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Morgan Perkins
Case Study
EDUC 340: Literacy and the Learner
April 29, 2014


























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Part I: All Teachers are Teachers of Reading

Literacy is, in my opinion, one of the most important skills that children learn
in school. It is the base of all education and is not something that is left solely for
English teachers to teach. Helping students to become literate doesnt necessarily
mean teaching them how to read or write, but instead, as the Literacy Matters
chapter states, reading, writing, talking, and viewing are tools that students use to
learn with texts in content areas (7). Every teacher has a content area that they
specialize in, and this is what they teach their students. How they teach their
students is where literacy comes in. There are endless possibilities for including
literacy in every content area, all which are important because becoming literate in
a content area requires understanding how to use reading, writing, talking, and
viewing to learn.
My experiences at Wellington Middle School helped me to understand how
every teacher is a teacher of literacy. When I went to the school every Tuesday,
every teacher in every content area incorporated some type of literacy strategy into
their lesson plan. I was lucky enough to see this happen Social Studies, Spanish,
Science, and a higher needs classroom. It was great to see that literacy isnt confined
to just simple reading and writing, but that there are so many different ways to
apply it to learning. Literacy can be executed visually, verbally, technologically, and
most commonly through writing. What is so great about literacy techniques today is
that even writing doesnt have to be done in a standard paper format, but can be
done in even more effective and fun ways that really ignite the students learning.
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Two of my most memorable experiences at Wellington Middle School
happened during my time in Mrs. Holmans science classroom and Mrs. Berkners
Social Studies class. Before seeing Mrs. Holman apply literacy strategies to science I
was having a hard time understanding how every teacher is a teacher of literacy.
Science has always seemed to me to be a content area that is very structured and
formula based. However, watching her literacy strategies opened my eyes to how
every teacher is not only responsible, but also fully capable of being a teacher of
literacy. My first time in her classroom I observed the strategy of questioning.
Costas three levels of questioning involve three different types of questions. Level
one is factual questions. Level two is interpretive questions. Level three is
reflective and open-ended questions. Answering these three levels of questions in
any content area really helps to promote a higher level of thinking. She
incorporated it into her class, and even took it one step further by having her
students come up with different questions about the unit using the three levels
method, and then present and answer the questions to the classroom. This activity
had students thinking about everything they had learned in the unit, it had them
expressing their knowledge in a different form, and it required meaningful thinking
to create questions at all levels. Watching the students share the questions they had
come up with was great. I could tell that they had put a lot of effort into thinking
about the questions they had created and this helped to reinforce what they learned.
It also challenged them to see the material in a different way, and express this
through writing and also verbally.
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Teaching literacy in Social Studies seemed obvious to me before observing
Mrs. Berkners class. I assumed that it would be done through reading a text and
then writing about it in a paper. I could not have been more wrong, and Mrs.
Berkners lesson plan involving the strategy of text connections showed me how
effective and fun literacy can be in Social Studies. The lesson had students read Abe
Lincolns Battle of Gettysburg speech and then fill out a text connection on it. The
students had a piece of paper with four squares that asked how they could connect
the speech to themselves, the other texts, to the world, and then there was a space
for them to draw a picture that represented the speech to them. The reason I loved
this activity was because it involved reading, writing, drawing, and then a discussion
afterwardsyet it still seemed simple and fun. Students were reflecting, using prior
knowledge, and expressing in different ways how the text connected to other things.
I feel like this was such a creative activity that stimulated so much thought and
discussion, and demonstrated how literacy can be included into a history class.
While I had several more experiences that taught me how every teacher is a
teacher of literacy, these are the two that were the most memorable to me. Literacy
is so important in learning, and it does not matter what content area the students
are in, because using reading, writing, talking, and viewing is how students become
the most effective learners in any content area.
Part II: How Will I Use What I Learned in Social Studies
While there are numerous ways to teach literacy in social studies, I have
narrowed it down to my five favorite literacy strategies and lesson plans. These five
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strategies are semantic mapping, text connections, RAFT, character mapping, and
questioning.
Semantic mapping is a great visual strategy for the extension of knowledge
by displaying in categories words related to one another (Orswell, Recitation).
There are several different forms of the semantic map that can be used for a wide
variety of purposes. I would use the bubble map at the end of a unit as part of a
review. Lets say that we had just finished up a unit on westward expansion and
were reviewing for a test. I would have students make Westward Expansion the
target word in the middle of their map. Then they would write out major words,
themes, or people that are associated with westward expansion of the United States.
Once they have completed their semantic map I would then have them work in
groups and all compare and contrast their maps and decide what they all have in
common and what they believe are the most important components of the map.
Then the groups would create a map together on large pieces of paper and present it
to the class. This would help the students review all of the material and get an idea
of what everyone else had in mind and thought was important for the unit!
The text connections strategy, where students connect a text to themselves,
to another text, and to the world, makes reading more meaningful. Research shows
that students are more engaged when they are utilizing prior knowledge while they
are reading (Orswell, Recitation). When students are able to personalize
information that they learn they are further activating the areas of the brain that
help form memories (Willis, 10). History involves reading many different types of
texts, so this strategy will be extremely useful for my social studies classes. One text
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that I think is important in understanding American history is Chief Josephs
surrender speech to the US soldiers. I would have students read the speech by
themselves and then pair up with a partner. Once with a partner, they would decide
how the text relates to another text, to themselves, and to the world. When making
these connections, I would ask them to think about how this is similar to other
surrender speeches, how it is similar to anything theyve experienced in life, and
how it is similar to other instances of oppression around the world. I would then
have all the partner pairs to talk about why this speech is important and how it
reflects our treatment of the Native Americans in the past. Then I would initiate a
class discussion on all they had thought about and what they wrote down.
The RAFT strategy allows students to write creatively and think about a topic
from a different point of view. There are several ways a RAFT can be done, but one
fun and creative way I would use it in my class is in a propaganda poster format.
The students role as a writer would be to act as if they are the US government
during WWII. The audience that they are writing to is the US citizens. The format is
a propaganda poster. The topic is they are to convince the US citizens, via a
propaganda poster, of why the United States should get involved in WWII. I believe
this would be great so the students could see what, if any, resistance the United
States had in joining the war. Also, it is a creative way to learn about WWII and
practice writing and creativity since it is in a poster format!
The next strategy I chose is character mapping. I believe this can be utilized
in many ways in a history class since students will constantly be learning about
different historical figures. I would like to use the character map in social studies
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for the students to compare different groups in history. The Civil War and the North
and the South would be a great way to do this. The students would fill out two
different maps, filling out one as if they were a citizen of the North and filling out the
other out as if they were a citizen of the South. This would allow them to take on the
different points of views of both sides of the war. This would be an easy and fun
way to think about the different aspects of the war and why the North and South
were so divided. It would allow them to see the different things that were important
to both sides, and ultimately why tensions were so high and what led to the war.
The last literacy strategy, but certainly not least, is Costas levels of
questioning strategy. According to AVID, by asking higher levels of questions,
students deepen their knowledge and create connections to the materials being
presented. I believe it would be useful and enjoyable to use these levels of
questioning for a game of jeopardy. After a unit has been learned I would want
each student to write down two questions per level of questioning and turn them
into me. This would help them reinforce what they had learned during the unit and
think about what they might be tested on. I would then use these questions to
create the jeopardy game and use it as a review tool for the students. The level one
questions would be worth 100 points, level two questions worth 200 and 300
points, and the level three questions worth 400 and 500 points. The day before a
test we would play this jeopardy game. My hope would be that it fosters learning
and helps students review all the material for the test. I think using questioning for
a review is useful because students really get an idea of the material from all
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aspects. They would be presented with concrete questions, questions that require
analyzing, and questions that require their opinion and creativity.
I have learned more than I ever thought I could about why literacy is
important and how every educator is a teacher of literacy. The five strategies that
were just presented are the strategies that I found the most interesting and effective
ways to apply literacy to social studies. As teachers it is our responsibility to ensure
that students are constantly applying literacy in every way they can, and learning to
do so in all the different ways it can be done. I know that as a teacher I will always
be teaching literacy in my classroom, and I am excited to keep learning new and
innovative ways to do so.













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References
(2014, March 11). Semantic Mapping and Compare and Contrast. Recitation. Lecture
conducted from Nicole Orswell, Wellington.
(2014, April 1). Text Connections. Recitation. Lecture conducted from Nicole
Orswell, Wellington.
Costa's Levels of Questioning. Curriculum Resource Guide. Retrieved April 22, 2014,
from http://blog.adambabcock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Costa-
House-Levels-of-Questions.pdf
Vacca, R., Vacca, J. A., & Mraz, M. Literacy Matters. Literacy & The Learner. Boston:
Pearson Learning Solutions.
Willis, J. (2006). Research-based strategies to ignite student learning: insights from a
neurologist and classroom teacher. Alexandria, Va.: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.