MLE 4280 TEACHING READING IN THE MIDDLE/SECONDARY CLASSROOM Fall: 2006 Linda Loy 2208 Buzzard 581-7862 (O) 217-536-5269 (H) [email protected] or [email protected] Office Hours: Monday 2-4:00, Tuesday 10-12:00, Wednesday 12-1:00 or by appointment 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: (8th Edition). Boston: Little Brown, 2005. 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. 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 lifelong learning in students and personally display one's own desire for lifelong 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. Demonstrate 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: 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 secondary school population requires a career long dedication to acquiring, developing, and pursuing instructional strategies andresources 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. 3. 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. 4. Develop in each student a commitment for providing reading instruction in content area classrooms. 5. Provide students with an understanding of the reading process. 6 Provide students with an array of instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary, comprehension, and the reading study skills. 7. Provide students with the opportunity to teach directed reading lessons in a content area in a public school classroom. 8. Provide for cultural diversity and provide curriculum for special needs children. ************************************************************************************* THE SYLLABUS IS A TENTATIVE PLAN AND MAY BE ALTERED AS THE SEMESTER PROGRESSES. MLE4280.002 COURSE REQUIREMENTS Fall 2006 All work completed outside of class should be typed. 1. Three major tests based on assigned reading, classroom presentations, and discussions. 2. Create a notebook with a detailed Table of Contents, containing reviews of all the books read and reported on by your class. You are required to read a minimum of 2 approved adolescent novels and one nonfiction book and report back to the class in a unique presentation. Prepare a brief description for each class member of each book with important information on the handout. (title, author, ranking system, reading audience, synopsis, year published, publishing company, suggestions how you could use these books in the content areas. (Include mathematics, language arts, science, social studies) Select books you have not read before. Give one book talk using a unique way of presentation and/or a visual aid. Everything should be typed. Possible Categories: 1. Relationships 2. Problems adolescents face (death, drugs, pregnancy, alcoholism, gender identity, divorce, dying, etc.) 3. Historical fiction/science fiction 4. Newbery winner book and other award winning books 5. Courage/Adventure 6. Mystery 7. Biography/Autobiography 8. Sports, science, and other non-fiction books Organize your book file/notebook by categories in ABC order by author or title within categories. A detailed Table of Contents is mandatory. 3. Teach a reading strategy lesson to the class demonstrating your assigned strategy. Prepare an explanation of your strategy for each class member. Tell whether it is a pre-, during-,post-, or study skill activity. Explain how it could be used for the content area subjects. Using only the information I give you in the folders, will earn you a B+ at the most. Additional research and explanation will earn a higher grade. 4. Assemble a portfolio of reading strategies for pre-reading activities,