Disciplinary Literacy- Science

Synthesis
Hinchman and Thomas ch 17-
The chapter begins with introducing a reluctant learner named Eduardo.  He had no desire to learn the science material.  He made little effort because he thought he'd never learn it anyway.  He saw himself as a poor reader.  His teacher, Brown, had a classroom focused around Reading Apprenticeship classroom.  Teacher with this method view teaching as an apprenticeship.  Instuctions include explicit how we read and why we read certain text.  In this classroom teacher acknowledge the struggle with the material and work through these challenges.  The class works collaboratively.  The teacher "normalizes struggles."  Eduardo also saw his progress and was motivated.  With this approach Eduardo not only made an A in the class, he developed understanding and strategies to help with future learning.   This idea "negotiating success" was supported Eduardo's learning and shaped his future.  The instructional approaches in this chapter helped shape Eduardo learner disposition while tackling higher level text.

Jetton and Sheridan, Ch 6
Students must understand that approaching content areas with the same reading approach as a literacy class will not work.  Many times science teachers take away the text book because students are not comprehending the material.   At times this is okay, but overall it's not a good approach.  Science is a literary activity.  Just doing experiments and lectures will not allow for students to learn as deeply as also incorporating literature/writing.

There are several challenges that occur when reading science text.  Vocabulary is difficult because it includes terms specific to the content.  Comprehension can be difficult in science because this type of thinking is abstract for some.  Students are asked to think in graphic, textual, and formulaic thoughts. Naturally fluency would be difficult if vocabulary and comprehension are hard.  Writing is science is a challenge too.  If you can't read you can't write.  Writing and reading go hand and hand.  The chapter then goes on to explain a few science specific strategies to help in these areas.  It is important to remember what strategies help with literacy understanding are not always appropriate for content area understanding.  Teachers need to teach content specific area strategies to help with vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and writing.



Text to Text- 
The text this week relates to the previous weeks because this is another content area.  It's obvious but a good reminder that everything involves reading/literacy.  The literacy may not look the same in every classroom, but continuing to learn ways to improve students comprehension, writing, vocabulary, and fluency will help students be more successful.

Text to Self-
Since my end goal is to be a reading specialist/literacy coach, I am again challenged with the idea of working with content areas teachers.  Most of my schooling will have been in the traditional approaches to learning to read.  I need to branch out and learn how to work with other teachers.  Literacy strategies may not always work in a content areas classroom.  This is a new thought for me.

Text to World- One idea that kept running through my head was teachers are going to say, "but when do I have time to teach these strategies.  I'm already bogged down with having to teach the material." I think thought about how we want kids to behave in class, but we have to teach the rules and procedures.  We don't expect them to know exactly what to do.  So we spend the first couple weeks just focusing on procedures and expectations.  I think this would be a perfect time to focus on strategies and explicitly teach some ideas that might help students with vocabulary, writing, fluency, and comprehension.  What's the point of teaching the rest of the semester if they aren't going to understand it anyway.  Might as well prepare them with the best approaches to ensure they will actually learn for the year.  If we take some time out of the day or beginning of the year to focus on these areas, we might have a better outcome for the year and really help students for the remainder of their lives.

Questions
1.   How do you motivate students to reading science text, when in their past it was boring?

2.  This isn't really a question, more a thought.  I'm curious what "negotiated success" might look like in a classroom.  I like this idea, but it's so different than we are taught!