Incorporating Literacy into Content Areas

I am a 2^nd Grade ELA teacher, so literacy is what I do every day with students.  As a teacher, it is my job to build students’ comprehension, writing skills, and overall skills in communication.   If I do this, I am covering reading, writing, and speaking.  

At the elementary I work at, we use units to teach our reading and writing.  Social Studies and Science has been embedded in these units also.  Using the skills and standards in the units; the ELA teachers in 2nd Grade come up with engaging and effective strategies to get students to think about, read about, write about, and talk about the content we are teaching in the Units. 

For reading, I do a lot of read alouds in my classroom.  It is important to model previewing a text, reading for a purpose, making predictions, making connections, and thinking aloud.  If a teacher is using strategies for prereading, during reading, and after reading often enough in front of the students; these should rub off on the students to do these on their own when reading.  My students have thirty minutes of independent reading each day.  Our school has a great library and I have a large classroom library.  My students have a zone they have to stay in if reading a book they will test on; however, students need choices on book selection if you want to keep them engaged in reading.  I expect my students to read half fiction and half nonfiction.  They have to write the genre of each book they read in their reading log. 

To cover some of the speaking, I use Kagan structures throughout daily lessons.  I will have students talk to each other for one to two minutes about a skill taught.  I can walk around during this time and do a quick informal assessment.  At the end of the two minutes, some will share what they heard.  Listening is important also.  Sometimes, I give some time for students to share what they wrote.  At the beginning of the year they are somewhat hesitant, but love doing this by the end of the year.

For writing, students do some kind of writing every day.  There are times they are asked to respond to a prompt.  They have a folder that they keep their writing in.  If they are not responding to a prompt, they are continuing a writing they already started in their folder.  It might be a narrative, informative/explanatory, or opinion writing that they are adding to.  Sometimes, they are starting a new writing.  To make it fun for students, I include informal and formal writing activities. The students research alot of the topics for Social Studies and Science that are included in the units.  I give them prompts to respond to as they learn a topic. The students also write a research paper with assistance on some of these topics.  Some of the topics have included researching one of the seasons and a famous person from the wild west.  

I teach in an inclusion classroom most years.  Within this inclusion class, I have advanced students, IEP students, proficient students, and struggling students.  I set my room up each year into Kagan pods.  Each pod is divided up into the abilities I just mentioned.  A student sitting next to or across from a student does not have the same learning ability as them.  When paired together for a Kagan structure, they can help the other.  I teach a lot of my skills and standards in guided groups.  These groups are divided up into abilities.  I give assignments or read books according to their abilities plus challenge those who need it. 

Here is a  video I found that introduces seven free  technology tools teachers can use in most content areas to embed literacy skills into their instruction.  Some of these tools really engage the students to think at a higher level.  Do you have any new ideas for incorporating literacy into your content area?