Review of Professional Articles

Edtopia Consulting Editor Rebecca Alber talks about How Important is Teach

Literacy in All Content Areas? Spoiler it is really important. This article talks about how in the

21st century literacy in more important than it has even been. This means that literacy needs to be

taught in all content areas to prep students for the interactions that they are going to face in the

adult world. Alber does acknowledge that most content areas practice one of the four aspects of

literacy, listening, but they lack in reading, writing and speaking. Alber stresses supporting

students comprehension in reading by teaching reading pre and post skill. She points out that

students need to be given formative assessments in writing such as quick writes to allow students

to hone not only their thinking but literacy skills as well. Finally, she talks about creating

scaffolding through small group discussions which help interduce students to Socratic Seminars.

I feel that Alber is correct in asserting the importance of Literacy in all subject and feel that she

provides accurate methods of fostering literacy in was that most if not all content areas can use.

In Visual Literacy and the Classroom Erin Riesland, a freelance graphic designer and

Student of curriculum at University of Washington, talks about the importance of Visual literacy

and its impact on the definition of literacy as we know it. Although this article is a tad bit out of

date its message is still an important on in todays world. Ms. Riesland talks about the rise of

PowerPoint changing the landscape of education and the increasing importance of hyper-

text/links. This change in the social environment leaves students uninstructed in visual literacy

using multimedia. Since 2003, my best guess as to when this article was written, this issue has

only become larger as students are expected to live in a world where more interactive forms of
PowerPoint presentations such as Animoto and Prezi lets the user take control of the visual

literacy of their presentation. It is my belief that, much like what Ms. Riesland proposes in her

article, students need to be given direct instruction and assessed through real world construction

of websites and visual presentations. Visual literacy and technology are only going to become

more prevalent in our society so it is about time that it is incorporated within students

educations.

The ideas of digital literacy are addressed by Brianna Crowley in her article What Digital

Literacy Looks Like in the Classroom. Brianna is a English teacher and a Technology coach, so

it is now wonder that she has taken time to talk about digital Literacy. She stresses the

importance of using technology to communicate and collaborate with other as being as important

as regular literacy. Even going on to say that students of digital literacy needs to be guided,

instructed and able to practice digital literacy skill just like they would be with regular literacy.

Although this article doesnt go into much depth in how to incorporate literacy in the classroom,

Crowley has endless resources linked to help the teachers start developing their own strategies

for teaching digital literacy. What I really liked about Crowleys article is that she dispels the

myth of digital natives and the importance of parents fostering communication skill to protect

students when using digital resources. Crowley points out that even though students use

technology from an frequently that this doesnt constitute literacy, where schools with a bring

you own device policy should teach digital literacy to help students best utilize those devices.

She also stresses parents should teach children how to communicate safely on the internet that

rather than blocking and locking down their access. This way they can promote literacy within
their children so they are better prepared for the risk and dangers of communicating over the

web.

Digital Literacy isnt the only type of literacy that needs more focus, Nonie Lusaux

article Focus on Higher-Order Literacy Skills examines the important of advanced literacy skills

in Hispanic students. The issue involved here is that native born Hispanic students, much like

black students, are having a hard time achieving high school level literacy skills when in lower

economic areas. Hispanics are the main subject group since they tend to be bilingual instead of

monolingual like their black counter parts. Lusaux infers that the issue isnt literacy but a lack of

higher level literacy skills being taught such as the skills needed to digest News Articles and Text

Books. Such skills, Lusaux claims, arent being taught in early education. Students need to be

given the opportunity to practice research projects, essays, and academic discussions so they can

learn these skills early on. I feel that these skills although vital for Hispanic students literacy can

benefit all students in the form of developing a higher level of comprehension. Advance skills in

literacy shouldnt be something that students must teach themselves. From what I have read so

far literacy seems to be best learned through guidance, and practice and higher-order literacy

should be taught in the same way.

To back up what I read in Lusax article found another article called a High School

Literacy: a Quick Fact Sheet by David Rutenburg. This article not only reaffirms Lusax but goes

further to explain that all high schoolers are lacking in literacy education. Rutenburg attributes

this deficiency to the lack interdisciplinary teaching of literacy even to the point of lack of

scaffolding when it comes to comprehension of source materials provided within that subject

such as textbooks. He attributes this to the increasing difficulty of difficulty of ELL students who
start in high school as well as the drop-in literacy growth of students when they reach high

school. These statistics are troubling to Rutenburg because they have impacts within school in

addition to having impacts on the kind of work and salary available to these students when they

leave school based on their levels of literacy. I found this article troubling for a few reasons too;

if student arent tough literacy in every content are they will have difficulty comprehending the

material provided, students are already missing out on digital literacy so they are already behind

without having to teach themselves advance literacy skills too, that this gap in literacy only

seems to make the gap in education more prominent when it comes to students who are already

struggling and that high school should be the point of highest literacy not the source of literacy

problems.