Strategies for Content Area Reading (Science Specfically)

[Elena Ramos]

I have noticed a pattern with a majority of my students. They do not know how to read the textbook. I usually give the reading for homework so that we can work on activities and labs in the classroom but I feel they need the support. I've been looking through some books, but I feel that these strategies are geared towards younger learners (I teach 8th grade). Does anyone have any suggestions for powerful and engaging reading actives for my students? I plan to have them work on the reading in class so that I can offer support.

[John Golden]

Hi Elena: Here's a copy of an e-mail I sent out to my colleagues at a high school where I am an instructional specialist. It contains links to textbook analysis and pre-viewing activities that I stole from Jim Burke, AVID, and others. Your message reminded me that I'm overdue for another message about during reading activities, which I'll post here, too, when I finish, maybe later this week... 

    I still cringe, thinking back to a conference in my first year teaching when a parent raised some concerns about her son’s ability to read the Faulkner novel I had assigned. I said to her, “I teach literature, not reading.” I can even hear myself saying it with some sort of affected, pseudo-British accent. Luckily, I have come to realize -- as our teaching profession has grown to recognize -- that to varying degrees, we all must be teachers of reading. If we assign our students something to read, and if we have any expectations that they will comprehend and utilize what they read, then we must provide assistance and structures for them, regardless of our specific disciplines.

      I know that as a staff, we have talked about and shared various strategies for reading across the curriculum over the past few years. All I wanted to do in this newsletter was to remind you of two key pieces to consider here at the beginning of the school year:

1. Textbook Analysis: taking just a few minutes to critically examine the textbook that you will be using with students will pay huge dividends throughout the year, by having them examine the features, structures, and format of the textbook. Here are links to a few different graphic organizers that you may consider: one, two, and three (this last one is in Word).
2. Previewing the Text: there are few strategies that will reward you and your students more than consciously activating students’ prior knowledge, especially with our A/B day schedule, in which there are often three-day gaps when you do not see your students. Here are a few of my favorites: ageneric quickwrite, a 30-second expert, and THIEVES. None of these is a long activity, but the results you get in terms of reading comprehension will be strong. 

      You may have noted with some trepidation that the title of this newsletter was “Reading, Part One,” so yes, there will be others where I will share additional strategies for during and after reading that I see around the school as I get more opportunities to drop in on your classrooms.

[Elena Ramos]

Thank you. As a first year teacher, I am always looking for things I can "steal". This is a great starting point. I feel that I have done my students an injustice by not recognizing this issue earlier; however, I do plan to correct this immediately. I look forward to anything else you add during the following weeks. Thank you for your time.

[John Golden]

Believe me, you recognized it MUCH earlier in your career than I did in mine. 

[John Golden]

Hi Elena: Here's the second part of the info I sent out to my colleagues. This part is about teaching academic vocabulary: 

Last week, I was fortunate to be able to hang out in a number of our colleagues’ classrooms where I saw so much student engagement and authentic learning experiences. I also heard a lot of words, really high-level, important words: ninth graders were wresting with terms such as confluence, personify, deciduous,topography, and many others. This is good because we obviously need our classes to be language-rich environments, and the teachers I observed were all highly skilled at addressing the difficulties posed with challenging vocabulary.

Based on a lot of research that shows the tremendous effect of vocabulary on overall student achievement, a crucial question we should ask ourselves is: how do we explicitly teach the essential academic vocabulary of our discipline? Some students can pick up these terms easily because they are likely to already have a context into which they put them, but this is not true for those students who come from less academically advantaged environments. Not only may they struggle with acquiring new vocabulary, but also not having these terms will act as a barrier to learning new content. Researchers have identified approximately 200 words in each content area that, if explicitly taught, lead to significant gains in comprehension of the material. This holds true for every discipline. The opposite is also true: if we do not explicitly teach those terms that are essential in our discipline, our most vulnerable students will struggle with our content.  

Robert Marzano, the guru of all that is vocabulary, recommends three overlapping steps to ensure that students have mastered key academic vocabulary. After each step, I’ve put links for specific activities or graphic organizers that illustrate that step. If there are any of these activities that you would like for me to come in and try out with your students, please don't hesitate to let me know. Also, be sure to add your favorite vocabulary activities to the comments section where this newsletter is posted. 

Step 1 -- Introduction: Frayer Model, Clusters/Web, KWL chart, Vocabulary Word Map

Step 2 -- Comparison: Visualizing Vocabulary, Double Bubble, Comparison Matrix, Students make their own Venn Diagrams, 

Step 3 -- Review and Refinement: Common Greek and Latin Roots, Vocabulary Bingo, various games for all content areas, 

[Dan Fullerton]

Hi Elena,

     I see the same thing and I teach 11th and 12th graders.  It's an ongoing struggle, but we start the year by talking about the SQ3R method of analyzing a text (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review), and I actually walk through a short passage with them using this method.  Then, regularly throughout the year, I provide the students a reading assignment and hold them responsible for the content in it.  The first few assignments include quite a bit of scaffolding (reading guides, focused questions to answer, etc.), then I slowly remove the scaffolding, having them turn in an outline, a one paragraph synopsis, and finally, pushing to the point where they are expected to do this on their own.

     Make it a great day!

 

Dan

[Pam Goble]

I would recommend Cris Tovani's books on reading. I teach 8th SS and ELA to reg ed and gifted students.

We constantly take notes.  I use a checklist and a rubric for all the notes that the students take. The rubrics make the students accountable for their reading. I also model "how to read" constantly on the Elmo.