I recently attended a professional development session on Adolescent Literacy run by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). They did a great job of laying out Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement as addressed in the state’s strategic plan titled Each Child Our Future. (also see Share Your Comments on a New Direction). As far as adolescent literacy goes, the plan is centered around three key areas: Individual Interventions which is focused on being more diagnostic to meet young people’s needs (also see Revisiting Inside the Black Box), Content Area Literacy, and Disciplinary Literacy. Seeing these three areas as the state’s focus was reassuring because it aligns with the general direction our district’s K-5 and 6-12 Literacy Teams having been moving. However, there was also information that could lead to some great discussions in our literacy teams as well.
One of these was a comparison of the 5 Big Ideas of Reading in K-5 vs. 6-12.
Elementary
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Secondary
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Phonemic Awareness
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Advanced Decoding
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Phonics
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Motivation
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Fluency
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Fluency
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Vocabulary
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Vocabulary
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Comprehension
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Comprehension
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I think it is safe to say that the majority of secondary schools spend their time focused on vocabulary and comprehension and just assume that all young people at this age come with the motivation and ability to read at grade level. We know from experience, that is not the case, so how can we support 6-12 struggling readers using the 5 Big Ideas as a guide?
In my mind, the first step is to help teachers across content areas make the connections to the importance of literacy within their own content areas. I will argue that we are not all teachers of reading, but we all should be teachers of literacy. Specifically, we should all be comfortable with helping young people acquire the reading and writing (literacy) skills necessary to be successful in our respective disciplines. In other words a focus on disciplinary literacy is a great place to insert literacy’s foot in the door of individual content area classrooms. (also see Ready to Drink the Disciplinary Literacy Kool-Aid?). Helping the young people in our classrooms to read, write, and think as scientists, historians, mathematicians, etc. will naturally lead to them being able to comprehend what they are reading much more effectively and efficiently. Also, using disciplinary literacy as the medium in which to work, could then lead to discussions concerning the importance of vocabulary and specifically the Tier II and Tier III vocabulary within each content area. Because learning to read is so important at the elementary grades most K-3 elementary teachers understand that reading comprehension is not just a function of language comprehension, but decoding also plays an important role. In fact you can’t have a young person be successful in reading without having both parts. This “equation” illustrates the importance of each quite well.
Decoding Domain x Language Comprehension Domain = Reading Comprehension
It is a little ironic to use a math equation to discuss a literacy skill, but this equation works because it illustrates if you have zero decoding skills inserted into the equation it doesn’t matter how well your language comprehension is because zero times anything is zero and therefore your reading comprehension will not be met. So where does “decoding” come into play at the secondary level? This can be seen very clearly in Scarborough’s Reading Rope.
From a secondary standpoint, decoding falls under word recognition and word recognition can be enhanced at the secondary level through morphology of the words in a particular content area. That is by studying the smallest unit of meaning in a word or, more directly, discussing what prefixes, suffixes, or Latin roots are used most in your particular content area can be advantageous for our young people . As an example “ -ology” is a very common suffix that young people often come across while in science class, so they can get a lot of “bang for their buck” if they understand it means “the study of” as in Biology (study of life) or Geology (study of the Earth). A common prefix in math is “poly” as in polygon (many sides) or polynomial (many algebraic terms). Helping young people make meaningful connections of these common prefixes and suffixes within the discipline will help them to see the connections outside the discipline as well. The same can be said for the importance of commonly used Latin root words. In fact Kelly Gallagher references the 30-15-10 list in Deeper Reading emphasizing the most impactful 30 prefixes, 15 basal root words, and 10 suffixes with which young people should be familiar.
Motivation and fluency can both be addressed at the secondary level by allowing young people more choice in their reading selections. It is hard to get motivated by a book you have been told to read and have no interest in reading. Luckily, there are no standards for Huck Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, Othello, Fahrenheit 451, or any of the other typical reading assignment at the secondary level. (see also Great Summer Reading to Help Create Readers in High School). As a result, the standards can still be met by reading a variety of texts that can be self-selected. Providing choice also can address fluency because young people need to be able to read at a 90% fluency rate and that can’t happen for all young people in a class if they are reading the same book. With a little guidance from the teacher young people will be able to select the just right book.
Long story short, these are some great discussion that can be had at the secondary level within ALL PLCs, because literacy is a skill which is important for all content areas and as a result has leverage in all areas as well. One might argue that we don’t have time to “teach” literacy in our specific content area, but we are not adding “literacy” on top of the content we teach at the secondary level. It is naturally incorporated in the content, we are just helping our young people become more cognizant of it within our respective disciplines. As researcher Julie Meltzer stated, “Literacy isn’t something extra on our plate, literacy is the plate.”
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