Instruction and Assessment in Elementary Science

Class 4 - Literacy

Agenda

• Welcome and Check-In
• Education Studio Visit (next week)
• Notebook Turn and Talk
• Vocabulary Instruction in Science
• Understanding Informational Text
• 5 Kinds of Nonfiction
• Other Types of Literature
• Digital Toolbox
• Closure

Turn and Talk

Take a few minutes to share your module reflections and the questions they raised for you.

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Write questions you would like to see addressed in class on a large post-it note and add them to the side board.

Anticipation Guide

An anticipation guide is a tool used before reading or an activity to activate students' prior knowledge, stimulate their interest in a topic, and set a purpose for their work and thinking.

• Students complete the anticipation guide by recording their responses in the ‘Before’ column.
• Then they read/listen with the purpose of finding out more about each statement. Students work to identify evidence to support their position.
• After reading, they can describe what they have learned and how their ideas may have changed in the ‘After’ column.

What is Vocabulary?

• Vocabulary refers to the words we know to communicate effectively.
• Students learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language. Other words are learned through carefully designed instruction.
• Vocabulary knowledge is the single greatest contributor to reading comprehension.

Types of Vocabulary

• Listening – Words we hear and understand.
• By the time we reach adulthood, most of us will recognize and understand close to 50,000 words. (Stahl, 1999; Tompkins, 2005)
• Speaking – Words we use when we speak.
• Our speaking vocabulary is relatively limited: Most adults use between 5,000 to 10,000 words for all their conversations and instructions.
• Reading – Words we understand when we read text.
• This is the 2nd largest vocabulary IF you are a reader. If you are not a reader, you can not “grow” your vocabulary.
• We can read and understand many words that we do not use in our speaking vocabulary.
• Writing – Words we use when we write.
• Writing vocabulary is strongly influenced by the words we can spell.

Did you know that …

• 20 minutes of daily reading can increase vocabulary by 1,000 words annually?
• a student who reads 21 minutes per day outside of school reads almost 2 million words per year?
• approximately 25-50% of annual vocabulary growth comes from reading and exposure to oral language?

What does it mean to KNOW a word?

Edgar Dale’s Degrees of Knowing Word Meanings (1965)

• Stage 1: I have never seen or heard the word before.
• Stage 2: I know there is such a word, but I don’t know what it means.
• Stage 3: I’ve heard it and seen it. I know what it has to do with, but I can’t tell you what it means specifically.
• Stage 4: I know what it means, I’ll recognize it whenever I see it or hear it, and I can use it.

Knowledge Rating Scale

Vocabulary or knowledge rating is a before reading strategy designed to evaluate students’ prior or background knowledge of a topic or concept.

Students are given a list of words related to the topic or concept and rate how well they know each term.

Rating scales can help students to actively look at and be aware of new vocabulary. They help activate prior knowledge and prepare students for reading, viewing, listening and discussing a new topic or text.

Knowledge Rating Scale Example

Defining Academic Vocabulary

• An analysis of standards documents across multiple curricular areas generated a list of academic vocabulary words that students are exposed to across their years in school.

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• Let’s look at the data.

Which words should we teach?

• In school settings, students can be explicitly taught a deep understanding of about 300 words each year.
• Divided by the range of content students need to know (e.g., math, science, history, literature), roughly 60 words can be taught within one subject area each year. (See chart.)
• It is reasonable to teach thoroughly about 8-10 words per week.

Tier 1 Vocabulary

Tier 1 vocabulary includes words that students hear and use every day.

• These words rarely require direct instruction and typically do not have multiple meanings.
• Sight words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and early reading words occur at this level.
• Examples of tier one words are: book, girl, sad, run, dog, and orange.
• There about 8,000 word families in English included in Tier 1.

Tier 2 Vocabulary

Tier 2 vocabulary words include those that students are going to see often in school.

• High frequency words that are used across multiple disciplines and content areas
• Not often used in conversation, but found in books and written text
• Often have multiple meanings
• Examples of tier two words are: masterpiece, fortunate, industrious, measure, and benevolent.
• There are about 7,000 word families in English in Tier 2.

Tier 3 Vocabulary

Tier 3 vocabulary words are content-specific and academic in nature.

• Low frequency words specific to one content area, field of study, or domain (i.e. subjects in school, hobbies, occupations, geographic regions, technology, weather, etc.)
• Examples of tier three words are: economics, isotope, asphalt, Revolutionary War, and, crepe.
• There are about 400,000 words in English in Tier 3.

Think of tiers as crayons …

Which box will make the richest picture?

Box of 8: Brown

Box of 64: Sand, Tan, Khaki, Copper

Box of 120: Almond, Antique Brass, Beaver, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Tumbleweed, Chestnut

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Selecting Words to Teach

There is no specific formula for placing words into tiers or choosing words for direct instruction.

Consider the following when choosing vocabulary words:

• Usefulness
• Necessity
• Relatability

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Usefulness

• How generally useful is this word?
• Are students going to see this word often?
• Will they use this word in their own speech/writing?

Necessity

• Does comprehension rely on knowledge of this word's meaning?
• Does knowing this word enhance comprehension?
• What words are most important to understand the text or topic?
• What words are unlikely to be part of a child’s prior knowledge?
• What words lack helpful, directive contexts?

Relatability

• How does this word relate to other things the student is learning?
• Does this relate to content the student is learning at school?
• What words are interrelated and will help children know additional words?

Table Activity

Identifying Tier 1, 2, and 3 Words

Use the nonfiction passage on bats.

Skim the passage and highlight Tier 1, 2, and 3 words in different colors. Do not include proper nouns.

Share your words with your group.

Together, discuss all the words that might need instructional attention. List the words on your chart paper by tier. Then, highlight the 3-5 most important words you think should be taught. (Come to consensus on this.)

When the timer ends, please finish your conversations and prepare to discuss.

15 min

Helpful Suggestions

Choosing the right words for Tier 2 Vocabulary Instruction

• Importance and utility
• Conceptual understanding
• Instructional potential
• Words to expand on “just for now”

“...we can’t teach all the words. In fact, we can’t even teach all of the important words explicitly. So what do we do when we come across a word in a story that we feel needs explanation? Well, just explain it...Not every Tier 2 word has to be examined and taught in-depth.”

Teaching Vocab - What Works?

• Repetition improves vocabulary acquisition.
• Learning vocabulary from context is NOT effective. The use of context alone rarely leads to the identification of an exact definition or deep understanding of a word.
• Context clues are the syntactic (structural) and semantic (meaning) clues that help a reader to identify an unknown or difficult word.
• These are the “hints” about the meaning of an unknown word based on the words, phrases, or sentences that surround it.
• Explicit vocabulary instruction is HIGHLY effective.
• Why you should stop pre-teaching science vocabulary and focus on students developing conceptual meaning first : StemTeachingTools (en-US)

Chances of Learning New Words in Context

Word Parts

• Every student is an SLL.
• Directly teaching word parts- affixes, base words, roots - greatly enhances vocabulary because 60% of English words have Latin or Greek origins (Armbruster & Osborn, 2001).
• Prefixes add meaning to thousands of words.
• There are twenty common prefixes that account for 97% of the prefixed words in printed school English (White, Sogihara, 1989).

Common Prefixes

• Anti = against: anti-war
• De = opposite: destroy
• Dis = not, opposite of: disagree
• En, Em = cause to: encode, embrace
• Fore = before: forecast
• In, Im = in: intake, implant
• In, Im, Il, Ir = not: injustice, impossible, illiterate, irrational
• Inter = between: interact
• Mid = middle: midway

• Mis = wrongly: mistake
• Non = not: nonsense
• Over = over: overlook
• Pre = before: preview
• Re = again: return
• Semi = half: semicircle
• Sub = under: submarine
• Super = above: supernova
• Trans = across: transport
• Un = not: unfriendly
• Under = under: underwater

Marzano’s Six Steps: Introduce

1. Teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the new term (DIRECT INSTRUCTION)
2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.
3. Ask students to construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term.

Foldables, Notebooks, Word Walls

• For the first three steps in Marzano, many teachers use foldables, graphic organizers, notebooks, and word walls.
• Let’s look at some notebook examples.
• Let’s look as some word walls in kindergarten.
• Here are some interactive ideas for word walls.

Marzano’s Six Steps: Review

4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

6. Involve students periodically in games that enable them to play with terms.

Analyzing Texts

Around the room there are several sets of books, each representing different types of text structures.

• Review the text structure handout.
• Find books representing each text structure and list them on your handout.
• Select two books that interest you.
• Review the informational text features handout.
• Skim the texts and identify the text features.

Description

Sequence

Cause & Effect

Problem-Solution

Compare and Contrast

Nonfiction Writing Styles

5 Kinds of Nonfiction

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These four use the expository writing style.

Active Nonfiction

• Highly interactive and/or teaches skills for engaging in activity
• How-to guides, field guides, cookbooks, craft books
• Clear, straightforward language
• Expository writing style

Best used for: Engaging in an activity or learning a new skill; perfect for makerspaces

Browseable Nonfiction

• Eye-catching design, lavishly illustrated
• Short blocks of straightforward text
• Can be read cover to cover or by skipping around
• Great for shared reading
• Expository writing style
• Description text structure

Best used for: Engaging readers quickly by offering interesting or unusual facts; text features make it easy to find specific information; the emphasis is on the book’s design and visuals; use later in the research process to add interesting detail

Traditional Nonfiction

• Survey (all about) books
• Overview of a topic
• Often part of a large series
• Clear, straightforward language
• Expository writing style
• Description text structure

Best used for: An overview or introduction to a topic, use early in the research process to build understanding

Expository Literature

• Focused topics presented creatively
• Strong voice and rich, engaging language
• Innovative format
• Carefully chosen text structure
• Expository writing style
• Books about specialized ideas, such as STEM concepts

Best used for: Providing more depth or interesting perspective, ideal mentor texts for writing workshops, nonfiction read alouds

Narrative Nonfiction

• Narrative writing style
• Tells a story or conveys an experience
• Real characters, scenes, dialog, narrative arc
• Strong voice and rich, engaging language
• Chronological sequence structure
• Books about people (biographies), events, or processes

Best used for: Understanding a past time or place, a person, or a process; nonfiction read alouds

5 Kinds of �Nonfiction by �Purpose

Beyond Nonfiction

• Can picture books (fiction) be used to teach science?
• Can poetry be used to teach science?

Basic Evaluation Criteria

The following guidelines are used in part in selecting books for NSTA’s annual Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students list.

• The book has substantial science content.
• Information is clear, accurate, and up-to-date.
• Theories and facts are clearly distinguished.
• Facts are not oversimplified to the point that the information is misleading.
• Generalizations are supported by facts, and significant facts are not omitted.
• Books are free of gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic bias.

Additional Resources/Ideas

• Evaluating Children’s Books (general guidelines)
• Check out the EL Protocols for additional literacy ideas.
• Using Science Texts to Teach the Organizational Features of Nonfiction
• Children’s literature in science
• Selecting Literature for Science Instruction

Digital Toolbox

Assignment guidelines (course blog)

Helpful directions from the Google Learning Center

Closure

Reflection

• Hook, Line, and Sinker Reflections

For next week

• Complete the module.

Questions?

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Hook, Line, and Sinker Reflections

What hooked you today?

(Most interested you)

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What lined up with your thinking? (Made sense)

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What didn’t sink in? �(You still have questions)

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