Before completing this assignment, I had never associated any of the agricultural courses with

context of content literacy. After reading the articles that I found, I now know that there is great deal of

reading, writing, and math that is used in even the most hands-on courses in the agricultural pathways.

Ag literacy encompasses a wide variety of everyday tasks that Ag students complete each day, from

reading growth charts on livestock to analyzing the chemistry that goes into chemical mixtures that are

sprayed on fields to prevent damage from pest and diseases. Ag education content literacy is defined as

educational promotion of the understanding and knowledge necessary to synthesize, analyze, and

communicate basic information about agriculture with students, producers, consumers, and the public.

In the first article, research was done on the practices related to reading in the agricultural

classroom setting. It was found that less than twenty percent of the classroom time was devoted to text

reading or writing. The article states, Teachers understood how to select textbooks and how to assess

student comprehension. Indications suggested that teachers helped students summarize, determine

important ideas, generate questions, and define unfamiliar words. However, they did not regularly help

students think aloud, make predictions, use multiple strategies, activate background knowledge,

preview texts, or create graphic organizers. The research also highlighted the differences in opinion

when it came to the responsibility in teaching the content area reading strategies (CARS).

In the second article, research was done on the effects of a long-term reading strategy

instruction that was embedded into a problem solving teaching framework on student reading

comprehension and motivation to read. This means that the research was done to determine the effects

of CARS instruction on agricultural science students reading comprehension, comprehension of

agricultural science content, and motivation to read. The outcome of the research showed that the lack

of the use of CARS in the curriculum model was not providing the students with a full understand of

the content area.