This summer, I'm participating in the Adolescent Literacy Project through the Louisville Writing Project. Over the first half of the project, I've been reminded of several core principles of literacy. One of the most intuitive and simple ones is that people get better at reading by reading. The volume of students' reading is important. The more they read, the more likely they are to improve as readers. The less they read, the less likely they are to improve. Richard Allington's research supports this as does the new book from Scholastic, Intervention Reinvention, and decades of research. My goal is not to cite all of that research, but to consider it's application in my science classroom.
This past year, I moved to a new school that embraces "no homework" as part of its alternative model. This means that there is no expectation that students will be reading at home. It is also true (in my experience) that many of the students who enroll in alternative schools have difficulties reading on grade level. If both of these are true, then it is essential that across the entire school day, the teachers provide students with opportunities to read and to develop their reading skills.
In the past, it has been my practice to spend little time in the science textbook because it doesn't fit with the standards or is too difficult for students to read. I've designed a classroom around the construction of knowledge (explanations) through experiments, talk, and group consensus. All of this aligns with the NGSS, but it does not help students develop their reading skills.
To help with this, I am developing text sets to accompany each of the storylines that I'll be teaching next year. Simply put, these text sets give students a variety of opportunities to engage with text and content. By having a variety, students are given choice in selecting the texts that they want to read. A rolling knowledge journal will allow them to track the growth of their content knowledge as they read more texts about the same concepts.
Making this a routine part of my class and providing before, during, and after reading strategies should be a great first step in shifting my NGSS classroom to a text-rich, NGSS classroom.
This past year, I moved to a new school that embraces "no homework" as part of its alternative model. This means that there is no expectation that students will be reading at home. It is also true (in my experience) that many of the students who enroll in alternative schools have difficulties reading on grade level. If both of these are true, then it is essential that across the entire school day, the teachers provide students with opportunities to read and to develop their reading skills.
In the past, it has been my practice to spend little time in the science textbook because it doesn't fit with the standards or is too difficult for students to read. I've designed a classroom around the construction of knowledge (explanations) through experiments, talk, and group consensus. All of this aligns with the NGSS, but it does not help students develop their reading skills.
To help with this, I am developing text sets to accompany each of the storylines that I'll be teaching next year. Simply put, these text sets give students a variety of opportunities to engage with text and content. By having a variety, students are given choice in selecting the texts that they want to read. A rolling knowledge journal will allow them to track the growth of their content knowledge as they read more texts about the same concepts.
Making this a routine part of my class and providing before, during, and after reading strategies should be a great first step in shifting my NGSS classroom to a text-rich, NGSS classroom.
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