Literacy is integrated into science and social studies
through the non-fiction text that the students are reading to gain information.
At the beginning of the year I teach non-fiction text features so that the
students can get the most out of their text books. It always surprises me how
many of them don’t know that the captions, charts, and pictures are supporting
details to the text with a lot of information.
Is this something we are not teaching well at the lower grades or are
they just starting to get introduced to a lot of non-fiction text in fifth
grade?
I agree that non-fiction is a difficult genres for students. I teach 3rd grade and in our building we are required to have a weekly non-fiction read/activities due to the fact that this is consistently our area of weakness on MAP testing. I like your idea of using letters as an assessment. I have done this before and it really allows you to ee the depth of knowledge a student has on the material vs. a multiple choice or fill in the blank type assessment.
ReplyDeleteI've really been trying to get away from those types of assessments, unfortunately that is the way the MAP test is formatted so they need exposure and practice with it.
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