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Teaching Teachers: The Language of Science in the Reading and Writing of Student Scientists
... Additionally, classroom teachers can provide opportunities for students to go beyond hunting for and identifying visual representations to discussing design features of visual representations, their attributes, and the communicative purposes they serve (Callow, 2018). As a result, students may be better equipped to navigate multimodal science books with nonlinear formats (Donovan & Coleman, 2018;McTigue & Flowers, 2011). Becoming more fluent in navigating multimodal science books, such as those in this study, could be an important first step toward navigating digital multimodal texts that include nonlinear pathways for reading. ...
This convergent mixed-methods study investigated what urban fourth-grade students self-reported for navigating multimodal science books. Reported strategies included general reading processes, clarifying understanding, selecting portions to read, choosing an order to read the text, and interpreting the process in the text. A range of metacognitive awareness in navigating multimodal science books included categories of Limited, Novice, Competent , and Expert. Using Epistemic Network Analysis to visually map the cognitive processes students reported, we found urban students within this study relied on general literacy strategies including comprehension strategies , traditional text directionality, and identifying infor-mational text features. Fewer students reported using more sophisticated strategies for interpreting multimodal science books, such as previewing or integrating written text and visual representations. This study provides evidence that disciplinary literacy instruction should go beyond general literacy strategies to equip students with more specific strategies for integrating the written text and visual representations in multimodal science texts.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide information teachers need to assess young children's science compositions for explanation genre features and content knowledge. The authors begin with an overview of the language specific to the genres of science in general and to explanation specifically. They provide an overview of reasoning and genre features used in explanation and describe how trade books on science topics written for children can be used to scaffold children's explanatory science thinking and writing. Examples of children's texts are then considered for how assessment of each provides insight into the disciplinary thinking of the authors, how the composition includes linguistic features of the explanation genre, and how teachers might scaffold the children's emerging explanation compositions of scientific phenomena while supporting disciplinary thinking and knowledge building.
I f learning to read effectively is a journey toward ever-increasing ability to comprehend texts, then teachers are the tour guides, ensuring that students stay on course, pausing to make sure they appreciate the landscape of understanding, and encouraging the occasional diversion down an inviting and interesting cul-de-sac or byway. The evidence for this role is impressive. In one study, some teachers of first-grade students in a high-poverty school district got 80% of their students to grade level in reading comprehension by the end of the year, while others in the same school district got only 20% of their students to grade level (Tivnan & Hemphill, 2005). In another study, Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, and Rodriguez (2003) found that second through fifth graders showed dramatically differ-ent rates of growth in reading comprehension over the course of the school year, depending on their teacher and the specific practices in which he or she engaged. Teachers can even overcome disadvantages in reading comprehension that students bring to school. For exam-ple, Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, and Hemphill (1991) found that students whose home environments were poor with respect to promoting reading comprehension development nonetheless made adequate progress in reading comprehension if they had strong teach-ers of reading comprehension for two consecutive years. If otherwise similar students had a strong comprehension teacher for only one year, only 25% made adequate progress, and none of the students who experienced two years of poor comprehension instruction overcame the effects of poor support for reading comprehension development at home. In sum, teachers matter, especially for complex cognitive tasks like reading for understanding.
Effects of illustrations on learning authentic textbook materials were studied among 10-year-old elementary school children of high and low intellectual ability. Experiment 1 showed that the presence of illustrations improved learning of illustrated text content, but not that of nonillustrated text content. Comprehension scores were improved by the presence of illustrations for high-ability children, but not for low-ability children. In Experiment 2, children's eye movements were measured during learning of illustrated textbook passages to study how children divide their attention between text and illustrations. The results suggest that learning is heavily driven by the text and that children inspect illustrations only minimally. High-ability students were more strategic in processing in the sense that they spent relatively more time on pertinent segments of text and illustrations. It is concluded that the learning of illustrated science textbook materials involves requirements that may be more readily met by more intellectually capable students. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.
This study sought to examine the frequency and type of graphical representations in science trade books for children from 1972 to 2007. Specifically questions addressed differences in graphical forms in science discipline and for intended audience age for books. The results revealed that there is an increase in the presence and variation of graphics over time. The physical science trade books had larger proportions of the range of graphics than life and earth science books. Most notably flow diagrams, cross sections, cutaways and tree diagrams were present in physical science books. Regarding intended audience age, there were more graphical representations of most types in books for intermediate age children. The results suggest that students will encounter a higher presence of trade books with graphics and graphical types in the coming years.
This paper describes the visuals second grade students included in their own information book compositions during a science unit on weather during which multimodal science trade books on the topic of weather were read aloud. First, the multimodal nature of the information books used in the unit are described. Second, the teacher's talk about visual representations during read alouds of books on weather is presented. And third, the children's own information books about weather topics are examined for inclusion of labeled pictorial illustrations with accompanying captions and graphical representations. These analyses reveal that 1) information book authors vary in their use of visual information, 2) some graphics may be more salient for children, and 3) children's use of pictorial illustrations and graphical representations in their own compositions seems to be impacted by both teacher attention to particular types of visual representations and immersion in information book graphics.
The greater emphasis on information books in elementary schools has led to an increased emphasis on informational writing as well. Although some have suggested utilizing mentor texts to engage children in informational writing, there has been little information about the developmental progression of children's ability to compose in this genre. What has been missing is advice on how to support children's approximations of the information report genre. This article aims to do precisely that by presenting a developmental framework of informational writing derived from a study of K–5 children's writing. We share the framework, provide examples of children's compositions at each developmental level, and demonstrate how teachers can use this continuum to support increasingly more mature forms of information text.
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