ELA instruction focuses on the areas that will build skills that students will need to be college and career ready in 5 key areas of literacy. There's Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, and Language. These areas combined comprise the major skills needed students to be able to communicate and interpret information effectively, which I believe is the main focus of ELA instruction.
In this digital age in order to fully engage students technology tools must be utilized alongside time-tested strategies of yesterday. For instance, reading instruction can be enhanced through graphic organizer generators and assistive technology tools like audio books and optical character recognition. Reading problems and comprehension difficulties can be made easier with these tools. Similarly, writing can be facilitated through the use of tools like blogs, wikis, and comic creating software that is interactive and engaging to the youth. Podcasts and ebooks can assist students with difficulties in speaking and listening since they would forced to listen for key terms and/or ideas. Lastly, language ties in easily with the previous suggestions, in addition tools such as ebooks with a vocabulary focus.
ELA is a challenging area to teach especially in my school where too many students are below grade level. While interview an ELA teacher at my school, I learned we have some of the same concerns. One issue was using the internet as a crutch. Students often as a substitute for research will go to wikipedia and copy and paste. This impacts their reading, writing, and language skills. In addition, the teacher I interviewed agreed that the students writing how they speak or text is a major issue. These were the only areas of difficulty for the teacher I spoke to.
Hi Kwane,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that there are many students who are reading below grade levels. That is the major challenge that the subject areas teachers face today. They are mandated to take at least 6 credits to take content area reading methods to assist their instruction. The common core also addresses literacy skills (including new literacies) in science, social studies, and technical subjects. :-)
Hi Kwane,
ReplyDeleteUsing things like blog's and wiki's are great way to get students to write at any grade level. It gives them a meaningful purpose to write and puts the responsibility of doing a good job on the student becuase they know others will be reading it.
Keith,
ReplyDeleteI agree and disagree. I agree that some students will pay more attention to their writing since it will be viewed by their peers, because I have noticed it in the online forum that I use in my class. However, the students who are not comfortable writing will forfeit the assignment because they don't want public embarrassment.