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Students need CLEAR PURPOSE for reading
Applicable to Technical text

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The Division of Career Technical Education (CTE) has set the following goals as suggestions for implementing reading and writing strategies within the CTE content:

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Article

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HIS hands were shaking slightly as they held his resume and cover letter, waiting for the interviewer to call his name. He knew the "job" wasn't real and that today's interview competition was just to help him practice, but he was worried he'd forget some of the important points he'd written down about his skills and experience gained so far in his career and technical education class.

"It's better for him to be nervous today and make mistakes than to go into his first real interview and not know how to handle himself professionally," explains Bill Uttich, one of the instructors of the automotive and collision repair class participating in a campus-wide interview competition. It's been an event at the Boulder Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC) for as long as he's worked there. Only recently, however, did instructors begin to view it as yet another way to increase literacy skills across the campus. Our efforts to increase our students' literacy skills may well interest many CTE educators.

The importance of literacy
Over the last three years, teachers and administrators at our CTE high school in Boulder, CO, have been on a mission to raise reading, writing, and speaking skills among our 400+ enrollment. With the shift to the Common Core standards, a stronger focus has been placed on literacy. Employers in industry have long stressed the critical importance of these skills on the job.

"CTE with a literacy focus is an excellent vehicle for students to better prepare for college and career readiness," says Joan Bludorn, director of Boulder CTEC.

By borrowing "best practices" modeled at other CTE schools around the country and pulling in the help of our language arts teachers and the school librarian, programs offered in everything from welding and cosmetology to criminal justice include daily lessons and activities to help improve literacy skills. And the school now has the scores to prove that all our efforts are working.

"One of the challenges has always been how to embed literacy into the class content of a CTE program without it feeling like it's being imposed from the outside in," says Peggy Slater, a language arts teacher who runs the graphic communications program on campus. She was pivotal in working with the instructors to identify early on what projects and activities they already used in class that supported the language arts standards.

Slater spent time in classrooms and labs observing the reading that went on in the computer science program, the research in the agriculture program, and the writing and editing involved in her own graphic communications program and began to meet with teachers to see how these activities could be further developed and assessed in ways that supported the language arts curriculum.

"These projects were real-world applications of literacy skills that teachers were already doing," Slater says. She knew that if literacy lessons were designed around the content of the CTE program-rather than in addition to it-teachers and students would not only make time for it, but would see it's value in helping to support learning in the skills and competencies within that program area.

Help from TCTW
To help initiate the development of these embedded lessons, Bludorn began by requesting Perkins funding to send almost every CTE teacher to a conference hosted by Technology Centers that Work (TCTW). The TCTW school improvement initiative was formed in 2007 to provide staff development and technical assistance to career and technical schools in an effort to produce high-demand, high-wage graduates who will be leaders in their chosen fields. Their conferences are designed as a forum that illustrates best practices and new initiatives going on at CTE schools around the country.

While attending the conference, teachers from Boulder CTEC were able to participate in round-table discussions, which often spilled over into ongoing conversations and cross-country emails, about ways other teachers have increased reading, writing, and speaking in their areas.

Building on the momentum from the TCTW conferences, our teachers and administration decided to make the integration of literacy the major goal of the school-wide improvement plan for the year. This involved creating SMART goals around steps that would be taken to ensure that each CTE teacher would not only be working towards increasing reading, writing, and speaking in their daily lessons, but that they would work together towards creating shared literacy projects that supported the language arts standards.

To help guide some of their brainstorming, they asked the academic language arts teachers and the campus librarian for support as they worked to address both the Common Core standards and district language arts content objectives. Together, they developed several strategies for integrating literacy into existing CTE lessons.

Reading
A wide range of reading opportunities are available in every CTE program. One of the benefits of linking reading activities to CTE classes is that students often have a great deal of interest in program-related material like trade magazines that feature new products or industry trends that the students may already be following. Assignments of nontextbook reading that students self-select can include written reflections, reviews, and online discussions.

Instructors can put up an interest board where students can share items they find that relate to their industry. Many teachers at Boulder CTEC found that after asking students to bring in items to post as an assignment, the students continued to do so throughout the year without prompting-helping to create a student-directed culture of reading within their program.

Needless to say, technological advancements have had a profound effect on student access to reading material. With the help of Perkins funding and a local technology grant, we purchased a set of Chromebooks and a set of iPads that we could share among the various CTE classes on campus. Using these computers, students have access to online links to articles of interest via a class website that can easily be set up for free on Edmodo or Schoology. Both learning management systems are similar to Facebook and very intuitive for both teachers and students to use. Students can post comments and hold ongoing discussions. These websites allow teachers to quickly see (and assess) student engagement in reading and can show their growth in reading skills over time.

We also paid specific attention to career-related vocabulary development. Traditional word walls that have students define new terms were posted in a highly visible location in every classroom and graphic organizers were examined and critiqued at staff meetings. Strategies for recognizing common word roots or language that had application in other subjects were highlighted when possible. Using the computers, some classes created vocabulary projects like an online glossary where they kept track of new vocabulary either collaboratively using wiki-pages or personally through a Google Doc. Apps are available for creating flashcards and word games for review as well.

Writing
In the classroom, teachers at Boulder CTEC decided to organize writing opportunities in two categories: short, formative daily writing activities and longer, summative writing projects that allow for greater feedback through editing and review.

Back in their automotive shop, Bill Uttich and Lary Long had always had students fill out daily records and perform short journaling activities as a way to keep records while improving student writing. They began examining new opportunities that had real-world applications for students to develop writing skills, such as paraphrasing interactions with customers and creating procedural manuals. In having students write down the steps of a specific mechanical procedure, Uttich and Long could assess both the students' skill at a specific task and their ability to communicate effectively as technical writers.

With the help of technology, students could also take photos and blog about a specific task they were working on, thus increasing their digital literacy as well. "My students post their design compositions for a website they are creating on their blogs," says Damian Tate, the computer science teacher at Boulder CTEC. "Other students are then asked to critique these written reflections as a discussion thread and reflect on their experience of the website from the user's perspective." The writing is rich in industry-specific vocabulary and instructors can assess it for grammatical growth. It also provides the students with a forum for engaging in professional dialog through their writing.

Most blogging software is free and very intuitive for students to use. They feature functions that allow for discussions and comments and most can be easily regulated by an instructor. Blogs can become effective visual aids for parent-teacher conferences and can be included in a digital portfolio for students to share with potential employers at job interviews.

Along with the resumes and cover letters that students write, working with the school librarian, we designed research papers. Each CTE program now requires a lengthier research paper that investigates a self-selected topic within their CTE industry.

At a time when they have wide access to information at their fingertips, "it is not enough to just teach students how to access and acquire information," explains Katrina Griffith, librarian at Boulder CTEC. She has worked with each CTE teacher to schedule one or two days when she visits the classroom to teach and reinforce student skills around how to locate, review, and cite information using databases, peer-reviewed journals, and other credible sources.

While helping to reinforce literacy skills, this campus-wide initiative also encourages ongoing professional growth in students' chosen career areas. "Information is not about access anymore, it's about how you evaluate and share it in an interactive workplace environment," adds Griffith. The CTEC staff is working on turning these research papers into a larger capstone project in the future.

To help authentically assess and edit the writing projects students were now completing, director Bludorn asked for funding to bring a language arts teacher into CTE classrooms for an hour each week. Support from the language arts teacher is important for both students and teachers.

The teachers benefit from having help creating and grading the assignments. The students benefit from immediate feedback and also are able to earn 2.5 LA credits towards their graduation requirements because a highly qualified language arts instructor is present in the classroom. (As graduation requirements have increased over time, they have made it harder for students to make time in their schedules for a CTE class. The embedded credit model not only offers students credit for the language arts work they do in their CTE class, but also answers the "when am I going to use this?" question about the value of developing writing skills.)

Speaking
CTE programs also offer a wide variety of speaking opportunities. Along with a job interview exercise, many teachers at Boulder CTEC have students present on a topic to the larger class. They might discuss an article they read from a trade magazine or demonstrate their proficiency in a skill by acting as an "expert" who teaches other students.

Instructors have brainstormed ways to increase the audience in these presentations, such as hosting a "research symposium," where students present their findings or projects in a science fair-style environment or record demonstrations that are uploaded to YouTube. Students can see the real-world value of the skills they are developing by monitoring hits when other people view their video in an attempt to learn what the students are teaching.

One of the greatest advantages of teaching within a career and technical cluster are the resources provided by the various student leadership organizations. Many local, state, and national CTE student organizations-such as SkillsUSA, FBLA, FFA, HOSA-have an organized speech competition. Each organization freely posts its guidelines and judging rubrics for these events and often includes lesson plans or strategies for supporting student growth in public speaking. Visit these sites for examples:

www.ffa.org/PROGRAMS/AWARDS/CDE/EXTEMPORANEOUSPUBLICSPEAKING/Pages/default.aspx

www.fbla-pbl.org/data/files/competitive/2012/2012-13%20fbla%20 tab%206a_competitive%20events.pdf

http://skillsusa.org/competitions

Positive results
After integrating these literacy strategies into their programs for a year, our CTE instructors could see improvements through assessments they made with the help of the language arts teacher assigned to their classroom. While this confirmed that their efforts were having a positive impact on student achievement, they wanted to be able to compare data over time and across populations.

For this, they needed a tool that could effectively measure student progress throughout the year and decided to request Perkins funding to purchase MAPS (Measure of Academic Progress) testing, which is a computerized adaptive assessment tool that students complete online in 30-40 minutes three times over the course of the year. Our instructors have seen value in the instantaneous feedback the short tests give them that they can use to modify their instruction the next day.

Almost every student showed growth in reading comprehension and literary response and analysis, even if the student was not currently enrolled in a language arts class during that semester. In some classes, the rate of growth, as measured by students' RIT scores, showed more than two grade levels gained within a single semester. (RIT is an abbreviation of "Raush unit" and indicates a student's level of instructional growth.)

An important benefit of the testing is that CTE instructors can now show district leadership that students enrolled in a CTE program are showing academic progress in reading and writing-even if they are not currently enrolled in a language arts class. This has helped change the image of CTE programming at the district level.

Given that more reading, writing, and speaking opportunities introduced into the content of a CTE classroom can increase important literacy skills, perhaps 10 years from now we will be looking at more ways to integrate CTE approaches into traditional language arts classes.

Heather Ridge is a career and technical education teacher, Boulder (CO) Career and Technical Education Center.

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HIS hands were shaking slightly as they held his resume and cover letter, waiting for the interviewer to call his name. He knew the "job" wasn't real and that today's interview competition was just to help him practice, but he was worried he'd forget some of the important points he'd written down about his skills and experience gained so far in his career and technical education class.

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These strategies might benefit struggling readers.

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The 12 Best Differentiated Instruction Strategies for CTE

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Meeting the needs of your diverse CTE students is tough. Learn about the 12 best differentiated instruction strategies to help your students succeed!

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Read aloud (TTS) accessible and inaccessible text (OCR), simplify difficult vocabulary, and translate English into other languages.

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Penn State

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Reading and Writing Resources for CTE - Penn State College of Education

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Professional Personnel Development Center > Reading and Writing Resources for CTE

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Look on page 5

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Read aloud (TTS) accessible and inaccessible text (OCR), simplify difficult vocabulary, and translate English into other languages.

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Can be modified for various topics/lessons

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Read aloud (TTS) accessible and inaccessible text (OCR), simplify difficult vocabulary, and translate English into other languages.

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Literacy Skills in Career and Technical Education Classes

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Literacy Skills in Career and Technical Education Classes

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CTE classes are a great place for literacy lessons as students are presented with authentic texts like technical manuals, computer programs, and blueprints.

© iStock.com/Steve Debenport

In 2015, the majority of high school seniors performed at or below basic on the reading assessment section of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The results of the writing assessment administered in 2011 were similar. This means that 50 to 60 percent of students had difficulty reading passages and performing tasks like interpreting information, making inferences, and drawing conclusions. While I do not want to place too much emphasis on standardized assessments, I do think they shine a light on an area that needs our attention.

Efforts to improve adolescent reading and writing skills are numerous, but few focus on increasing literacy through career and technical education (CTE). It is a common misconception that literacy instruction should occur only in English class. CTE teachers can teach literacy quite effectively-it is normal in the CTE classroom for students to be presented with a range of authentic texts, such as blueprints, technical manuals, computer programs, profit-loss statements, lab reports, and floor plans. Presenting students with texts that align with their interests has been proven to inspire even the otherwise unengaged student to actively participate in reading and writing activities.

Incorporating literacy strategies in CTE classes can be difficult at first for both teacher and student. When I taught business classes, there were always a few students who would say, "Why are we doing so much writing? This isn't English class." Nevertheless, it was my duty to teach the course content and provide students with the strategies needed to read, write, listen, design, and speak in a manner that prepared them for life after high school.

Here are four literacy strategies that I found to be useful in CTE classes, though I know they can be used in any classroom. Please note that these strategies are intended to be temporary literacy scaffolds; thus, students no longer need to be provided the strategy when they naturally begin to use the related skills on their own. For instance, the first example is showing students how to summarize an article using a graphic organizer. Once they master how to find the right information and arrange it in a logical manner, the scaffold (i.e., the graphic organizer) is no longer needed. This is a great sign that students are strengthening their literacy skills.

Four Literacy Strategies for the CTE Classroom

1. Read and summarize an article. This may seem like a simple task, but I have received papers in which students either missed the key points or nearly plagiarized an entire article. A graphic organizer helps solve those problems. The organizer allows students to identify the right information, place it in the correct order, and synthesize their thoughts before writing a formal summary.

2. Think critically and ask questions. The world of work requires that students have critical thinking skills and, more specifically, critical questioning skills. Students need to learn how to properly question what they read, see, hear, and think. This skill comes naturally for some, but others may need help. I found that the Creative Questions section of this worksheet (page 8) was a quick and easy way for students to learn the language of critical questioning.

3. Reflect on and respond to what they see. Video clips were a large part of my instructional resource library, including everything from YouTube videos to documentaries to movies. I would often ask students surface-level questions about the content of the video (just to make sure they were paying attention), but I also wanted them to reflect on what they learned, connect it to prior knowledge, and create a proper written response. The art of reflection is a difficult one to teach, but it is vital to learning. Using Sentence Starters for Reader Response helped students find the appropriate words to reflect on and respond to videos, and helped the class have more genuine conversations about what they had just learned.

4. Take a stand and support it with evidence. A CTE curriculum is often problem-based; it challenges students to evaluate a problem, devise a solution, and present evidence to support the solution. Whether that means presenting safety-gear recommendations for a construction site or a new marketing campaign to revitalize an old brand, it is important for students to know how to articulate their ideas in a logical, clear manner. I found the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning framework to be a helpful strategy. Though this framework is usually associated with science, I found it applicable anytime students were asked to make an argument and support it with evidence.

Increasing adolescent literacy rates is a complex challenge that needs to be addressed from multiple perspectives. With 97 percent of students completing at least one CTE course by the time they graduate from high school, CTE programs are naturally positioned to help students build literacy skills in preparation for future success in college, careers, and life.

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Literacy Skills in Career and Technical Education Classes

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CTE classes are a great place for literacy lessons as students are presented with authentic texts like technical manuals, computer programs, and blueprints.