how does mechanical weathering change rocks?
Using Reading-to-Learn Strategies to Teach Science Content
by Peter Wardrip and Jennifer Tobey
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how does mechanical weathering change rocks?
B
y sixth grade,
Example of annotation—student circled the heading and
teachers expect
FIGURE 1 asked, “How does mech. weathering change rocks?”
students to read
and understand
the texts they’re provided.
Students need to do more
than decode the information,
however; they need to be able
to read a variety of texts while
activating skills such as defining, analyzing, summarizing,
and reflecting. This is important not only because science
reading and language are a
significant part of science literacy (Yore, Bisanz, and Hand
2003), but also because reading critically and communicat We believe reading-to-learn sums up the strategies
ing are practical, real-world skills students will need
used by expert readers. It is a collection of cognitive
(Gomez and Gomez 2006).
and motivational approaches to support reading in
Many teachers fall into the pattern of “assumptive
learners who have mastered the skills of reading as
teaching” (Herber 1970), assuming that other instrucdecoding but are still mastering the skill of reading
tors will teach students the important strategies they
for knowledge. The cognitive components of readingneed for learning. In this case, tools and strategies may
to-learn that are so important to our classes include
not be taught outside of reading or language arts beactivating background knowledge, questioning to
cause a science teacher can say, “It’s not my job.” Howconstruct meaning, question answering, summarizing,
ever, our sixth-grade team decided to make it our jobs.
and comprehension monitoring within a self-regulating
With the help of university researchers, we employed
system (Yore et al. 1997).
three reading-to-learn strategies in our content areas as
We chose to work with a set of three reading-to-learn
a routine instructional strategy to help students become
strategies: annotation, T-charts, and summaries. Anexpert readers.
notation is a form of content analysis students perform
In this article, we summarize our work using one
by marking up key elements on the text such as main
particular science lesson as an example. This snapshot
ideas and new vocabulary. T-charts (also called doubledemonstrates how the reading-to-learn strategies are
entry journals) guide students to reflect on components
used in the service of learning the science content.
from the text important to the learning goal. SummaReading-to-learn in science
rization is used as a means for students to synthesize
content and give an account of the essence of the text.
Expert readers are aware of their purpose in reading, continually monitoring and regulating their apExample lesson
proach and adjusting their reading effort to the complexity of the text (Pressley 2000). Expert readers
The following lesson took place in a sixth-grade science
are also sensitive to the fact that they are engaged
classroom in a school diverse in terms of ethnicity,
in a meaning-making task (Scardamalia and Bereiter
socioeconomic status, and student ability. The goals of
1986; Pressley and Gaskins 2006). These readers are
this lesson, part of the Earth and Space Science curconstantly making connections to prior knowledge
riculum, were for students to learn how mechanical
and keeping aware of what their purpose is rather
weathering and chemical weathering break down rocks
than simply decoding the text. In addition, expert
and to synthesize this information by writing a parareaders make note of intellectual roadblocks when
graph summary.
they meet them and have strategies to mitigate
Pre-reading
these challenges. In contrast, struggling readers
simply ignore these roadblocks and push on (Clay
I star ted by tr ying to activate students’ prior
1991; Pressley 2000).
knowledge from the unit and their lives by asking,
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SCIENCE SCOPE
how does mechanical weathering change rocks?
FIGURE 2
Example of annotation—student boxed new
vocabulary and identified in-text definitions with
“def” squeezed between the lines
“Can rocks break? How might rocks be broken or
worn down?” I reminded students about small rock
samples they had examined in class as part of a
rock identification activity and about rocks they may
have seen outside on their own. Students responded
to these questions verbally as part of a whole-class
discussion. Many students (some with the help of
hints) recalled information about erosion from our
previous unit. At this point, we discussed the term
weathering, which was a new science word for students. I projected a series of six photos (which I
had found through an Internet image search), each
of which depicted the dramatic result of a different
agent of mechanical or chemical weathering. For
example, one picture showed a large boulder that
had been split apart. I asked, “Can you guess what
caused each of the types of weathering or breaking?” Through whole-group discussion, students engaged energetically in the predicting and produced
thoughtful, if not accurate, hypotheses.
After showing all six photos and
hearing students’ discussion about
each one, I told students I had a piece
of text we could read to find out what
caused the weathering examples. I
transitioned from the pre-reading
phase of this lesson by giving students
their during-reading instr uctions,
which I had also written in the margin
of the photocopied text pages.
Reading strategy
One piece of the during-reading
activity is text annotation. First,
students circled both section titles
(“Mechanical weathering produces
physical changes in rocks” and
“Chemical weathering changes the
mineral composition of rocks”) and
wrote a question about each (see
Figure 1). In class, students and I
have used question words (generally
the 5 Ws and an H: who, what, when,
where, why, and how) to actively
seek infor mation that an author
might be expected to provide in a
certain passage and to initiate interest in a topic.
Generally, students in this class
underline details that answer the
aforementioned heading questions
or record answers in a T-char t, a
two-column chart students set up in their notebooks.
The use of questioning in this step of the annotation
process is the result of reflective dialogue among
grade-level team teachers and university researchers. When the university researchers introduced
annotation to our team, their technique consisted of
simply circling headings and subheadings as a way
of noting text features. We felt that since text features usually already distinguish titles and headings,
merely circling them would do little to critically
engage students. Reading with questions in mind—
especially students’ own questions—gives a sense
of purpose for reading, which is crucial for student
engagement.
Although students and I had already set a purpose
for reading by asking what caused the types of weathering we saw in the photos, by annotating titles students
could now narrow their questioning, already beginning
to use the relevant content-area vocabulary and to categorize information. I asked students to pose possible
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how does mechanical weathering change rocks?
FIGURE 3
Example of a T-chart—student’s written and picture
descriptions of four different types of weathering
questions for the first title (“Mechanical weathering
produces physical changes in rocks”). Students’ ideas
for this section included “What changes does mechanical weathering produce?” and “What is mechanical
weathering?”
Students also put rectangles around new words (see
Figure 2). The teaching and research team defines new
words as words that students have never heard before,
words that they have heard but are not sure how to
use, or words that they have heard in other contexts
but that may be new for the content area. Students
write “def” next to in-text definitions of those words. In
this lesson, I especially wanted students to be aware of
when the terms “mechanical weathering” and “chemical weathering” and terms for causes of weathering
were introduced. In general, it has been a goal of the
team teachers to help students be aware of in-text definitions and context clues as a way to empower them as
independent readers.
Students also made a T-chart for each type of weathering (see Figure 3). T-charts included the causes
of weathering and a description and drawing of each
cause. In class, students use T-charts to organize con-
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SCIENCE SCOPE
tent not only physically on the page,
but also intellectually as a way to apply
higher-order thinking skills. Students
often draw their notes or responses in
science class as a way to emphasize
visualization habits during reading and
to facilitate comprehension. Both the
drawing and describing are steps in
which students process the content. In
this lesson, I hoped organizing weathering causes into two separate T-charts
would facilitate awareness of how the
two are different. To help students create their own T-charts, I drew sample
T-charts on the photocopied textbook
page and listed the weathering causes
in the order in which they appeared in
the text.
Reading activity
After reading, students wrote one
paragraph in their notebooks to answer their two section-title questions
together. This was an important assessment tool for me, as students’
ability to synthesize the content in
a logical way should be indicative of
comprehension. In order to further
enhance the sense of purpose for
reading, I had told students before they read that they
would be expected to write a paragraph to answer
their questions later.
After showing the instructions for annotation and Tcharting, which needed little clarification since these
are routine during-reading activities in our class, I
distributed the reading and asked students to begin
working. Students sat in tables of four or five, and
they were encouraged to work together on the reading, choosing their own method of collaboration for
reading and during-reading tasks. Groups had been
together for months and had established norms for
reading together. At some tables, students took turns
reading aloud and then stopped to record information
in their T-charts together. At other tables, students
read silently to themselves and then checked in with
each other periodically to record information. I circulated to check T-chart setup and to see what kinds
of questions students were asking about the section
titles. I occasionally asked a student to rewrite a question more broadly to incorporate more answers from
the whole text. I also looked for the new content-area
vocabulary words to be annotated.
how does mechanical weathering change rocks?
During this activity, as with most reading activities
in which students use the literacy tools, students were
on task and engaged—reading, writing, annotating, and
drawing (regardless of ability level)—because the tools
gave them something to do. Even the lowest-ability
readers had a way to approach the text. In my experience, low-ability readers are likely to be off task when
text is difficult or when they do not have a sense of purpose for reading. This is the most compelling rationale
for helping students develop a repertoire of literacy
tools—making text accessible makes the act of science
reading possible.
As students read, they often commented that they
had figured out what caused the weathering they saw
in a certain pre-reading photo. Also, although the
sample T-charts showed “description” coming before
“drawing,” several students seemed better able to write
descriptions of the phenomena in their own words after
doing the drawings.
After reading and summarizing (the next day),
I showed the photos again and asked students to
identify the causes of weathering, using the appropriate content-area vocabular y, this time as a review
and another assessment tool. In discussion, students were largely able to use the correct science
terms to identify the causes of weathering as well as
to differentiate between mechanical and chemical
weathering.
Conclusion
This lesson is one example of how much reading takes
place in science class and how important the reading is
for content mastery. In valuing text as a medium for science learning, we need to integrate literacy strategies
for learning through the text.
Based on our experience using annotation, T-charting, and summarizing with science texts throughout
this school year, our recommendations for implementation include
• doing a considerable amount of frontloading, e.g.,
thorough planning for gradual, scaffolded introduction and explicit modeling of parts of the strategies;
• choosing just a few literacy tools to use in a school
year, giving students the opportunity to master and
“own” them rather than sampling many different
ones throughout the year;
• creating and posting an anchor chart to remind students of the annotation symbols;
• viewing the strategy not as an end, but as a means
to an end, the end being comprehension of the science content;
• electing the appropriate strategy for each individual
piece of text;
• using the tools frequently enough to help students
maintain certain habits of mind and also to be able
to determine the need for support with certain skills;
and
• engaging students with a hands-on follow-up activity
such as taking a nature walk to look for examples of
weathering on school grounds or in their neighborhoods. n
References
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Paper presented at the Annual International Conference
of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science, Cincinnati, OH.
Peter Wardrip ([email protected]) is a doctoral student
in Learning Sciences and Policy at the University of
Pittsburgh. Jennifer Tobey ([email protected]) is
a sixth-grade science and social studies teacher in
school district 65 in Evanston, Illinois.
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