The science dept head kindly asked me to help bring up their TAKS scores by teaching some nonfiction reading strategies. After searching through my college textbooks and PD books, I have found lots of help with teaching nonfiction using texts suck as books about sharks, how trees grow, the growing stages of butterfies, etc. But, I have found very little help in the area of "understanding your science test book." I am specifically looking for strategies they can use by themselves before/during/after they read a piece of 8th grade science text.
At a workshop a while ago, I saw something about an acronym for analyzing a chart...something about looking at the title, analyxing the x axis and the y axis, forming a conclusion, but I can't find it and I think there was more to it than what I remember. Does anyone know what I am talking about? I did find something cool with charts. I think it was in When Kids Can't Read (Beers, K.). It is called what does it say and what does it not say. I did this lesson last week and it worked quite well. To introduce it, I gave them a chart like this: Teenage Pregnancy 1955 43,000 2005 138,000 (Those numbers and idea were totally ficticious and made up by me 30 seconds before 1st period started.) We talked about the fact that as time increases, teenage pregnancy increases. (what it does say) Now, for what it DOESN't say...where in the world these teenagers are. what race the teenagers are. The number of children each mother had (twins, octuplates, etc.) How many had abortions or miscarrages, etc. The questions these students thought of! Then we looked at some charts in their science book and did the same thing. The lesson learned was that sometimes what the chart doesn't say can be just as informative as what it does say. I am also looking for reading strategies for reading nonfiction texts. Something that is universal to fit almost any piece of text. ...And also good lessons on skimming a passage to find information needed. Okay, great people...any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ashli _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
