Student Teaching

So far my student teaching experience has been awesome, exhausting, but awesome. So far I have taken over a Physics class and slowly working my way up to taking 2 Physical Science classes one at time. I have found that there are not many new vocabulary words (that is my literacy project, teaching vocabulary) but the words have a different meaning in different contexts. I have found with my Physics class that I am having to stop frequently and ask students what different words mean from one word problem to the next. At first they did not see what the point of what I was doing, but once they saw how understanding one word was able to give them the last piece of information they needed they were able to understand the importance of reading each word and thinking about its meaning. Incorporating literacy, like I have in the Physics class, will be much more difficult in my Physical Science classes because this class has the EOCT looming in future and they are already behind. I see why so many teachers have a hard time bringing content literacy into their classrooms because of the information they have to cover before the EOCT. I guess teachers could bring a lot more literacy after the EOCT because most schools still have about 2-3 weeks of school left after the EOCT. If you have any tips about how to still cover the mountains of information and together, I am all ears.