Thursday, June 24, 2010

Science & Literacy

I cannot assume that all of my students can read well. Even though I teach science, I cannot depend on the language arts teachers to give them all the reading skills they need to be successful in each class. Science is focused on problem solving and our future depends on good problem solvers. The "Science & Literacy Tools for Life" article did a great job of giving me some guidelines for science literacy.

Just like students who know the expectations of how to behave in a classroom, they must know the performance expectations of literacy. This is something I never thought about before, and I feel ashamed about it. My middle school will be working in teams, or pods, for the first time next year, so I really want to take advantage of this and work closely with my other team members to work on these performance expectations. It actually sounds pretty overwhelming.

After reading the explicit teaching strategy examples in the article, I am really hoping I can get a good set of textbooks for next year. (mentioned in previous blog). I feel I can use these guidelines effectively. I don't want to even think about photocopying reading selections.

Finally, the metacognitive strategy written for lab reports got me thinking about how I have my students write their labs. One difference between what I have my students do and what is listed is I have my students write numbered steps for the procedures (what they are going to do or what they did do to test their hypothesis). I will now think about incorporating narratives instead. I really like that strategy!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the reflection. I think the following link is a great way to have students write lab reports: http://cues.missouri.edu/

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  2. I too think the metacognitive strategy for lab reports are intriguing.

    As far as the explicit teaching strategy, I can see using some form of it that won't require photocopying papers. Myself, I might use a modified version of it using a blog or other such medium. I might not be able to address all guidelines in such a selection, but most could be.

    Eric - I love the link for the lab reports. I'm actually very excited to try a version in my science classes this year. (I've found that the lab reports I've had my students write not to be nearly reflective enough, and maybe this will get them thinking.)

    JYates

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