School Wide Literacy Lesson Plan

School-wide Literacy Lesson Plan

Jann Andring

LIT5203

American College of Education

Introduction

“The mission of Mandan High School is to develop responsible citizens by providing quality educational experiences in a positive and safe learning environment.” With this in mind, it is important that we, the staff of Mandan High School, work together to help develop these citizens through reading and writing. Reading and writing have the potential to transform not only the way students communicate, but also the way they think. Students with a strong foundation in critical reading and real-world writing can become engaged in the civic responsibilities facing them as adults.

School-wide Literacy Lesson Plan

School-wide Literacy Need:

Prior to being asked to instruct and model active reading, all staff will need to be trained in how to carry this out. Wood and Burz (2013) discuss a school where consultants suggested all staff target Common Core State Standards in Reading and Writing. English/language arts teachers were to focus on writing standards and the rest of the disciplines were to focus on reading standards. The school underwent great growth under this model.as they went from being in the bottom 5% to ranking in the 55th percentile. The students will be given a handout on the different ways readers mark up the text as a reference throughout the year progress through their year; the teacher will model active reading using a think-aloud strategy, so students are able to “see” the thinking involved in marking the

Based on their notations, students will write a response to the article. I generally ask only that the student stay on topic, but they are welcome to reflect on the big ideas, the reliability of the source, or the writer’s craft. In questioning and sometimes challenging the author, students learn techniques that can enhance their own writing. Cisco (2016) discusses the value of teaching these reading and writing skills as she states, “It is not enough to provide students the opportunities to read and write; students need to be taught a literate disposition — a value system — that will encourage them to use and develop their literacy practices for civic rhetorical purposes” (p. 19). In order to practice these new skills of civic responsibility and interaction, students will post their written reflections on our school’s learning management system discussion board and will be expected to join in discussion with at least three other students. Finally, students will engage in a classroom discussion to exchange their thoughts on the reading and writing of the assigned articles. This will be done in groups and will further enhance not only their reading and writing skills, but will also develop their skills in speaking and listening. As a final project, the groups will bring together both their annotations on the text and their written