Tareyn Daugherty, George Escobedo 11/13/18

Using Literacy Strategies to Connect Students to Science

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

classes, but also in future careers and everyday life.

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
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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
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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

their understanding when needed.

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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

paraphrasing. One way to proactively counter this problem is by pre-teaching vocabulary

(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

comprehension. As an alternative to simply dumping a lesson’s worth of new words and

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

comfortable with the language of science.

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.
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References

American Museum of Natural History. (n.d.). Integrating Literacy Strategies into Science

Instruction. Retrieved from https://www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections/

integrating-literacy-strategies-into-science-instruction

Pearson, P., Moje, E., & Greenleaf, C. (2010). Literacy and Science: Each in the Service of the

Other. Science, 328(5977), 459-463. doi: 10.1126/science.1182595

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Williams, D. (2002). Seven Literacy Strategies that Work. Educational

Leadership, 60(3), 70-73.

Daniels, H., & Zemelman, S. (2004). Subjects matter. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Link to Presentation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O5ohqKC10J2v63y-j9r1GHfTLhZplx4F/view?usp=sharing