1. Word Play Quick Strategies to Improve Adolescent Literacy Heather Mullins HPS Middle/High Schools Instructional Coach

2. What is Literacy? • The ability to communicate through a wide variety of media • Visual • Auditory • Oral • Interactive media • Written text

3. What are the literacy skills students need to learn across the content areas?

4. Quick Strategies • Focus on Facts • Big and Little Questions • Everyday Words • The Billboard • Viewing with a Purpose • Seen it…Heard it…Thought it… • Answer This!

5. Focus on Facts • Skills • Vocabulary • Continuous Evaluation • Visual • Summarizing • Speaking • Listening • Writing

6. Focus on Facts • Metacognition Questions

7. Big and little Questions • Essential Questions vs. Stepping-Stones Questions • Conceptual thinking • Building connections • Teacher-generated questions and student-generated questions

8. Big and Little Questions • Metacognition Questions:

9. Everyday Words • Brain-Friendly • Student Choice • Vocabulary building • Connecting Knowledge

10. Everyday Words • Variations • Allow students to choose words from a list • Have students draw pictures that represent words – Display drawings on a word wall.

11. Everyday Words • Metacognition Questions:

12. The Billboard • Uses visual imagery and vocabulary to summarize • Share some billboards • (Google images has some great billboards) • Ask students… • How are billboards used to convey messages? • What is the purpose of a billboard?

14. The Billboard • Students… • Use vocabulary • Connect new knowledge • Create images • Periodically summarize • Use text features • Devise a plan

15. The Billboard • Metacognition Questions:

16. Viewing with a Purpose • Previewing guide • Provide overview • Ask students what they already know about the topic • Front loading for class discussion • Goal setting for viewing

17. Viewing with a Purpose • Options: • Break viewing into small chunks to discuss effectiveness of student viewing strategies • Couple with “Seen it…Heard it…Thought it…” • Definitely have a plan for students during the video

18. Viewing with a Purpose • Metacognition Questions:

19. Seen it…Heard it…Thought it… • Students will… • Analyze visual and aural information • Interpret what they see and hear • Draw inferences

20. Seen it…Heard it…Thought it… • Metacognition Questions:

21. Answer This! • Empowers students • Ensures teachable moments about levels of questions • Promotes careful reading, listening, and viewing • Provides formative assessment x 2

22. Answer This • Encourage students to create questions that require students to use a lot of information to answer

23. Summary • Literacy strategies • Provide formative assessment for you • Give students an opportunity to become actively engaged in the topic • Help students to become independent learners • Promote metacognition through activities and questioning

24. References Beers, Sue (2008). Adolescent literacy. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Leslie, C. (May 2006) "Metacognition through Group Practice in the New Media Classroom," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved 02 Jun. 2009 from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/11-leslie.php>.

25. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For more information, visit http://creativecommons.org . Credit info: Heather Mullins, Middle and High Schools Instructional Coach mullinshe@hickoryschools.net