Speaker: Betsy Butler, Course Creator
What do you hope teachers will take away from this course?
Betsy Butler: Hi, I'm Betsy Butler and I'm the course creator for course 5360: Developing... Oh, sorry. We changed the name, Boosting Literacy and Critical Thinking in the Content Areas. This is an area that's near and dear to my heart because I really strongly believe that literacy skills can be present in every content area and sometimes you have to get creative to do it. But it certainly is a benefit across the board and help students become better writers. And so you're going to learn about, seven essential writing skills that students should be able to do before they graduate from high school. And all of the, all of the strategies and ideas in the text focus around those essential skills. And I think everybody will find a way to plug in those essential skills in their content delivery.
What do you love about this course?
Betsy Butler: One of the things I love about this course is it really addresses anybody who is not an ELA teacher. Oftentimes they'll say, "How am I supposed to teach writing in my classroom?" And it's not necessarily just about teaching, writing. It's about teaching persuasion and compare and contrast. And it's really about helping kids experience ways to take these skills into life no matter where they are. And right after graduation, these are gonna be important things to be able to demonstrate, to be able to really engage with the world. And so I think that this course provides some nice guide posts for content area teachers so that they can actually do this and not really break much of a sweat doing so.
