MLE 4280 TEACHING READING IN THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM Fall, 1999 Instructor: Lockart Theme: Educator As Creator of Effective Educational Environments: Integrating Students, Subjects,Strategies and Societies Course 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 ELE4000, MLE3150, MLE4760, or permission of department chair. Text: Vacca, Richard T. & Vacca, Joanne. Content Area Reading: (Fourth Edition). Boston: Little Brown, 1996. 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 Model (Joyce & 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 formation which includes identifying and enumerating data, grouping data, and developing categories and labels for the groups. 2 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. Proficiency is required in planning and teaching directed reading lessons using a variety of instructional strategies. Outcomes for all MLE Classes: 1 Develop a desire of lifelong learning in students and personally display one's own desire for lifelong learning, including self-evaluation skills. 2 Demonstrate good communication skills. 3 Demonstrate/exhibit sensitivity to students' feelings. 4 Demonstrate instruction to develop and utilize the cognitive processes by which pupils learn. 5 Demonstrate a knowledge of facts and an understanding of fundamental principles, ideas and relationships among various knowledge domains.6 Demonstrate knowledge of past and present developments, issues, research, and social influences in the field of education. Outcomes Specific to this Course: 1 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. 2 Recognize that the vast range of individual differences in the middle and secondary school population requires a career long dedication to acquiring, developing, and pursuing instructional strategies and resources which will illuminate the essential concepts in each content field and enable pupils to read and comprehend textbooks and other reading materials literally, inferentially, and critically. Goals: 1 The students' work in this class will be judged on his/her ability to prepare a portfolio of teaching strategies for pre-reading activities, concept development,comprehension,and reading/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 secondary classroom. 2 Develop in each student a commitment for providing reading instruction in content area classrooms. 3 Provide students with an understanding of the reading process. 4 Provide students with an array of instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary, comprehension, and the reading study skills. 5 Provide students with the opportunity to teach directed reading lessons in a contentarea in a public school classroom. 6 Provide for cultural diversity and provide curriculum for special needs children. Field Experiences in a school that would: 1 Assure that students would have ample opportunities to plan and teach in a supportive school atmosphere prior to student teaching. 2 Provide multicultural involvement. 3 Provide pre-professionals and professionals with opportunities to dialogue over a sustained period of time. 4 Allow school professionals the opportunity to have input into college classes. University Expectations: Activities will be appropriate, sequential, and of a reasonable mix to give the student directed observation and classroom participation. The student will be closely and competently supervised and evaluated.Receive a total of 100 hours of clinical experience in the classroomReceive planning and teaching experiences.Keep a log of experiences.Be evaluated on their performance and be given a positive critique.Be evaluated by cooperating teachers and receive input from them.Course Requirements: 1 Two exams based on assigned reading, classroom presentations, and discussions. 2 You are required to read a minimum of 5 books and report back to the class on two of them. Select novels you have not read before and no more than one from a specific category. Sign up for the books you want, as there are not to be duplicates. Categories:1. Friendship/romance 2. Problems adolescents face (death, drugs, divorce, dying, etc.) 3. historical fiction/science fiction 4. Caldecott or Newbery winner books 5. Golden Oldie. Your typed note cards on the five books should have the following information: author, title, publishing company, year published, synopsis of book, ranking system (your personal one from 1-10, 10 the best), age level. Select two books for book talks. Your book talk is to last at least 2 minutes and not more than 3 minutes. 3 Assemble a portfolio of teaching strategies for pre-reading activities, concept development, comprehension, and reading/study skills. Ten are required. You will present two (total of four minutes). 4 Attendance and class participation are essential. You must be IN class to participate and take notes. One percentage point of grade (total grade) will be taken off per missed class. Students must stay the full period 7-9:30 p.m. to get full attendance credit. If you are gone half the class, then you lose ½ percentage point.