A Balanced Literacy Program, Strategic Instruction, and Best Practices

I am teaching  9th to 12th students Mandarin Chinese in a magnet high school.

Literacy is more than reading and writing. It involves purposeful social and cognitive processes. It helps individuals discover ideas and make meaning. It enables functions such as analysis, synthesis, organization, and evaluation. It fosters the expression of ideas and opinions and extends to understanding how texts are created and how meanings are conveyed by various media, brought together in productive ways(the National Council of Teachers of English).

According to my experience, being literate not only means that one is simply being able to read and write, but also help prepare for jobs in the future and allows him to socially integrate.  People in ancient time have had a strong desire to share their thoughts in writing. Without the ability to write and to express one’s feelings a person could feel lost in a big world. As a teacher, it is important to not only know how to teach students to write but to teach them in the most effective way.  My philosophy is that teacher should be responsible to improve students’ literacy. While the teaching of literacy needs to include a balance of reading, writing, speaking and listening activities. Recently, however, it has become clear that many middle and high school students are increasingly under-literate, lacking the complex literacy skills they will need to be successful in an information-driven economy(ACT. (2006).

Instructional Strategies for High School is an accessible, practical, and engaging methods textbook that introduces pre-service teachers to various instructional strategies and helps them to decide how and when to use these methods in the classroom.

Many students in our school district are on low levels of reading achievement. Improving students’ literacy is the priority at our school. Below I would like to introduce instructional strategies that we used at our school and how they help students to learn.

At the very beginning of the school year, every teacher has to attend meetings three times a week to learn about the status of students’ literacy levels and the importance of improving students’ literacy. The school will also provide professional training for instructional reading and writing strategies.

As far as each student get his/her laptop(each student would be assigned one), there is online testing like iready or renaissance as assessments for all students. Teachers who havethird-periodd class will guide students to take the test. The test scores a student got would result in what next levels of reading or writing exercise they will enter. By the way, the tests include reading, writing and math. The school then collected the data and grouped the students according to the scores. And that’s the beginning of strategies used. Students who passed the test will still stay in their third-period class to do reading writing or math in the first twenty minutes of class. The names of those who failed the test will put into a google excel. They will get help from their mentors. Mentors are teachers who don’t have third-period classes or interns from nearby universities. For teachers like me who have, the third-period class has our own options to choose what strategies we like. The goal is simple, but clear “to improve students’ literacy”. And the goal is also part of teacher performance. You may think that a new teacher might have a hard time to guide the students. The fact is we not only have professional training but also get suggestions from experienced teachers. Last year when I had no idea what I could do. My colleagues suggested me to use www.newsela.com or khan acacemy. With newsela, I can assign my students with articles that are suitable for their grade levels. Students have either multiple choices or writing as an assessment. Most importantly, I can see the test data on my computer. I would sometimes choose articles with “Chinese” as keywords(literacy is necessarily interdisciplinary, isn’t it? ) or assign them to read articles about Chinese cultures in Chinahighlights and write a reflection paper, which has various requirement according to the articles they are reading. I will correct the paper and mark the scores in PowerSchool.

Literacy skills come into play in many ways. It needs both teachers and students work together to achieve its fulfillment!

Reference

Bruce E. Larson, Timothy A. Keiper Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School

Routledge, Nov 12, 2012

ACT. (2006). Reading between the lines: What the ACT reveals about college readiness in reading. http://www.act.org/path/policy/re- ports/reading.html.

The National Council of Teachers of English NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform Apr.2016

Whole Language Learning Theory

I am teaching  9th to 12th students Mandarin Chinese in a magnet high school.

Before I read Whole Language: Integrating the Language Arts--and Much More, I didn't know the concept of "whole language". I read articles recommended by my instructor and by google research. I agreed with What’s Whole in Whole Language. “Learning language became hard by breaking whole (natural) language up into bite-size”.

I started to learn English when I was in middle school. English is a mandatory subject even today in China. But back in the 1990s, there was seldom any English supplemental materials in urban China that teachers or students could use, not to say online resources. My teachers learned English from their teachers, who all have never had any chance to communicate with a person from English speaking countries. We started with phonogram, words, phrases, sentences and then reading comprehension. Our teachers sometimes played tapes of the textbook to us. Thirty years later, my first-grade son came home with sight words assignment. I then knew what “sight words” means after googling. I still felt ashamed of my accent. I spoke less to avoid being teased. I am still nervous when people asked me to repeat what I said. I read novels, even though not too many, to expand vocabulary. I watched videos like “improve your accent”. I attended the master program to practice writing and reading. Now as a Mandarin Chinese teacher, my experience as an English learner and a second language teacher would definitely help my students avoid detour in learning a second language.

What I am implementing now in my class include:

1. a Chinese style classroom.

I decorated my classroom with lanterns, ornaments, pictures, and a sight words wall.

2. I bought books from China and labeled them from easy reader to intermedium levels.

3. I collected videos from youtube or other websites and shared the link in Edmodo, so my students could practice listening anytime, anywhere.

4. I designed my lesson according to topics. ex. I encouraged students to order food from a Chinese restaurant when they have learned “ordering food”. I inspired by their excitement when they used what they have learned in class to real life.

Reference

Goodman, Ken. What’s Whole in Whole Language. Berkeley CA: RDR Books, 2005. pp.3-7.

Goodman, Ken. What's Whole in Whole Language? A Parent/Teacher Guide to Children's Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1986. [ED 300 777]