Effective instruction should introduce new science concepts using an “activity before content” approach.  After actively exploring ideas, reading comprehension strategies can be used to help students connect these ideas to scientific concepts. The January 2009 issue of NSTA’s Science Scope magazine has a great article about using reading comprehension strategies to promote science learning.  Wardrip and Tobey describe how to use a variety of strategies to help students understand mechanical weathering of rocks.  Here are brief descriptions of a few of the strategies that they used.

Pre-reading: Before reading, students should identify (activate) their prior knowledge.  The teacher should also use discussion to preview the reading so that students know the purpose of the text and what they are expected to learn from the text.

Annotation: The authors state that reading with questions in mind, especially their own question, gives a sense of purpose for reading.  This can be facilitated in textbook style readings by identifying section headings.  Students change the heading into a question (Using who, what, where, when, why, or how as question starters). Next, students underline details from the text that help them answer the questions.  Ideally, students should then record the question and their answer in their notes. Students can also circle new words (vocabulary) and construct definitions in the margins or their notes.

EXAMPLE
Header: Mechanical weathering produces physical changes in rocks.
Question: How does weathering change rocks?

T-charts / double entry journals: A T-chart is a type of graphic organizer.  In this article, the teachers had students create a T-chart that included the causes of mechanical weathering (ie: ice wedging, pressure release, plant root growth, abrasion), a description of each type of weathering, and a drawing to illustrate each type.

Summaries: After reading, it is important for students to summarize the text in their own words.  If you use the questioning technique described above, students can write a summary paragraph(s) as answers to their questions.  Alternatively, students can write a summary based on teacher supplied questions or write a “minute paper” on the topic.  In addition to helping students synthesize the information from the text, this summary can be used as an assessment of student understanding.

Here are two additional strategies that I like-

Two Words, Two Sentences: This strategy requires that either the teacher or student sections the text into “chunks” of a paragraph or two.  After reading, the student creates a two word title and writes a two sentence summary for each chunk.

3-2-1: This is a flexible strategy that can easily be used with chunks of text.  In general, students identify 3 things they learned, 2 things they found particularly interesting, and 1 question they have after reading the text.  The 3-2-1 strategy can be modified based on the purpose of reading the text.  For example, if students are reading to learn about plant and animal cells, you could ask students to identify 3 similarities between plant and animal cells, 2 differences, and 1 question that they have.

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