Professional Article

Carnegie Counsel on Advancing Adolescent Literacy. (2010). What It Will Take To Get Our Adolescents
       College and Career Ready. Time to act: An agenda for advancing adolescent literacy for college
       and career success. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York. Pages 7-15.

       According to the article, "What It Will Take To Get Our Adolescents College and Career Ready," literacy rates have been increasing exponentially over the past eight years for students who are in elementary grades.  In middle and high schools, students are expected to read more complex texts that require a high level of literacy skills.  Students are not getting the help the need in order to succeed in these courses and are therefore falling behind in literacy tests.  The authors of the article believe that there needs to be more time spent in the discipline areas on content literacy rather than just the subject.

       I teach English/Language Arts, so the value of this article to me while I am teaching is not as great as, say, a Biology teacher.  As an English teacher, I could help my students decipher tough reading selections that are in other content areas.  This could help with content literacy.  In addition, I could explain to my students that they need to read things in a different way in each class they take.  I could also do some lessons on homophone words, which are the same word but with different meanings.  This could show my students how one word can mean something in this class, but in their science class, it could mean something totally different.