Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Students deserve to have a content area teacher who can give instruction in the multiple
literacy strategies needed to meet the demands of their specific discipline. There are several
literacy strategies that teachers can use to help the students connect with the language of science.
A couple of these strategies include using a multimodal approach, vocabulary instruction, and
the use of graphic organizers. The use of these different strategies to enhance literacy in science
can help the students learn how to be science literate and help them, not only in their future
Beginning teachers struggle in teaching literacy because they need “ongoing professional
development that allows for growth in expertise across departments and with years of teaching
experience.”(Fisher, Frey & Williams, 2002). This makes it extremely difficult for first or
second year teachers because they simply don’t have the experience they need to properly teach
science literacy. Since science is constantly changing the need for professional development is a
huge responsibility put onto the teacher and in some cases can be extremely difficult for the
teachers to attend more than the normal amount of professional development each year.
Although teachers may struggle with being able to attend professional development, this is also
essential to staying up to date with the evolution of science. Attending more professional
development would be very beneficial to the teachers not just by staying on top of the changes in
science, but also by learning new and exciting ways to teach literacy in science. “Both students
and teachers could be better at reading, writing, learning, and teaching from science text,”
(Pearson, Moje & Greenleaf, 2010). This is another issue for teachers because they have a hard
time being able to incorporate teaching literacy in a science classroom because of the “poor
Tareyn Daugherty, George Escobedo 11/13/18
quality of texts available for science. Science textbooks are dense and disengaging.”(Pearson,
Moje & Greenleaf, 2010). Since one of the only resources that is provided for the students is
disengaging and dense, the teachers struggle at being able to incorporate this resource into the
classroom. This causes the teachers to have to come up with new and exciting ways to be able to
teach their students, which is not always a bad thing but can make lesson planning more difficult
for the teachers especially when some teachers do not have a lot of other resources to utilize.
Teaching students to be science literate can be very useful in several ways for students.
“Students can learn how to build on and expand the work of other scientists by reading about the
designs and findings of others,” (Pearson, Moje & Greenleaf, 2010). This is essential for our up
and coming generations because the only way for society as a whole to be able to learn more
about our Earth and how different things work is for people to know how to do experiments and
engage in critical thinking. “Student achievement is up, indicating a positive trajectory for future
growth and greater opportunities for our graduates,” (Fisher, Frey & Williams, 2002).
A key step in teaching students to understand science is getting them in the right frame of
mind. Science itself, is the study of the surrounding world through experimentation and
observation. It follows logically that the first step in getting students to study the world around
them is to get the students interested in the world around them. One method of doing this is for
the instructor to regularly present the learner with recent scientific articles that highlight a variety
of current research, breakthroughs, and problems. The pieces presented can be used to introduce
or reinforce a lesson or they can be more general, just trying to spark an interest. These articles
can easily be used in conjunction with literacy techniques and strategies such as “Think Alouds,”
“Turn and Talks,” “Partner Readings” and any others that strongly lend themselves towards
Tareyn Daugherty, George Escobedo 11/13/18
questioning (Daniels and Zemelman 2014). When students read the articles and start to ask
themselves and each other how a problem can be solved, a new way some technique or
technology might be used, or even just why something is happening they are starting to think like
scientists. This way of thinking should, in turn, set up their minds to be more receptive to
science.
Often times, in the science classroom, the textbook itself can seem like an obstacle to
student learning. As mentioned earlier, the syntax in these books is often at a very high reading
level and can interfere with student comprehension. This lack of understanding can frequently
cause students to lose interest and disengage from the lesson. One literacy strategy that can be
very useful in increasing learner comprehension is paraphrasing. This is the practice of having
the student stop periodically throughout the reading and restating, in their own words, what they
just read. According to the American Museum of Natural History (n.d.), this is a very effective
technique because it empowers the student to be able to assess their own understanding of the
text. This technique is introduced and modeled by the teacher using a somewhat easy to
comprehend text, and is then practiced by the student in a multitude of ways. The strategy can be
utilized in partner, class, or individual readings. The stopping points for the paraphrasing are
most often times predetermined by the instructor when the technique is first introduced. Once
students become more comfortable with paraphrasing, they will often develop their own natural
stopping points. The eventual goal of this strategy is that the student will begin to develop their
own internal monologue while reading. Through that monologue, they should be able to
determine when their comprehension is faltering and take the appropriate steps to supplement
Another obstacle that often interferes with students understanding the language of science
is the new vocabulary. The sheer volume of new words encountered by a student attempting to
read text related to the field of science can be staggering and more than a little intimidating to
readers of all levels. These new words can even interfere with other literacy strategies such as
(American Museum of Natural History n.d.). Identifying new and difficult words ahead of time
and pre-teaching them to the students can help to mitigate much of their interference to
definitions onto the student, however, AMNH recommends utilizing a variety of interactive
models, visuals and even videos to help students build their own definitions for these words
before encountering them in the text. This should help with the student’s recall when they are
later presented with the word. Additionally, encouraging students to utilize these new words
rather than any substitutes should also help with their understanding and make them more
The language of science can appear very alien to newer students of the subject, and it can
be made even more so by its technical aspects. However, a science teacher with a bevy of
literacy strategies at their beck and call can make comprehension and understanding of that
language seem much less like a space horror film where only one crew member makes it, and
more like meeting a friendly extra-terrestrial who just wants to make a long-distance phone call.
Tareyn Daugherty, George Escobedo 11/13/18
References
American Museum of Natural History. (n.d.). Integrating Literacy Strategies into Science
integrating-literacy-strategies-into-science-instruction
Pearson, P., Moje, E., & Greenleaf, C. (2010). Literacy and Science: Each in the Service of the
Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Williams, D. (2002). Seven Literacy Strategies that Work. Educational
Daniels, H., & Zemelman, S. (2004). Subjects matter. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Link to Presentation
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O5ohqKC10J2v63y-j9r1GHfTLhZplx4F/view?usp=sharing