Literacy Research Project

Prompts: What are your initial thoughts and ideas about your inquiry topic? What are your beginning ideas about your contribution to the inquiry project? How are you now understanding reading in your discipline?

For my research project I want to look into how teaching vocabulary can improve student's reading comprehension. Before now I did not know how to teach vocabulary to students. Now that I have been reading different articles and textbooks on adolescent literacy I am particularly interested in learning strategies to implement into my classroom that will help my students improve in literacy.

Last semester I had a difficult time teaching my students not only content vocabulary but even general vocabulary. I constantly had to stop and explain meanings of words throughout my lesson. I used BINGO and crossword puzzles to help the students learn the content terminology needed in order to understand what I was trying to teach them in the business classroom. At the time that was an effective way to grab the students' attention and let them know what words were important to know for their success in business content. Unfortunately these strategies were only a quick and easy way to get the students to memorize the meanings of certain words, not commit them to memory.

I believe that it is very important to teach my students content vocabulary and by doing this research project I hope that I will find successful strategies to use in my classroom no matter what content I am teaching. I feel that especially in the business content the terminology directly connects to the real-world and everyday language used on the news, in newspapers, the internet, and by business employees. I want my students to understand and get familiar with business terminology in order to help them in the future as they move on to get a job and be successful!

Content Literacy

Here goes with my first blog...

PROMPTS:
What are your perceptions of content literacy and the adolescent reader? What are your experiences involving content literacy? What are your initial observations of effective reading in your discipline?

Before entering into my first day of this course (The Teaching of Reading), I thought we were going to learn how to teach students to read, which of course scared me a little. Before this class I had not really heard the term "content literacy". I now understand the meaning and the strategies that help students apply reading and writing throughout content areas. English class is not the only place that students need to read and write!
Throughout my years as a student I do not recall my teachers using content literacy strategies. For the most part we were told to read a chapter in the provided textbook for homework then the next day the teacher would lecture to us while we took notes. I also have had many teachers ask me to read a chapter or an article and then never discuss the readings or use the information from the readings (this is called "busy work"). These strategies of course were not motivation for me to read.
My content area is Business Education and I am excited about using different content literacy strategies in my classroom. I plan to not only use textbooks but also newspapers, trade books, and the Internet for students to explore their interests in the business world! I am going to get to know my students and try to understand what motivates them about business to help promote content literacy. I will implement several strategies mentioned in the article "Effective Literacy Istruction for Adolescents".
Today students are bombarded with information that they get from TV, cell phones, and computers. I want to be able to use this technology especially the internet to open the students to learn about real life business. I want to teach the students how to read, interpret, and write about the information being taught in my Business Education classroom. My ultimate goal would be to find out what MOTIVATES students to want to learn and discover more about business education.