Developing Literacy in MST

On-line Comprehension

For the past 3 weekend sessions we have been exploring a plethora of strategies (pre, during, post) for developing content area literacy including vocabulary instruction, think-alouds, reciprocal teaching, Socratic seminars, note-taking skills, and use of graphic organizers just to name a few. Identifying alternative, more authentic sources to a textbook to use within the content areas has also been a focus, but the more I reflect, the more I feel we need to design specific strategies for developing on-line reading comprehension skills. We are still stuck in the “book” mode even with incorporating alternative text sources.

Session handouts from the 2008 TRLD Conference are available
on-line and one I found that connects with the need for a closer examination of on-line reading comprehension can be found under the Friday session keynote: How Reading Comprehension Has Changed While We Weren’t Looking, Donald Leu.

Leu is also part of The New Literacies Research Team at the University of Connecticut where research is being conducted on the new reading comprehension and learning skills required by the Internet and other emerging information and communication technologies. For further information on this research, go to the Publications page where many articles can be downloaded for personal use.

What have you discovered about on-line reading comprehension? Will the tried and true literacy strategies still be effective or even relevant in an on-line environment? What do we need to create, what can we modify, and what should we discard to develop our students’ literacy skills?

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