Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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).
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6 comments:
Our topics are the same in that they are both attempting to increase reading comprehension. What are your findings thus far? Do students who read science text not get it? I wonder if that is because of how the text is written. Are your students unengaged? Mine in second grade absolutely love,love, love science time so I assume it's the same at your level, but I could be very wrong. I've found that students who can see (like through pictures, picture books, etc) nonfiction text have an easier time then seeing it in their own heads and thus comprehension occurs. I often tell my kids, if you can't see what you are reading about in your mind then you don't really understand it...does that apply to your students too?
My son is in 4th grade at the same school I teach at. Our school had a new science adoption this year, so there are new text books. At the 4th grade level, the scientific material presented in Jack's textbook is not easy to follow, even for Jack who reads at grade level. The concepts are hard for a 9 year old, so I can't imagine the gap there will be for him at the middle school and high school levels. We are an actively engaged in education family (well, duh!), and are of middle class economic means. I'm having to read the book with Jack to help both of us understand how series circuits and static electricity work. Without me helping him, he would not understand. The pictures and diagrams in the book are very helpful
That sounds spectacular. Share some of those strategies on your blog if you have time please. I'm very happy to hear about good engaging techniques to help students comprehend content area reading. I'm continually appalled by how schools have separated all of the subjects so efficiently. I'm all for cross curricular eduction-I think it is a better model for real life. Mix it up!
Sandra,
Congrats on settling with an area of study that you are totally fired up about. Throughout the MAT experience you've shared how siked (psyched) you are about your area of expertise, the sciences. Your enthusiasm totally comes across in your blog entry! Honestly, I think that the whole MAT experience has been preparing us to identify our passion and inject a much needed dose of energy to our daily teaching routine.
Creative writing in the content areas is often overlooked, but I think it's mostly because those of us who are not experts do not know where to begin. Two weeks ago, I caught the final part of an interesting documentary about the Space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. According to that documentary, a U.S. team would've put a satellite in space a full year before the Soviets if our government had chosen a team led by a German engineer who formerly developed weapons for German Nazis. I'm sure that would make a great topic of discussion for any physics class, but then again, what do I know? Good Luck!
I was in the SJVWP in 1995 and loved it. Later I became an associate director of the project- when I was active in the project, Gail Tompkins was the director- she was incredible. For me, it was a wonderful experience, leading me to be a "teacher of writing" something I never imagined. I found the hands on, collaboration to be enlightening and it made me stretch as a teacher and a writer. You too?
From the looks of your comments, I better get started publishing what I have been doing and what my findings are. Although my data collection isn't complete my research seems to be very specific. I'll be more specific with my next blog entry
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