Subject Area Reading

Content Literacy RED 4325/5339

Subject Related Reading

Dr. Helen Robbins

Dr. Maria Tsalikis

What is Content Literacy?

• Content Literacy is Discipline literacies and refers to how we use literacy in specific content areas

• Math, Science, and social studies are examples of discipline literacies

• Teaching from a disciplinary approach we teach literacy practices particular to the discipline being studied

• For example, reading in science requires disciplinary literacies that differ from those needed to read poetry or historical information

Content Area Courses and Textbooks

• Many adolescents have difficulty reading textbooks

• This may be traced back to problems with decoding—something that needed to be learned in elementary school

• Other problems may be poorly developed vocabularies and / or a lack of background knowledge (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko & Hurwitz, 1999)

• Schools continue to use content area textbooks, even though the average high school student is reading below the level of many of the texts (Allington, 2002)

Content Area Courses and Textbooks • To address this issue, Biancarosa and Snow (2006) recommend

explicit teaching of reading comprehension and writing across the curriculum, in addition to instruction in how to learn from texts

•Motivation and more opportunities for small-group instruction is also helpful

• There are more than 8 million students in grades 4 – 12 who are struggling to comprehend (Reading Next—A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy, Biancarosa and Snow (2006)

•Meeting these literacy needs require a comprehensive approach

Possible Instructional Improvements • Explicit teaching of comprehension strategies

• Use reading and writing into content areas

•Motivate students---provide opportunities for self-selection of research/project topics, and encourage students to represent their thinking in different ways

•Work in groups

• Use multiple types and level of text—theme related trade books

• Intensive writing—integrate writing in content areas

• Use technology to motivate and to inform

Reference

• McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content area reading: Teaching and learning for college and career readiness. Boston, MA: Pearson.