Reading to Learn Science as an Active Process

by: Victoria Ridgeway Gillis and Gregory MacDougall

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One way to help students learn to read science and teach the content simultaneously is by incorporating classroom strategies that actively engage students in thinking, talking, reading, and writing about science. To maximize the probability that strategies will be effective is to use a learning cycle as a guide when designing lessons. This article describes learning cycles in science and reading, including processes involved, and teaching strategies that increase student involvement and learning.

Details

Type Journal ArticlePub Date 7/1/2007Stock # tst07_074_05_45Volume 074Issue 05

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Matthew Kimball

Learning Cycles: connecting Science to literacy

Reading to Learn as an Active Process I found this article on the NSTA web site and discovered that it contained a great deal of information about interaction with the text. It relates the learning cycles of science education and the learning cycles of literacy education. The author feels strongly about utilizing 3 step learning process for teaching science and literacy. These steps are loosely defined and widely studied and published about. Typically there is a pre-reading/introduction stage that helps the junior scientist and reader develop an understanding about what to expect. Then there is a second step that involves interaction with the text as well as an involvement in understanding the content. The third step is to relate with the new information or expand the ramifications into their personal lives. These three steps have been proven many times to help students grasp literacy better and wasn’t really the point of the article. The article assumes that the reader will buy into the learning cycle method of instruction easily and urges them to connect the content of science to reading. Science teachers have long thought that science education should be about getting your hands dirty and interacting, physically, with the subject. This can easily be done with the written word as well. The article suggests that teachers increase the number of literacy assignments in the science classroom, because it will help students become lifelong learners through a better understanding of written work in our increasingly scientific world. The article gives many practical examples of how to help implement this same mindset into reading education. Some methods mentioned were reading in groups, using graphic organizers, and think aloud’s. I agree with this article. I didn’t think that it was anything real new. I feel like I’ve inadvertently stumbled upon the content that I’m going to receive in the next few weeks in my collection of education classes this semester. It relates directly to our class and provides a third party to corroborate what you are teaching us. I chose the article, because I wanted to try out my new membership to the NSTA.org site and did a quick topic search through their collection of peer journals. I learned that there is research supporting more reading in the science classroom. I really want a large portion of my science classrooms to be article based. I think it’s important for students to understand that science is all around us and it comes up in our daily live frequently. I don’t want them to shy away from it because they don’t understand it. I don’t have any criticisms for the article. There was a lot of charts and examples of work sheets to help students actively engage during reading.