i)        Create a 15-18 slide PowerPoint presentation outlining the importance of reading, writing, listening, and speaking in your own content area classroom. Pretend that you are doing this for a staff meeting with the district office officials in order to convince them about the importance of keeping your favorite content area as part of their curriculum. For example, they might want to eliminate your music or social studies class in order to save costs. Your objective in this PowerPoint is to prove to them that your content area offers many opportunities for addressing literacy, so they will be convinced to not eliminate it from the curriculum.

ii)       Give clear examples of how the literacy areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking are needed and employed by students within the context of learning your content.

iii)     The slides should address the following topics at a minimum:

(1)   Historical Changes in Content Area Reading Perspectives

(2)   What Current Researchers say about Content Area Reading Instruction

(3)   The Content Area Teacher’s Instructional Role in the Classroom

(4)   Real World Literacy Demands of Today’s Students

(5)   How your specific content area requires your students to use literacy

iv)     The Title slide and References slide (in APA format) do not count towards your 15-18 slide total. The title slide should provide all of your identifying information.

The presentation should be engaging and attractive using graphics and color schemes. It should also be clear and informative by using headings, bullets, examples, and references when appropriate.

i)        Using the following assessment tools, evaluate the content area textbook preferably in your grade level (if this is not available for your grade level, then evaluate a textbook from a different grade at your school site).

(1)   Using the Fry Readability Formula, determine the estimated readability level of the chosen content area textbook. Script the textbook excerpts/passage samples that you used and show the step-by-step process you followed for determining the readability, including the number of sentences and syllables per sample passage.

(2)   Using the Cloze Procedure, create a cloze test for the same textbook but use a different passage sample than the ones used for the Fry’s Formula. Administer your cloze test to two students in the respective grade-level and score their performance. Score the students’ performances based on the following three categories: Frustration (less than 40% correct), Instructional (40%-60% correct), and Independent (more than 60% correct). Compare these results with the Fry’s Readability score for that same textbook. How are the results from the Cloze and Fry assessments similar? How are they different? What are your explanations for any discrepancies between the Cloze and Fry outcomes? Include a copy of the Cloze test you created.

ii)       Using the information about the Content Area Reading Inventory (CARI),     create an assessment of the textbook in your content area using the CARI     methodology (this should be the same textbook as used above). This will require you tailoring the CARI to your specific textbook. Administer your CARI for your textbook to at least five students. Report what you discovered. Describe individual responses and group patterns. Include a copy of the CARI you created for your textbook.

Use standard essay format in APA style, including an introduction, conclusion, and title page. An abstract is not required. Cite in-text and in the References section. Provide appropriate reference for the textbook you evaluated (i.e., author, year, title, publisher, pages referenced).