Where elementary schoolers read all subject matter in one room, secondary students often travel to ten different rooms during their school week and are exposed to a variety of complex text modes.  For our older students (and for educators), it is easy to lose the thread that binds reading skills together.  Unfortunately, our country has bought into the belief that Reading should be taught by English departments, but here’s the rub:  English teachers are experts at teaching novels, poems, and plays; they have very little exposure to skills necessary to help our students become adept at reading across the disciplines.  Let’s face it: Reading in science class looks incredibly different from reading in history class and even looks different from reading in mathematics class.  Throw in an art class, and chaos ensues.

This is where you come in:  You are already the professional reader of your subject matter content. One of us in this class will be experienced at reading lab reports, and one will be a connoisseur of Shakespeare, and one will be a whiz at word problems and theorems. And if we can all get on the same page when it comes to teaching the art of reading, we can advance our shared students’ reading skills that much more effectively so that they improve in ALL subjects.

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

• Identify traditional text modes and acknowledge innovated styles of text that increase learning accessibility.
• Access new reading strategies to ignite interactive reading in and out of the classroom.
• Learn to set purpose and provide background knowledge to reading assignments.
• Encourage students to question and seek answers in content.
• Help students to increase vocabulary and semantic field.
• Support students as they connect the word to the world through imagination.