Good Content Area Literacy Instruction: What Does it Look Like to Raise the Bar?

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Good Content Area Literacy Instruction What
Does it Look Like to Raise the Bar?

• Elizabeth Birr Moje
• University of Michigan
• Alliance for Excellent Education
• Adolescent Literacy Symposium
• November 7, 2005
• www.umich.edu/moje

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Good Content Literacy Instruction What Does it
Look Like?

• Draws from students current knowledge and
  literacy practices
• Apprentices students into disciplinary/content
  area knowledge and literacy practice
• Attends to the differences and challenges
  presented by texts within and across
  disciplines/content areas

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Student knowledge and literacy practices

• Adolescents do read and write outside of school

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Student knowledge and literacy practices

• What they read and write is very different from
  what we ask them to read and write in school and,
  in particular, in content area classrooms
• Content is different
• Structure is different
• Rhetorical devices are different
• Consider the difference between a poem or journal
  entry about ones feelings and a data-based
  argument for or against a required program

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Student writing out of school

• Detroit
• Motor city of the world
• Automaker and designer
• A player of cars and casinos
• A city of violence
• They tell me your the 1 murder city
• For I have seen your people and streets.
• They tell me you are feared and violent
• And I have seen the results of that with
• My friends who have passed away.
• For the people who want to show me the
• Good side, Ill show them my reality.
• The view that only people who live here see and
  hear.
• Gang violence, gun shots, drug dealing, rappists
• Prostitutes, crackheads, bumps, thieves, burn
  houses,
• And dirty streets.
• All of this hides under those beautiful buildings
  
• In Downtown.
• Under the unknown places of the camera hides

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Student writing for school

• State a claim.
• Use at least one piece of data from the data
  provided.
• Use a core democratic value to support your
  argument.
• Use at least one idea or principle from one of
  the social studies (economics, history, civics,
  etc.) to support your argument.

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Student writing for school

• I think middle school students should be
  required to participate in a community service
  program because it make them more responsible and
  teaches them what work realy is.
• Another reason I think this is because it will
  help them to be successful and not to die as a
  teen gang member. Some people have thrown away
  their lives in gangs this community service
  program will help prevent that by keeping
  students away from gangs and away from drugs.
• The Core Democratic Value that I choose is
  Common good, I chose this value because it states
  that we should protect and provide safty for our
  community as well as for anyone who lives here.
  Also because the community service program
  reduces the gang killings and increases the safty
  around us. Community servics are when students
  help around their community and to help older
  neighbors cut the lawn, rake the leafs, or shovel
  the snow.
• I have learned that gangs are no good they bring
  nothing but trouble. All gangs are just about
  which gang is better the only things they do are
  fight, steal and cause trouble. Here in Detroit
  there have been alot of teens being killed
  because they were involved in gangs.

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Student writing for school

• I believe that middle school students should
  perform of community service.
• I believe that students are more likely to
  support mandatory community service programs
  after doing community service themselves.
  According to public opinion survey 2 part B,
  after doing the community service 44 more
  students favored it then opposed it. The data
  supports my position by I think that we should
  favor it, 64 which is more then half of the
  students thought so as well after doing
  community service.
• According to the core democratic value, Common
  good states that individual citizens have the
  commitment and motivation that they accept their
  obligation to promote the welfare of the
  community. The public or common good, provide
  for common defense, provide for safety and
  secuirity of others, provide the general welfare,
  and insure domestic tranquility. It supports my
  opinion by doing community service is a common
  good.
• There-for I believe that students should
  participate in doing community service, Not only
  those it make you feel good, but it also helps
  others. We provide them the help that they need
  when we do community service.

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Apprenticing students into content area knowledge
and literacy practice

• Mentioning ? Learning
• Repeated opportunities to read and write ideas in
  oral and written language
• Ideas generated in the practices of the content
  area
• Scientific explanation writing
• Generation of rubric using models
• ..\Moje rubric.Nov 7.part 2 of 2.pps
• Engagement in scientific investigations
• Peer review (e.g., poster displays, museum walks)

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Differences and challenges in texts

• Expository and narrative everyday and
  disciplinary
• Text structures
• Cause/Effect
• Problem/Solution
• Proposition/Support
• Sequence/Process/Chronology
• Comparison
• Description/Definition
• Enumeration
• Exemplification
• Different ways of writing in different domains
  and for different audiences
• Ways of using data
• Word usage
• Sentence structures

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Good Content Literacy Instruction What Does It
Require of Teachers?

• Recognition that disciplinary cultures and
  disciplinary learning are complex, thus teachers
  need
• Knowledge of content
• Knowledge of practices and texts associated with
  producing that content knowledge
• Time
• Apprenticeship Process
• Mentioning ? Learning
• Ability to assess what students have learned
  about both content and literacy
• Achievement ? Learning
• High-stakes tests ? Instructional assessment

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Good Content Literacy Instruction What Does It
Require?

• Recognition that youth cultures and youth
  development are complex, thus teachers need
• Understanding of adolescent development
• Understanding of the roles of culture and social
  interaction in learning
• Opportunities to learn about particular students
  experiences, backgrounds, and uses of texts
• Skill in scaffolding students navigation across
  everyday and content-area discourse and learning
  communities

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For more information . . .
Making Makin It Possible William T. Grant
Foundation
Social and Cultural Influences on Adolescent
Literacy Development NICHD/OVAE/OSERS HD046115-01
Textual Tools Study Group IQWST National Science
Foundation
Advancing Literacy in the Disciplines Carnegie
Corporation of New York

• www.umich.edu/moje