Literacy in Grades 4-8

Best Practices for a Comprehensive Program

Nancy L. Cecil, Joan P. Gipe, Merrill E. Marcy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351217323
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Comprehensive yet succinct and readable, Literacy in Grades 4-8, Third Edition offers a wealth of practical ideas to help preservice and practicing teachers create a balanced and comprehensive literacy program while exploring the core topics and issues of literacy in grades 4 through 8. It addresses teaching to standards; differentiating instruction for readers and writers; motivating students; using assessment to inform instruction; integrating technology into the classroom; working with English learners and struggling readers; and connecting with caregivers. Selected classroom strategies, procedures, and activities represent the most effective practices according to research and the many outstanding classroom teachers who were observed and interviewed for the book.

The Third Edition includes added material connecting the Common Core State Standards to the instruction and assessment of literacy skills; a combined word study and vocabulary chapter to help readers integrate these important topics in their teaching; more on technology, including comprehension of multimodal texts, enhancing writing instruction with technology tools, and teaching activities with an added technology component; added discussion of teacher techniques during text discussions, strategic moves that help students become more strategic readers.
Key features: In the Classroom vignettes;more than 50 activities, some with a technology component;questions for journal writing andfor projects and field-based activities;troubleshooting sectionsoffering alternative suggestions and activities for those middle-grade students who may find a particular literacy focus challenging.

CHAPTER ONE
A Comprehensive Literacy Program for Grades 4–8

FOCUS QUESTIONS

• What is literacy?

• What are the major characteristics of the reading process?

• What are the major building blocks for development of literacy knowledge and enjoyment in grades 4–8?

• How does a balanced and comprehensive literacy program for grades 4–8 differ from a more traditional program?

• What are some of the characteristics of learners in grades 4–8?

in the classroom

Mr. Piper’s fifth-grade class is learning about the desert. He uses Google Earth to show his students the many deserts that exist around the world. He then asks them to share what they already know about deserts. He writes their answers on the whiteboard under a heading labeled “What We Know.” Next, Mr. Piper asks them to think about what they would like to know about deserts and desert life. Students respond enthusiastically, and he writes their questions—such as “Does it ever get cold there?” and “Do they ever run out of water?”—on the whiteboard under a heading labeled “What We Want to Know.”

Mr. Piper then invites his students to close their eyes as he takes them on a guided imagery of a trek across the arid desert of Israel’s Negev region in the blazing noonday heat. They ride camels for several long, uncomfortable miles and finally stop to rest when the stubborn animals will go no farther. They encounter an angry scorpion behind a bush and, as the sun is at its brightest in the cloudless blue sky, they realize (oh no!) that their water canteens… are empty.

As the students open their eyes, Mr. Piper tells them they will be reading a true story about a 10-year-old boy who gets lost in the harsh desert and must save himself from dehydration by drinking the juice of a giant cactus. He asks them to read silently while thinking about what they would do in the same situation. After everyone has finished reading, a lively discussion ensues, inspired by Mr. Piper’s provocative question, “What would you do to survive if you were lost in the desert?” Mr. Piper waits until all the students have had a chance to respond to this question in their journals; then he calls on them, one at a time, until everyone has had a chance to respond. All answers are validated and written on the whiteboard. Later, in writing workshop, the students are divided into small groups to create their own desert survivor manuals using information gleaned from the Internet. Finally, the students revisit their lists and share all that they have learned about desert life, while Mr. Piper records their responses under a heading labeled “What We Learned.” Any questions not answered by the reading of the passage lead to a discussion of where answers can be found and, ultimately, self-directed research using the Internet and media center resources.

What Is Literacy?

Literacy is not something we do in school during English, reading, or language arts class. The term literacy has come to describe competence in a special field, such as computer or math literacy, and includes many types or multiple literacies, such as visual, media, cultural, and workplace, to name a few.

Today’s broader definitions of literacy also include a sociocultural perspective, studying the ways people communicate in various settings and exploring how communication can mediate issues of power and privilege (Gee, 2001; Moje & Lewis, 2007). Academic literacy, or the language of instruction, is taught to help ensure that all students can access the language of school and texts. Disciplinary literacy focuses on the ability to communicate in a specific discipline, such as science. Content literacy refers to skills and strategies used to best understand content information about that discipline. Teachers also need to recognize the importance of visual literacy for today’s digital natives. Visual literacy refers to the ability to interpret the meaning of visual images as well as being able to construct effective visuals to convey one’s ideas to others.

● visual literacy

The union of reading and technology has caused educators to reconsider what it means to be literate in today’s world (Leu, 2002; Leu & Kinzer, 2000). Students are now called on to know how to read, write, and comprehend in both the print and digital worlds (Schmar-Dobler, 2003). For example, a student may read a print version of a poem and also listen to an audio version and/or view an illustrated version online. The New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut studies new literacies and the connection between reading comprehension and technology.

Literacy also involves how new technologies change the ways we think, read, write, speak, visually represent, and so forth. Today’s students, for the most part, are learning and growing in a technological environment with access to resources beyond the classroom and school. Technology can enhance the literacy development of students and help to foster relevance and creativity. It is important that we as teachers learn to use these tools effectively. In the United States, most grade 4–8 schools have access to various technological tools and resources, but in some cases only a few teachers are trained to use these tools and integrate them in the classroom to enhance student learning.

New Literacies Research Lab

www.newliteracies.uconn.edu

Historically, readers who wanted more information would look for it in supplemental readings—either other printed texts or in a different part of the same text. Today, readers using digital technology no longer read linearly. They read in layers or in a recursive way; from a typical starting point, they may explore and follow a number of paths to various interesting places. With the ability to hyperlink, they can make relevant connections with little effort. With nonlinear reading, readers select which links to follow and thus influence their own learning and their interpretations of the text and other resources they encounter. Ideally, all students will know how to navigate online and be able to perform technologically literate tasks such as linking to supporting articles, graphics, videos, audio, and so forth. Today’s young people are digital natives, and they prefer to learn this way, negotiating the additional layers of meaning available to them.

Classrooms today must embrace new technologies and the continuously evolving means of acquiring and communicating information (Leu, 2000). Because technological innovations allow us to meet and learn from others around the world, our ability to seek and find information is greater than ever and our global awareness has increased. Our students were once bound by the walls of their school but now are able to become literate members of the worldwide community. As teachers, we need to impart the skills needed to participate in global conversations, but we also need to be mindful of and promote safe uses of this new technology.

From the above discussion, it should be apparent that one definition of literacy cannot encompass all the meanings the term has acquired. For the purpose of this book, however, the following description is useful to consider: Literacy is a continuum of skills, including reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, visually representing, and critical thinking, applied in a social context to enable a person to function effectively in his or her group and community (Harris & Hodges, 1995).

● literacy

Literacy Instruction and the Constructivist Model

The definition of literacy instruction we use in this book draws on research on the nature of literacy and literacy learning best understood through the ideas of Lev Vygotsky. This forerunner of current understandings of how students learn to read and write defined instruction as “helping the student to become interested and involved in a meaningful activity, then providing the student with the support needed to complete the activity successfully” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 68).

At the heart of the constructivist model of learning is the belief that students must actively build their own understandings of all literacy activities. Vygotsky further asserted that all learning is basically a social and psychological process that takes place through interactions between students and others in their environment. Over time, students begin to internalize the skills and knowledge...