What I'm finding out about the way I teach

Today was a great day in chemistry! The unbelievable stories that were turned in were incredible. At first, my students were reluctant to try writing a story in chem. class, but after organizing small writing groups, brain-storming activities, and feedback from me, my students seemed to acknowledge that they really learned and understood the content that was being presented to them.
I believe kids really want to be challenged in school and I am convinced that, as teachers, we also need to challenge ourselves in our own classrooms. By implementing story writing, I was able to really enjoy the content and learn more about the character of my students. Not only did I learn about what they knew about electron placement, I also was presented with a window into their lives. What a treat! Science teacher's usually don't get that view.
I plan to incorporate more reading and writing strategies that will engage and challenge my students and myself. I can't wait for what I will think of next!

Change is Good! (and necessary)

As the focus of my ARP changes, I feel compelled to change the layout of my blog. Over the past few weeks, it has occured to me that change scares many teachers.
Last week I was asked by my principal to present content area reading and writing strategies to my colleagues. As I embraced this challenge with excitement and hope, I was unprepared for the response I got from my math and science peers. Although in our heart of hearts, we know that traditional lecture isn't the most effective strategy, we (teachers) tend to grasp and hold tightly to strategies that are comfortable to us. To my amazement, many teachers found it impossible to ADD more strategies into their time limited daily lessons. After thinking about this for the past 9 days, I've decided a few things:
1) Change is difficult for many teachers (and CHANGE DOESN'T mean ADD).
2) English and History teachers "totally get" the reading and writing strategy game.
3) Students struggle reading vocabulary dense textbooks.... (BORING)
4) Science and math teachers must experiment with new reading and writing strategies with their students, if they are ever going to encourage the excitement and exploration in these content areas.
So....this is what I did.
In my physics class instead of traditional lecture, I asked the students to read Chapter 5.2: Velocity-Time Graphs (v-t graphs)and use "Post-It's" to write down ideas, questions, interesting facts, formulas, examples, and real-life applications (Day 1). After the Post-It note session, I asked them to organize their notes and create a double-entry journal (Cornell Notes) including their important information (Day 1 Homework). Small groups used v-t graphs to calculate velocity, displacment, and time (Day 2). Individually, each student composed a sentence about each line segment in the graph to "tell a story" about the object's motion (Day 2 Homework). Finally, 6 small groups created a story to share with other groups to graph and calculate (Day 3).
In my chemistry class instead of test review questions, I asked the students to compose a 1 page, single-spaced story about electron arrangement. The students began with a brain-storming activity to create story ideas (1/2 day). They were assigned writing groups (oh no.... writing groups in chemistry?) to collaborate how they were going to incorporate as many vocabulary words as possible into their story (Day 2). Each student created a rough draft of their story idea (Day 2 Homework). The writing groups met for one last revision session and began writing their final draft of their story(Day 3 and Day 3 Homework). Day 4 Test Day......I received incredible stories about electron arrangement and a much deeper look into the content.

So, this is what I know..... teachers who have the courage to try new ways of dispensing content area information, may very well be surprised with what they recieve....... and by the way, their test scores were great! Because if they didn't really understand the content they couldn't write their story!

Content-Area Reading

Well.......as I continue my research, my ARP begins to spin down (again)) into a more specific topic (content-area reading with my high school physics students). This summer I attended the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project at CSU Fresno and found that science teachers could, in fact, include creative writing strategies within their curriculum. During this course, I read an eye-opening and inspiring book titled: Content-Area Writing - Every Teacher's Guide by Daniels, Zemelman, & Steineke. After applying some of their suggested writing strategies and experiencing success!, I went to Barnes and Nobel.com to find more books written by these same authors. Guess what I found? Another book titled: Subjects Matter - Every Teacher's Guide to Content-Area Reading. As I read through the pages I am finding a wealth of reading strategies that will help me to collect more data for my ARP. And not only are the strategies extremely interesting, they will (I think) most definately help my students "get" what they read in their physics textbook. It might also help me improve student comprehension in my physics class (hooray!). Although research is a frustrating and exhaustive effort, at this point it is paying off great dividends for my students and me (their teacher).

Social Justice and Multicultural Education

So far, I have been working diligently toward finding research that will help me to uncover what I'm looking for........."How can I help my students understand what they are reading in the textbook?" I find that my students really struggle to understand the way the book presents material and assesses their understanding. Of course, when I clarify the material for them they understand it, but that doesn't help them glean the information from the text when I'm not around to help them.

Regarding social justice and multicultural education, I find that my ARP is centered around each issue. My chemistry and physics students are an extremely diverse group of students. They are economically striated, culturally diverse, and academically varied in their readiness to comprehend scientific information.

To date, I haven't decided what issue I plan to focus on within my ARP. Currently, I'm leaning toward socio-economic differentiation. I wonder how household income and parental education levels affect the ability for my students to comprehend science information? Do the students who understand the difficult text have advantages outside of school that attribute to their academic success? or is it all about dedication to learning? Only time will tell. I'm looking forward to more research. If anyone has suggestions regarding journal articles or scientific studies that will help with my ARP, please comment. As for now......more research is needed.

All About My Action Research Project

Traditionally, reading and writing is continued from Elementary school into the High School English courses, but with an English curriculum that emphasizes a great deal of literature, there is little time to assist students who fall below grade level in reading. At some schools, unless students qualify for special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), there are few programs out there to help them improve their reading level.

Why is there a lack of attention addressing the needs of struggling readers at the secondary level? There are many reasons for this dilemma, but one that stands in the forefront is the attitude of some secondary techers who believe that literacy (reading, writing, and communication) should be taught in the English classes only. Content area teachers insisit that students must understand text disregarding the students reading level, but tend not to teach their students how to improve their comprehension. These teachers assume that teaching literacy is another teacher's responsibility. All the while, these same content area teachers know that students entering adulthood will read and write more than any previous generation.

Two of my research questions are: 1) Why do most of my teenage students have a difficult time reading and comprehending their science textbook? 2) What methods and strategies can be used by secondary science teachers to help their students comprehend information at a higher level?

These research questions drive my action research project, in that, I hope to better understand and use 'best practice' strategies to help improve the learning of my science students. I really get tired of them telling me "Mrs. Seals, the textbook is retarded! Could you please explain it to us?" and "Mrs. Seals, why can't they (the authors) just write what they mean?"

As I continue my research, I will keep you posted on what strategies work for me and my students.

Secondary Science Comprehension