In 2015, I began teaching a required content area literacy course at Northeastern Illinois University, and I continued this emphasis as I joined the faculty of California State University, Fullerton. In these state-mandated courses, candidates in secondary and K-12 licensure areas (including social studies, English language arts, mathematics, biology, physical education, Spanish, music, and art) reflect on their own literacy experiences, integrate and apply literacy theory in the classroom, and prepare to teach academically and linguistically diverse learners to meet state goals regarding reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Our approach to those objectives, however, was entirely up to us.
The following examples, all of which emerged from assignments that were co-created with and refined by candidates, illustrate strategies for using a course like this one to model dynamic, student-driven curricular processes.
Contextualizing Young Adult Literature: Book Trailers [coming soon]
Learning What Matters: Literacy Interviews [coming soon]