| |
Kane, Sharon. (2003). Literacy & Learning in the Content
Areas. Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb Hathaway Publishers.
Pp. x + 390
$46.50 ISBN 1-890871-37-0
Reviewed by Donna W. Jorgensen
Rowan University
February 14, 2004
In 1937, William Gray coined the phrase
“every teacher a teacher of reading” and, while the
firestorm might not have been immediate, it did follow. A
prevailing attitude that the teaching of reading was the province
of elementary classroom teachers existed and exists among many
secondary content area specialists. If students have difficulties
with reading, it is frequently perceived that they are not
trying. Clear understanding of what it means for students to take
their learned ability to read and convert that to reading to
learn is essential for all teachers. It is incumbent on every
teacher education program to be certain that all content area
specialists are prepared to guide students’ literacy
experiences within their classrooms. This means that every
teacher candidate must learn how to be come a teacher of reading
and writing. To enable that, the right textbook is essential.
That text will not only cite the theory and give candidates the
necessary background information, but will also offer very
tangible ways of implementing literacy strategies in
today’s diverse classrooms.
Literacy & Learning in the Content
Areas is the answer many content area reading/literacy
professors have been waiting for: it is a well-formatted, clear,
usable text that students and professor alike will find filled
with valuable information and immediately applicable ideas for
implementation in real classrooms. I wanted the book to succeed
from the first moment I began to do my first perusal of it. The
Introduction models what we should ask students to do with their
texts and clearly helps the reader to be comfortable with the
structure of the chapters so that movement through them is
facilitated. Too many content area reading/literacy textbooks are
for reading specialists or those desiring to become reading
specialists. Clearly this is a book for those who are willing,
whatever their subject specialty, to be teachers of reading.
Although there is a great deal of material in the eleven
chapters, what cannot be covered in a limited length semester
becomes excellent reference material. The table of contents is a
ready-made course syllabus.
Kane knows both her subject and her audience well.
After spending some time devouring the book myself, I decided to
use it as the primary text for a summer content area reading
class with master’s/teacher certification candidates with
no understanding of content area reading, and it was a resounding
success. From the topics chosen to the format of the book to the
easy to search table of contents and indexes, my students found
it “enjoyable,” and this is something a professor
rarely hears about a textbook. In our journey through the text,
we were able to navigate with confidence and to utilize many of
the activities of different types provided. There are sufficient
ideas in this book to help a student teacher through an entire
semester and to provide a ready reference for the transition to
first year teaching. All of these strategies have been written
about elsewhere, and I have taught my students before from
textbooks that were far more theoretical and less practical than
this text. Kane presents all the material in theory-based yet
palatable ways to allow for immediate opportunities for guided
and independent practice.
The chapters are presented in logical order, although it was
difficult to adequately deal with the Introduction without a
prior knowledge of the novel, The Giver. We were not
daunted, nor deterred as a class however, because we simply used
the Introduction to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the
text so that we would know what to expect. After the assigned
reading of The Giver and following our study of Chapters 1
(Literacy, Content Area Teaching, and Learning Standards) and 2
(Affective and Social Aspects of Content Area Learning and
Literacy), we returned to the guided practice provided in the
Introduction. Chapter 1 provided, in a clear and understandable
tone and language, the basics my students needed to feel secure
in their beginning usage of content area literacy vocabulary and
strategy development. Students bean to understand the reading
process and its place in content area classrooms and to develop
personal understandings of the multi-faceted term
“literacy.” Chapters 3 through 6 take us into the
world of content area reading through exploration of the role of
texts (not to be confused with textbook!), comprehension and the
reader’s role in it; vocabulary development; comprehension
and critical thinking. Each chapter has multiple parts to break
down the parts of the chapter titles and this allows the user to
focus on pieces of the literacy puzzle in proper order and with
the appropriate activation of prior knowledge, guided practice
and independent practice. The English language learner is not
forgotten, nor is the special needs student as the chapters offer
suggestions for adaptation for these individuals. The special
education students in my class wanted more help with the
adaptations, but were quick to recognize that they could take the
given samples and see what might need to be changed for their
students. By far, the section on use of trade books in the
secondary content area classroom became the favorite method of
getting away from simply using the assigned textbook without any
other support, but students also quickly saw the value of
incorporation of other texts because Kane makes their use so
appealing and manageable that students feel that they can begin
to integrate them into lessons and units with ease. The only
complaint I have is that a number of trade books I most thought
would work are out of print and difficult to find. Additionally,
the method of indexing the titles of trade books mentioned in the
text is awkward. Most are listed in the trade books reference
list, but some are listed simply as references and not all are
title indexed in the general index. It would appear that there is
method in this connected to how they are used in the body of the
text, but it did present some challenges for me when I was
attempting to find further information by title only.
Chapter 7 takes on the formidable task of explaining writing
in the content areas and does an admirable job of it. The
breakdown of information in the chapter makes it easy for
students to follow what the writing process should look like in
their individual classes and helps them to recognize their own
abilities not only to integrate writing into the curriculum of
all classes, but also to develop strategies for the assessment of
writing in the different content areas. This is an area students
need a great deal of assistance with and this chapter is a
mini-course in writing in the disciplines that can be used in a
variety of classes other than content area literacy once students
own the text. In chapters 8 and 9, additional perceptions of
literacy, speaking and listening and visual, media and digital,
are discussed. Because they are so late in the text, it would be
easy to miss them or simply not get to them in a semester, but
they are a necessary and valuable part of the text. Chapter 10 is
also one that prospective teachers need to spend some time with,
recognizing that in the context of this text, the author is not
talking about assessing students for the direct purpose of
diagnosis and remediation of reading disabilities although the
items discussed prepare candidates to recognize some of the
myriad possibilities why “students can’t/won’t
read.” The section of the chapter on Classroom-based
assessments is particularly valuable for the beginning teacher
candidate. There is no question that asking students to envision
their own futures as teachers of content area literacy is a
fitting way to end the book. Chapter 11 allows Kane to introduce
the opportunity for students to see what schools could be like
and to share her personal vision for the future. She issues a
challenge for new teachers to make a difference.
One of the questions this reviewer had to ask was “How
well did Dr. Kane meet her own criteria for textbook review as
listed in Chapter 3?” Kane (pp. 64-65) lists thirteen
things to look for in evaluating a textbook, and her own fares
well on most counts. As this is a college level text, the
supplemental materials requirement would seem non-essential, but
on every other count Kane does well. The fact is that students
using this text do not need supplemental materials because
everything one could possibly want is neatly incorporated into
each well-organized chapter. The incorporation of BookTalks,
Activating Prior Knowledge activities/questions, Action Research
possibilities, immediate incorporation of bibliographies of
useful supplemental materials, and Getting Ready to Teach
activities at the end of each chapter make each a veritable fount
of information and strategies. A particularly effective piece of
every chapter is the final Getting Ready to Teach activity list.
These thought-provoking activities that conclude each chapter
truly do help teacher candidates to refocus their thinking and
preparation to be classroom teachers. The suggested activities
require students to both activate their prior knowledge and to
synthesize information for deeper understanding. Even if there is
not sufficient time in the context of a course to do all of the
Getting Ready to Teach activities presented in each chapter, they
form the basis for candidates to think about them independently
and to begin to create a new knowledge base.
Students will quickly get past the fact that there are no
slick color illustrations or headings when they realize the value
of the book for the money spent! Kane’s use of the stories
of her former students makes the book very personal to each class
member. Kane (2003) says “the students in your classes have
stories to tell, there are stories of struggling to learn, to
comprehend, to read” (p. ix). These are not simply the
stories of the students we will meet as teachers; they are our
stories as well. Students may discover through reading and
working with the text that they are alliterate themselves. They
will most assuredly discover that they are not alone in some of
their content area literacy struggles. Kane concludes her preface
with an extremely important statement: “As we and our
students grow more literate throughout the school year, a story
of promise and potential is created” (p. ix). As teacher
candidates work with this text, they are sure to become both more
literate and more able to begin the work of planning lessons that
take into consideration the literacy needs of all students.
Another question was “Is the material presented in this
text based on sound theory?” and again Kane shows that she
has ‘done her homework.’ The book is a very pleasing
blend of the theory of known experts in the field: Alvermann,
Christenbury, Darling-Hammond, Kenneth and Yetta Goodman,
Herber, Ruddell, and Vacca and Vacca. Additionally, the theories
of Piaget, Vygotsky and Gardner are adequately interwoven into
the text in appropriate places so that text users will be
reminded not only of reading and writing theory, but also about
learning theory in general. The references are not so heavy that
students would require a depth of prior knowledge in the work of
any of these theorists, but rather are the key pieces of
information needed to either activate prior knowledge or become
the basis for new knowledge. Each chapter smoothly blends just
the right amount of theory with practical explanations of how the
theory works with real students in the real world of teaching
today.
Essential to any teacher candidate’s understanding of
literacy and learning in today’s classrooms is the
understanding that in our rapidly changing world we need to be
cognizant of how different today’s classroom is from the
classrooms of even a few short years ago. The teacher who
believes that literacy means simply the ability to read and write
(in the most simplistic, concrete denotation) is missing a great
deal. Definitions of literacy are evolutionary in nature. It is
not enough for today’s educators to hold to the idea that
if a student is able to decode, he will be successful in reading
the myriad texts available for use in today’s classrooms.
Kane is especially effective in moving teacher candidates away
from a limited perception of literacy toward the more
far-reaching interpretation needed in a modern world. Chapter
Nine’s three parts take the student through visuals such as
pictures, graphs, and charts to film and television to electronic
or digital literacy. Kane’s skillful manipulation of the
information in these areas helps the novice make sense of these
newer concepts of literacy and to visit the possibilities of
using picture books, comic books, art, films and the internet.
While to some it would seem obvious that the same techniques that
work for pre-during-after reading will work with film and
television, new teachers need guidance in how to best integrate
these media into content area literacy activities. Kane weaves
opinions pro and con about the use of technology into the chapter
so that users of the text are compelled to think about both
sides. She cautions that there are “voices of
concern” and “voices of enthusiasm” (p. 291)
and we need to listen to those voices. Kane poses questions that
all teacher candidates will want to explore with regard to the
use of advancing technology. She says, “…it was
foolish to wait for the technology to be perfected before we
tried things. We came to view our trials and errors with
instructional technology as an analogy for what all aspects of
their teaching careers would be: a bumpy road, with potential for
wrong turns and storms, but one leading to a truly exciting
destination, and full of stimulation and lively learning along
the way” (p. 293). This is indeed what teaching is all
about.
In her final chapter, Kane reiterates what her book has said
throughout: “…teaching literacy and teaching your
content curriculum and disciplinary knowledge will be
interwoven” (p. 331). Too many teachers have not grasped
this concept and it is crucial. As educators, we must recognize
that reading and writing are not “add-ons” out there
to complicate our jobs in covering an already full curriculum.
Rather, literacy and learning work hand-in-hand and we will be
giving our students powerful life skills if we help them to
activate their own prior knowledge and to create new knowledge.
Our jobs will be easier, not more difficult when we integrate
literacy strategies into our daily teaching. Kane concludes with
a list of 18 questions she might ask if she visited a content
area classroom. If every content area teacher would strive to
have the answer to every one be ‘yes,’ we would make
giant strides in having classrooms where content area literacy is
an integral part of each and every lesson. It is a fitting
conclusion to a superb textbook: if teacher candidates keep these
things in mind as a guide for themselves as they move into their
own teaching careers, they and their students will profit.
About the Reviewer
Donna W. Jorgensen is an assistant professor in the
Department of Secondary Education/Foundations of Education at
Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ. Her specialties are English
Education and pedagogy including teaching of content area
literacy skills and strategies to both undergraduate and graduate
teacher candidates.
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment