Science and Technology Lessons with Literacy Tasks -We do and You do

These lessons represent an major shift and suggest a considerable amouint of 'buy in'by staff of the need to include literacy tasks in all lessons. A physical comparison was made between texts and worksheets taken off the internt and lessons created to address the learning needs of our students.

Science and Technology Lesson Enhancement Workshop

This is the bottom line. How do we get students to actually read a text in class. Find a disciplinary text, chunk it, add a vocabulary exercise, a survey question, a scan and predict task, keyword highlighing and a summary or exit strategy. See Bilboa as a basic example.

TOD literacy Issues

I've used this document in the passed. It highlighs the feaures of struggling readers and compares this with more competent readers. When we teach a text we must endeavour to help students improve their comprehension skills by the explicit teaching of those skills. There is also, a non-fictiction summary marking rubric. Students tend to get very compeditive with themselves (and with there peers) when their grads are below par. 'Why am I still on Level 3, Sir, and she is on Level 4?'

Teacher Only Day Science and Technology Departments

Teachers read one of the acdemic readings, completed an Exit Ticket and then feedback to the rest of the department. This was followed by working in pairs to develop a vocabulary strategy or a reading task. Examples to follow.

AsTTle Writing Review Year 9 and 10 Term 4 2024

I asked teachers to complete a review of the asttle marking process. This simple analysis of student work is designed to encourage teacher planning for 2025.
I asked for the pluses and gaps so teachers could decide on areas they must focus on next year. One teacher has already shown me how she is focusing on 'Other Punctuation' beyond the basic stops and caps. This is an attempt to move her students from Level 4 to Level 5 or even 6. It's also worth mentioning, that one of the marking panel leaders for the corequisite writing exam, said recently, when it comes to the mechanics, if a candidate uses capitals and full stops, that's a tick.
Anecdotally, several of the students sitting the writing test put their hands up and asked, "Sir, what is the 'body' of the thing (essay)?" Teachers usually have their favourite writing frame but perhaps the use of TEXAS framework may need to be a department policy in 2025.
There are many strands on which teachers may choose to develop for 2025 but my recommendation involves the teaching of the language features of explanation writing, functional grammar and cohesion through the use of synonyms, repetition and the use of pronouns.
As we plan for the rollout of the foundation units, the link between the asttle Writing and and the Corequisite writing assessment becomes more acute.

We Do and The Teaching of the Carbon Cycle in Yr 10 Science

Inquiry So far

Binominals and Lexical Density

Literacy Strategies

In an effort to promot the use of literacy strategies in subject areas I produced this document. This offers teachers a selection of strategies other than RT.

Scones, Language and 321

Teaching the language of instructions or procedure improves engagement and helps with comprehension.

Inquiry Review

Food Chains and Food Webs Junior Science

In comparison to fiction, nonfiction texts often present greater challenges for our students. The flow of a narrative in fiction aids comprehension as one event seamlessly transitions into the next. While this may seem like an oversimplification, the accumulation of detailed information in nonfiction can be overwhelming, particularly when it requires familiarity with a specialized set of vocabulary. It is essential for educators teaching disciplinary subjects to pay attention to the lexical density of the texts utilized in their instruction. Research indicates that students benefit from multiple exposures to new vocabulary in order to effectively assimilate new terms. This is particularly pertinent when they encounter subject-specific terminology predominantly found in fields such as science or technology.



Food Chain and Food Webs

Reciprocal Teaching at Tamaki College 2025 -a discussion document

Art: Henri Rousseau and Lexical Density

This art text offers another opportunity to use Reciprocal Teaching Strategies. Again the lexical density will be a problem for many of our Year 11 students. Not only are students required to process sophisticated noun groups such as 'unconventional renderings,' 'outrageous imagery' and 'hybrid influences' there is the whole history of European art rolled up in the text. There is a reference to many famous artists. A Google search should help students develop an understanding of various art movements such as Realism and Cubism but it is less likely to explain the controversy and vitriol which raged during this period of art history. Loaded terms such as 'high and low sources' carry immense cultural baggage along with such art history terms as Orientalism and Surrealism.

Karen Fergeson hunted around for a suitable text for her Year 11 students, she then added a vocabulary grid and a prereading activity. I added to the prediction exercise, I added a map, a keyword list and an art movement matching exercise. We taught the lesson together adding discussions on the various art movements and trends related to the period.

The scaffolding of this two-paragraph text still seems inadequate but there is a time factor to consider when delivering the Curriculum. Non-fiction texts have a lexical density and cultural underpinnings that far outweigh fiction texts. The structure of a non-fiction text also creates problems for many of our students.

Science: The Binomial System of Naming Species and Classification of Life

I'm more than happy to work on texts for or with subject teachers. The two texts 'The Binomial System of Naming Species and Classification of Life' offer a chance to include tasks to help students improve their comprehension skills. Reciprocal Teaching strategies are a must when presenting content to our students. The lexical density found in the Binomial System of Naming species is mind-numbing. Not only are there the scientific terms which the teacher wants the students to master genus and species there is also a huge amount of background knowledge, both historical and cultural, needed to comprehend this text.
The mention of an 18th-century Swedish scientist at the start of the text implies the reader has some knowledge of the development of modern modern science and scientific methodology. Also buried in the text is an understanding of European culture and its development out of Greek and Roman academic institutions. The use of Greek and more importantly Latin by the church as a universal language is also implied. Throw in some understanding of the West's colonial enterprises and the occupation of the gentleman explorer is echoed in the text.
If a student is a fan of the hero genre, knowing who Hercules was might help in the reading of this text, but for many of our students, these ancient references will be alien concepts. By contrast, when I was a primary school student, I had extra lessons from a retired English woman, who was fluent in ancient Greek. (Later she complained, that it was totally useless when she spent a year living in post-war Greece.) It opened up a whole new world to me and in my early years going to church on a Sunday meant listening to the service in Latin. Unfortunately, there are few ancient Greek speakers about and even Latin teachers are now rare. For many of our students bridging this gap will be difficult and scaffolding the document can only help up to a point.
These two pieces of text offer an excellent opportunity to teach comprehension skills such as scanning, predicting, summarising and sorting information. If our students are to succeed in the Co-requisite Assessments they need to be exposed to a wide variety of texts but this needs to be delivered in a structured way.

Science and Technoloy -back to the future

Sometimes it is necessary to revisit devices used in the past. The Effective Literacy Strategies handbook is an excellent place to start when attempting to teach comprehension skills in a subject area. I've asked teachers to use the handbook to explore basic comprehension skills and to teach them in their classes.

Reading Fitness Programme

One way to motivate teachers into teaching comprehension skills in their subject is to shown teachers how much reading happens in their classroom and how much reading students do over the period of a day or a week. This is based on Secondary Literacy, A Teacher Handbook by Jennifer Gleen and Irene Anderson which in tern was based on the work of Heemi McDonald. I hope to use this for a limited period in the comming weeks.

Science Department Teacher Meetings -Term II Overview and Reflection

Margaret Aull Year 11 Reading Task with Comprehension Strategies

Occasionally I’m presented with a text which seems to be too difficult for anyone to read let alone Year 11 art students. I wondered about a language features approach to the text but this seemed to be overkill for such a short text where the degree of lexical dentistry is more normal at a University level. It seemed the best approach was to reinforce the reading strategies needed to read such a difficult. Through teacher talk, students must be encouraged to read and reread the text until they have gained some understanding of the academic and philosophical concepts contained within the passage. There are some weighty and sometimes personal issues mentioned in the text. Teacher talk may wish to explain that topics explored in Aull art such as spiritual essence, metaphorical references and metaphysical representation may not be fully clarified just by reading the text. These concepts will require some intensive investigation if clarification is desired. ie the writer is somewhat ‘none the wiser’ having read the text and having investigated the topics in terms of the vocabulary definitions.

A Maternal Lens Curated by Ema Tavola Margaret Aull

Mrs Gren, Reading in the Science Classroom

In the 1990s YouTube became available as a teaching tool. The US Military was quick to seize upon this new facility when giving instruction in the use of sophisticated weaponry such as missile launchers. Military instructors resorted to this method because, it was argued, many enlisted me lacked the literacy skills needed to read instruction manuals. US football coaches abandoned the whiteboard in favour of using videos when discussing field tactics claiming young players turned off the minute a coach picked up a whiteboard marker or piece of chalk. It’s impossible to accurately assess if, during the 1990s, there was a real decline in literacy skills or attention spans. Either way, videos now play a large part in academic instruction. I’ve witnessed its use in after-lunch classes, where students put on their headphones, sit quietly for twenty minutes and watch the screen. This silent disco of a lesson provides a way to get students on task but it avoids the very real need to put written texts in front of students. Texts which they must process as they strengthen their comprehension skills. In addition to the video, teachers reported using this task to ensure the detailed concepts of MRS GREN are being learned.

Anticipation Guides -Before and After Reading

An anticipation guide is a quick way to get students to work on their prediction skills. After completing the first section of the guide and having looked at the text, students should be able to write a quick guess about the topic or text to be studied during that day's lesson.

Matter Part II

Teachers must present students with reading tasks regularly. In my meetings with teachers in the Science Department, I'm often shown vocabulary exercises and comprehension tasks based on YouTube texts. This is good but students are rarely required to process an extended chunk of scientific text. An obvious reason for this is the lexical density of science texts. Using our list of comprehension skills, scanning, predicting, clarifying and summarising we can help student improve their comprehension skills when reading a science text. Feedback must be given for summary tasks so students can focus on those skills which need strengthening.

Teaching Reading Skills -Summary Writing The Metal Man by Chris Culshaw

One aspect of text summarising is persuading students to follow a process. I give students a list of keywords and ask them to say the keywords in their heads. They do this before they attempt to write a summary. At the same time, I also encourage students to check their understanding of the text. If they can’t add a keyword from the list to their summary it suggests they need to return to the text to improve their understanding of that section of the story. In the example, The Metal Man, students did not include the word ‘beg’. They did not explain that Magoda was forced to ‘beg for food’ and simply jumped to his decision to leave the village and to live in the jungle. Also, students often ignored the last section of the text and did not include the time indicator where the story jumps ‘five years’. It’s hard to say if students didn’t think this information was important or if they had difficulty making the leap in narrative time of five years. A recent addition to Google Slides is the ability to record yourself. There is a record button on each slide. This Google Sheet was placed on the class site. Each student created an oral summary before they wrote their summary. A crowded classroom isn’t the best place to record a student's response but I saw students writing notes as an aid and I saw students quietly speaking into the microphone on their devices. This digital summary helped students process the text, in their own words,

Teaching Reading in Secondary Science

Science texts at a secondary school level are lexically dense. Extra effort is needed to help students gain the necessary vocabulary so they can read descriptions and explanations found in a science lesson. Some studies have suggested learning semantic groupings may impede language development when learning a second language. However when learning the vocabulary in a subject area like science it is important to learn subject categories and which words belong to that category. This way a student may make local connections between words learnt previously and the new words associated with a new topic.

Teaching Reading Skills in Science

Staff Resources 2024 Gathering Data and Planning In Science

Making Global Connections using Bible Stories

Teaching Comprehension Skills in Science

Reading Skill Development and Metacognition at Year 9

Inquiry Plan -a beginning

What are we doing differently?

Teachers have access to the data. What is their responce?

PAT Testing Term 1

Information Sheet for Students with Teacher Notes Preparing students for PAT reading testing