Integration of Foundational and New Literacies Instruction within Our Secondary Content Area Courses

Empirical work has confirmed that proficient readers and writers of printed text actively construct meaning using a small set of powerful reading comprehension strategies (Pressley & Afflerback, 1995; RRSG, 2002.) Readers must be strategic, activating prior knowledge, questioning, inferring and synthesizing as they read. While many approaches to strategy instruction exist, Reciprocal Teaching (Palinscar, .) and Questioning the Author (Beck, .) are researched based. As such, these instructional approaches on foundational literacies have been integrated into our pre service teacher training. Many of the same strategies are necessary for proficient online reading. However, additional strategies to which we refer as New Literacies are also necessary. Internet Reciprocal Teaching (PDF document) and Internet Questioning the Author (Leu, Leu, Coiro, 2004) are vehicles through which we teach the new literacies. To best understand these literacies and how to successfully instruct on and integrate them in addition to the foundational literacies above, we have developed a series of courses in which our pre- service teachers participate.

Courses

Course 1: Two Week Course #1: Technical knowledge and skills with the software and hardware used for new literacies instruction will be acquired by teacher candidates through the help of an expert in using digital tools for new literacies instruction.

Syllabi (to be linked soon)

Course 2: Four Month Course #2: Disciplinary-specific methods course where teacher candidates acquire pedagogical content knowledge for applying literacy and new literacies instruction in math or science instruction. Teacher candidates will acquire initial expertise with integrating two literacy instructional models: Questioning the Author (QA) and Reciprocal Teaching (RT); they will also acquire initial expertise with integrating two new literacies instructional models: Internet Questioning the Author (IQA) and Internet Reciprocal Teaching (IRT) (PDF document)

Math Syllabus (Word Document)

Science Syllabus (PDF document)

Enhancing Internet Comprehension using Reciprocal Teaching: http://ctell1.uconn.edu/IRA/InternetRT.htm (website)

Internet Reciprocal Teaching Strategies for Critically Evaluating Websites: http://ctell1.uconn.edu/somers/quag.htm (website)

Course 3: Two Week Course #3: Pedagogical knowledge specific to literacy and new literacies instruction with an expert in both pedagogies. Teacher candidates will acquire in depth expertise (through video analysis and peer teaching) with integrating the two foundational literacy models: RT and QtA, and the two new literacies models IQtA and IRT.

Syllabi (coming soon!)

Course 4: Four month seminar: Application and reflection on the implementation of literacy and new literacies pedagogy in a clinical setting. Teacher candidates will acquire applied expertise in using the two literacy (QtA and RT) and two new literacy models (IQtA and IRT) with pupils.

Syllabi (PDF document)

Clinical Practice

Teacher candidates will engage in clinical practice for two four-month sessions. During the first experience, teacher candidates will observe, co-implement and share knowledge with their master teachers for utilizing foundational literacy and new literacies pedagogy in their math or science placements.

Teacher Candidate Research Projects

Teacher Candidates receive two weeks of formal instruction on research methods and instrumentation prior to designing and carrying out two mini research studies over an eight month period. They will specifically co-implement QtA, RT and IQtA and IRT and study their effects on student academic performance.  Additionally, they will study the integration of both foundational literacy and new literacies within their student teaching contexts.

Research Project #1 part one (PDF document)

Research Project #1 part two (PDF document)

Research Project #2 (PDF document)

What We are Learning from This Work

Assessment tools

Survey of online Teaching and Learning (PDF Document)

Course Internet Survey - MS and HS Written Responses (PDF Document)

Course Internet Survey - K-12 Written Responses (PDF Document)

Findings-Under Construction

References

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