You know you’re an Immersion Literacy content teacher when:
Real Reading
- Students are reading poetry, novels and other narrative texts
- Students are reading the newspaper and other highly engaging non-fiction texts
- Students are reading speeches, technical papers, primary source documents, and charts and graphs
- Students are reading a variety of sources on the same subject so as to compare and contrast what they’re reading
- Students are reading more on their own and not just listening to the teacher read
- Students are doing fluency-building and vocabulary activities that go beyond worksheets, sentence writing and dictionary work.
Real Writing
- Students are writing poetry and other creative writing forms in all classes (and not just research papers and 5-paragraph essays)
- Students are writing more personal essays and reflections and fewer “academic” papers
- Students are learning how to use word choice, tone and voice to bring their personal and academic papers to life
- Students are learning how to use metaphor and personification to bring their personal and academic papers to life
- Students are learning how to use active verbs and specific nouns to add detail to their personal and academic writing
- Students are learning to focus more how interesting their papers are and less on how technically correct they are (mechanics, # of paragraphs, MLA, APA style)
Real Speaking
- Students are speaking more and the teacher is speaking less (pairs, small groups, etc.)
- Students are providing answers and the reasons behind their answers
- Students are given time to articulate their answers without interruption from the teacher and other students
- Students are constructively critiquing each other’s answers and each other’s thinking
- Students are focusing a great deal on the words they use (and other’s use) to defend their thinking and not just their reasoning and support
- Students are debating any number of topics relevant to the day’s lesson and speaking in impromptu fashions on any number of topics related to the subject area
Real Thinking
- Students are required to defend their own thinking instead of relying on the teacher to explain things
- Students are asked to complete tests and quizzes that challenge them intellectually, to challenge their reasoning skills (and not just their rote content knowledge)
- Students are provided rigorous vocabulary assessments that go beyond matching the words to the dictionary definitions
- Students are asked to complete assessments in which writing is required to explain their answers
- Students are asked to find the faulty reasoning in an argument made by an author, the teacher or a fellow student
- Students are asked to teach concepts to other students
