MLE4280 Content Area Reading in the Middle/Secondary Classroom8-9:40 a.m. Tue. /Thu.Fall: 2007Dr. Gail [email protected] BuzzardOffice: 581-7884, Home: 345-3771Office Hours: 10-12 (T, R), 3-4 (W)THEME:Educator as Creator of Effective Educational EnvironmentsIntegrating Students, Subjects, Strategies, and SocietiesCourse Description: As a reading methods class for middle school/secondary pre-service teachers, this class provides appropriate reading instructional techniques in the content area for grades 6-12.Prerequisites: MLE3110, concurrent enrollment in MLE4000, MLE3150, MLE4280, or permission of department chair.Text: Vacca, R. & Vacca J. (2008). Content area reading (9th edition). Boston: Little Brown.Purpose of the Course: This course is designed to convey to middle school/secondary pre-service teachers the understanding that they have a serious responsibility to provide students with the instructional support necessary to comprehend content textbooks. To achieve this end, class members will become familiar with several perspectives of the reading process and will acquire multiple strategies for teaching the reading skills using content textbooks, reading textbooks, and other reading materials.Teaching Model: Inductive (Joyce and Weil, 1972). This model, developed by Hilda Taba, was designed to help students improve their ability to categorize and to use categories. Three cognitive tasks are included in this strategy:1. Concept formation2. Interpreting, inferring, and generalizing data.3. Applying principles to explain new phenomena or predicting consequences. This model was promoted specifically to develop, improve, and increase thinking capacity.ILLIOIS TEACHING STANDARDSIL- STANDARD: Information Literacy Skills: The competent teacher will developCAS.CTECH.8 Information literacy skills to be able to access, evaluate, and use information to improve teaching and learning.Il-PTS.1 STANDARD: Content Knowledge: The competent teacher understands the central concepts, methods of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) and creates learning experiences that make the content meaningful to all students.IL-PTS.2 STANDARD: Human Development and Learning: The competent teacher understandshow individuals grow, develop, and learn and provide learning opportunities thatsupport the intellectual, social, and personal development of all students.IL-PTS.3 STANDARD: Diversity: The competent teacher understands how students differ in theirapproaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverselearners.IL-PTS. 4 STANDARD: Planning for Instruction: The competent teacher understands instructionalplanning and designs instruction based upon knowledge of the discipline, students, thecommunity, and curriculum goals.1IL-PTS. 5 STANDARD: Learning Environment: The competent teacher uses an understanding ofIndividual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment thatEncourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.IL-PTS. 6 STANDARD: The competent teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.IL-PTS. 7 STANDARD: Communication: The competent teacher uses knowledge of effectivewritten, verbal, nonverbal, and visual communication techniques to foster active inquiry,collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.IL-PTS.8 STANDARD: Assessment: The competent teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and uses them to support the continuous development of all students.IL-PTS.9 STANDARD: Collaborative Relationships: The competent teacher understands the roleof the community in education and develops and maintains collaborative relationshipswith colleagues, parents/guardians, and the community to support student learning andwell-being.IL-PTS.10 STANDARD: Reflection and Professional Growth: The competent teacher is a reflectivepractitioner who continually evaluates how choices and actions affect students, parents,and other professionals in the learning community and actively seeks opportunities togrow professionally.IL-PTS.11 STANDARD: Professional Conduct and Leadership: The competent teacher understandseducation as a profession, maintains standards of professional conduct, and providesleadership to improve student learning and well-being.Outcomes for all MLE Classes:- Proficiency is required in planning and teaching directed reading lessons using a variety of instructional strategies.- Develop a desire of line-long learning in students and personally display one’s own desire for life-long learning including self-evaluation skills.- Demonstrate good communication skills.- Demonstrate/exhibit sensitivity to students’ feelings.- Demonstrate instruction to develop and utilize the cognitive processes by which pupils learn.- A knowledge of facts and an understanding of fundamental principles, ideas, and relationships among various knowledge domains.- Demonstrate knowledge of past and present developments, issues, research, and social influences in the field of education.Outcomes Specific to this Course:- Develop an enduring capacity to care, specifically, to care about the literacy needs of pupils by utilizing the content area classroom as a vehicle for teaching and extending the reading skills of pupils.- Recognize that the vast range of individual differences in the middle school population requires a career-long dedication to acquiring, developing, and pursuing instructional strategies and resources which illuminate the essential concepts in each content field and enable pupils to read and comprehend textbooks and other reading materials literally, inferentially, and critically.- The students’ work in this class will be judges on his/her ability to prepare a portfolio of teaching strategies for pre-reading, during reading, post reading, and study skills. Each student will teach a directed reading activity. In addition, students will become familiar with a variety of reading materials and formulate a bibliography appropriate for use in the middle school class along with strategies for using these books in the classroom.- Develop in each student a commitment for providing reading instruction in content are classrooms.- Provide