Ashli, I am currently teaching a unit on this same topic...also, in hopes of helping my students score higher on the WESTEST and understand their science and geography text better.
Graphs- I made up an acronym for my students...not sure of the one you are talking about. Here is our acronym. T-title (of graph) H-headings (what heading are on the graph) I-intersection (what do the points of intersection tell us) N-notes (what extra notes are there on the graph) K-key S-Scale (how data measured) Again, this is an acronym I made up for my students with the help of my teaching team. If you use it please give credit to my team (7th grade team at Ritchie County Middle School, WV) In order for students to understand the structure of non-fiction, I started with the Encyclopedia of Gross Facts (Something like that) and as a class we read and took apart the different elements of the page. We read a selection about farts so I had everyone's attention. (Believe it or not it also had a lot of science information in it!) Then I had everyone bring their geography book. We started on the chapter they were responsible to read for geography class. We used our list from the Fart encyclopedia entry and tried to find the elements in the text book (pictures, captions, text boxes, bold words, etc.) We read the first section of the geography book. We added more elements to our list-focus questions at the beginning of the section, etc. As we read, I did think alouds to illustrate to the students how these different elements of the text correspond to understanding the text. Once we were done reading the first section, we looked at the review questions. Again, I made an effort to show students how the focus questions and the review questions are related. Then we took the section test provided by the textbook company. After the test, I paired the students and with a photocopied set of the textbook pages, asked them to highlight the areas tested on the test. Then in a different color highlighter, highlight the areas that were on the test AND part of the focus/review questions. The highlighting allowed the students to "see" the connection between the text and the test. SQ3R-Is a reading technique specific for textbook reading. There is a lot of information about this technique online. This technique does have a skimming stage so there might be some information about how to teach students how to skim. An idea off the top of my head is to have a race with the textbooks. Open to a new chapter in the science text and ask questions. See who is the first one to answer-they win. The competition edge may force students to "skim" the pages rather than read. Just a thought... Hope this helps. Melanie Davis -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ashli and Paul Andersen Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 11:11 PM To: A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades.; National Middle School Association Subject: [LIT] teaching comprehension through nonfiction 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 _______________________________________________ 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
