Science literacy can be difficult for students. Often it is drastically different from articles or journals read in other subjects. I like the idea of modeling how to read
science literature. It is true that depending on the content you may read an
article or paper differently by focusing on different things. A great way to
teach students how to read through various subject’s eyes can be done in a
variety of ways. I like the idea of modeling how to read a scientific article. Tovani
says that teachers “can show students through modeling their own reading process
how proficient readers attack different kinds of texts (Tovani ,2004, pg 26.)”
Science articles can be difficult to read, even for experienced readers.
Science articles are often filled with data tables, graphs, and scientific
jargon that many students can be confused by. By modeling how I read this type
of literature I can teach how to effectively read science literature. I can
find several articles rooted in real-life scenarios, so students are
immediately interested, and interweave them with the curriculum. This way
students start to use the content I teach as background knowledge that will
reinforce what they know while learning new information. I could even structure
the lesson so students only read part of the article and then meet with other
students to share a summary of their part. This would allow them to collaborate
with peers and simultaneously work on their reading skills.
I like your ideas of structuring lessons around parts of articles and have the students share summaries! Being able to talk about scientific articles as a group makes the reading task much less intimidating to them, and fellow classmates may have different things to offer to the conversations. That kind of modeling reminds me of one of my graduate-level classes I took during undergrad, where we read 2 scientific literature articles per week and met in small groups and were required to come to class with at least one question to discuss with classmates. Everyone left the class knowing the content and purpose of the articles, and this seems to be what you might be hinting at with your lesson ideas!
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely good to start early in exposing students to scientific literature though, so they are familiar to the language and style when they possibly encounter it in higher education and technical occupations!
Hey Donovan,
ReplyDeleteI agree that exposing students early on is a great way of encouraging science literacy. One of the concerns that I have in teaching right now is that we don't use a book at all because it is felt by the teachers that a better job can be done through alternative ways. I like how you are looking for articles that reflect real-life scenarios.
We do have a time period called enrichment that occurs once a week and we have the students read "ChemMatters", which is an American Chemical Society magazine for students that describes interesting chemistry topics. The student magazine route could also be helpful since it is a scaffold leading to the actual articles.
My favorite literacy item to work with students about is just as simple as to how to read and prepare for a laboratory. Sometimes just getting students to be able to scan a page and summarize can benefit the teacher greatly. Then maybe the students won't ask so many questions that make you refer them to the instructions.