“What to include in your content literacy instructional toolkit”

Mixed literacy media-Teachers should be prepared with many different media to address literacy such as: journals, websites, textbooks, computer resource software and novels.

Baseline literacy assessments-Teachers should assess their students’ pre-course or pre-content literacy. This will allow the teacher to develop their literacy approach and determine what type of differentiation of instruction is necessary in the classroom.

Overall Literacy Teaching Techniques-Teachers must provide basic literacy instruction to all students no matter what content area they teacher to ensure literacy success.

Content Literacy Teaching Techniques and Medias-Specific content areas offer their own type of literacy instruction. It is essential that content teachers be competent in their areas’ literacy specific techniques and media. But at the same time hold strict literacy grading policies that parallel those in reading/language arts classes.

Teaching across the curriculum/content collaboration-Teachers must collaborate with their grade level team to incorporate similar approaches to literacy. This is effective to overlap content area which allows further exploration of specific subjects and offshoots of content areas.

Up to date research-Teachers need to be provided with and keep themselves current with the latest research and techniques in the areas if literacy and their specific content area. This can be done by school based professional development, system wide professional development, membership in professional organizations, and journal and web-based information subscription.