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Literacy Across the Curriculum

Vanessa Ramirez-Jasso
Principia College

Part 1
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My experience with reading has developed from hating and ignoring reading, to

appreciating and striving to read more. The range of perspective testifies to the 7 years

I attended school in Mexico, and the rest of my schooling career spent in the United

States. Before studying literacy during Ed Block, I understood reading as a tool for

communicating knowledge or information from one platform to another. This tool

required focus and effort to truly understand the reading.

Back in elementary school when I lived in Mexico and I attended public school, I

never read asides from the reading necessary to complete my assignments. This

illiteracy in my life was one most of my peers, if not all, experienced in the first decade

of our lives. Reading a book for fun was unheard of and for the time I attempted reading

the first Harry Potter book, I didnt share with others because it wasnt a cool thing

people talked about. My perspective on reading at the time was very limited for I had

not experienced the amusement, motivation, and knowledge it brings. While I dont

regret my childhood, I am sad to have missed out on such great kids and adolescent

books my friends sometimes talk about.

In eighth grade, I was fortunate to attend school in California where literacy

played a big role in the curriculum and society. During my last year of middle school, I

was introduced to the beauty and power of reading after having completed reading a

book on my own. Although completing such a task was difficult for me, that experience

was huge in my life because it helped me improve my reading comprehension and my

English pronunciation.

During the first 2 years after I moved to the United States, I went to the library

to get my library card and I began reading books out loud to native English speakers

and myself to improve my fluency of the language. This type of practice was influential
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in my love of learning because the more I read, the more words I knew and the more I

understood from each page.

On another note, it is unbelievable for me to look back at my reading experience

and realize I have never completed reading a book in my native language, Spanish.

Thanks to a friend who loves talking about the books she reads, I was motivated to buy

a book in Spanish to expand my Spanish literacy. I look forward to reading it during

winter break when schoolwork doesnt exist.

After taking Ed Block and learning about literacy, reading is the ability to

fluently deliver text in thought or out loud, while comprehending vocabulary

accurately. Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, authors of The CAF Book: Engaging All

Students in Daily Literacy Assessment and Instruction, provide guidelines to assess students

reading. The C in CAF stands for Comprehension, A for Accuracy, F for Fluency,

and E for Expand Vocabulary. These guidelines are a useful way of supporting the

growth of students because it meets every aspect of good reading.

Reading goes deeper than the comprehension of words, its a persistent cognitive effort

to enlarge our perception on different ideas from the authors perspective.

My understanding of reading has changed from knowing that reading entails

reading and understanding words, to valuing the cognitive process of comprehending a

variety of new and old ideas. My experience in elementary and middle school were very

different because literacy played a bigger role in the U.S. than Mexico. Thankfully, my

most recent education has introduced me to the benefits reading brings for all. Reading

is a large part of literacy. Literacy is a very large part of education that forms our

thinking and decisions we make.

Part 2
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Literacy is at the core of every schools curriculum. Schools have been built to

develop reading and writing skills to communicate with others, orally and verbally. As

curriculums change and educators work to improve education for students, balanced

literacy programs have developed. These types of programs include literacy principles

that go in depth and are covered through the efforts of the community, home, and the

school. A definition for balanced literacy I agree with says that it is a philosophical

orientation that assumes that reading and writing achievement are developed through

instruction and support in multiple environments in which teachers use various

approaches that differ by level of teacher support and child control (Frey, Lee,

Tollefson, Pass, and Massengill, 2005).

As an educator, the reading and writing proficiency for a balanced literacy

includes word recognition and the construction of meaning through differentiation. The

provision of differentiating literacy instruction serves to meet the learning needs of

students, as well as to enhance the cognitive development of students literacy. Ways to

provide options and different approaches to instruction are through read aloud, guided

reading, shared reading, and expository, persuasive, descriptive, and narrative writing.

These types of activities bring a balance to the development of students reading and

writing.

Another aspect of a balanced literacy includes assessment on the progress being

done from the student and teachers perspectives. This part of literacy is very important

because it provides a tool to understand how students are doing with their reading and

writing proficiency. This step provides opportunities to include struggling readers, such

as ESL learners that require extra support in their experience through literacy.
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Asides from understanding how to provide effective literacy instruction,

understanding the motives behind the actions, will drive the teachers efforts to ensure

their literacy program is balanced. Based on an information analysis done by Barbara

Scola, the majority of educators have a common goal for literacy. These three are goals

for students to 1) be able to read words, 2) be able to comprehend, and 3) appreciate

good literature and be motivated to read more (2002). With my beliefs on literacys

purpose, the three goals mentioned above cover my intentions for emphasizing the

importance of reading and writing. Although writing was not mentioned in the literacy

goals, achieving those goals can happen through writing and the use of words to

comprehend and appreciate good literature.

A balanced literacy program includes a variety of ways and strategies to help

develop reading and writing proficiency, integrating differentiation in the students

approach to being able to read, comprehend and appreciate good literature. These

efforts emphasize on the greatness and importance of literacy that will hopefully open

doors for students to read more. I believe in this type of balance for literacy because it

provides students with a range of ways to love the ability to read and write as a way of

nonverbal communication, a way for humans to connect with one another.

Part 3

My internship at the Alton middle school was an experience with limited

opportunities to observe how reading and literacy instruction were integrated in the

everyday class. While reading was not an emphasis for the seventh-grade math class, I

noticed few approaches to reading for the diverse group of learners. In the next couple

of paragraphs, an analysis on my observations during the internship will cover the little

emphasis on reading, and the ways literacy is growing through a mathematical

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approach. My definition of reading and literacy has changed through the experiences

Ive had with literacy during my internship because I now value a lot proficiency in

reading and writing.

Through math, students continue their practice of reading by the focus it

requires to understand directions or instructions needed to follow to solve math

problems. Most of this type of practice happens during worksheet time where students

worked independently. Throughout the teachers instruction, she would read out loud

for students to understand new concepts and learn new vocabulary. Her reading was

loud and clear, and for words or phrases that were important, she repeated them a few

times before moving on. This practice of literacy was very limiting for students who

need more engagement in class to learn

Another qualitative observation I made throughout my time there, it was

noticing that many students did very well comprehending their reading, meanwhile,

some students struggled to comprehend most word problems and therefore couldnt

accomplish their problems correctly. This type of challenge for students is a challenge

the teacher and the whole class faces because not all students will move forward at the

same pace. After a couple of weeks of being present in the seventh-grade math class, I

also discovered that the teacher shared short cuts to understand what word problems

ask to do, by looking at specific words in the writing. While this seems helpful, it takes

away from the students opportunities to be challenged in their reading ability of a

whole sentence.

The emphasis on reading in the math class I observed, resulted in students

falling behind on their math due to the low level of reading and writing. This lack of

practice impedes the learners logical mind to develop for the reading and writing skills
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allow students to communicate their problem solving. Although students dont

experience the emphasis on reading and writing, their math skills are part of their

literacy in great ways.

References

Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2009). The Literacy CAFE Menu [Table].

Frey, B. B., Lee, S. W., Tollefson, N., & Massengill, D. (2005). Balanced literacy in an

urban school district. The Journal of Educational Research, 98(5), 272-280.

Retrieved from JSTOR database.

Scola, B. (2002). An effective intervention program as part of a balanced literacy

program. Retrieved from ERIC website:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED469151