Literacy+and+Content+Areas

Author: Albert Watkins Professional Resource: Guzzetti, B., Elliot, K., & Welsch, D. (2010). DIY Media in the Classroom: New Literacies Across Content Areas (Middle Through High School). Language & Literacy Series (Practitioner's Bookshelf). Teachers College Press.  This book (available on Kindle and in hard copy) is a guide with step-by-step plans and tools teachers can use to design projects that ask students to design pieces of digital media. It covers basic digital media forms for learning and how to implement them with students. The book covers how to use basic video streaming and social media with students as well as how to incorporate Wikis, Zines, blogs and fan fiction into projects and classes, much in the way this Language and Literacy class has made use of Wikispaces. The cross-content literacy potential for these resources is tremendous: Students can easily transfer and make connections between contents through media they create digitally because it is accessible to them in multiple classes. Albert (2014)

Theoni Soublis Smyth and Brandie Waid. //The Mathematics Teacher//, Vol. 104, No. 2 (SEPTEMBER 2010), pp. 113-119 Accessible through ERIC and publicly via: [] In this article, Smyth and Waid (2010) draw parallels between various mathematical concepts and related novels to expose students more broadly to the language used to demonstrate those concepts. This listing would likely be useful for math teachers of adolescents who are looking to add a reading component to their classes and are looking for explicit demonstrations of mathematical language to use with their students. Searching for these “explicit” textual examples can be difficult and time consuming- particularly when math teachers do not have much time built into instruction to focus on literacy outside of word problems. Albert 2014)
 * Integrating Literature: A Novel Idea!**

Reddit Colorized History- A public database of submissions of photographs from history colorized from black and white by various users.
 * ColorizedHistory. (n.d.). //History in Color//. Retrieved May 5, 2014, from []**

This public catalog of user-submitted images is a tool I have used for descriptive writing with many of my students. Particularly when teaching parts of history that might be considered “dull” by students, it can be helpful to use images that are “re-colorized”- giving (presumably realistic depictions of black and white photographs in color. When asked to describe images as “Do Nows’’ or answer written questions about related time periods, students tend to respond more positively and effectively to these images than to black and white ones. The page contains images dating from the Industrial Revolution through the 1940s and 1950s and includes many images of famous historical figures in color. Albert (2014)


 * History Blueprint: Common Core Program. (2011). //- California History-Social Science Project//. California State Board of Regents. Retrieved May 7, 2014, from []**

The “History Blueprint” Common Core Program contains multiple lessons, units, primary sources, secondary sources and assessments that can be incorporated into Social Studies units and curricula for adolescents (and some primary school students). The assessments are literacy based in that they ask students to evaluate sources or draw conclusions about events, figures and time periods as opposed to selecting classic “regents-style” answers to general, historical event-based questions. Albert (2014)


 * Tyler, V. (n.d.). Spurious Correlations. // Spurious Correlations // . Retrieved May 9, 2014, from [|http://www.tylervigen.com/](This web page is designated by its author as entirely public and may be used or replicated in any manner). **

This feed basically contains line graphs depicting randomly occurring correlations generated by a computer with access to multiple databases around the country. For instance, one of the correlations is entitled: “Per capita consumption of cheese (US) correlates with [the] Number of people who died by becoming tangled in their Bedsheets.” Within Social Studies and Math, the idea of what the word “correlated” really means comes up frequently. This feed provides ample, constantly updating correlations that can be used to stimulate discussion or writing on what it means for two pieces of data to be “correlated.” I plan on using some of these in an upcoming Social Studies lesson on how figures have been used to manipulate people. Albert (2014)

Authors: Kaitlyn, Dorna & Donna

Beeman, L. (2004). //The progressive era (reform)//. Retrieved from [] This is a unit plan for the Progressive Era. It includes a variety of reading resources, including the National Archive and a social studies text book. They use paired reading strategies: “Have __students__ read pg 306-310 in Pearson History and Geography, in pairs. This is done with two students sitting close to each other, they take turns reading paragraphs. If either does not understand what is read in a certain section, the other can clarify or they reread that piece and have a brief discussion over the content.” This resource will be helpful because I’m in the process of planning a literacy based unit on the Progressive Era.  (Kaitlyn & Donna)
 * Social __Studies__ Resources:**

National WWII Museum, New Orleans //Eisenhower speaks: Analyzing d-day orders //. (n.d.).  Retrieved from [] This is a World War II __lesson plan__ about Eisenhower’s D Day orders. Students will be required to fill out a graphic organizer while reading a primary source document. Again, I find this to be very useful because I will be teaching a literacy based unit on World War II at the end of the school year. We are trying to work to incorporate the common core standards into our current curriculum and I think this lesson is a nice example.



(Kaitlyn & Donna)

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory //Graphic organizers //. (1988). Retrieved from []

This resource from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory contains a lot of graphic organizers, which look to be useful for content area literacy. There are a wide variety of options, including ones that appear to work for science content and others that would work well for social studies. I especially like the ones that look like they could be used for social studies content.

(Kaitlyn & Donna)

Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. //La follette and the progressive movement //. (n.d.). Retrieved from [] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">This is a collection of resources from the Wisconsin Historical Society. Wisconsin was at the forefront of the Progressive Movement and there are a lot of great political cartoons and other resources for use duing a progressive era unit. I thought this information could be more accessible to students with lower reading levels. (Kaitlyn & Donna)


 * Math Resources: **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Achieve 3000. (2003, October 5). //Achieve3000 the power of one//. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Retrieved from <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">[] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Achieve3000 is an interactive __online__ reading program, that differentiates content to the reader’s current level. Teachers can use the database to assign readings on any topic, including readings that introduce mathematical concepts. Achieve3000 aims to incorporate all of the latest research on best practices for reading instruction, and as students read they engage in best practices (such as predicting, summarizing, determining importance) as they read. There are also vocabulary comprehension activities tailored to the students’ reading level. Finally, there are games that are associated with the content to help encourage engagement. It is an excellent website, but requires a subscription. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">media type="youtube" key="s0xSgVE1P74" height="315" width="560"

(Dorna, Kaitlyn)

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Apangea Learning (2009). //Apangea Math: Problem Solved.// <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Retrieved from [] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Apangea is a __math tutoring__ website currently used by my self-contained students that is very interactive. Students read word problems and have to select the sentence that describes what they need to solve for, and then break down the problem into its component parts, with the computer monitoring their process and awarding points according to their success. It has a text-to-speech component as well, so that low-literacy students can have the questions and directions read aloud to them. In addition, students can use their points to donate to nonprofit organizations or to buy gift certificates for their classroom, which provides many of them with the motivation they need to do their best. Also an excellent resource, but requires a subscription. (Dorna, Kaitlyn)

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">MathFlix: Using Quicktime Movies to Develop Math Skills. (n. d.) Loyola University Chicago. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Retrieved from [] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This website has a vast array of short, 4-7 minute Quicktime movies that illustrate mathematical concepts. The website is geared towards both students and teachers. It is another great mode of accessing the mathematical concepts I teach. The website is aligned to the common core standards, and also works to prepare students for college entrance exams. (Dorna, Kaitlyn)

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">//Super maths world//. (2012). Retrieved from [] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Games that allow students to test their learning in a visually stimulating environment-- it reads like a computer game. Our students are in the first generation of people who have grown up with technology. They are incredibly “literate” in many technological areas in which their teachers struggle. I would be curious to see if they would be more highly motivated to work with math in a forum in which they feel very comfortable-- as opposed to in books, which for many students are a relatively foreign medium that they associated mostly with school. (Dorna, Kaitlyn)



[|www.mangahigh.com] is an invaluable resource for reinforcing math principles and lessons. The website is a free to use site that only requires teachers and students to set up accounts. Once that is done, teachers have access to a suite of cool math games that students will love to play all the while practicing important math concepts. There is also an on site rewards system that encourages students to play and do well. As students achieve certain goals and points, more privileges and site access is granted. The site also contains a classroom communication tool, which teachers can regulate. ( Kenny Santos)



Math. (n.d.). IXL | Online math practice. Retrieved May 11, 2014, from http://www.ixl.com/math/

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">IXL is a website that builds literacy and numeracy through individual student accounts and regular skills practice. Although students tend to think of the site as sets of math problems that score them on specific topics, the site itself provides detailed explanations when students make mistakes on problems, using academic language in a way that help scaffold learning. I use this resource in my classroom by assigning a particular skill or set of skills to my students. For extra credit, they write down the problems as they do them, which increases their math literacy immensely, reinforces good habits of written work and, enables them to explain their mistakes after the fact. Alex ( 2014)



Burns, M., & Weston, M. (1975). <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The Brown paper school presents: The I hate mathematics! book. Boston: Little, Brown. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This book is a classic in math education and it builds math literacy by helping students make connections between classroom problem-solving skills and delightful real world wonderings offered by the authors. It is also an excellent introduction to the rest of Marilyn Burns’s work, which includes many excellent applications of math concepts for use in the classroom. Burns builds literacy because she wants students to really understand math concepts at a deep level rather than just being able to match them to the associated problems based on what these problems “look like”. Alex ( 2014)



Khan Academy. (n.d.). //Khan Academy//. Retrieved May 12, 2014, from http://www.khanacademy.org/

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Salman Khan’s famous website begin with his explanations of math concepts and has become a model for my own flipped math classroom. Teaching through videos and detailed note-taking is a valuable model for increasing student to student discussion and writing around their understanding of math problems. Whenever students seek support or practice with their classwork, I can instruct them to take notes from Khan’s videos on our math content. Then, students can bring their new learning back into the classroom and use the school’s iPads to create videos for one another based on Khan’s model. Alex ( 2014)



<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[|BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts. (n.d.). //BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts//. Retrieved May 9, 2014, from http://www.brainpop.com/]

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">BrainPOP is a website that, like Khan academy, includes videos on many topics that help students learn new concepts. However, BrainPOP also has many resources that students can use after watching videos. For example, students can use the vocabulary worksheet to take notes and then take the vocabulary quiz. They can also play games built specifically for the video they just watched, and they can practice the skill they learned using custom-made worksheets. Students at my school also enjoy using BrainPOP at home, so the school purchased individual accounts for then. Alex ( 2014)


 * <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Science Resources: **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Leu, L. J., Coiro, J. (2002) The literacy web. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Available at [|http://www.literacy.uconn.edu]

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Literacy Web is designed to promote the use of the Internet as a tool to assist teachers in their search for best practices in literacy instruction. This website has many resources for teachers to use in the classroom with students including “webquests” (which I plan to try) and inquiry-oriented activities are on the internet. There are many tools that are specified by grade. There is a literacy topics page links for early literacy, adolescent literacy, comprehension, multicultural literacy and content area literacy. There are sections for professional development for teachers.

<span style="color: red; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">(Donna, Dorna)

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Glencoe/ McGraw-Hill Secondary Division (2000) Teaching Today. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Available at []

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Teaching today is a Glencoe website. My school uses their science and math textbooks and workbooks. It has many resources for teachers to use in the class as well as professional development for teachers. There is a tab for “Teaching Tips” that includes a lengthy list of reading strategies and activities that can be used in your classroom - tomorrow. Specifically, I would use the “Question of the day” strategy that can be used as on opening and closing to a lesson. <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">(Donna, Dorna)

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">George Mason University Literacy at School and Home (n. d.) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Available at [|http://mason.gmu.edu/~cwallac7/TAP/TEST/index.html]

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">This website is meant for students K-3rd grade. These strategies can be used by teachers, or parents can use them at home with their children. Additionally, many of the activities can be used in middle school classrooms with struggling and emergent readers. The focus ofinstruction is on comprehension of informational text in content areas and using different media to display them to students. I like the science activity that includes using v<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">ocabulary words and corresponding objects and pictures in the non-fiction/science center. <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">(Donna, Dorna)

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Schools of California Online Resources for Education History/Social Science (1995) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Available at [] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">SCORE is the Schools of California Online Resources for Education, History/Social Science. The website is designed to evaluate, align, and annotate quality resources from the internet to the California History-Social Science Content Standards and curriculum. The lessons and activities were selected to meet the needs of California's diverse student population. However, these resources can be used in any classroom across the country with ELLs or struggling readers. The activities are appropriate for primary or secondary schools. The activities can be utilized by classrooms with and without technology or access to the internet. Many of the lessons and activities can be printed out. For classrooms that have technology, their goal is to provide memorable learning experiences for students through the use of visually rich “Virtual Projects & Field Trips” in which students access and follow a topic, directly. <span style="color: red; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">(Donna, Dorna)


 * Professional Resources:**

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Chang, K. (2008). Study suggests math teachers scrap balls an d slices. The New York Times, NY, NY. <span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Retrieved from: [] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This is a crucial resource as the study quoted here turns much of what I had been taught in terms of best practices as a math teacher on its head. According to these researchers, teaching students mathematical concepts using real-life examples and manipulatives can confuse the underlying math, and actually take away from their ability to successfully complete problems. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“The students who learned the math abstractly did well with figuring out the rules of the game. Those who had learned through examples using measuring cups or tennis balls performed little better than might be expected if they were simply guessing.... The problem with the real-world examples, Dr. Kaminski said, was that they obscured the underlying math, and students were not able to transfer their knowledge to new problems.” In this case, teachers should shift their focus from word problems to purely numerical equations. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I wonder if part of the reason that the authors found that real-life problems do not aid students in completing problems, is that the problems given to the students were abstractions and not real-life problems themselves. I find it hard to imagine that practice with real-life math problems would not be beneficial in helping students solve real-life problems. (Dorna & Kaitlyn)

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Irujo, S. (2007). Putting it all together: Integrating academic math language into math teaching. In The ELL Outlook. Retrieved from <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">[] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This website is meant for ESL teachers, although many of the idiosyncrasies that teachers must be aware of when teaching ELLs are similar for Special Education population, including that the depth and breadth of the vocabulary must be considered when crafting word problems, and that idiomatic expressions can easily throw off a student’s understanding of the problem. Irujo recommends pre-teaching key concepts and vocabulary, integrating mathematical language into lessons, and offers strategies for integrating her model. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> (Dorna & Kaitlyn)

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Richardson, J. (2004, July/August). Content area literacy lesssons go high tech. //Reading Online, 8//(1). Available: <span style="background-color: initial; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This article connects literacy and technology with conent lessons across the board. It goes through the history of content reading instruction and talks about how important it is to use it to ensure our kids are learning content material. It also talks about how technology can be used to design even better content lessons. I like how it does not just talk about reading comprehension, but it also includes technology. Our kids spend so much time in front of computers, it is important that we use resources that will speak to them. I plan on especially looking at the example lessons that incorporate reading comprehension, content and technology.

(Kaitlyn & Donna)

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Snow, C. E., Lawrence, J. F. (2011) Word generation in boston public schools: natural history of a literacy intervention. //The Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship Series,// (3) Retrieved from <span style="background-color: initial; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[]

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) is the creator of Word Generation. This program was implemented in my school this year. The purpose was to build knowledge of high frequency academic words, skills for spoken and written academic discourse, and knowledge about topics worthy of discussion. The readings are thought provoking for my students. Some topics were “Does Rap Music have a negative affect on Youth?” and “Animal Testing: is it necessary?” Each passage has an activity related to the topic in ELA, Math, Science and Social studies. The ELA activity is always a writing response. The Science is some type of experiment to evaluate, using the scientific method. The math activity is a “problem of the week”. The report was interesting to review. The program was implemented in six public schools in Boston. Results showed that student scores did improve with this program. However, this was due to the discussions, deep reading, and regular writing activities incorporated into Word Generation activities. <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">(Donna, Dorna)

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Stephenson, B. (n.d.). //Literacy practice: Promoting content area reading//. Informally published manuscript, The University of Tennessee, Tennessee. Retrieved from <span style="background-color: initial; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[|www.deafed.net/ContentResources/../Literacy_Content_reading.ppt]

<span style="background-color: initial; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[]

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This powerpoint presentation provides a number of strategies for using reading comprehension exercises to teach content area subjects. For example, it goes in depth about using scaffolding to ensure that all kids comprehend the material. It also talks about how the teacher can prepare ahead of time to make sure the material is accessible by all children. I like how many useful strategies she included.

(Kaitlyn & Donna)

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Unknown (2007) What c <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">ontent <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">-area teachers should know about adolescent literacy. Retrieved from <span style="background-color: initial; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Source: National Institute for Literacy <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Many secondary content teachers feel they are not academically prepared to teach literacy skills to our students. We have little or no preparation for <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">teaching <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> these skills within the <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">content <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">-areas. This report is a useful tool for content area teachers that are faced with literacy issues. The first section describes five key components that are critical to the development of reading proficiency: decoding/phonemic awareness and phonics, morphology, vocabulary, fluency, and text comprehension. The second section discusses four other <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">areas <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> that are fundamental <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">in <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> helping adolescents achieve advanced levels of <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">literacy <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">: assessment, writing, motivation, and the needs of diverse learners. Walk-aways for teachers are these strategies: 1) Think alouds; (2) Graphic and semantic organizers; (3) Explicit comprehension strategy Instruction; (4) Reciprocal t <span class="termhighlight1" style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">eaching <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">; (5) Word map; (6) The Plan and Write Strategy; and (7) Summarization strategy. <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">(Donna, Dorna)

(Kaitlyn Somers, Dorna Lange, Donna Webster) Alex Kahn <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[|dy/dan. (n.d.). //dydan RSS//. Retrieved May 12, 2014, from http://blog.mrmeyer.com/]

Dan Meyer’s blog is an excellent professional resource for teachers to use in reinforcing math literacy. Like Burns, he believes that meaningful creation and application of math concepts starts with interesting real-world problems. His blog includes links to his curricula, including his three-act teaching model, which introduces various math problems through fun and engaging videos that teachers can easily share with students. Students can even answer his questions on his 101qs website, which also promotes writing literacy and allows them to see whether others have similar questions. =__English Language Arts__=



As the Common Core State Standards are ushered in, teachers everywhere are asking for curriculums aligned to the standards. Unfortunately, very few exist on the high school level. The following link: [] is a resource for curriculum maps. The website requires a $25 annual membership fee. They do have curriculum maps for ELA, grades K-12. The maps are decent and on the high school level, the units are broken down into themes. Membership grants you access to curriculum maps by content for a range of grades, for example ELA K-6 or ELA 9-12. The site isn’t perfect, but it is a good start and resource for teachers trying to teach to the Common Core. ( Kenny Santos)