Jo Draper, R. (2010). (Re)imagining content area literacy instruction. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Summary: Chapter three discussed the three instructional ways, which were meaning, activity and literacy, which literacy needs to be presented. It also discussed the importance of literacy specialist and teachers collaborating to make it beneficial for the students.
This chapter, unlike the others was more related to my content area and was still a little difficult to get into at first, but once I was able to see that there was new information being given, I became interested. I think that it is hard to get into because I feel like I have already covered so much information on literacy that I know it already and could figure it out on my own if I needed to. Once I got into the information I was able to find new information that could be useful. While reading, I would frequently relate back to the math classes that I have had and notice the different strategies that my teachers used and how they had incorporated literacy into the lesson. The literacy principle I found very important, because it made the important point that the literacies need to be from the content area and be beneficial. Since the word literacy connotes reading words, teachers think that they have to give the students articles to read about math. What this principle is emphasizing, is that the literacies from each content area are different and that the literacies that are chosen for the classroom need to be beneficial and go along with the lesson. Reading an article about calculators would be boring and the students would probably not learn anything because it is not something they need to know in order to be literate in mathematics. But if the teacher taught a lesson on how to use calculators, the students would take away something useful that could be used throughout the class and life.
Your comment about "figuring it out on my own" is interesting to me. One of the things Draper is trying to communicate is the importance of collaboration among teachers and professionals. Having said that, it is so important to always be thinking about how you can learn from a text, a teacher, a mentor, a colleague, etc. If we go into meetings and reading with the idea of collaboration, there is always something to learn...you have demonstrated that here in your response as well. You are always pushing yourself to learn something from your reading! Nice job!
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