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Phase: Discover Missions: Hacktivity: Roses and Thorns

Struggling readers in STEM classes

Students struggling with reading are struggling in all subject matters.

Photo of Brooke Monteith
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Roses: Students are successful readers with adequate support in my classroom.  It takes a lot of time, energy, and hard work (from adults and the kids) to make our Reading Intervention classroom work!  

Thorns: I see and hear about kids struggling in other content areas.  Some teachers may not know how to fill those holes/needs.  

How do we get struggling readers to be successful in all classes?  Can we see successful reading and writing happening in all content areas?

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Photo of KRISTIN KIBBEE

Brooke,
This is something I think about also.  Our struggling readers often have unidentified strengths in math or science.  If we can build a strong literacy foundation, students will also be able to communicate in the languages of science and math.  Using writing to explain how to do a math operation is one idea.  Students could then write a script and produce a learning video to share with other students.

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Photo of Brooke Monteith

I love this!

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Photo of Erin Quinn

I wonder where the intersection of STEM and literacy is. I've been reading the book Visible Learning for Literacy (http://visible-learning.org/2016/03/visible-learning-for-literacy-hattie/) and there's a few passages in there about making and literacy and how making can build the transferable skills we need to be literate.

Another great resource is This is Disciplinary Literacy (https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/this-is-disciplinary-literacy/book246182)!

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Photo of Brooke Monteith

I'll  check those resources out!  Thank you!

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Photo of KRISTIN Nash

Brooke, I'm excited to hear you name this problem.  It is essential that content teachers help support the reading development of their students, but many of them are not trained as reading instructors and lack the tools to do so.  

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