Critical Reading in Science

1. Critical Reading in Science • We will examine additional Active Reading Strategies using Graphic Organizers • News Strategy. • Read and Recall. • Get Curious & Ask Questions • Having a Conversation With Yourself. These are AVID strategy suggestions that can be used to aid in our school wide goal of increasing students critical reading abilities. Teachers may utilize this power points any way they wish.

2. News strategy Timeline: 30-60 minutes AVID Methodologies: Writing Inquiry Collaboration Reading The News Strategy helps students develop the skill of finding the main idea in a newspaper article. This reading strategy combines words and pictures to increase student understanding of newspaper articles read in science class.

3. News Strategy How to Orchestrate Lesson Student will find a relevant article dealing with subject matter or uses the article provided by the teacher. Put in the student’s Interactive notebook or on a sheet of paper divide paper into four sections with a center circle area that contains the title of the article and the source and date of article. Top Left - Noteworthy information Top Right - Evidence supporting premise Bottom Left - Science connection Bottom right - What does this have to do with me? I will distribute a science student sample of News Strategy for your evaluation.

4. Read and Recall One of the main reasons to read is to gather information that you will need to use later. This strategy will help you accomplish that goal by asking yourself questions as you read. How to Orchestrate Lesson Divide paper into two sections. First is titled “READ” and the second is “RECALL”. Stop after you read each paragraph and think of a question that the author answered in the paragraph. Write it down in the Read column of your paper. Re-read or re-call the answer given by the author in the paragraph that you just read. Write down the answer in the recall section of your paper. To meet your goal, which is to read to gather information that you will use later, make sure students include questions from both level one and two.

5. Read and Recall Questions are based on Costa’s and Bloom’s Taxonomy levels. Level 1-“GATHERING DATA” is a literal level includes Bloom’s Remembering and Understanding. Level 2-“PROCESSING DATA” is where students process and interpret includes Applying and Analyzing in Bloom’s Level 3-“APPLYING” is about universal output which concludes Bloom’s highest levels evaluating and creating. Master worksheets of thinking verbs and thinking skills will be provided to teachers to make class sets to assist students in writing higher level questions.

6. Get Curious & Ask Questions Timeline:20-30 minutes reading time included AVID Methodologies: Writing Inquiry Reading Concept Statement: One goal most science teachers have is directing students to be inquisitive and inquiry oriented. This activity provides simple strategy for asking more analytical questions, both in class and while reading. I will include a copy of the student handout so you can make a class set. This activity can be adapted to whatever areas you want to focus on and forces students to explore the material more deeply.

7. Get Curious & Ask Questions How to Orchestrate the Lesson Early in the year have the students brainstorm 10-15 questions from any area of the test that interests them. You can list their questions by category on the board and use them later to reintroduce topics as they come up in the year. This can also guide the types of readings that you assign students on their own through this activity. Discuss what students already know about reading topic before the assignment is made. Activating prior knowledge is key in helping students make sense of current reading assignment. Assign reading. Have students complete four square chart as they read.

8. Get Curious & Ask Questions Let students discuss their responses in small group or with the class. This gives them a chance to evaluate their critical thinking skills as well as to discuss and review contents of the reading. Conclude activity with a quickwrite. The four square responses act as the pre-write list. Students use this information to formulate their quickwrite response. Procedure Skim the reading assignment.Using a pencil write question marks where you feel you could ask a worthwhile question. Divide your paper into 4 squares. Respond to the four powerful questions on the student direction sheet.

9. Get Curious & Ask Questions Project Requirements: Monitoring the discussion as groups share their ideas will indicate the level of questioning of the students. Suggest ideas to improve the depth of questioning as you monitor. This activity can be used as a homework check or class work assignment. The quick write canbe read to see if the student addresses questions about the reading and the clarity of ideas expressed. Extension The ideas researched here can be used to chooses a research topic for the Annotated Bibliography or a three part essay. These questions can also guide independent research. I will include a copy of the Annotated Bibliography assignment for each teacher. Student samples with teacher analysis will be provided to help you with implementation.

10. Having a Conversation With Yourself. Timeline: 30-50 minutes AVID Methodologies Writing Inquiry Reading Concept Statement Good readers employ a variety of strategies to insure that they are understanding and learning from the material. The handout is a written version of many components of that conversation that we, as good readers, have with ourselves when we find that the selection is difficult or hard to follow. Students need to begin to apply these strategies as they read so that they begin to have this conversation mentally while they read instead of stopping and rereading the same passage the same way. This, in conjunction with vocabulary development is a way to facilitate the development of reading skills for those that have a difficult time reading.

11. Having a Conversation With Yourself. How to orchestrate the lesson Select reading. This reading should be challenging to students. You may want to provide a variety of readings so that students can select an appropriately difficult one. Reading passagedifficulty is usually based on length of sentence, sentence construction and vocabulary level. Provide students time to read the article and complete the conversation provided on the student handout page. Have the students develop a vocabulary list that proved difficult and debrief strategies that they used to determine the definitions. Have students provide examples of context cues and root word derivations to show students other students how to apply these strategies. In small groups, have students discuss why reviewing and skimming is an important step in reading. Return to this skill often throughout the term. Each time provide a blank conversation handout for student note taking.

12. Having a Conversation With Yourself. Project Requirements and Rubric Checking for completeness or collecting and grading are two options for this project. This activity is good for difficult reading assignments. Building discussion based on these ideas is critical to student’s feeling that the work is worthwhile and helpful to their reading comprehension. Another grading option would be to have students paraphrase the reading selection using their conversation sheet, then use the paraphrasing rubric to grade their paraphrase. I will provide a copy of the student handout and student samples for you to analyze, make a class set and configure into your lesson plans.

13. Sources • AVID Center, 2003, The Write Path Science Teacher Guide Grades 6-12 • AVID Center, 2003, Critical Reading. Marking the Text: Non-fiction (Argument).

15. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

16. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

17. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

18. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

19. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

20. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

21. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

22. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

23. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!

24. Photos you may use. Delete this page before saving your presentation. You may use these AVID student pictures in your presentation. Please do not resize them disproportionately. Thanks!