At my first teaching job, I not only taught science, but I also taught a reading intervention course. It was aimed at the very lowest readers in the school and the results were remarkable. It was a class completely disconnected from my other courses, but I enjoyed teaching it just as much. We worked with very simple books, very simple sentences, and broke them down word for word to get to their meaning. What they learned was astonishing.
My current position is only for science courses, but after having the experience teaching a reading intervention course I realized how extremely important literacy skills are, both reading and writing, even to high school students. This is an idea that is brought up in education courses but seems to get pushed aside when teachers are expected to teach a certain set of standards and have their students reach a certain benchmark. There doesn't seem to be enough time in the day.
I am by no means an expert in this area, but it is an area that I am actively trying to improve in my teaching. I am trying to incorporate both reading and writing skills into each unit.
For me, the easiest way to incorporate reading is when we are discussing famous scientists. Each unit seems to have at least one -- Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, James Watson and Francis Crick, and the list goes on. Many textbooks have special sections to highlight these scientists and there are a lot of books and articles available that may highlight key points of their research. I try to find an excerpt that is relatable and has some personality. Students who dislike reading or are not very strong readers it is especially important to give them a piece of reading that is approachable. If the introduction uses too many large, unknown words or if the language is too technical, they will lose interest and will either completely give up or will struggle through it and not gain any knowledge.
The key is finding a middle ground between what my students call a "baby book" -- that being a picture book usually, or a very simple piece of writing -- and a dense, dry technical piece from a research journal. It is trial and error at first. Your classes may not all be at the same point, but eventually you will be able to determine what types of readings work for each class.
As students read, I give them a simple method to organizing and remembering what they read. All they need is two colors -- either pens or highlighters. One color they use to underline or highlight things that were confusing, such as vocabulary words, difficult sentences, or overly technical language. The other color they use to underline or highlight main ideas -- important points, interesting facts, information that is new to the student, or summarizing sentences. I love this method because students do not need any extra papers or special writing utensils. When we discuss the reading, we start with the questions and confusing passages to help students piece together what it was talking about. As a class, we identify some key passages that helped them understand the article better. It's a great way to get students to read activity and provides clear places for discussions to start.
I like to follow reading assignments with written responses. I don't always like assigning them questions that have precise answers because students tend to just skim for the information; instead, I like to ask them to give their opinion or to summarize the main points. Often times I have them post these responses on our online class page (eClass for our school) so they can respond to each other and continue the discussion out of class. It's a great way to provide content enrichment without losing valuable class time that is needed for reviewing key concepts.
As we know, literacy involves not only reading, but also writing. I already have another post on one strategy I use to incorporate writing into each unit, called Let's Talk About DBQs
What are your literacy strategies? I would love to have more ideas in my arsenal!
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