Workforce Literacy

Effective literacy instruction for adolescent readers in Career Technical Education classrooms

Workforce Literacy is a professional development series in literacy instruction designed to give teachers, school leaders, and district leaders a customized, contextualized plan for increasing literacy in Career Technical Education classrooms. While school and district leaders learn about their roles as Literacy Leaders, teachers explore the most effective ways to build their students’ mastery of:

• Comprehension
• Vocabulary
• Writing
  

Taken together, these research-based, interactive sessions provide over 200 hours of professional development, including group-based sessions and on-site coaching. Most schools and districts choose to focus on Literacy Leadership and two or three areas in a given year, reflecting the specific needs of the Career Technical education teachers.

Strategic and diagnostic tools provided in each session are designed to work with the school’s current Career Technical Educational texts and curriculum. Strategies and activities for administrators are designed to work within a school’s or district’s leadership policies.

Critical Thinking Skills for Adolescent Readers

All sessions include conceptual foundations and current research on its role in reading and strategies for literacy development across the curriculum

Instructional approaches in each session will target strategies that will improve learning in Career Technical Education courses and effectively improve literacy in all content areas:

• In the context of any subject, Comprehension professional development sessions provide explicit strategies and activities for improving comprehension, including activating prior knowledge, utilizing text structure, adjusting rate, predicting, summarizing, using imagery, generating questions, and monitoring comprehension.
  
• In Vocabulary, both explicit and implicit instructional strategies for vocabulary development are employed.
  
• In Writing, both explicit and implicit instructional strategies for writing improvement in a variety of Career courses are explored.

Biancarosa, G., and C.E. Snow. 2004. Reading Next—A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy: A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Buehl, Doug. 2001. Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, 2 nd Ed. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Faber, Sharon. 2004. How to Teach Reading When You’re Not a Reading Teacher. Nashville, TN: Incentive Publications, Inc.

Fullen, Michael. 2001. The New Meaning of Educational Change. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Heller, Rafael & Greenleaf, Cynthia L. 2007. Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas—Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement. Washington, D.C: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Herrell, A. & M. Jordan. 2004. Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners, 2 nd Ed. Columbus, OH: Pearson, Merrill, Prentice Hall.

Marzano, R. 2001. Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

National Commission on Writing. 2003. The Neglected “R:” The Need for a Writing Revolution. New York: The College Board.

National Reading Panel. 2000. Teaching Children to Read: Report of the Subgroups. Report to the National Reading Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The Partnership for Reading. 2001. National Institute for Literacy, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and U.S. Department of Education. Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read. Washington, DC: U.S. GPO.

Sousa, David. 2005. How the Brain Learns to Read. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.

Urquhart, Vicki and Monette McIver. 2005. Teaching Writing in the Content Areas. Alexandria, VA: ASCD and Aurora, CO: Mid-Continent Research Laboratory.

Wolfe, P. 2001. Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

.

.