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Course Description Literacy and Language in the Content Areas is a 3 credit course designed to provide practical guidelines for those who are or will be elementary, middle school, or secondary content area teachers to assist them in using reading, writing, speaking and listening as complementary learning processes for the content area. Students of this course bring their expertise of the subject to be taught (such as English, social studies, science, mathematics, music, art, etc.), and the course assists students in dealing with the language component of the content area. Students will be given experience in producing study, pattern and concept guides, techniques for effectively presenting vocabulary, and using reading, writing, speaking and listening to facilitate learning in content areas. PK-6 and 1-8 education majors are required to take a second literacy course. They may choose this course or one of two others. Secondary education majors are required to take this course as their second literacy course. Students are usually juniors or seniors when they take this course. Class size ranges from 20-35. Foundations of Literacy in the Elementary School is a 3 credit course. Instructional strategies and materials are explored, as are various organizational patterns within the framework of balanced literacy. Word recognition, fluency and comprehension are major components. Phonics and decoding strategies along with meaning processing strategies are included with the focus on helping young readers become strategic and metacognitive. Literacy is viewed as a developmental process with promoting children's love of reading and time spent reading as crucial elements. All PK-6 and 1-8 education majors are required to take this course. Students are usually juniors when they take this course and class size ranges from 25-35.
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Executive Summary The goal of this project was to develop a self-contained lesson on six-trait writing specifically appropriate for content area teachers. It was intended to be a lesson that could fit into several literacy courses. In the developed lesson for Literacy and Language in the Content Areas and Foundations of Literacy in the Elementary School, undergraduate students participated in specific activities to generate new learning regarding the teaching and assessment of writing using 6-trait analysis. Learning goals for the students were: 1) to learn and understand the components of 6-trait writing; 2) to learn how to evaluate writing using a trait rubric; 3) to understand how writing can support the teaching and learning of content material; 4) to understand and appreciate 6-trait writing from the view point of the language arts teacher and the content area teacher; 5) to experience and understand pair/share, list-group-label and cloze as instructional techniques; 6) to self-assess learning; Students participated in an activity to activate and share their prior knowledge about writing in general. A mini-lesson followed regarding 6-trait writing and using rubrics for trait assessment. Students were provided practice in analyzing and evaluating a piece of writing using a specific 6-trait rubric. Throughout the lesson students participated in activities such as pair/share, list-group-label and cloze as examples of instructional techniques to use in their future classrooms. The different activities as well as the interactional design of the lesson were an attempt to facilitate learning and the application of developing skills.
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