- Module
- Challenge
- Initial Thoughts
- Perspectives & Resources
- Wrap Up
- Assessment
What are the responsibilities of middle- and high school teachers for teaching vocabulary and comprehension skills within their content areas?
- Building conceptual knowledge
- Solving problems
- Completing an academic task
- Understanding a context or perspective
Students must be able to read and understand written material associated with different content areas, learn from various types of texts, and apply the information they read to new learning. This type of literacy is referred to as academic literacy. Academic literacy involves the kinds of reading, learning, and understanding that are related to academic tasks in content areas.
Successful performance in subject areas depends on strong reading skills. A surprising number of middle- and high school students lack academic literacy skills and would benefit from explicit content-area reading instruction. This is true not only for students with reading difficulties but also for those who are competent readers (i.e., those who score well on reading assessments) but still have difficulty comprehending content material. In spite of this need, students generally do not receive this type of instruction in the content areas.
Research Shows
Only one in four high-school students taking college entrance exams met college readiness benchmarks in all subject areas, and only about half demonstrated college-level reading proficiency.
(ACT, 2011)
Many content-area teachers believe that reading instruction is not their responsibility. They did not receive the relevant training and generally feel it is someone else’s role to teach reading skills. Although reading specialists and special educators might in fact provide instruction for students who struggle with basic reading skills such as decoding words and reading fluently, it is nevertheless important for content-area teachers to integrate literacy instruction into their classes. Deborah Reed and Sharon Vaughn discuss these issues.
Deborah K. Reed, PhD
College of Education
University of Iowa
Director, Iowa Reading Research Center
(time: 1:37)
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Sharon Vaughn, PhD
Professor of Special Education
Director of the Vaughn Gross Center
for Reading and Language Arts
University of Texas, Austin
(time: 2:00)
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Transcript: Deborah K. Reed, PhD
There are a lot of pressures put on the teachers to satisfy certain standards or to cover a certain amount of material. I think they feel the pressure of coverage of content, and because they are less comfortable with addressing literacy issues that’s the first thing that they want to have fall off their very full plates. They want to be able to focus on what they see are the main issues associated with learning that subject area. I think that we don’t do a very good job of showing how those are actually integrated, the literacy and the content learning being integrated into what students have to learn. I think we make it seem as though these literacy skills are ubiquitous, that everybody can do the same thing, and it will work for everyone, and it’ll be so easy. I don’t think that it’s that easy, and I don’t think it’s exactly the same in every content area. So if we put all the high school teachers together in a room and say everybody should just do this, they walk away with very different impressions of what we have said and think that it applies to them in different ways. What they really want is for somebody to show them exactly how it’s going to work in their class with their materials and their students, and that it will still support satisfying all of those standards and other expectations related to the content that they need to master and meet.
Transcript: Sharon Vaughn, PhD
It’s important for content-area teachers to integrate literacy practices into their instructional routines–getting the kind of momentum and success we need with this age group can only occur when it is done throughout the day. So expanding the number of vocabulary words that students have from 8,000 to 12,000 can’t occur by one teacher teaching two or three words a week. It can only occur with multiplicative outcome that occurs when every teacher participates. Also many of the academic words that we want students to learn have unique definitions and meanings within the content area. So if you take a word like equal in the area of social studies, equal has a very important meaning in terms of how we establish rights and responsibilities across various cultures, but the word equal has a very different meaning in the mathematics area. The way in which you get a lot better at reading is by reading. So if every teacher includes opportunities for students to read and understand what they read within their class, the amount of time students are exposed to print and read print increases substantively. Running throughout the common core is reading and understanding complex text, and that isn’t just in English language arts. That’s in social studies and science, as well, and we can certainly expand that to math. It’s important for content-area teachers to see the valuable role they play not just in assuring that students understand and know the content but know how to continue to learn the content by being able to better understand what they read.
For Your Information
Many states have replaced their existing standards with the Common Core State Standards for English language arts. Common Core State Standards are designed to provide a national framework for instruction. These grade-specific standards:
- Are aligned with college and work expectations
- Are clear, understandable, and consistent
- Include rigorous content and the application of knowledge through high-order skills
- Build upon the strengths and lessons of current state standards
- Are informed by other top-performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in the global economy and society
- Are evidence-based
The development of these standards was informed by teachers, administrators, and experts and reflect the best instructional models used in the United States and internationally.
Content-area teachers familiar with the written material and the reading demands of their disciplines are best suited to provide effective adolescent literacy instruction. Teachers who integrate academic literacy instruction with content instruction will find that their students are more likely to:
- Construct meaning from content-area texts and literature
- Make inferences from text
- Learn new vocabulary using context clues
- Link ideas across texts
- Identify and summarize the main ideas or content within a text
- Perform well on classroom and state-mandated tests
Although the idea of teaching academic literacy skills might seem overwhelming at first, teachers can implement some manageable vocabulary and comprehension strategies that complement their existing instructional practices.
Listen as Deborah Reed talks about implementing vocabulary and comprehension supports in the classroom and how teachers can get started (time:1:44).
Deborah K. Reed, PhD
College of Education
University of Iowa
Director, Iowa Reading Research Center
/wp-content/uploads/module_media/sec_rdng_media/audio/sec_rdng_audio_page01_b_reed.mp3
View Transcript
Transcript: Deborah K. Reed, PhD
I usually tell content-area teachers to start small. We’re gonna eat this elephant one bite at a time. It seems very overwhelming to think of learning how to address vocabulary and comprehension and simultaneously addressing all of the content that they have to get across to students. We need to look for the serendipitous moments where the vocabulary and comprehension nicely converge with learning the content and focus on those at first, focus on something that you feel that you can do. I’m going to spend a lot of time working on it this time, and then next time that I teach it, or next semester, I’m gonna add a few more. So if we look for these moments to build our own skills as teachers while we’re helping students build their skills with the content, I think that it becomes more manageable. Not to think that I have to be the expert at it instantly and do it perfectly all the time in every lesson. We need to cut ourselves a little bit of slack as teachers and say I’m gonna try it, and I’m gonna work on it, and then the next lesson I’m going to try it again, and I’m going to get a little bit better, and maybe I’ll add a little bit more to it, or I’ll incorporate this other element now, but think of it just as we do for our students of gradually building skill and expertise. There’s no question that there’s a lot to cover, and this is a difficult job, and there’s planning time involved. Just thinking of it as I’m gonna do this much now and build on it is comforting to content-area teachers.
Did You Know?
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recommends that content- area teachers support student learning by incorporating vocabulary and comprehension practices into their lessons.
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Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
The mission of this research division of the U.S. Department of Education is to share rigorous and relevant evidence which can then be used to guide educational practice and policy. IES develops education practice guides to outline evidence-based recommendations for educators.
The remainder of this module will present vocabulary and comprehension practices that teachers can implement across content areas.