Good afternoon everyone.

I am Deborah Kearney and I serve as the K-12 ELA Curriculum leader.

I am an 8th grade English teacher at Lionville Middle School. This year I have the exciting opportunity to pioneer our new middle level writing courses that focus on students who are advanced writers as well as some reluctant writers.

As the ELA curriculum leader, I work with my colleagues to uncover and spread best practices in teaching strategies.

Today I have the pleasure of combining both of these roles to work with you on reading strategies in your content area -- the flip side of writing.

When you leave today you will know
why we developed the Live Binder's Content Literacy Strategies
how to access the Live Binder and the Content Literacy Strategies to help your students access your content.

These strategies will help you plan your lessons in any content area.

Before we start, please write your DASD email on a sticky note at the table. we'll use this for a super-secret, cool project at the end of our session.

Why are we looking at content area literacy? Well, the PA Core Standards emphasize literacy throughout all curricular areas. In fact, the PA Core calls upon educators in all disciplines to deepen student learning through active literacy scaffolding strategies. These strategies help us as educators ask our students better questions and drive them to ask their own more challenging questions of their materials -- and us.

We use literacy strategies to help them access the content.

So, as my reading specialist colleagues will tell you, we need to begin with vocabulary. Let's use an example:

Turn to your table partners and come up with definitions for these multiple meaning words: rational, theme, and catastrophe. Take two minutes and we'll share out.

Ask for volunteers to share.
Isn't it interesting the way we all have slightly different ideas of what those words mean? Some of that is based on our discipline bias, some on life experience.

Still, to be effective educators, we need to come to some common definitions of important vocabulary in context. Again, the Pa Core requires us to help our students understand these high frequency/multiple meaning and low-frequency, context-specific vocabulary words -- Tier 2 and 3 -- as part of a literacy strategy.

Today, as educators, we we'll tackle our own vocabulary term: "readability"

In K-2, we teach to read. In 3-12, we reading to learn.

These strategies can help your students access your content and model for them the ways that they can communicate their learning about that content to you.

So materials might be readable - but what is its readabilty? That answer is key to your lesson planning.

Have you ever encountered a student who had a problem reading the textbooks for your course? How did you help?

turn to a partner at your table and name one strategy that was successful or might e successful. We'll share out in a minute.

So what I am hearing you say is that readability actually has two components: the materials and the student.

That makes sense and drives us back to the Common Core's requirements for teaching literacy throughout the entire curriculum.

Common Core Standards define a three-part model for determining how easy or difficult a particular text is to read as well as grade-by-grade specifications for increasing text complexity in successive years of schooling. Each year requires increasing sophistication in students’ reading comprehension ability. The Standards look at both what and how students read.

As teachers we look at readability in three ways:
(1)Qualitative dimensions of text complexity
meaning or purpose; structure; language conventionality and
clarity; and knowledge demands.

(2) Quantitative dimensions of text complexity
those aspects of text complexity, such as word length or frequency, sentence length, and text cohesion

(3) Reader and task considerations. Include variables specific to particular readers (such as motivation,
knowledge, and experiences) and to particular tasks
(such as purpose and the complexity of the task assigned and the questions posed).

Such assessments are best made by teachers employing their professional judgment, experience, and knowledge of their students and the subject.

Can someone share his or her experience with this kind of readability analysis?

Another way to judge readability is the Fry Readability Formula.

Let's divide into curricular areas: ELA, Science, Math, History, Encores.

You have some copies on your tables there should be one for everyone. Take a look. What do you notice about the chart's components?

Right, this is a very mathematically-based assessment.

Let's determine the readability levels of your texts using the Fry Formula.

The Fry Graph Readability Formula

Step 1: Select 3 samples of 100-word passages randomly (eliminate the numbers from word count).

Step 2: Count the number of sentences in all three 100-word passages, estimating the fraction of the last sentence to the nearest 1/10th.

Step 3: Count the number of syllables in all three 100-word passages. Plot your findings on the Frye graph in your group.

Are you surprised?

Did the readability of your text surprise you?

No matter what level of course you teach -- leveled or not -- you will encounter a wide range of reading abilities in your students.

How will you scaffold the text for a student who cannot read at the level required by the book?

DASD's Live Binder Content Area Reading Strategies is the place to start.

Let's take a tour.

Right now, let's go to the resource you can use to find solutions. ''Let's tour the LIve BInder.

You should have a link in your Schoology course.

Let's stay in our subject-area groups.

Open the textbooks on your desks to any section.

How will you plan to help your students access this material?

You have 10 minutes to use the Live Binder and decide on two strategies you would use to present this material to your students. We'll share those.

To add a layer of friendly competition, you will need to convince another subject area group that your choice is better than theirs when it comes to helping students access meaning. We'll share and compare until we have a strategic "winner". I will award a prize befitting this honor.

Have fun!

Great work everyone!

Beyond this binder, we have real live experts at each of your home school who can support you with tehir expereince and expertise:

DWHS: Jeannine Rhatican
DEHS: MaryAnne Butler
DMS: Tracey Resto (CL)
LMS: Dianne Umstead

and me: Deborah Kearney

Did we achieve our goals this afternoon?

How do you access the Live Binder? Does anyone have it bookmarked or Pocketed?

How do access the Content Literacy Strategies? Book marked?

Great!

What could you share with someone who missed today?

Email someone in the room with your strategy.