Our classes place a strong emphasis on listening skills, but what about reading and writing skills?
This summer, you’re likely to be busy planning and revising lessons, as well as adding, adjusting, and tweaking them as needed. Let’s fast forward to autumn. Does everyone know that students are excellent listeners, but what about the three additional communication skills that they should be developing daily? This is about communication skills such as speaking, writing and reading.
Let’s start with a definition of literacy. Literacy used to be defined as the ability to read and write well. It is now about the capacity to comprehend and participate in advanced reading and writing, as well as listening, speaking, and writing activities. If someone has advanced literacy skills in a foreign language, for example, he or she can engage in these skills in any situation.
CRITICAL THINKING IS A SKILL OF THE THIRD CENTURY
If you’re a history, science, art, or math teacher, how does reading fit into your curriculum? Many people believe that literacy instruction is only for language arts teachers. This is not true. However, this is not the case. According to Richard Vaca, author of Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, “Adolescents entering the adult realm in the twenty-first century will read and write more than at any other period in human history.” They will require sophisticated reading skills to do their jobs, maintain their homes, participate in society, and run their own lives.
When content standards are in place, it is simple to remain focused on what we are teaching. There is a lot we can teach students about a variety of topics. Is it true, however, that we provide children adequate time each day to develop critical communication skills?
Consider this: content is what you teach, and you are responsible for it. But there’s also the question of how. This is where the importance of literacy teaching is highlighted. There are numerous fascinating and effective strategies for getting students to think about, write about, read about, and discuss the material that you are teaching. Literacy teaching is intended to assist students in improving their reading comprehension, writing skills, and oral communication skills, among other things.
What is the most effective way to communicate knowledge to my students? Is it better to listen to a lecture or a teacher talk? Do I provide students with various opportunities to locate knowledge on their own?
SPEAKING
Academic or high-level conversations among small and big groups in academic or high-level contexts are not something that happens by accident. It takes effort and structure to build a Socratic seminar setting in your classroom, but it is possible.
Before engaging in academic discussion or responsible discourse, students should conduct informal talks with their peers in pairs and triads to develop their communication skills. You can use the following tactics to help children improve their oral communication skills: Think in pairs, with an elbow partner, and with a shoulder partner. The words chunk and chop are also acceptable choices. Children should be actively participating in discussion rather than simply sitting there. Keep in mind that Lev Vygotsky believed that learning is a fundamentally social process.
Each kid should be given one to two minutes for every five to eight minutes that you speak. You can also wander around and listen to each other, measuring and checking understanding in a more informal setting.
The conversation is a fantastic technique for processing new ideas and information while we are learning something new. Students will also have more useful responses as a result of this. When you are asking children questions, make sure to always allow them time to think about their answers.
WRITING
When was the last time your pupils complained about being sore from writing in class? Writing, like speech, aids us in making sense of the information we get and connecting it with other ideas that we encounter. Writing is a method of thinking.
Every student in every subject is required to write regularly. More fun and casual writing exercises, such as rapid write, stop and jot, and graffiti dialogues, could be incorporated into your curriculum to make it more engaging. Writing assignments are not needed to be entirely formal.
National Writing Project is the most extensive and longest-running teacher-development program in American history, having been in operation since the 1950s. Workshops are held throughout the country, usually in conjunction with a local university. Teachers from many subject areas will learn fascinating techniques to help, encourage, and grow young writers in their classrooms during this intensive course.
The NWP is founded on two fundamental ideas. Teachers writing side by side with students and scheduling regular time in your classroom to organize a writer’s workshop, I believe, are two strategies that can help students make significant improvements in their writing. This workshop follows a style of writing method that places the writer in command of the material (of voice, content, and structure).
READING
In our previous generation, we assumed that kids could read informational texts or novels from us and be able to comprehend everything they were reading on their own. We are all reading instructors, regardless of the subject area we teach.
Use effective tactics before, during, and after reading to make the reading experience more enjoyable for you. Preparing ahead of time, reading with a purpose, making predictions, finding connections, thinking aloud, and employing graphic organizers are all examples of effective strategies. This will benefit all kids, not simply English language learners who are having difficulty reading.
It is critical to establish a love of reading in pupils and to help them improve their reading abilities. This means that they must be able to maintain their gaze on the page for some time greater than a few seconds. How are we going to accomplish this? A high-interest classroom librarian is a fantastic location to start looking for work. If you are a Title I school, you should be able to provide funds for classroom libraries. Make a strong case for classroom libraries if your school does not have the resources to support them. The presence of a few books should be adequate to give a location for students to study if necessary.
Invest yourself, or organize a book-raising party to raise funds for the cause. Send a list of books that students are interested in, as well as a list of your repeating favorites, to all of your friends. Invite your pals to your cocktail party and ask them to bring a couple of copies of the books. See this Edutopia post for more information on how to set up and manage a classroom library for more information.
What books do you have to read to be considered a physics teacher? Do all of your books have to be science-related? No! You may, on the other hand, wish to concentrate on nonfiction and educational literature instead. Following the new English national standards, all K-12 teachers should enhance their nonfiction content, which includes magazine and newspaper subscriptions, in compliance with the new English national standards.
I won’t go into detail about why I believe students are not excellent listeners in this section. Fortunately, there’s a website that may assist you in teaching your pupils about the traits of a good listener so that they can practice together.