Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum ~ Double Entry Journal #10

In a blog posting briefly describe why it is the responsibility of all teachers to provided writing instruction for their students.

Without reading the article I can state why reading and writing is important in the field of science. Being able to read scientific textbooks, journals, articles, and so forth are challenging on its own. Being able to interpret what is being read is even more difficult. Science is a rather abstract subject and making sense of scientific mumbo jumbo as I like to call it can only be approached by the science teacher. After all, the science teacher is really the only one qualified to teach students how to read science textbooks, journals, and articles. Recently during my clinicals I had to teach 10th graders how to take a science journal and skim the article for keywords. The article was too long to read and absorb on a 10th grade level, therefore breaking the article down was essential especially in a 50 minute time period. 

The next point I would like to make is that science teachers also have the duty of teaching students how to read scientific data tables and graphs. It is one things to create a graph but being able to read the graph and interpret is a higher level of thinking. Often this level is not reached, not even in college. I believe science teachers forget that this skill is a literary skill and that no one else is more qualified to teach it. 

Writing in science is another skill that is highly important. Getting students in the mode of being scientists in the science classroom is a skill I've been working on in my science classroom. As a scientist in the community, being able to communicate your findings is often done in written form. Without the proper skills and techniques of writing, communication fails. When communication fails, the scientist's findings might as well be null and void. You'd literally be laughed out of the scientific community. Your findings certainly aren't going to be published in a journal or article. Properly done, the science teachers should be able to begin showing proper techniques of writing in science which in turn will prepare the student for the university level and so forth and so forth. I can't express how many times students enter the university level and can't write a science report. The students who lack these skills have a lot of catching up to do before they can move to a higher level.  

This is purely my point of view and I can't see that this isn't the case all the way across the curriculum. 

Quote:
Students who can read with clear comprehension and write effectively about a given subject matter will learn the material much more thoroughly than those who do not. (NCTE, 2011)

Reaction: 
I completely agree with this quote. There are certain techniques required to make an subject easier to read and comprehend such as being able to skim and scan; summarize after a few paragraphs or a chapter; finding key words; looking for headings which will help summarizing techniques; and so forth. In science, in particular this is the best way to cut through the science mumbo jumbo to find the important parts. Without these skills it is easy to get hung up in the first few paragraphs of any science literature. Being able to relate the information back in written form shows a certain amount of comprehension. I honestly believe that this eliminates a lot of the need for memorization. 

Quote:
Yet, as research shows, reading and writing cannot be learned once and for all; these skills represent complex arrays of capacities that vary from one discipline to another. Reading and writing in science is not the same as reading and writing in social studies or a technical subject like drafting. (NCTE, 2011)

Reaction:
Exactly! This information supports my opinion above. Reading and writing varies from one subject to the next. I know that I am not qualified to teach literacy in English or History but I know and feel positive that I can in Science.

Name and describe four research-based strategies to support writing instruction for students.

1. Low stake writing assessments - Break down the assessments in to key words, summarize a topic, or outline a procedure. This process gets away from the tedious long assessments that can really weigh on the student. It instead gives them quick practice sessions in reading and writing.
2. Multiple forms of feedback - Switch gears from traditional grading to peer responses, class discussion of samples, and one-on-one conferences. This helps the student view their writings from a few different perspective and builds meta cognitive skills.
3. Employ a variety of levels of reading difficulty - This technique boils down to scaffolding. If the students are always bombarded with difficult texts, especially those above grade level (such as the textbook), then they are not given the chance to practice skills at their own level and build from there.
4. Employ variety in texts and their presentations - the science classroom in particular should give students a chance to read a variety of science magazines, digital text that can be found easily on the Internet, short journals that sources such as LiveScience puts out on a daily basis (last weeks article was "New Hominid Found" which was barely a page long). Even Sci-Fi may be interesting to some students in a science classroom. Anything that grabs the attention of the student will help them practice their skills. And may even provide an interesting discussion in the classroom.

Related Source:

(sarahblaz, 2008)

This video represents the fact that unless we teach students to understand science based literacy then they will not have the skills to make informed decisions on their health, to understand the changing world around them, to make informed decisions about the ever changing environment (aka many ecological disaster are the result of ignorance), or to even make knowledgeable arguments.
Sources Cited:
NCTE. (2011). Reading and writing across the cirriculum. National Council of Teachers of English, 15-18. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CC/0203-mar2011/CC0203Policy.pdf

sarahblaz. (Producer) (2008). Scientific literacy- science education for the 21st century [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-elygXbo7s
 

The Top 10

I have to start with WOW! The work the kids put into their Wikis were so professional looking. I understand there are templates that can be used to make web pages aesthetically pleasing but the work still had to be put into it. Something at the end of the video caught my attention when the teacher stated that her kids learned more from doing the website work than being taught by the standard method and then be tested. My guess is that by doing this hands on activity and learning through it Fact vs. Opinion that all of these kids would indeed score higher on a standardized test in this area. I think its great. Not only did they learn Fact vs. Opinion (which I have found is a difficult subject for kids when I have had to teach it) but they learned job related skills by developing a website. Kudos to the teacher!  To check out a Wiki that elementary school kids created themselves click on The Top Ten.

Does this activity differ from much of the activities you engaged during your K-12 education? How? or How not? Give examples.

Absolutely! I come from a totally different time frame. Some of my classes had one computer but they were the old OLD Apples. The kind that only have a flashing prompt when you turned it on. You then had to slide a disk into it to play games or practice typing. There was no Internet, at least not the kind accessible by the public.  I do have to give props to my 10th grade computer programming teacher who taught us how to use DOS by having us create pixelated cartoons that moved.  That was quite cool.  But I gave away the kind of technology there was at the time by same "DOS".  The advancements that have been made since then are phenomenal.

Is your learning style addressed in this activity? How? Give me an example.

Yes.  The kinesthetic or tactile portion of this project being hands on is definitely appealing to me as a student.  The fact that the students were taking part in gathering data to determine Fact vs. Opinion is much more appealing to me than listening to a teacher give me examples.  Also there is definite visual appeal.  Its not that I learn better when something is visually appealing, its that I want to take part in something that is visually appealing.  Before I started this class, my favorite part of blogging was positioning pictures just so around text to help make my point or build my story.  It may be just a personal preference I have but it is something that drives me. 

This project was implemented without the use of textbooks. Are you surprised? Are you interested in teaching in a similar way when you become a teacher?

No, I'm not surprised at all.  There aren't many subjects that need a textbook to guide a lesson.  Its a lazy cop-out if you ask me.  And sometimes I wander if its not because a teacher is not comfortable with the subject he or she is teaching.

I think science is better taught without a textbook.  For example: "What is a mineral?"  For a child to understand what a mineral is they need to see it, touch it, and for Halite - taste it.  If a child has never seen a mineral, how does reading from a textbook help them to understand what a mineral is.  My child is in 3rd grade learning science from a textbook.  Not experiments or first hand experience.  But purely from a textbook.  What is he learning?  Nothing.  At least not from class.  The fact his mom is enthusiastic about science and has the time to sit with him and show him different minerals makes him lucky.  What about the other kids?  What are they learning?  And we wonder why kids form a bad opinion about science at an early age. 

What are your concerns and what do you anticipate as being barriers?

Actually, what bothered me about the video was in the introduction.  I could not believe how much that school had when it came to technology.  Its not that I don't think they should have it.  The kids deserve it.  But what about the school my kids attend?  I've been in a couple of schools in Marion county and we don't have near the amount of technology that one school had.  The first thought that went through my head was, "That's not fair!"  So how do struggling schools and counties compete?  How much difficulty would a struggling school have in carrying out such a neat project, especially if their computer systems were outdated and slow.