Integration of Foundational and New Literacies Instruction within Content Areas Instruction

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 & Brown, 1985.) and Questioning the Author (Beck et al., 1997.) are researched based. As such, these instructional approaches on foundational literacies have been integrated into our pre service teacher training. Please see the Foundational Literacy link above for more detailed information.

Many of the same strategies are necessary for proficient online reading. However, additional strategies to which we refer as New Literacies are also necessary. Video examples of efficient and inefficient New Literacies can be viewed here. Internet Reciprocal Teaching and Internet Questioning the Author (Leu, Leu, Coiro, 2004) are vehicles through which we teach the new literacies. Please see the New Literacies link above for more detailed information.

Project Ideas Which Could be Adapted for Secondary Classes

Research Project #1 part one (PDF Document)

Research Project #1 part two (PDF Document)

References page

What We are Learning from This Work -under construction

Assessment tools --Under Construction

Findings-Under Construction

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