Blog Post for December 2014

All teachers teach basic literacy: students learn any subject by reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These days, we also need to teach more advanced literacies, such as knowing how to use technology and manage information.

But how can we teach all of those literacies? Is there a simple approach that makes sense of literacy in science, history, art, literature, computers, math, drama, and media?

The Communication Situation

Yes. The communication situation is the key to unlocking any form of communication in any subject. Whenever someone uses a medium to express an idea to someone else, there is a communication situation.

Every communication situation has five components: sender, message, medium, receiver, and context.