Promoting Literacy in the Classroom Through ReadingtoLearn Strategies

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Promoting Literacy in the Classroom Through
Reading-to-Learn Strategies

• Harry G. Lang
• Rachel C. Lewis
• National Technical Institute for the Deaf
• Rochester Institute of Technology

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Reading-to-Learn

• Objectives
• The participant will
• learn strategies for effectively embedding
  reading strategies into science and mathematics
  classes.
• incorporate science and mathematics learning
  strategies that will enhance reading skills,
  including
• metacognitive skills
• vocabulary development
• inferencing skills
• memory rehearsal

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Reading-to-Learn

• Deaf children who do not actively achieve early
  literacy skills often tend to continue to lag
  behind hearing peers during the middle and high
  school years.
• Every possible effort should be made to
  strengthen early literacy in deaf children to
  reduce the need for remediation during the
  postsecondary years.

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Reading-to-Learn

• Embedding Reading-to-Learn strategies in such
  content areas as science, mathematics, and social
  studies can aid both content learning and general
  literacy.

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Reading-to-Learn

• Why is reading important in Science and Math?In
  the past, "literacy" usually referred to reading
  and writing skills of the students. It was
  considered essential that students be able to
  read at a sufficient level in English to obtain
  current information from a newspaper or read a
  contract in order to understand what they were
  signing. Now, those same rudimentary skills are
  not considered enough in this technological world
  of ours.

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Reading-to-Learn

• Why is reading important in Science and Math?
• In order to be able to fully participate in
  society and obtain jobs in an increasingly
  scientific market, deaf students must have
  significantly higher literacy skills.

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Reading-to-Learn

• Most deaf children progress in reading at only a
  fraction of the rate of hearing peers. More than
  30 percent of deaf students leave school
  functionally illiterate.
• However, at the same time, there are clearly many
  deaf adults and children who are excellent
  readers. How do we account for such differences?

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Reading-to-Learn

• How do we account for such differences?
• Few people will argue that practice with reading
  at all ages can make a difference.

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Reading-to-Learn

• In this PowerPoint slide show, we will not go
  into detail about readingskills. Rather, we will
  demonstrate some ways that content teachers
  canembed reading activities that willprovide
  that important practiceBUT will not steal
  time away from teaching the content.

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Reading-to-Learn

• Rather, the embedded reading activities will
  promote learning of the content while
  simultaneously addressing various reading needs
  of deaf learners.

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Reading-to-Learn

• We have chosen four areas related to reading
  skills that deaf students would benefit from more
  practice in across the curriculum
• metacognitive skills
• vocabulary development
• inferencing skills
• memory rehearsal

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Reading-to-Learn

• Metacognition in its simplest form is thinking
  about thinking.
• When children are young or learning is new, they
  rarely stop to think about what they are
  learning. For example, a child does not usually
  explain to us why she knew the color of a her
  brothers hair or why she identified an animal
  as a dog. Learning at that stage of life is
  simple and straightforward. Facts are accepted
  as given, for the most part. Experience is
  rarely questioned.

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Metacognition

• As children grow older and the amount of learning
  increases, they actively participate in the
  control of their own cognitive processes.
• Our students become aware that they can
  manipulate and increase their learning by
  understanding what is important, what can be
  deleted or purposefully unremembered, what
  information needs to be placed in conjunction
  with other information, etc.

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Metacognition

• The concept of metacognition requires active
  involvement of the learners in what they are
  learning. Learners approach any task and any
  subject matter with the awareness that they will
  need to pay attention in order to learn and
  incorporate new material into previously learned
  knowledge.

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Metacognition

• The simple act of concentration means that the
  learner will need to filter out competing
  stimuli. For deaf students this usually means
  filtering out visual input that is not directly
  related to the information to be learned. This
  can include bright colored objects in the room,
  movement of other people, and even traffic
  outside of a classroom.

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Metacognition

• Filtering out unimportant information is also
  important to reading.
• We should give our students practice with brief
  readings in mathematics and science, challenging
  them to identify less important information in
  the paragraph.

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Reading-to-Learn

• Realizing that one is not understanding the
  material, or is unable to utilize it well is also
  an essential part of metacognition. When this
  type of awareness is reached, students will be
  more able to influence their own learning.

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Metacognition

• Teachers in mathematics and science should
  encourage students to think about their own
  thinking as often as possible. Some teachers have
  experimented with asking students to think aloud,
  or sign aloud.
• The students sign their thoughts as they solve a
  problem, thus allowing the teacher and peers to
  see what they are thinking as they progress
  through the problem.

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Metacognition

• Film clip R1 shows a deaf student signing aloud
  as he solves a Sudoku puzzle.
• The goal is to place each number 1 to 9 so that
  it appears once in each row, column, and 3x3 box.
  The student tries one placement for 2, sees it
  wont work, then figures out the correct
  placement.

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Semantic Memory

• Semantic memory refers to the memory of
  understandings, meanings, and factual knowledge.
  Deaf students should be constantly challenged
  with games, activities, and other mental tasks
  that will help them represent knowledge in their
  minds.

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Memory Rehearsal

• Memory rehearsal is crucial to reading and
  learning in general. Introduce many activities on
  a regular basis.
• Examples of Activities - Younger Students
• Make a list of all the things in the classroom.
• List as many kinds of trees as you know.
• Name as many colors as you can identify in this
  classroom.

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Memory Rehearsal

• Memory rehearsal is crucial to reading and
  learning in general. Introduce many activities on
  a regular basis.
• Examples of Activities High School
• List five parts of your body above the neck that
  have three or four letters.
• List the ten largest things that you have touched
  in the past two weeks.
• Name as many vegetables as you can.

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Memory Rehearsal

• Film Clip R2 illustrates a teacher challenging
  her students with activities requiring memory
  rehearsal.
• Students are asked to list animals whose names
  begin with vowels.

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Vocabulary Development

• Science and mathematics are excellent areas for
  developing vocabulary. There are many approaches
  that can make the lessons fun.
• The greater the vocabulary especially multiple
  meanings of words, the easier it will be for deaf
  students to unpack meaning from long-term memory
  as they read and discuss their science and
  mathematics work.

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Vocabulary Development

• Film Clip R3 shows a teacher dealing with
  multiple meanings of the term maturity.

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Drawing Inferences

• Another skill that is crucial to reading and that
  can be developed through regular activities in
  the classroom is inferencing the process of
  deducing new information from information you
  already know.
• This can be done by practicing with text, data,
  diagrams, and other information.

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Drawing Inferences

• Film clip R4 illustrates how a teacher is using a
  graph about two basketball teams to have the
  students draw inferences about how the teams are
  different and possible reasons why they are
  having different seasons.

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Reading-to-Learn Summary

• These are just a few of the many general skills
  that can strengthen both reading ability and
  content learning when embedded into lesson plans
  on a regular basis.