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Supporting literacy in science using reading to learn approaches presents some unique challenges. Science teachers, like most content-area teachers at the high school levels, have not been explicitly taught to attend to text structure and the articulation of content and text. That is, the primary focus in science teaching is to deliver content and to help students understand the procedural activities of conducting science investigations. What is less prominent in science teaching is an awareness of the important role of the text that students read (including charts, graphs, and tables) in providing students will deep conceptual understandings of scientific phenomena. This lack of pedagogical content knowledge, knowing how to recognize the literacy-in-science and knowing what to do to support literacy-in-science, can and does lead to students’ learning less science than they need to in order to become scientifically literate. It also often leads to frustrated science teachers who want their students’ to embrace and engage the concepts and processes of science. Without deep pedagogical content knowledge about to recognize and support the role of literacy in science, teachers will not be able to leverage the powerful ideas and cutting-edge technologies offered through the curricula described in this proposal.
Our professional development approach to introducing and guiding teachers in the use of literacy support materials and tools has 5 components. First, we introduce science teachers to reading-to-learn theoretical approaches to supporting content-area literacy. Second, we focus the content of each workshop during the year-long professional development activities on one element of several literacy-in-science pedagogical content issues in order to allow teachers opportunities for deep learning. Third, we iteratively connect these approaches to instructional activities and student products through ongoing professional development with teachers. Fourth, we build capacity through developing teachers’ metacognitive awareness of the literacy present in science activities and materials. Finally, we work with teachers to co-create formative assessments that couple literacy and science and which can be shared with their peers.
Introducing Reading-to-Learn Approaches in Science Teaching and Learning
We will provide teachers with a three-day summer workshop. During the workshop teachers will be provided with an overview of reading-to-learn theory and will be introduced to the literacy materials and support tools that they will be using during curriculum implementation during the school year. We will also take teachers step-by-step through the curriculum and make clear how we have closely connected the reading task, in each unit lesson, to the science content. We will also introduce teachers to the explicit strategies that students will use in applying reading-to-learn skills to science text. In order to increase the likelihood of initial ease and confidence in using the materials and tools during the school year, teachers will be involved in walk-through exemplar lessons during which they will “try out” applying reading-to-learn strategies (e.g., annotation, double-entry logs and summarization) on selected unit lessons. During the workshop teachers will also be introduced to, and use, the Summary Street technology and the electronic double-entry reading log/annotation tool. Finally, teachers will, with professional development staff guidance, develop teaching hints to support their instruction when they begin introducing literacy-in-science support activities. For example, we will offer a general guide to writing summaries but will encourage teachers to tailor the guide to their own teaching approaches.
Supporting Teachers’ Reading-to-Learn Knowledge Through Focused Content Activities
As we have noted earlier, supporting literacy in science is not without challenges. High school science teachers have not typically been exposed to reading-to-learn approaches to teaching science content. When teachers have been presented with information about how to support literacy in science it has generally taken two forms: broad (i.e., an overview of the importance of supporting literacy in science) or scattered (i.e., multiple activities or techniques (e.g., graphic organizers, KWLs) without connection to specific content or to pedagogy appropriate to the technique. Teachers must have opportunities to learn the rationale and theory underlying selected reading-to-learn approaches and to engage in hands-on and minds-on activities that connect the approaches to science content. During the ongoing professional development workshops during the school year, we will help teachers connect each element of the reading-to-learn approach by focusing a portion of each professional development activity on the relationship between literacy in science element (e.g., annotation), the pedagogical approach that supports the element, and a science lesson that will illustrate implementation. Through guided lesson analysis we will work closely with teachers, during professional development, to consider how to better support teaching and learning through deeper conceptual understanding of the elements of the reading-to-learn approach we take to supporting literacy in science.
Iterative Connection to Instructional Activities and Student Products
During the school year, the professional development workshops will offer teachers repeated exposure to theory and activities that iteratively connect literacy activities to science tasks. The primary vehicle for making this connection explicit will be student work products. Teachers will be asked several times during the year to bring their students’ work products to the professional development workshops. In small group peer review discussions, teachers will review the lesson plan that preceded an activity, examine students’ application of reading-to-learn approaches and share common experiences and make recommendations for remediation of student performance and support for continued improvement in the application of reading-to-learn approaches. The benefit of this approach for teachers is that, led by the professional development staff, teachers will be able to follow the connecting thread of their lesson plan for the activity all the way through to the student product, recall their pedagogical approach to presenting the activity to students and scaffolding the literacy in science approach, and finally hear, once again, the professional developer articulate the connection and rationale for the literacy approach and the science activity. Each participating teacher will have an opportunity to engage in peer analysis of student products and have his or her student product reviewed by peers several times during the school year,
Development of Meta-Awareness of Literacy in Science
One of the keys to building capacity in teachers is to develop in them a meta-awareness of their practice. With regard to reading-to-learn approaches in science, teachers who develop a meta-awareness of the literacy present in science will be more likely to (1) understand how to adjust their practice based on feedback from the professional development team and the coaches, (2) understand when students are correctly and efficiently using the literacy support materials and tools and effectively applying literacy in science strategies in science, and (3) when relevant, choose and use supplementary or extracurricular activities and materials that will be considerate of students’ reading comprehension needs or that can be adapted using reading-to-learn approaches, to meet students’ needs. We will design several professional development workshops that will focus on the development of this meta-awareness in teachers. Teachers will learn to analyze the presence and utility of linking reading tasks to science lessons. Teachers will have opportunities to query the professional development staff about the rationale for the inclusion of a literacy task with a reading lesson, will be encouraged to make suggestions (supported by actual classroom evidence such as student products) for including other literacy support tasks as alternatives or additions to the lessons. Teachers will also be encouraged to bring in to the workshops potential extracurricular material that, once vetted with their peers and the professional development staff may be appropriate for inclusion in the unit supplementary materials. Should teachers choose to bring in supplementary materials for analysis and review, they will be expected to provide a reading-to-learn theoretical rationale for the appropriateness of the materials in support of building students’ reading-to-learn literacy in science skills.
Developing Formative Assessments To Support the Literacy/Science Connection
In the professional development workshops we will work to use assessment creation as a vehicle for developing teachers’ theoretical understanding of reading-to-learn applications to classroom practice. One vehicle for developing this understanding is assessment building. The IES and the other science units in the proposed work have analysis questions and summative science assessment measures that will track students’ developing conceptual and procedural science knowledge and skills. We intend to work with teachers to use reading-to-learn rationale in the design of formative assessments that will allow teachers to use the curricular text and other content representations (e.g., tables, graphs, charts) and the electronic literacy support tools to provide regular feedback about students’ deep conceptual understandings of scientific phenomena and their understandings of how to “read”, analyze, synthesize and apply the information contained in text and graphic representations appropriately. It is our expectation that teachers will build, vet, and share, with their peers, a set of formative assessments that will serve as resources for using the literacy materials in the units to measure the development of science understanding.
The summer workshop will be a three-day long workshop for a total of 18 hours of instruction. There will be 8 professional development workshops during the school year. Each workshop will be two hours in length and will meet after school hours between September and May of the 2006-2007 school year. There will be a one and one-half-day (1.5) summer workshop during the Summer, 2007. The workshop will be designed to introduce teachers to the linkages between the physics/chemistry unit and the literacy tasks and materials. During the 2007-2008 school year, we will conduct 4 professional development workshops of two hours in length. We will conduct a one and one-half day (1.5) summer workshop during the Summer, 2008 to introduce teachers to the linkages between the biology unit lessons and the reading tasks. During the school year we will conduct 4 professional development workshops of two hours in length.
The design of the scope and sequence of our professional development approach aims to provide teachers with an overview of the reading-to-learn theoretical approach to supporting literacy in science, deep and iterative opportunities for exposure to reading-to-learn and to the literacy materials and tools in the unit, regular skills training in the use of the materials and tools relevant to the science lesson, meta-awareness of the rationale underlying the application of reading-to-learn approaches in science, and opportunities to apply their understandings to the design of formative assessments that will measure students’ developing science understanding through the use of the literacy materials and tools. Our approach to professional development offers a combination of theoretical and hands-on knowledge building, knowledge application, and knowledge transformation that is critical to building long-term capacity in supporting literacy in science in high schools.
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