Instructional Strategies
"Math is the language that scientists communicate in." That's what I've always believed & tried to teach my students. This is despite having had college classmates that flunked freshman biology due to inability to comprehend the rather basic text. More recently, my mentor for student teaching - 7th/8th grade science at Grover Washington Jr. actually coplanned lessons with the literacy but not math teacher. Hearing that the Common Core Standards view science and history as applied reading courses along with teaching special education/ELLs has helped me to realize that I have to change my approach.
To this end, I am presenting science as a 4 step process: Inquiry, Experimentation, Real World Application, & Communication.
Typical methods of engagement include:
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My foundation still begins with differentiated presentation of information: I like to incorporate student learning preferences & interests into lessons. This provides student buy-in & also means multiple representations of content are needed to stimulate students. Visual, audio, tactile, kinesthetic, modeling, comedic storytelling, and other means are all used to express awesome ideas from children attempting to demonstrate their learning. My challenge is too remain focused on learning objectives rather than merely doing activities.
Building on vocabulary and knowledge bases in order to generate comprehensible student input is my new mission. Children need help learning English, posing good questions, troubleshooting ideas, answering open ended questions, & solving real world problems. This week 9/29 - 10/3, I plan to begin the first lesson with an Exclusion Brainstorm About Cells in order to assess background knowledge & informally check for understanding of last week's content. The procedure (pg 350 Tompkins) Literacy in the Middle Grades is to: 1. Prepare a word list related to content & include some unrelated words. 2. Read the list of words. Go over the list with students and have them - individuals or groups - circle unrelated words. 3. Learn the topic. Have students read the source document - text or short magazine article. 4. Review the list. Have students cross out unrelated words & place a checkmark near related words. It does not matter if words were previously circled or not. |