5 Tips to Improve Literacy in Every Classroom
Literacy can be a challenge to teach, especially if students feel like reading and writing aren’t for them. But Scott Warren, who has spent over 25 years working with schools across the country before retiring from the Southern Regional Education Board in 2023, believes literacy is like running or swimming — it’s all about building endurance.
At the 2024 Making Schools Work Conference, Warren shared his favorite tips for helping students not just survive literacy but actually enjoy it. Here are five of his top strategies to make reading and writing easier, fun and more effective for everyone.
1. Build Endurance With Short Reads and Writes
Warren’s first tip for teaching literacy is to start small. He likens reading and writing to physical endurance; expecting students to finish a full novel or lengthy essay right away is like asking someone who’s never run to complete a marathon.
Instead, start with short readings and short writing exercises. Give students articles or paragraphs and gradually build up their stamina.
Over time, this approach will increase their comfort with longer texts and help them read and write more effectively.
2. Make Reading Fun with a Twist—Request (Reciprocal Questioning)
If you want to get students interested in reading, why not add a little challenge?
Warren’s “Request” strategy does just that. Students and teachers read the same passage, but when it’s time to quiz each other, the students ask questions designed to stump the teacher.
Students love trying to catch the teacher off guard, Warren said. It’s a simple way to motivate students to read closely, encouraging them to pick out specific details and concepts.
The best part? Everyone wins — students feel a sense of accomplishment, and teachers get to see their students dive into reading with enthusiasm.
3. Turn Vocabulary Into a Game
Building vocabulary is critical, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull. Warren shared two creative strategies to make vocabulary fun, Word Splash and Gist.
In Word Splash, students are given a set of vocabulary terms to create sentences or predictions before they even know the full context. Gist, on the other hand, involves summarizing content with hashtags, creating a short description of an article, or coming up with catchy “clickbait” titles.
By framing vocabulary work as a game, students get competitive and engage more deeply with the words and meanings. This makes vocabulary practice more enjoyable and meaningful.
4. Use Metaphors and Hashtags for Better Comprehension
Metaphors and hashtags may sound like social media tools, but they’re powerful strategies for literacy, too.
Scott’s Metaphorical Thinking activity involves asking students to compare a topic to something familiar (e.g., “a classroom is most like a circus or a farm”). This approach not only gets students thinking critically but also makes it easier to connect new ideas with concepts they already understand.
Hashtags are a simple way to summarize — students read a sentence or paragraph and then condense it into a hashtag that captures the essence of what they read. Both activities encourage students to think creatively and retain information by finding unique ways to express it.
5. Introduce RAFT Writing for Real-World Practice
For Warren, writing needs to be purposeful to engage students, and the RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) approach does just that. By assigning students specific roles (such as a 9th grader writing to an 8th grader about high school), RAFT assignments give students a clear purpose for their writing.
A humorous twist Warren suggested is Capsule Vocabulary, where students must incorporate unrelated words into their writing. Imagine a disgruntled student writing a letter to their principal while weaving in terms like “dinosaur” and “hamburger.” Students laugh, get creative and learn that writing can be fun and personal.
Conclusion
Warren’s strategies remind us that literacy doesn’t have to be a struggle for students or their teachers. By taking small steps, adding interactive elements, and letting students take ownership, literacy in the classroom can be a source of excitement. So, try out one or two of these strategies in your next lesson, and watch as students start engaging with literacy in ways they never have before.
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