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Reading in the Sciences

My 6th and 7th grade science classes are intensely hands-on, with new labs every week (the tomato & ethylene experiment is the favorite so far.  Deducing mass from volume was the least favorite.)  Nevertheless, I do have two scientific literacy projects planned for the semester.  I decided to include a literacy component after reading Feng and Wei (2010) who showed that even a little bit of reading in the sciences can improve outcomes.

The first project is a word wall.  As I envision it, each student will be assigned one word, such as prokaryote or kinetic, and make a small poster with the correct spelling, definition, and etymology (I have been stressing the Greek and Latin roots of scientific vocabulary all semester) of the word.  The students will be given colored markers,  and a dictionary.  The words will be affixed to the walls in alphabetic order.  Each student will present his word to the class; explaining how it is used, the definition, and the origin of the word.

The second literacy project for my students will be a four page paper written in APA style.  The first page will be the title page.  The second and third pages will be a short biography of a scientist.   In addition to the major scientific contribution, I'll ask the students to argue if the scientist approached science with a Platonic or Aristotelian mind-set (we have been talking about this for a couple of weeks so they should be able to do it.  I hope.) The fourth page will be the references, of which I am going to require two.

I realize that this might not seem like much, but as I said, this is a science class and most of what we do is hands-on.  I stress repeatedly that as scientists they don't take anyone's word for anything; scientists want to see experimental results with their own eyes.  Therefore, I don't think I've had any of my students read more than 15 pages since classes started on August 17.



References

Zhihui Fang and Youhua Wei (2010).  Improving Middle School Students Science Literacy Through Reading Infusion. The Journal of Educational Research, 103:4, 262-273



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