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Posted by:
Dennis Szymkowiak
K-12 Classroom teacher
Mundelein, IL
Topic:
Strategies in Secondary Content Areas
Message:
About seven years ago a colleague and I began teaching Senior Project, an elective English credit. We envisioned and wrote the course as a capstone language arts class in which students would demonstrate their proficiency in the English/Language Arts through demonstrations (written and oral) of their learning in a self-selected inquiry project. The class was the result of four years of planning and preparation and was part of the overall restructuring of our district's English/Language Arts curriculum. During those years, a core group of seven teachers conducted teacher-research in the areas of authentic assessment and alternative course offerings. We attended a professional development in-service at Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to observe first hand many of the teaching and assessment practices we hoped to put in practice in our curriculum. In addition, we read individuals such as Grant Wiggins. We also reviewed material from South Medford High School in Medford, Oregon, where a successful Senior Project program was already operating.
The overwhelming number of projects in our class turned out to be related to content areas. By the end of our second semester teaching the class, we recognized the potential for increased learning in content areas through the application of reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills and strategies. As a result of that potential, the two of us began to talk about the possibility of revising the course so that students could receive credit in a content area as well as in English. Then, as is sometimes the case, there were administrative changes, a new direction for school improvement, and personnel changes that resulted in the concept being placed on hold for a couple of years. During that time, I began pursuing a doctoral degree in reading and language. It seemed natural enough to investigate literacy strategies in secondary content area classes, and that was the impetus for the integrated language arts/math class that my brother Dan (one of the other panelists) and I currently teach.
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