Teachers need to Consider Student's Lack of Critical Literacy/Writing Skills

It would seem that I am on a literacy bend right now.

Perhaps this is because the OSSLT is now a month away, and every school has their after-school literacy programs up and running (a separate problem that these are really only utilised before the test - but that could be another article all together); or perhaps it is just because the growing poor results that are seen on a daily basis.

As a follow up to my post yesterday about whether or not digital literacy skills were beginning to affect traditional literacy skills; literacy rates (at least in Ontario) are static, stuck at 82%...

So today, during my lunch break I did some more reading about critical writing and literacy skills. This was prompted largely thanks to a great back and forth conversations with Keith Donaldson (@klgdonaldson) on Twitter;

I think many profs seeing new undergrads having more difficulty with reading and analyzing even article-length texts https://t.co/ViBbGQ9Qp4

— Keith Donaldson (@klgdonaldson) February 25, 2016

.@Avro_ArrowRL201 If they even try to analyze... Regurgitation without interpretation or contextualization is more and more common it seems.

— Keith Donaldson (@klgdonaldson) February 26, 2016 

It would seem that I am not alone in this assessment. Don't get me wrong, students are basically literate in the sense that they can read and write; but they cannot interpret, contextualise, or even analyse what they read. Which makes sense, as the current acceptable form of assessment of learning is largely regurgitation. Including in large part the OSSLT; as students are prepared to previous versions of the test.

If they [students] are unable to think about what they are reading; then it is no wonder that they are not able to write about it either. So if you are a teacher that continuously gets poor reading response journals back - this is most likely the reason why.

I currently teach workplace and college level English; and the increasing student population that does not read anything outside of their English classroom has become unacceptable. It is largely to the point where students complain when they are asked to read the instructions to the latest video game...

English is just like other subjects, in the sense that you need to use it to practise. Practise is the only way to get better. It would seem that largely the students who participate in sports understand this reference better than others. However, this could be another result of the lower critical literacy results.

Almost every student today has access to MSWord, OpenOffice, or GoogleDocs, yet their writing is still filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Even when they are provided the tools that can help them write - they still struggle. Perhaps this is because they are only writing for you - their teacher.

In my upcoming Blogger Tutorial for teachers, I explain what I believe is the most important aspect of blogging in the classroom - students writing for an authentic audience on a classroom blog.

We as teachers need to spend some of our professional development time looking at how we can return to producing student who are critical readers and writers; not just students who can read and write.

Thoughts? Let me know; even if you think I am way off base.