Literacy Across the Curriculum

My School--Clayton Ridge Community School District has a lazer focus for our Professional Development of increasing reading scores.  We have an early out every Wednesday at 2:20 and we work in our Professional Learning Communities on how to increase reading proficiency until 4:00.

My Professional Learning Community is Teacher Driven Professional Learning!~~Awesome!  Teachers decide what we need to learn and invite experts in to work with us to develop or find activities that would fit our curriculum and our teaching style.

My PLC started by looking at the data on reading comprehension.  Our next step was to interviewed the students and asked what they thought . . . was the problem for their poor reading scores.  Their answers gave us insight in how to progress forward.

Student's Views on why they feel they do poorly on the reading test:

• Too big of vocabulary
• Too much reading
• I gave up years ago
• Why are these tests important?
• I don't even know where to start?

What my PLC decided to focused on . . . 

• Teach test taking skills
• Teach test taking vocabulary
• Reword unit test questions to be more like the standardized test
• Do more reading activities with our text books
• Simply have the students read more--by adding novels to our classes!
• Reading more!
• Have reading activities in all chapters--give them a reason to read.

Books I have decided to use in my Business Classes are:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad~~Marketing
• Lawn Boy & Lawn Boy Returns--Intro to Bus
• Lester Thurow Speech--Intro to Bus
• Midas Touch--Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich--and Why Most Don't--Sm. Bus. Mgt.
• Disney 2012 Annual Report--Parts in Marketing & Accounting
• Textbooks in Computer Classes

We also focused on Test Taking Skills

• Teach using standardized assessment vocabulary
• We use the website to practice assessment skills
• We teach strategies for reading test-- Examples:
• Skim read the questions first
• As you read write down the main idea of each paragraph
• How to figure out a word you don't know by using context clues
• Iowa Assessment Vocabulary
• Graphic Organizers & Activities

You can follow along in the handouts--more activities are on my Website--

• Mrs. Keehner's Literacy Website

Two Suggested Resources to buy for your classroom

• Reading Strategies for the Content Areas, Volume 1--ISBN-13:978-0-87120-757-9
• Reading Strategies for the Content Areas, Volume 2--ISBN-13:978-1-4166-1320-6

A few of my favorite textbook graphic organizers we use from Sue Beer's books

• Signal Words--use with my computer and keyboarding books.
• Thinking About My Text--teaches them to look at the text and why things are the color they are or placed where they are
• Pre-Reading Activities
• During Reading Activities
• Post Reading Activities
• Free Online Books
• Vocabulary Resources
• Book Report Options
• I have shared resources that we have created at my livebinder:  Sharon Keehner's Literacy Resources for Teachers

This livebinder contains resources for my novels:

• Lawn Boy Activities
• Lawn Boy Returns
• Midas Touch Resources
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad Resources

Summative Assessment I like to use is to:

• Create a book jacket 
• Include artwork
• Bio of the author
• Summary of the book
• Write a book review

Summative Assessment is creating an Infographic

Three Ways to create them:   Infogr.am--Website--Easel.ly--Website OR Paper, glue, markers and they make one on their own

• Disney Annual Report--My activities for reading this
• Lester Thurow Speech on The Future of Capitalism--My resources
• We also used Google Drive (formally knows as Google Docs)--Use the google form to create online quizes which we looked at the results and discussed what the correct answer was and why.  Discussed content clues and vocabulary practice   Example:  Lester Thurow Vocab Quiz

Conclusion

Five frogs are sitting on a log.  Four decide to jump off.  How many are left?

Answer?

FIVE--Why?  Because there's a difference between deciding and DOING!

GET OFF YOUR LOG!  JUST DO IT!

Questions?

Contact me at skeehner@crcsd.k12.ia.us

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