1. What is literacy?

11. Language capacity is the root of all student performance. The success of a classroom learning experience rests on student language capacity. Heidi Hayes Jacobs

13. The need to read, write, speak, and listen effectively is fundamental to every subject, in every grade, and in every class these learners will ever attend. Heidi Hayes Jacobs

15. What is literacy?

17. If you are an eighth grade math teacher, then you are a speech teacher. If Johnny cannot describe in conversation with you what confuses him in computing an algebraic equation, then he will be a frustrated learner. Heidi Hayes Jacobs

18. 4, 4x, 4x2, -3x2y, xyz

19. What is literacy?

21. If you are a [social studies] teacher, then you clearly are a writing teacher. Maria needs your help. She is trying to convey her point of view… She needs an academic inventory of words that will help her think in the language of social studies. Heidi Hayes Jacobs

23. What is literacy?

25. If you are a [science] teacher and you rely on lab reports, you must teach your students how to employ an empirical style of writing… perhaps you need to help them with notetaking. Heidi Hayes Jacobs

27. What is literacy?

29. You are a physical education teacher… and their ability to listen carefully will affect their actual safety. If Rachel doesn't understand your words but just smiles at you, she cannot progress. Heidi Hayes Jacobs

32. What is literacy?

34. NYS Learning Standards Review Principles: Embed literacy into all of the content areas NYSED Report on Standards Review, 11.14.08

36. Exposure to new words can differ dramatically among the families of different socioeconomic classes. From “Promoting Vocabulary Development”

38. It has been shown, for example, that young children of parents with jobs classified as “professional” can be exposed to 50% more words than are children of parents classified as “working class.” From “Promoting Vocabulary Development”

42. The hardest part about reading is remembering what I’ve read. Jessica, ninth grader

45. If a 5 th -grade student reads for an hour each day, five days a week… the student will encounter 2,250,000 words in the course of reading in a school year. Texas Reading Initiative

48. If 2 to 5 percent of the words the student encounters are unknown words, he or she will encounter from 45,000 to 112,5000 such words. Texas Reading Initiative

51. We know that students learn between 5 and 10 percent of previously unknown words from a single reading. Texas Reading Initiative

54. It really isn’t hard to avoid reading – you just ask someone what it means, or wait for the teacher to explain it. Lisa, high school senior

57. What is literacy?