[Reading-hall-of-fame] RHF newsletter and spin-off

[tsticht at znet.com]

Colleagues: Congrats to all those who made the RHF Newsletter so attractive
and informative. I especially enjoyed the tribute to Hal Herber. It
stimulated me to prepare a brief note (see below) which I have posted on
several internet discussion lists for hundreds of adult literacy educators.
Thanks to all who worked on the RHF Newsletter!

Tom Sticht

Related note:

10/26/2012

Teaching Reading in the Content Areas



Tom Sticht                                                             
International Consultant in Adult Education


The Fall 2012 issue of the Reading Hall of Fame Newsletter includes a
tribute to Harold “Hal” Herber, who died June 6, 2012. Herber was the
author of the seminal textbook on contextualized reading instruction by
integrating reading instruction into the academic content areas of science,
history, social studies, vocational education, and other content. His 1970
textbook, Teaching Reading in the Content Areas, was aimed at the teaching
of reading comprehension strategies within the context of academic content
in the K-12 system, particularly at the middle and secondary school levels.



I first became acquainted with Herber’s work in the early 1970s while
working on the design and development of an adult literacy instruction
program for the U. S. Army. In the course of this curriculum development
project I studied earlier literacy programs developed for Army personnel
during World Wars I and II. I was struck by the extent to which Herber’s
ideas about integrating the teaching of reading and academic content in the
public schools reflected the approaches to the teaching of reading to adults
in the two World Wars.



In WWI, Cora Wilson Stewart, founder of the famous Moonlight Schools in
Kentucky, wrote the Soldier’s First Book to teach illiterate recruits
reading and writing. In this book she integrated the teaching of literacy
with the teaching of important military content. This was consistent with
her approach to teaching literacy for adults in the civilian population in
Kentucky. In that approach she taught literacy within the content knowledge
areas of farming, health, soil conservation, and other important life areas.
Her approach was explicitly based on her understanding of the importance of
teaching literacy and content knowledge together. In 1922, in her book
Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Illiterates,   she stated, “
each
lesson accomplished a double purpose, the primary one of teaching the pupil
to read, and at the same time that of imparting instruction in the things
that vitally affected him in his daily life”(p. 71).



In WWII, Paul Witty, an early member of the Reading Hall of Fame (now
deceased) developed reading programs for illiterate or poorly literate
adult recruits and once again followed the approach of Cora Wilson Stewart
and integrated the teaching of literacy and mathematics within the
functional contexts of daily military life.  This allowed the students to
learn both literacy skills and important job content knowledge in an
integrated manner.



In both WWI and WWII, the teaching of reading and military content knowledge
in an integrated manner could be termed “teaching content in the reading
area”, because the primary purpose was to teach reading. This is different
from Herber’s approach of “teaching reading in the content areas”, where
the primary purpose of the instruction is to teach the knowledge content,
while secondarily teaching reading strategies and skills.  However, the
latter was the focus of another reading program developed for the U. S.
Army, this one for higher level, college level reading.



During World War II the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) needed
personnel with knowledge of chemistry and physiology to deal with chemical
and biological warfare. They sent more highly literate troops to colleges
to learn these subjects but found that many lacked the reading and study
skills needed for college level reading and study. So the Army got Francis
Robinson, professor of psychology at Ohio State University, to develop a
study skills training course for Army personnel. Robinson developed the
famous SQ3R formula (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review), outlining the
most widely used reading comprehension and study skills method in the world.
It deals with what the reader does before reading (Survey,Question) , during
reading (Read, Recite), and after reading (Review). This general approach,
sometimes called the active reading strategy, forms the basis for many of
the approaches for improving reading comprehension in what Herber and
others have called teaching reading in the content areas in the K-12 system
and which are taught in college as developmental (remedial) reading courses.



Interestingly, there is now a massive movement, funded by over 100 million
dollars from charitable foundations and the federal government, to
contextualize the teaching of reading and writing integrated within
academic and vocational courses. And the newly funded center for adult
literacy research has Mark Conley, a former graduate student of Hal
Herber’s,  as one of its major research associates. In his 2008 book,
Content Area Literacy: Learners in Context, Conley continues the work of
helping teachers advance students’ learning by contextualizing the teaching
of literacy within the functional contexts of important subject matter
content knowledge.



tsticht at aznet.net