Luke Ericson

Final Thoughts on Literacy

What is your take on literacy? How would you build literacy skills within your content areas?

What is your take on Literacy?

I believe that establishing strong literacy skills is absolutely essential to science education.

1) Science is based on real-world phenomena, inquiry, investigation, and finally explanation

and prediction. Literacy is an important piece of investigation, which is where answers to
scientific inquiry are found.

2) Literacy in science can be defined as students having the​ skills, knowledge, and
motivation​​ to clearly​ understand, communicate, and apply ideas.

a) Skills​​: Students should be literate in the scientific method, problem solving

methods, interpreting data, and asking questions.

b) Knowledge​​: Students should have the baseline knowledge that they will need in
order to participate in scientific content. This includes vocabulary, facts,
equations, and anything else they will need to know in order to progress.

c) Motivation​​: Students will be more successful in scientific literacy if they are

motivated. This can be achieved in science through inquiry, interest, and
curiosity. Teachers should provide students with opportunities to connect
scientific concepts to the student’s prior knowledge and real-world experience
whenever possible. Research shows that interest increases motivation (​Teaching
Reading in the Content Areas​ by Frazee, Urquhart). Also, real-life demonstrations
and experiments can get students excited and motivated to learn.

d) Understand​​: In order for students to truly understand something, they must be

able to apply it in several different contexts (​Understanding by Design by
Wiggins, McTighe).​ ​They should be able to summarize information in their own
words rather than memorizing an exact meaning. They should also be able to
apply their understandings to new situations that they have not encountered
before. Understandings are large, overarching ideas that are at the center of the
discipline, and require students to have the right knowledge and skills to attain.
Achieving these understandings is the end goal of a unit.
 e) Communicate​​: In order to be successful in science, students must be able to
communicate the results of their findings clearly. Students should have the
discourse skills necessary to “talk and think like a scientist.”

f) Apply​​: Science is useless without application. Students need to be able to use the
scientific concepts they learn for a purpose. They need to be able to solve
problems, make predictions, and explain things based on scientific concepts.

3) Literacy is an integral part of science because science is based on observation,

experimentation, and ideas that must be understood, communicated, and applied.

4) Literacy skills are one of the most important things that a student can learn in school,
because if a student is a good reader, they can teach themselves anything they want by
reading books.

How would you build literacy skills within your content area?

Science is about understanding the world around us. In order to help students gain this
understanding, there are specific strategies that should be built into instruction:

1) Start each lesson with a real-life phenomenon.

a) This connects the new concepts to be learned in class with the student’s prior
knowledge and experience.

2) Lead the class in an inquiry based discussion over the phenomenon.

a) Questions will provoke student interest and curiosity, which will lead to higher
motivation for the lesson (​Teaching Reading in the Content Areas​ by Frazee,
Urquhart).​. ​They will also provide a framework for the information needed to
understand the phenomenon.

3) Lead students through the instruction/investigation that they need in order to attain the
understandings necessary to explain the phenomenon and answer their questions.

a) This is where specific literacy skills like reading, writing, listening, and speaking
should be practiced.
 b) Teachers should use strategies that help students as they learn, such as visuals,
graphic organizers, examples, connections to prior knowledge, and any other
strategies that help students identify and categorize the important knowledge and
skills that they will need to achieve the overarching understandings.

4) After the lesson is done, teachers should return to the phenomenon they first introduced
at the beginning of class.

a) Students should now have the information needed to ​explain​​ the phenomenon
introduced at the beginning of class.

b) The teacher should then present a new phenomenon that is similar, and have
students make a ​prediction​​ about why it occurs.

c) The end goals of science are explaining and predicting, and this method achieves
both. Taking students through this sequence as often as possible will build
scientific literacy skills.

5) Units should be designed using Backwards Design (​Understanding by Design​ by

Wiggins, McTighe)

a) Teachers start planning their units by first deconstructing state standards into
more specific and student-friendly learning targets.

b) Teachers should then determine what acceptable evidence for completion of

learning targets would be.

c) Next, teachers should write the summative assessment for the unit.

d) Once the summative assessment is written, the teacher should know what specific
skills, knowledge, and understanding students will need to be successful on the
assessment (learning targets).

e) Learning targets drive the planning of instruction.

f) Formative assessments should be given often and for every learning target. The
teacher should then adjust their instruction in response to student needs revealed
on formative assessments.
g) Backwards Design is important because it gives a framework and focus to the unit
by beginning with the end in mind.