Final Synthesis

After taking this course, it is very obvious that reading/literacy should be taught in every single content area. It should be taught in math because students need to know how to interpret and process word problems, graphs, and charts to be able to set up and solve problems. It should be taught in social studies because students need to know how to interpret historical texts and analyze for bias. And students need literacy in science because “students may read texts in order to learn about specific scientific facts, laws, and principles. However, not everything written in a science text is intended to be taken as a fact or absolute” (Hall 404). As a future science teacher, I want my students to be able to understand science outside of just a textbook. This means that they will have to explore science articles and journals, which are not easy to read and understand. Interpreting science texts involves paraphrasing and summarizing.

            Having a textbook as the only source of text for a class is a huge tragedy. However, the textbook can still be very useful for providing basic facts and definitions. I thought the “Subjects Matter” textbook was very useful in shaping my ideas on content-area literacy. It gave me plenty of strategies to use in my future classroom. Here are just a few of the strategies this class has taught me to help my students get better at reading.

1.     Think Aloud: Doing a think aloud in front of my class to show them how I would dissect a difficult text is very powerful. It not only shows students real techniques to get through a text without quitting, but it also shows them that I am vulnerable. Maybe in their eyes I know everything about science, but by being vulnerable and showing that I don’t know everything, maybe they will inquire more about things and try to understand texts more for themselves. 

2.     Frontloading with Images: This is a before reading activity that I did in my strategy lesson. I think this activity is useful for science concepts that need a great visual to understand better. Having students get an idea of what something looks like, will help them better visualize it when they are reading the text about it. Better visualization will make for better understanding and comprehension.

3.     Post-it Response: This is a during reading strategy that we utilized during our book clubs. It is designed for students to “stop, think, and react to the text” (Daniels and Zemelmen 118). I really enjoyed it because I think a lot when I am reading and if I don’t stop to process it, then I will forget what I was thinking when I read it. 

            This class also gave me plenty of ideas for class activities that I am likely to use in my future lessons. I would utilize these lessons to escape from a boring lecture-based class. These are the activities that I had the most fun completing, so I hope that my students would enjoy doing them too.

1.     Blogger: I had never made a blog before this class, but it was really fun to make my own design and post the assignments all in one place. I also enjoyed looking at my classmates’ blogs and commenting on their posts. It was a neat idea and I think it writing posts about different topics from the textbook or research that we did helped improve our literacy overall.

2.     Book Club: The book cub was my favorite part of the class. Getting to choose my own narrative was key and I ended up really enjoying it. I was the connector for my group and I wrote down my connections on post-it notes. I would like to have some sort of book club or journal club in my class and use the post-it strategy. Book clubs give students a change of pace to the traditional lecture/lab routine of a traditional science class.

3.     Podcast: I loved making the podcast after reading our book club book. I thought it was fun to try and come up with some engaging content that listeners would actually want to hear regarding our book. I don’t think we got it right, but I know I would enjoy listening to my future students’ podcasts. 
                Going into this class, I didn’t really understand why literacy or reading strategies needed to be taught in a science class, but now I am leaving with not only an understanding of why, but many practical ways of how I am going to teach literacy in science. Maybe I am not the most comfortable at teaching reading right now, but Nick Thompson says “the best way to learn how to teach reading, is to teach reading.” So I guess I’m going to teach reading in my science class.

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