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.