Content Literacy in the Elementary Grades and Design Thinking

The article Making a Case and a Place for Effective Content Area Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Grades, by Barbara Moss was a fantastic research article about incorporating informational text into the early elementary classroom to promote “reading to learn.”  I am of firm belief that schools do not think of student education in a whole sense.  Learning should be like building blocks.  Once in school, the building process needs to begin.  So many schools, past and present, do not begin focusing on the important skills of literacy until children become older and get into the higher grades.  This leaves our children unprepared for what is to come and without the necessary skills and tools to critically read and analyze information.  This article is designed to show the importance of teaching students to “read to learn” at the earliest age/grade possible.  How are we to expect our students to understand, comprehend, synthesize, and analyze information when they get to the higher grades if they are not teaching and learning process has not begun at an earlier grade?  This is impossible unless the student is extremely gifted and has taught their self, which is more unlikely than likely.  As educators, our main objective should be to prepare our students for higher levels of education and life.  This preparation needs to begin at the earliest age possible to improve the students’ success rate.

Kindergarten is where this should begin, as stated in the article.  There needs to be a shift from narrative text to informational text.  It is the teacher’s duty to teach the students how to not only read the text, but pull information from and learn from it as well.  This can be done using many strategies such as, modeling and think-alouds.  Research shows that children, especially boys, prefer reading informational text over narrative text.  Children want to learn, and what better way to feed this curiosity and need for new knowledge than with expository text. 

There needs to be a shift in thinking by our educators.  One than goes from looking at kindergarteners and lower elementary students as babies that are incapable of reading, working, and understanding complex problems and texts, to one where they strive to teach and guide these children to be able to read, work, and understand complex ideas.  Education does not start in upper elementary or middle school.  It goes from kindergarten to twelfth grade.  By shifting the focus to education for ALL ages, our students will have a much higher chance of graduating and leaving our school systems as successful critical thinkers. 

Literacy is not only reading and writing.  There are many components to literacy, and I feel that these were left out of this article, but should be held in just as high of a regard, especially speaking.  It is not until the end of the article when Inquiry Based Learning is mentioned and speaking (and other literacy components) is even mentioned.  I think this is as important as reading to learn because what the end goal should be for teachers is to create a student that is well-rounded in all areas of literacy.  Is speaking not as important as reading to learn?  Some may say it is not; however, I think is as important for our students to be effective communicators, debaters, speakers, etc…as it is to read to learn. 

How do we create a learning environment that is literacy rich in all areas?  We do this by designing our lessons to incorporate ALL aspects of literacy.  By starting in the kindergarten classroom and moving up each grade, our students will never feel an enormous sense of frustration because content literacy is familiar to them.  The information will become progressively harder, but they will have the knowledge and tools to understand, comprehend, and solve any new problem with the guidance of their teacher.  If this shift was made, I think our “fourth-grade drop” would soon be erased because students will not be thrown into a grade, which to them is like the first day of their school career.

This research needs to be known and followed by educators nationwide, but how do we make such a drastic change in the schools?  The truth is this matter is not drastic, but to many it will be viewed as so because many people fear change.  Teachers get used to doing the same thing year after year and become closed-minded in their beliefs and practices.  What needs to be looked at is the big picture of learning and how this process works.  This transformation of schools will happen, but will take the motivation, passion, and drive of progressive teachers taking a stand and fighting for change and then making the results known to all.  

I have noticed, during my practicum, many teachers introducing informational texts at a very early grade level.  I wonder if this is because of the shift from the MS Frameworks to the Common Core Standards?  When teachers follow common core, they are supposed to introduce narrative texts and informational texts at a 50/50 ratio.  I am so glad this is becoming a major issue and is actually going to soon be required by all.  This will help turn our education system around in a very positive way, and aid in preparing students for all grades and life!

On a final note, when reading about the learning logs I realized they are like our blogs.  Having students reflect on what they have learned is a great tool for facilitating metacognition in students.  There is something about reflecting and writing through a blog that makes the experience much more exciting, fun, and less tedious.  Way to go, Dr. Bishop….you’re making learning fun!  :-)

In Betty Ray’s blog on Design Thinking, she lays out the process for collaboration, brainstorming in order solve problems.  When using design thinking, small groups of people get together to work through the steps.  In these meetings there are rules to follow.  One of these rules being to say “yes, and” instead of “yes, but” when disagreeing with someone in the group.  This keeps the communication positive and opens the minds of others more.  I love this idea and am going to try to use it in my everyday life.  I am very opinionated and do not have any problems speaking what is on my mind, especially if I feel it is for the betterment of someone; however, this can be seen as overbearing and negative.  Always opening a disagreeing statement without the negative I can see as being very beneficial.  Often if someone perceives the words are going to be negative or/and if the words are in disagreement with a previous statement, then others are more likely to close off and not listen to what is being said.  When I am selling something I never use negative statements, even if what I am saying truly is in fact negative.  I do not let the other person know this, and am able to mask it by tailoring my words to sound positive.  I do not do this in everyday communication or when collaborating with peers.  Working to state things in a positive manner will be a goal of mine after reading this blog.  I wonder how this would look in the classroom when teaching students.  I think this would create a positive learning environment, but how does a teacher do this with students?

Design thinking is a great process that involves many different people from the school, the community, parents, and students.  This process can be used for anything when trying to solve a problem.  I think this builds a sense of community with the students and families and is a great tool that should be used to solve problems as a whole, while also teaching the students lessons.  How time consuming is this process though?  I do not think it matters how time consuming this process is when it is a classroom project; however, when it is one where multiple people are involved then it seems as though there might be issues with time.  To me it seems as though it might be extremely difficult to get all the people needed together at one time for collaboration.