Candice shared thoughts about the most recently revealed Finnish educational reform in her blog post in March, 2015. Check out this article in the Washington Post to read more about how Finland is seeking to essentially remove subject area teaching and instead teaching by topic. This would allow students to analyze problems and situations in authentic situations utilizing multiple disciplines. The changes are expected to be complete by 2020.
Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell describes in depth how to effectively implement guided reading groups within your classroom to meet the needs of your various learners. It is a great read and allows teachers to reflect upon their current instructional practices in the area of guided reading.
Fountas, I.C & Pinnell, G.S. (2012). Guided reading: The romance and the reality. International Reading Association, 66(4). Retrieved from http://www.heinemann.com/fountasandpinnell/supportingmaterials/fountaspinnell_revdreadingteacherarticle12_2012.pdf
STEM: Beyond the Acronym "STEM education isn't just one thing—it's a range of strategies that help students apply concepts and skills from different disciplines to solve meaningful problems." This article is a great read if you want to learn more about STEM and how transdisciplinary units of study give students opportunities to apply their learning across multiple content areas. Vazquez, J. (2014). STEM: Beyond the acronym. Educational Leadership, 72 (4). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec14/vol72/num04/STEM%E2%80%94Beyond-the-Acronym.aspx
Characteristics of Literacy-Rich Content-Area Classrooms (ASCD) Regardless of the content we teach, we are all reading teachers. So what does "literacy-rich" look like in a content-area classroom? This article gives a clear overview of how students can become readers and writers in various domains. Urquhart, V. & Frazee, D. (2012). Characteristics of Literacy-Rich Content-Area Classrooms. ASCD Express, 8(6). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol8/806-urquart.aspx
The study sought to find ways to motivate students to read in middle school. Through thier research, Ivey and Broaddus examined middle school students’ responses about how their classroom environments motivated their own reading. Ultimately they were seeking teh ansers to two primary questions: "What makes you want to read in this class?" and "What do you like most about the time you spend in this class?". Their work resulted in a variety of suggested strategies that support reading among adolescents including providing choice, increasing set independent reading times, encouraging reading multiple genres and having a large variety of texts to read, and including teacher read-alouds.
Ivey, G., & Broaddus, K. (2001). “Just plain reading”: A survey of what makes students want to read in middle school classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 36 (4). Retrieved from: http://rpdp.net/admin/images/uploads/162IRAArticleMSreaders.pdf
Meeting the Reading Comprehension Demands of Each Content Area The book chapter from Content Counts! Developing Disciplinary Literacy Skills, K-6 by Jennifer L. Altieri explores reading in math, science, and social studies. Altieri not only provides a framework and vernacular to discuss content area literacy, but also provides strategies for each content area in order to effectively address the reading skills needed in each academic domain. Altieri, J.L. (2011). Meeting the reading comprehension demands of each content area. In Content Counts! Developing Disciplinary Literacy Skills, K-6 (67-104). Newark: DE: International Reading Association. Retrieved from: http://www.reading.org/Libraries/books/bk838-3-Altieri.pdf