Language and Literacy, it’s for all Subjects

Overview
Throughout the course EDUC 360, there was one learning
experience that stood out to me, lesson planning combining English and
chemistry for diverse learners. My partner and I were tasked to create a
three day learning segment that included the skills of summarizing,
non-linguistics, and similarities and differences with combining English
and chemistry. This experience is valuable to me for two reasons. The
first being it showed me how multiple content areas can be incorporated
together. The second reason is that it exposed me to language and
literacy skills that all students must learn.
Skills and Insights Gained
To begin this assignment the first step was to come up with a learning segment topic that
incorporated chemistry and English. This topic chosen was identifying chemical and physical
changes using annotation skills. The next step was to write out three lessons with differentiation
in reading levels. Then, my partner and I incorporated the literacy and language elements into the
three lessons. Finally, one of the three lessons was taught to our class, and we were able to
determine that our lesson was affective in increasing student learning. One moment that stood
out for me was the realization that language and literacy is prevalent in science. Before this
experience I only had the basic understanding that reading, and writing was a part of chemistry.
Now, I see that the skills students learn in their English class (annotation, evidence gathering,
and setting up sentences/paragraphs) are also need in chemistry. It had me realize that no matter
what content area you teach, you will also be teaching your students how to read, write, and
speak academically. To deal with competing expectations of what a combined content area
lesson was, my partner and I ensured to have both subjects equally represented. All students
would get a balance of learning, showing both content areas are equally important.
Lessons Learned
This learning experience stayed with me as creating these lesson plans opens the door of
bringing in different content areas to the classroom. While my concentration is chemistry, I now
see the opportunities of math, English, foreign language, and social studies coming into my class.
This is valuable to my own life as it teaches me to be open to new types of learning. Applying
this lesson to my daily life I have now used education writing skills in my science papers. After
this assignment I am improving in the skill of blending information to get to an answer. I can
now combine math concepts with science facts to prove a chemistry theory. This experience
shapes how I approach the future as I am now open to new concepts and ideas being
incorporated into old ones.
Importance of Impact Section
The need addressed in this experience is students must be educated in multiple subject
areas to gain the ability of bringing pieces of information together. In high school students go to
a separate class for each subject, rarely having them be combined. The problem is one needs one
subject to understand another. One cannot do science without math, or history without English.
By gaining the skills of combining information, one gains a higher learning experience. This
learning experience connects to my larger professional goals as for my future classroom as I now
understand that I need to bring in other content areas in my class to my students. While my main
responsibility is to teach chemistry, I must also teach the language and literacy of other subjects.