Thinking Response 2

Stuart Jackson-Monroe

EDUC 4354 Literacy and Learn in I/S Curriculum

Lauri Roberto

Lakehead University
 This thinking response is going to address this statement: My purpose and rational for

teaching literacy. I’m going to use this Thinking Response as an opportunity to articulate an

answer to a question that I have been mulling over in my mind for some time.

First, I will provide relevant context to the question. My history teachable teacher here at

Lakehead has often said that as teachers we are used car salesmen. What this metaphor implies is

that it is necessary to trick your students into thinking that what is being taught is meaningful,

purposeful or interesting. Without sounding too idealistic I believe that mindset as a teacher is

not a good long- or short-term strategy. Regarding teaching literacy in the classroom, I think the

used car salesman approach is a case of intellectual laziness on the part of the teacher and not a

clever trick. When I was a high school student it was very important to me that I know the

purpose and meaning in the assigned task. Perhaps it was the case that I was a very stubborn

student but what I was searching for were good reasons to pursue an education. The typical

answers I would get from my teachers were “You need to get good grades because you want a

good career” or “You have to do it because I told you to”. Ultimately these arguments were not

persuasive to me. As an adult on the verge of teaching my aim is to maintain intellectual integrity

and provide my students with the best rational to doing assigned work. My best argument for

why you should develop literacy skills is very much a practical one. We develop or thoughts by

reading, writing and speaking. Reading, writing and speaking is how we think. In my first

placement something that I noticed was how frustrated students were when they couldn’t

articulate their position. By simply watching the student you could see that many had the answer,

but they simply couldn’t find the words. Literacy helps this. Upon noticing this trend, I began to

draw their attention to the times where they could not articulate themselves. For instance, have

you been innocent of something that your being blamed for, but you were too worked up to find

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the words? What about the times where you stared at a piece of paper, unable to describe what it

is that you were thinking about? Moreover, it is my position that teaching students the practical,

life enhancing, reasons for developing their literacy skills is of crucial importance. Not all

students are persuaded by grades or the proposition of a good job years down the line however,

students are motivated by limiting their frustrating in the present. By utilizing my argument

students will begin to view their education as an antidote to their suffering. Hopefully this theory

holds true in practice. Do I think students will all of a sudden student will pick up Macbeth with

the utmost passion? No. But it is important to plant this important idea.

The article written in the dadvocate makes the case for teaching academic language in the

classroom. The article begins by mentioning the frustrating feeling of learning a new subject.

Many students feel overwhelmed if they don’t understand new words in an unfamiliar subject

thus bridging this gap between new learner and class material is important. The article highlights

a variety of strategies that a teacher could use in the classroom to teach new and difficult words

to students. The strategies include; making definitions students friendly, creating a concept map

and appropriately scaffolding academic language. I could see myself using these strategies in my

own classroom. Adding variety to your teaching tool box is important because you don’t want to

bore the students in your classroom. For instance, the scaffolding activity would be great for

second language learners. By providing a prompt for the students the second language learners

would better understand context. The idea of teaching academic language in the classroom is

closely tied to the idea of teaching reading comprehension in all subject areas. This idea is

stressed in the YouTube video that was assigned to be watched this week. Dr. Bill Lewis

advocates for teachers to teach their students how to read the classroom texts that are specific to

their discipline. Reading a text in English and reading a text in Math are two very different

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operations and thus should be treated as such. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the teacher to

teach how to read a text in their discipline. For example, in another one of my classes we were

discussing the importance of skeptical reading when consuming newspaper headlines/articles.

This kind of skeptical reading is useful in the context of an English class but not in a math class.

Skeptical reading isn’t useful because math students don’t need to be skeptical when reading

instructions to a word assignment. They don’t need to consider the validity of their teachers

writing. Instead, perhaps, a reading strategy for math would involve a slow, deliberate read so to

understand precisely what is being asked of you.