Several things struck me when reading about literacy.
1. "Students need to have a compelling reason
to read, write, listen, and speak, and meaningful
science content offers that reason."
I've always felt that way as a learner. I am not much of a writer. Reader, yes. Listener, yes. But speaking and writing has never been my thing. However, if what I am reading or listening to is compelling... that makes it easier. The "my summer vacation" essay was always HORRIBLE for me and not just because my summers were super boring. (Farm kids don't get to go on any vacations.)
2. "When you share performance expectations
with your students, you let them in on the
strategies that good learners use intuitively."
When I finally realized that "how" to learn things was not intuitive for kids that was huge. I have learned to be explicit about how to get there and where there is.
3. By writing as they read, students
also create their own study guides for review and
outlines for report writing.
Great point. I am going to have students do this for sure. I have struggled with how to make reading about science active in a meaningful way i.e. not just playing a reading strategy game.
4. "What did you find out?
How did you figure that out?
How did you get that idea?
How did you reach that conclusion?"
Love this! I'm going to make cards of these discussion questions and put them on lanyard to use with labs. Middle school kids need explicit prompts for discussions to work. Can't wait to see how it works out!
Finally, it is heartening to see that literacy standards relating to science and technical arts are being developed. I have always been concerned that both language arts and science teachers were missing this aspect of literacy. Students need technical reading, writing and communicating skills and many are not developing them. When my husband taught first year university students in general bio he used to get many a research paper that began, "The sleek, gorgeous animal flew through the warm tropical waters, flying like a mythical beast..." Gak! He likes to remind me that real scientists don't read (or write) romance.
Ha ha, I got a kick out of your husband's comment! Some of my English teacher friends struggle with the lack of functional writing skills our high school students have, while on the science end, we tend to struggle with their lack of reading comprehension. It was interesting to find that "creative writing" had been a main focus at the middle school level for quite some time...which just might explain the type of writing found in some of the research papers your husband had the "joy" of reading. ;)
ReplyDeleteI love your unbridled enthusiasm for the interface between science and literacy. I don't think it's an accident that some of the best writing I've ever seen has been in the naturalist vein (Aldo Leopold, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm paranoid that what makes science special and exciting is being usurped by the "literacy industrial complex". I think science can be fun even for those who are illiterate, and it draws even more fundamentally on what makes us human: we are pattern-finding machines, and science, at its very core, is pattern-finding.
So, while I think literacy skills are essential and vital to our students, I don't view them as the be-all and end-all of education, as seems to be the current trend.
I'm finding your posts to be very thought-provoking.