21st Century Literacy Across Content Areas

With Lin Kuzmich

Senior Consultant

Fall Symposium, Atlanta 2007

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Critical Questions for Today

• What are the 21st Century Literacy demands that should guide our work?

• What does Math Fluency look like in the 21st century?

• How will we use these demands and resources to focus our work?

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21st Century Learners• We want to prepare our children for life, work,

and communication in tomorrow’s world. There are tools that can help students prepare for the 21st Century.

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Changing Brains of Today’s Adolescents

• When learning something new, over 40% of adolescents need visual input and over 30% need kinesthetic. Only 17% need or respond to only auditory input.

• Speed of processing visually is higher in students exposed to multi-media.

• Relevancy and relationship are keys to enhancing long term memory and literacy.

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What is Literacy in the 21st Century?

• Reading, writing, speaking, and listening in a variety of settings to establish personal meaning and sense

• Solving problems and creating solutions in unknown or unanticipated situations

• Adapting to change using information and communication

• Using multiple sources of information fluidly

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Relevance for the Future• What is the big idea?• What is the life long

benefit?• What is the thinking we

need to make this work or useful?

• What is the real life application?

Adapted from Pat Wolf

NSDC Dec. 2005

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Report on Adult Literacy

• 43% of adults performing below basic levels of literacy on a national assessment were living in poverty, compared to 4% of those at the highest levels of literacy.

• Non-literate adults average $240 per week in wages and highly literate individuals $681 per week.

• 7 in 10 prisoners in the US performed at very basic or below basic levels of literacy.

From the NAL Report 2003

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Skills of Literacy from NAL• Non-Literate

Individuals can perform:– Sign one’s name– Identify a country in a

short article– Locate one piece of

information in a sports article

– Locate the expiration date information on a driver’s license

– Total a bank deposit

• Cannot Perform:– Locate eligibility from a

table of employee benefits

– Locate intersection on a street map

– Locate two pieces of information in a sports article

– Identify and enter background information on a social security card application

– Calculate the total costs of a purchase from an order form

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Four Parts to Literacy for Student Growth in Grades 7-12

1. Functional LiteracyLearning to read, write,

speak and listen

2. Content LiteracyReading, writing,

speaking, and listening to demonstrate content area learning

3. Technological LiteracyUsing reading, writing,

speaking and listening in multimedia venues to create products and demonstrations of learning

4. Innovative LiteracyReading, writing, speaking

and listening to do or solve something complex, invent something unique or produce something innovative

From: Kuzmich and Gregory, 2005

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Connecting to Literacy

Overall Focus on Literacy

DVDs from Bill

Leading for Literacy Kit

Professional Development Offerings

Functional Literacy

Programs Such as Scholastic READ 180

Content Literacy Content Area Reading Kits

CTE Reading Kit

Writing Kit

Technological and Innovative Literacy

Document, Technological and Quantitative Literacy Kit

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Innovative Literacy in a Constantly Changing World

“Successfully intelligent people are flexible in adapting to the roles they need to fulfill. They recognize that they will have to change the way they work to fit the task and situation at hand, and then they analyze what these changes will have to be and make them.” (Sternberg, 1986) p.153

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Innovative Literacy and Mathematical Fluency Require

Creativity1. “Innovation and Creativity:

entrepreneurial sense of thinking and acting, fluid and flexible in use of information and transformation of knowledge into new things, attitudes, solutions, products, and/or actions”

(Gregory and Kuzmich, 2005)

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Innovative Literacy: Life Long Learning

2. Life-Long Learner Orientation: acquiring marketable skills over time, responding to anticipated need, and creating ways to assimilate and accommodate to change, regardless of speed of the change

Gregory and Kuzmich, 2005

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Innovative Literacy: Adaptive Thinking

3. “Practical and Adaptive Thinking: scenario-based thinking and responses to real life situations, interpreting new information, inquiry, consumer skills that are self selected based on desired result; adapting the information or interactions to make decisions or plans for the present and the future”

Gregory and Kuzmich, 2005

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Innovative Literacy: Influential Communication

4. “Influential Communication: communicating to convince others of a point of view, applying rational, ethical, and congruent logic that supports creative, positive solutions and conclusions”

Gregory and Kuzmich, 2005

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Does Your Literacy Program Result in Adaptive Response?

Our students will encounter:

• Unknown personal situations

• Unknown jobs• Unknown technology• Unknown global

impact• Unknown future

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Adults and Literacy

“ Adult literacy requires the ability to creatively reason through and use multiple information sources in order to formulate an adaptive response to the unknown.” DTQ Literacy, ICLE, Kuzmich, 2007

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Criteria for Looking at Tools to Support Innovative Literacy

Supports: • Rigor and Relevance • Questions we ask: beyond Bloom’s• Scenario-based, problem or project based

learning: making it real• Creative use of information: fluid and flexible• Influential communication: ethics and persuasion• Practical problem solving: adapting to change• Prose and non-prose literacy

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Strategies Across Content Areas

Fix-up Strategies• Activating prior knowledge• Predicting• Searching to identify

unknown words• Rereading, adjusting the

rate• Self-monitoring• Inferring• Interacting with unfamiliar

formats• Forming mental pictures

Learning Strategies Essentials

• Outlining• Note-taking• Highlighting• Underlining• Summarizing• questioning

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Writing

• Writing to learn

• Technical writing

• Electronics use

• Infusion into content

• Short Constructed Response and Quick Writes

• Essay and other longer formats

• Templates, strategies, and tools

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Leadership

• Literacy tasks include:– The type of reading material being encountered– The purpose of the reading task– The demands of that type of content– Strategies that are available for the reader to use

• Literacy Leadership:– Monitors these tasks in every classroom– Plans for focus on literacy– Plans for the “toolkit” of every teacher in order to meet

diverse student needs

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Adapted from:

Mosenthal, Kirsch, Guthrie, deGeus, Reitman, and Kuzmich

Three Aspects of Document, Technological, and Quantitative Literacy

1. Previewing the Document or Source

2. Understandingthe

Task

3. Completing theProcess

Document, Technological,

and Quantitative

Literacy Skills

These 3 aspects are comprised of 14 Core Skills for DTQ Literacy

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21st Century Focus on Literacy and Math Fluency

How will you implement what you learned?

What are your next steps?

Thanks!

Lin Kuzmich

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May Your Moments be Many!

“Educators are addicted to the moment when a student’s eyes light up, when the teaching becomes learning. May your days be filled with such moments.”

Philip Patrick Horenstein

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Excerpts, references, and information in this presentation are from:

Gregory and Kuzmich (2005b) Differentiated Literacy Strategies for Student Growth and Achievement in Grades 7-12. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Sessoms and LaRocca, Strategic Reading in the Content Areas – Boosting Achievement in Grades 7-12 , Rexford, NY: International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE)

Kuzmich, Redefining Literacy in Grades 7-12: Strategies for Document, Technological, and Quantitative Literacy, Rexford, NY: ICLE

LaRocca, Strategic Writing Across the Curriculum in Grades 7-12 , Rexford, NY: ICLE

McBride, Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald, Leading with Reading, Rexford, NY: ICLE

Lucey, Hurwitz, Peterson, and Zimmerman, Algebra Mastery Through Relevant Applications in Grades 6-10, Rexford, NY: ICLE

Miles, Reading Strategies for Career Academies and Career-Technical Education, Rexford, NY: ICLE

Quick, Informational Writing — Writing That Gets the World's Work Done, Rexford, NY: ICLE

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Thank You!

Lin Kuzmich, Senior ConsultantICLE/SPN970-669-2290970-203-4176 (cell)kuzenergy@gmail.comwww.kcsink.orgInternational Center for Leadership in Education Phone (518) 399-2776www.LeaderEd.com

info@LeaderEd.com