I felt that this class made me realize that teaching literacy is a responsibility of every teacher in the school. Not one person can be in charge of all the knowledge a student needs to be successful. Regardless of content area, teachers need to pitch in to make sure that our students, especially in the inner city, are prepared for what awaits them once they leave our school.
I liked the online aspect to this class. As one who teaches during the day and then after school in a tutoring program, it was nice not to have to be physically in a classroom each week.
I think that I have done pretty well in this course, especially since I have never taught literacy before.
I thought our instructor was good, but I would have liked to have seen updated grades sooner. Some of the assignments I turned in back in March still have not been posted.

Response to Literacy Observation

I really enjoyed this experience because I got to see how one teaches literacy to students. As I am in the gym all day, I don’t get to see a lot of quality classroom instruction and by observing a 6th grade language arts teacher teach a poetry lesson to students I got to see firsthand how having a strong grasp of the material can make a lesson more enthusiastic. When kids see that their teacher has a passion for their material, they are more likely to be engaged and learning. I witnessed the teacher using technology by giving her students the opportunity to research poems and topics for students to create their own work. Technology is something that I feel is vitally important for kids to be able to use, so it was good to see another teacher using it during the course of her lesson.

Science Literacy Plan

This unit was much easier for me to create than the math unit plan, because I have a much better grasp of the subject material. Science is also a very interesting topic for me, because studying nature and the life in it has always been a passion of mine. Creating lessons where students are actually able to explore and environment and be able to reach out and touch what they see can be a very inspiring and motivating way to teach and that is what I feel I have accomplished with this unit plan.

Math Unit Plan

Wanting to use teacher collaboration, I had my students work with the librarian to select books to read each night. Students would then share the number of books they read each night with their classmates and the students would transform that data into a series of different graphs to help illustrate the number of books each student read. This unit plan was fairly difficult for me to grasp. I am not a classroom teacher and not particularly good at math, so creating a lesson for students that would incorporate math and literacy was fairly challenging. The social studies and content unit plans were much easier for me to create, but I believe that this unit plan is a good start.

Response to Music Literacy Lesson Plan

This unit really made me think about incorporating literacy into my physical education classes. Dance is obviously a very good area in PE for using music and by creating a unit plan they had students use the internet to research dances from different cultures students were able to use technology and understand the different streams of information presented to them. These are two of the 21st century literacy strategies that are I feel are very important for students to understand and utilize as they progress through school. I also wanted to incorporate as many strategies as possible from my toolkit, so I used teacher collaboration, literacy in my content area and had students discuss their findings.

The Right to Literacy Education in Secondary Schools

The Right to Literacy Education in Secondary Schools

This chapter was very interesting to me as it describes how literacy can be incorporated into mathematics, science, social studies and language arts. As a non-classroom teacher, it is nice to see how this is done. We are always told “you have to incorporate reading and writing into your curriculum”, but no one has ever shown me how. While this book doesn’t talk specifically about physical education, it does show me that literacy has been used successfully in classes outside of language arts. As a teacher who cares deeply about student achievement, it encourages me to use literacy in my classroom.

The item I liked most about this chapter was the parts in the social studies and language arts sections where the teacher said that they were attempting to make their students better citizens. Instead of just spoon feeding the students the information, they encouraged the students to questions everything that they read, to find meaning and value in the material they were presented. Students were also engaged in an active discussion. Instead of becoming a human computer, they thought for themselves and examined what they thought and why they thought. It is easy to see that their students were much more motivated in these classrooms. It is refreshing, because educating young people for life was the reason that I became a teacher. These sections make me want to be a better teacher.

I strongly believe that literacy is a civil right. Many people say that inner city students can’t or won’t learn. In what I have seen in my short career is that is simply not true, or worse, a copout. Our students are hungry to learn and if we can empower them to not only understand what they have read, but to think critically about it, we will have given them a tool that they can use the rest of their life. Therefore, literacy education, as it appears in section II, needs to be incorporated, not just into the core academics, but into classroom like mine. For example, my students could read articles about sporting events or athletes and report back to the group regarding what they found. Or they could choose an athlete that has had personal trouble and give their feelings about that topic. This would make them think critically and evaluate their heroes. Much like the core subject teachers, the resource teachers need to work together to show our students that literacy matters in every area of school. By doing so, these students may gain a greater respect and understanding of each subject they encounter in school.

You Gotta Be The Book

The introduction of “You Gotta Be The Book” gives a description of the author’s teaching career, describing the change from teaching high school to middle school remedial reading classes and the challenges that doing so presented. With a class full of students who did not enjoy reading, the author could no longer avoid or ignore students who had a great dislike for literacy. The author attempted different strategies to engage the reader, such as newspapers and comic books, but the students did not become engaged in reading. The author felt that students did not know how to find personal meaning in the literacy texts that they were reading. Students told the author that it didn’t matter what they read, because teachers only cared about how they answered questions after the reading. The author tells us that how we teach literacy has to change, that students become engaged readers because they feel a personal connection and meaning to what they are reading.

The first chapter of the book, the author describes the way literacy is taught today. With the bottom-up approach (i.e. teaching phonics and understanding of what words mean) being very prevalent. The New Critical orientation, basically a bottom-up approach, is the common approach to literacy education. In this approach, students are asked questions about what they have read and are expected to answer them the “right way”. Students are taught not to give a personal response, but that there is only one right answer a question about a text. This, the author states, is the reason many students don’t engage in reading. The author feels that a more top down approach is better. Teach students to search for personal meaning in text and they will respond more positively and engaged in their own literacy education.

After reading these chapters, it is clear to me that we spend too much time telling students what the right answers are and not enough time encouraging them to search for their own meaning. A student who is constantly told that their interpretation is incorrect will eventually withdraw from the reading discussion. But by demonstrating to students that different views of the same text are correct, students will begin to think more deeply about a text and what it means to them. Then by discussing their feelings with other students and teachers, they will gain more perspectives and ideas on different subjects.

Teachers also need to be aware that some students will interest outside of what they are reading. To fully engage these students, teachers need to know them better in order to give them texts that appeal to their interests. A student who is a reluctant reader will most likely be open to reading texts about their own interests.

Instructional Toolkit

Instructional Toolkit

1. Teachers Must Work Together
In order for any collaboration to be successful, all teachers and staff must be willing to teach literacy, regardless of content area.

2. Use Students Prior Knowledge
Students enter the classroom with their own knowledge and in order to best teach them, we have to realize what the prior knowledge is and how best to go forward from that point.

3. Teachers Must Use Technology
Technology is already a very important instrument in our students’ lives. They must know and understand how to use technology or they risk being left behind once they leave our classrooms. Therefore, it is necessary to include technology in our literacy instruction.

4. Administrators and Teachers Professional Development
It is vital that professional development be used in a way that benefits both teachers and administrators in teaching literacy. If administrators don’t provide useful professional developments, how can teachers be expected to implement literacy into the content areas?

5. Using Literacy Appropriately In Your Content Area
Each content area is different, so not all literacy strategies and instruction will work the same. Each teacher must experiment with different ideas and strategies in order to find what works best for them.

6. Allow Students Discussion Sessions
Students need to be allowed to discuss their opinions and beliefs regarding a text so that they can better formulate their ideas, as well as understand and see that there are different points of view.

Video Reaction

My web cam is not working correctly right now, so here is the text of my response for this week.

What I Learned

I learned a lot about literacy instruction through this assignment. As a physical education teacher, it is difficult for me to understand how to implement literacy instruction in my classroom. I have not been given guidance on how to do so and this makes me apprehensive about attempting to incorporate literacy education because I am fearful that it will not be successful and the students will not gain the knowledge they need to be successful. But the articles that I read for this assignment show literacy incorporation is indeed successful. Many of the teachers began their studies with similar concerns as me. They didn’t know how to properly incorporate literacy into their content area, but with guidance and honest attempts they became successful at doing so. This gives me hope, because I feel responsible for my students’ academic achievement, even if I am not a classroom teacher.

Reaction to Article and Podcast

In Dr. Moje’s article and podcast states that the way in which educators teach literacy to students has to change. She states that teachers with content areas such as math or science do not believe that they are responsible for a students’ literacy success. Unfortunately, the way education is set up today, the focus is on test scores for each tested subject. Math teachers, for example, do not feel, and perhaps rightly so, that they have the time to teach or should even be concerned about a student’s literacy education when they have to prepare students for their own standardized tests.

About Me

My name is Nathan Parsh and I teach Physical Education at Pimlico Elementary and Middle School in Baltimore City. This is my fourth year teaching and I love what I do. I am originally from Michigan and attend the University of Michigan. While we may be down right now, I love Detroit sports, especially the Tigers, Red Wings and Wolverines. I am currently finishing up my masters at Towson University and will be completely done in the fall.

As a physical education teacher, literacy doesn’t always play a huge role in my classes. Instead of being just a “resource teacher”, I want to help my students academically as much as possible. My hope is that through this course I will have a better understanding of how to do so.