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.