Content Area Literacy Essay

Content area literacy is an important part of a students’ literacy development. My definition is that it is the part of literacy that helps students comprehend different subjects and the information that comes with the content. A student will not be completely successful if they do not fully understand what they are supposed to be learning. This puts a great deal of pressure on our shoulders as teachers to make sure our students can read and write successfully in all content areas. My past experiences with content area literacy has not all been positive. Classes were taught in lectures and we were expected to gather our information from the textbook. There was little drive from the teachers to make connections outside of the standard curriculum. What literacy I gained in content areas came from searching for the answers on my time. It was extremely frustrating to have to navigate …show more content…
The students will benefit from this more than simply being given the solution. Rather than showing the students a movie that relates to a book they read the students can perform a reader’s theater. Instead of discussing chemical reactions a simple experiment that the students can complete can help them better grasp what occurs in a reaction. I believe that the best way to help the students connect to the content is to make the connections personal. Interest surveys conducted at the beginning of the year can help teachers find ideas for ways to connect different content areas. While content area literacy may not be easy it is important to a student’s success. Promoting content literacy is different from simply promoting reading skills. Content literacy includes addressing TEKS from all subject areas while working on reading and writing. As a general education teacher it is important that we learn how to successfully meet the needs of the students in all core