Tara Slade

RDG 323 Fall 2018

Classroom Literacy Observation and Analysis

"School and classroom cultures that successfully promote the development of adolescent

literacy skills are characterized by connections, interaction, and responsiveness, which lead to

student engagement and reflection" (Urquhart, 2012). While I agree these are all characteristics

of a literate classroom, I would perhaps argue that it begins with engagement, which leads to

students making connections. Connections may also be made upon reflection or when

background knowledge is activated. So now we have ourselves a chicken or the egg conundrum,

but we can see how vital making connections is to the learning process.

I am currently and intern in an eighth-grade social studies class. I do see many

opportunities for listening and speaking in my internship, yet I am somewhat concerned about

how many reading and writing opportunities are done in class (they rarely have homework). I

am also only there one day a week which makes an accurate assessment difficult. My mentor

teacher has also told me she struggles with text selection because the range of her students

reading levels is from second grade to high school.

As far as reading instruction goes, my mentor teacher is great at going over vocabulary

words that may be unfamiliar to students. She explains what new words mean in a way that the

students can understand at the beginning of a lecture, or video, or article. I have also observed

her using an Interactive Reading Guide while teaching annotation to the class. I believe she did a

close reading with it the day before. The students annotated the article, took notes in the

margins, answered questions about the text, and wrote a brief summary about a section of the

article.
 This same lesson also ties into writing as an instructional method. On another occasion,

students copied down notes on an AVID note form. While my mentor teacher lectured about the

first two battles of the American Revolution, she wrote notes on the projector and the students

copied her notes word for word. During a different lesson we made passports and the students

“traveled” around the world (around the classroom) to the various countries who allied with the

American Patriots. Students filled out how the different counties aided the American Revolution

and answered other questions in their passports.

The physical layout of the room provides a supportive environment, there are nine round

tables that seat four students each. This allows for the “turn to your neighbor” technique.

Students feel safe sharing their thoughts and ideas with one shoulder partner or a small group

before sharing with the entire class. This set up also allows for collaborative learning. Sitting in

rows where everyone faces the front of the room can increase the stress level for students and

make it harder for learning to take place.

At the beginning of the semester the walls were almost bare. Now one of the walls is

covered with bright, beautiful student artwork. I wasn’t present for this lesson, but it looks like

they made travel advertisements for the original thirteen colonies. Or perhaps they are ads trying

to persuade other Europeans to join them. Displaying the students work on the walls sends the

message that the teacher values what students do and supports diverse learners by encouraging

students to learn from each other. Another wall now has the three branches of government, a

description of each branch’s powers and a visual as to how they check and balance each other.

On the back wall above the door there is a student drawing titled “The 50’s” and it drives me

crazy because there is a giant Beatles logo in the middle. The Beatles are my favorite band and

they helped define the 1960’s. Other than that, it’s a cute poster!
 The students have multiple resources at their disposal. There is a large library at the

school, there are two computer labs (one with MAC’s and one with PC’s), there is a set of

laptops for the classroom, and there is a small class library but I don’t think it gets very much

attention from the teacher or the students.

For each new chapter they go over in the course, the students look up the vocabulary

words, write down the definitions from the text book, and turn them in for credit. While this is

better than not learning vocabulary at all, it may not be the best method for retention. “Teaching

words well involves helping students make connections between their prior knowledge and the

vocabulary to be encountered in the text and providing them with multiple opportunities to

define, clarify, and extend their knowledge of words and concepts during the course of study”

(Vacca, 206). I think different activities could be used to spark background knowledge and to

help them “own” these words by giving more opportunities to see and use them.

The lesson I described about filling out the passports was research/inquiry based. The

over arching theme of the day was which countries helped the Patriots and how? At two of the

stations, the students looked up information in their text book. A two of the other stations

students read online articles to look up the information for their passport and in the final station

they watched a YouTube video about how France helped the Patriots. They were able to utilize

different materials to do research and find answers for themselves.

Overall, I am not sure there is enough emphasis on reading and writing for social studies.

At the college level, reading (biographies, autobiographies, documents, articles, etc.) and writing

papers are all you do in a history course. I would like to see documents introduced so students

can analyze them and come up with their own ideas. This would be a great anticipatory set!

This could help them start learning to think like a historian (and see why they need to be able to
read cursive). I also think short biographies should be used to prepare students for the future. I

have never seen a history text book in my 100+ hours of history course work at the collegiate

level. I loved the passport activity and I do think that is something I will use in my future

classroom.

When I was in school I was taught creative writing. I was not taught how to do research,

how to explain evidence, and provide a proper analysis for a history paper. When I was in

school the words research, evidence, and analysis applied to my science courses and we did not

write papers. This assignment has taught me that not only do I need to help my students advance

their literacy skills, but when it comes specifically to writing, there are multiple types of writing

skills they will need to have in their tool kit and I can teach them how to write a history paper in

high school to better prepare them for courses at a university.

 Works Cited

Urquhart, V. & Frazee, D. (2012, Dec 20) “Characteristics of Literacy-Rich Content-Area

Classrooms”. Alexandria: ASCD. ASCD Express, Vol. 8, No.6.

www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.

Vacca, R., Vacca, J., & Mraz, M. (2017) Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across

the Curriculum. Boston: Pearson.