Content Area Reading Summary

Prior to opening Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum (Vacca et al., 2014), I had never thought of literacy as something that was vital to a high school math class. I was under the assumption that math was comprised of working through problems with students to find the solution, but I now recognize that there is greater knowledge to teach and learn. Chapter one of Content Area Reading opened my eyes to the importance of teaching content literacy. A study conducted by Harold Herder (1964) demonstrates this point, for he found that “students who used ‘study guides’ to read a physics text significantly outperformed those students who did not use guides to read the content under study”(Vacca, 2014, p. 18). Students who were assisted in understanding how to read the material comprehended a greater amount of what they were reading. Learning literacy in specific content areas is a significant facet of education. The importance of literacy came as a shock as I read through this chapter. I’ve always understood that literacy is imperative to our daily lives, but have never considered …show more content…
I was surprised to read how the term literacy has changed over time and all of the meaning that it now holds. “Literacy has morphed to characterize someone’s level of knowledge or competence in a particular area or subject,” according to Vacca (2014, p. 12). Reading and writing were the first concepts that would come to my mind when thinking of the word literacy, therefore, I was shocked to read how “complex and multidimensional the concept of literacy”(Vacca, 2014, p. 12) has become. Computer literacy, digital literacy, information literacy, media literacy, and health literacy are just a few examples of this concept. As society’s ability to communicate has evolved, so has the concept of literacy. Astoundingly, literacy is as multifaceted and adaptive as the human