Literacy Action Plan Academy of Innovative Technology Ms. Lynch & Ms. Stahl

Literacy Professional Development November 16 th, 2011 Goal: To provide teachers with a toolbox of strategies in order to support our students in finding their voice through argumentative writing across the curriculum. Rationale/Supporting Data: According to the 2011 Performance Series Exam 41% of AoIT students are ‘at risk’ which means they are reading below grade level. Our students have greater trouble identifying vocabulary words in nonfiction text than in fiction. Our students have the ability to make generalizations, identify text purpose, restate ideas, distinguish between fact and opinion, and understand the relationship between cause and fact in non-fiction text when the level is between 2 nd -4 th grade, but as soon as the text reaches a 5 th grade reading level our students encounter a lot of trouble. The message is clear: our students need help understanding non fiction text.

Pre-Assessment and Gallery Walk What do your students read and write daily? How do we currently support our students in content area reading? What are some strategies we use to help our students understand text books? What challenges are you facing when students read textbooks?

Popcorn Reading PAGES “How Smart Readers Think” from Subjects Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading” by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman First half of the room read the first 5 pages Second half of the room read the second 5 pages

Introduction Each month a new area of literacy development will be introduced across the disciplines. 2-3 comprehension strategies will be introduced at a PD during the first Wednesday of the month. 1 grammar mini-lesson will be introduced per month. 2-3 monthly academic vocabulary will be introduced. Teachers will try these strategies in their classroom. In the 3 rd week of the month teachers will exchange and analyze student work based on the strategies used each month. Debrief in teams during the PD: What worked? What didn’t? How can we improve on this strategy?

Monthly Themes November: Pre-Reading Strategies (activating prior knowledge) December: Making Connections (text to self, text to world, text to text, to predict) January: Questioning (to surface uncertainties, to interrogate the text, to actively wonder) February: Visualizing (making mental pictures or sensory images) March: Making Inferences (to hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions) April: Synthesizing/Analysis (determining what is important, summarizing, notice text structures, author’s craft, making judgments, pulling it all together) May: Wrap Up/Reflection/Test Taking Strategies

Pre-Reading Strategies Model the activity Explain how this activity can be helpful when it comes to informational text and argumentative writing How can you use this in your classroom? Notes: Clustering (2 groups of 5) Probable Passage (2 groups of 5) Tea Party (Fishbowl) WITH VOLUNTEERS—Outside: what did you see? Inside: share your experience and statement.

Your teacher toolbox: Now you have 3 Pre-Reading Strategies: -Clustering -Probable Passage -Tea Party Next month is MAKING CONNECTIONS— you’ll be able to add: 2-3 strategies to help students connect to the text, make text-to- text connections, and text-to-world connections A grammar mini-lesson 2-3 words to enhance academic vocabulary