Join LINCS for a Live Event August 18 at 3 PM ET on Teaching Content Area Literacy Skills

Hi Fellow Learners,

Is it possible to improve students’ reading and writing skills while teaching in the content areas?

Yes, it is! Please join the LINCS Reading and Writing and Science communities on August 18th at 3 PM ET for the live event, Science and Literacy Practices Working Together. In this 60-minute presentation, you will learn how to incorporate skill development tools like interactive read-alouds, graphic organizers, and writing scaffolds into science teaching and learning. These methods will work for other content areas too. Please register HERE

  • How do you incorporate literacy skills while teaching science, social studies, or other content areas?

Looking forward to interacting with you on the 18th,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group

Comments

Hi Everyone,

This is a friendly reminder about our event with the LINCS Science group that will take place on Wednesday, August 18th at 3 PM ET. The live event, Science and Literacy Practices Working Together, is a 60-minute presentation where you will learn about incorporating skill development tools like interactive read-alouds, graphic organizers, and writing scaffolds into content area teaching and learning. Please register HERE to attend. 

Many of us are familiar with the KWL chart graphic organizer (What I Know, What I Want to Know, and What I Learned). Did you know there are other forms of this chart that can help our students' activate their background knowledge and read more strategically in content areas like science and social studies? KLEWS is a new take on the classic KWL chart that Lizelena Iglesias (moderator of the LINCS Science group) will demonstrate how to use during the event. 

Looking forward to seeing you on the 18th,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group 

Hi Colleagues!

We all want our students to learn the necessary reading skills to land family sustaining wage jobs. Teaching reading strategies students can use to improve their comprehension of any text builds skills for education and future employment. An evidence-based strategy, the KWL chart, boosts comprehension by activating background knowledge and providing a purpose for reading. 

In our event with the LINCS Science group las week, we saw how the KWL chart could be modified for science content area reading:

We start the graphic organizer with a big question worth answering. We then list what students know about a topic in the far left column. Next, student observations from a text are put in the evidence column. Then, we move to the learning column where claims (general statements students think are true based on the evidence) are written. As questions come up, they are placed in the wonderings column. The last column, scientific principles, holds Tier 3 vocabulary (content area specific words like photosynthesis). This last column could also be called Words We Are Learning to make a KLEWW chart! Click HERE to see an instructor demonstrate how to use this organizer.

  • What are your favorite graphic organizers that help students improve their reading skills?

Thanks in advance for your responses,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to mention another gem from the Science and Literacy Practices Working Together presentation a few weeks ago. Lizelena Iglesias shared how she uses children's books to teach content using strategies like interactive read alouds. Adults reading to their children has long been a staple of PACT (Parents and Children Together) time in family literacy programs. 

Remember James Holzhauer, Jeopardy! champion? He prepped for the quiz show by reading children's books. He said that the library’s children’s section is the place to go for books “tailored to make things interesting for uninterested readers.” 

Motheread, a literacy organization, uses "children’s books, and adult poems and narratives to teach literacy skills to adults." (Note: OCTAE is neither endorsing nor recommending this organization or its curriculum.)

Maybe we should move children's books to a more prominent place in our classrooms!

  • How have you used children's books in your class or program?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group