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Literacy and the Learner Case Study

Emily Pipkin
Colorado State University















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Literacy and the Learner Case Study
Through the course of this semester, many skills have been learned and experienced both
as a student and in working with students. Every week, a new strategy was added to my
teachers toolbox and every week I learned just how important literacy strategies are in every
content area and not just in language arts classes as is usually presumed. I am excited to try out
some of these great strategies and skills once I am in my own classroom.
All teachers are teachers of reading
From science to music, agriculture to art, and language arts to everything in between, all
teachers are teachers of reading. Whether one likes to admit it or not, one reads every day,
especially when one is a student. And reading is not just for English classes anymore; it is a skill
which must be fine-tuned for whatever material is at hand and must be taught in the most
effective way in order to be used successfully.
No matter what class a student is in, the minute they walk into a classroom, sit down and
a lesson begins, that student is processing information through all of their senses, not just
through sight and hearing, which are necessary to listen to a lecture, read a PowerPoint, and take
notes. Even in a lecture situation, however, a student must be taught the best way to take notes
and process this information to make the best use of it. Inevitably, most teachers will need to
have a simple lecture day and even if they do not, any student who moves on to the college level
is going to experience a lecture based class and teachers fairly early on in a students educational
career will need to teach those skills. However, the best teachers will not rely on a basic
PowerPoint and lecture to teach students materials, but will rather get creative in how they
present information while also teaching students those essential literacy skills necessary for
many aspects of adult life.
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In any reading situation, before delving into a new text, it is important for any teacher to
activate a students prior knowledge. Prior knowledge can come from any number of sources and
can be remembered through multiple methods as well. No matter what subject, however, a
teacher is going to need to activate a students prior knowledge, debunk any false knowledge,
and continue to build a students knowledge base with the information being taught in that given
class. In todays day and age, prior knowledge does not only come from what has been read, but
from what has been seen, heard, and experienced and teachers must get creative in finding ways
to get students to activate and apply this knowledge to what is being taught. Using prior
knowledge effectively requires several literacy skills which makes any teacher who incorporates
prior knowledge a teacher of reading.
With all the technology being used more and more often in classrooms and in the world
in general, reading and processing what is online becomes a whole new literacy strategy to be
taught. Unlike a book, or even a short story, text online has links that can be followed and all
kinds of information off to the sides of the main text as well. A student must know how to filter
all of this information to figure out what information is actually necessary. Before even getting to
an article, a student must have the basic knowledge of navigating the web to find what they need
and they must be able to filter out the phony websites from those with legitimate and helpful
information. In each subject, there are different key words and websites that are important for
students to know to be able to successfully navigate the web. Not only do teachers need to teach
their students all of these helpful hints and tricks for each content area, they also need to always
stay one step ahead of their students in the technological field in order to always provide the best
support possible, even as changes keep coming.
While re-reading notes is one way for a student to review what has been learned,
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information must be reviewed in multiple ways to be stored in long-term memory. Information
can be written, read, watched, and rehearsed in many ways to reach the point of storage in long-
term memory. However it does make it to that storage area in the brain, that information must
also be recalled for assessments, and knowing how to read and respond to multiple types of
assessments is also a literacy strategy that a teacher must teach just as much as writing an
effective assessment is a literacy skill which a teacher must learn how to do.
No matter what prior knowledge is being recalled, or material that is being taught, or
even reviewed, teachers of all subjects are teachers of reading. Reading is a strategy which must
be adjusted for each skill set and subject and as reading is not something the human brain is
programmed to do, this set of skills does not come naturally. It must be taught, and taught well in
every single classroom a student steps into.
How can this be used in English?
English is inherently a subject focused on reading, but also on writing. However, an
English classroom does not have to be structured in a read this book, write that paper way. A
teacher can do so much more to engage students and teach them a myriad of great strategies for
their own learning in other classes along the way. Just within a few chapters read and lecture
sessions this semester such as those about comprehension strategies and graphic organizers, I
believe I already have several great ideas for the beginnings of future lesson plans.
Instead of a traditional summary, or as a plan for a well-structured summary, one of the
comprehension strategies I might use would be the narrative pyramid. This would be almost
exactly what it sounds like, a picture of a pyramid which students would fill out with information
from a book or short story. The trick is that each level corresponds to the number of words that
are to be written there; for example, the top level has one word (the name of a character), the
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second level has two words (describing the above character), etc. When first introducing this
activity, I would most likely assign a short story to read and then the whole class would
collaborate to help fill one out. As I used it again, I might have the students partnered up and
working on one together. For some instances, a narrative pyramid could be used as the summary
of a piece without any further work. Other times, a narrative pyramid might be used as an outline
for a full-blown summary. However, knowing how students can easily tire of a repeated and
over-used activity, I would use this particular strategy sparingly and introduce it mainly as a tool
that could be used to plan out a formal summary.
Another summary strategy which I think will be an incredibly helpful tool in helping
those who struggle with summarizing, or even as an easy alternative to a traditional summary is
the $2.00 summary. This is a way for the more logically oriented students to shine as it operates
on a mathematical concept of each word being worth $0.10 with several free-bees such as a,
as, and the. The $2.00 summary is an easy way to have students jot down the few most
important ideas and would hopefully be a low-stress activity and building block up to writing a
full paragraph summary.
Once I reached high school, all of my language arts teachers were all about annotating
texts. The problem was that I was never taught different strategies for doing so, or even what to
annotate as opposed to what not to annotate. One strategy I learned this semester, which is just
one of the many ways to annotate a text is the INSERT model, which stands for Interactive
Notation System to Effective Reading and Thinking. This involves four basic symbols (a
checkmark, +, -, and ?) which are used to show a students understanding, or their
confusion, among other things. Students could write these symbols on a sticky note to stick right
to the page, or could have a bookmark where they would write these symbols down along with a
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page number. Not only would they use the symbols, they would also elaborate on their thoughts
behind putting a specific symbol on their sticky note or bookmark. The INSERT model would be
one of several ways I would like to teach students to annotate their texts. Providing multiple
ways to annotate allows students to find what works and does not work for their own reading and
annotating purposes.
One of the literacy strategies I am looking forward to trying in my own classroom is the
RAFT activity. This acronym stands for role, audience, form and topic and is a great way to
engage the minds of the more creative students in a class with an activity that allows for more
imagination and originality than a typical essay. On first introducing this activity, I might have a
few examples to show students or perhaps even work through one with the whole class
participating and contributing just to show them the process of making one. After introducing
this activity, every so often, a RAFT could take the place of an essay (though learning to write an
actual academic essay is important too) and the possibilities for what students could do is
practically endless. Another great part about the RAFT activity is that if students can get creative
and have a bit of fun with this kind of project, they would most likely enjoy sharing their projects
with the class, which would be a fun way to fulfill the speech requirement included in most
language arts standards. Last, but certainly not least, the longer I teach and use RAFTs as an
assignment, the more examples I will have to show the next classes and inevitably there will be
projects students come up with that are incredibly creative and that I could not have imagined
myself.
In a high-school level English course, I believe that one of the most important concepts a
student can grasp is listening to, contributing to, and even guiding a discussion. What better way
to get students involved in their own and others learning than by sharing ideas and generating
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new ones? Reflecting back on my high-school English classes, I realize the true value in large
group discussions even though as a fairly shy and quiet student, discussion days were not always
my favorite. However, my idea of a discussion day would involve students arranging desks into a
large circle, handing everyone a sheet with several overarching, guiding questions and opening
the discussion with one of these questions. Students would then be free to respond to these
questions or pose their own questions and lead the group in a new direction. As their ticket out
the door, each student would be required to have a couple of the main points of the discussion
written down as well as at least one corner of their paper torn off to signify at least one time they
had spoken up and contributed to the dialogue. In higher level classes, I might even have
students create their own guiding discussion questions to bring into class for a discussion. Class
discussions are simply a great way to get students involved in their own learning, and with a
well-led discussion, everyone should walk away with a new insight or idea to think about.
Every week of this semester, I have walked away with some great new strategies in my
toolbox that I am excited to try in a classroom of my own. This reflection on all of the different
strategies has also made me realize that English can be so much more than reading a book and
writing a paper and that if these strategies are applied effectively, every student can find their
strong suit and truly grow and thrive in each and every classroom that they enter.