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Supporting Literacy in the Science Classroom

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Supporting Literacy in the Science Classroom

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There are a variety of ways to incorporate literacy strategies in science education without sacrificing content.

©iStock/Nadzeya_Dzivakova

Written and spoken language play a significant role in all classes. But if you're trained as a science teacher, how do you support literacy development without losing content time for science?

Rethink Literacy

Asking students to think critically while reading science reports, news and pop science, graphs, and documentaries;

Challenging students to connect multiple sources of media, analyze a source's potential bias, or identify an unreliable source; and

Asking students to write or speak about science findings from a review of research or their own experiments with an audience in mind.

Good news: You already teach literacy. Science teachers offer students many opportunities to improve their literacy skills, including:

Components of literacy are already present in the science classroom. The key is to mindfully support the levels of reading, writing, and speaking skills your students possess, while focusing on content.

Embed Supports

A key method to support skill development without taking away content time is to embed supports.

When you're in direct instruction, acknowledge your strategies. Model reading a science text by thinking aloud with your questions about the text, making connections, or summarizing as you read.

Include multiple types of sources: Students can be given a chance to discuss a chart or watch a short video to set some baseline understanding before tackling a text on the same topic. Be sure to ask students to connect the different mediums-you may be surprised at how many of them initially see the pieces of information as unrelated.

Embed writing supports: Provide opportunities for students to write parts of their notes in their own words, with structure. For example, ask students to summarize a main idea as part of their notes for the day. For students who need more support, create a sentence frame and word bank. Mentor texts are another great way to clarify expectations and demonstrate strong writing; choose a former student's work to share with the class and ask students to identify what is right about the response.

Original prompt: Describe the process of photosynthesis as it relates to glucose production. Explain how plants and other living organisms depend on one another.

Annotated version: Describe the process of 1) photosynthesis as it relates to 2) glucose production. Explain how plants and other living organisms 3) depend on one another.

Annotate the prompt: Science prompts are often multifaceted, and scoring depends on students' responding to each component of the question. Students who miss points often know the materials but have difficulty processing the entire question. Students can learn to identify each part of a prompt and use each identified requirement as a section in their writing. Here's an example:

Readers Below Grade Level

Some students can discuss the science topics but struggle to access any material they have to read. There are several ways to address these below-grade-level readers' needs.

Engineer a text: Take a grade level piece of text and center it on a page. Create a column to the left where you pull out and define key vocabulary, and one on the right where you ask questions of the reader. These questions can be tailored for many levels of readers, ranging from supportive, fact-based questions (helping students read to find out the key facts) to application and extension questions for your readers above grade level. The result is differentiated instruction for your students.

Use technology to expose students to texts: Even if a student is unable to independently read a text, they can develop grade-level literacy skills by interacting with vocabulary, sentence structures, and content of higher-level texts through technology. Several devices have the option to enable text-to-speech functions, which have the device read the text out loud. Speech-to-text functions allow students to speak what they want to have typed. This function requires some practice-don't ask the student to use it for the first time on an assessment.

The Immersive Reader program from Microsoft also reads texts to students. It includes other enhancements, like syllable recognition and the ability to highlight as you read. It even has parts-of-speech recognition to support writing.

Two more benefits for science teachers in promoting literacy: As my students improved their engagement with the literacy inherent to science class, I noticed an increase in engagement with the content and a decrease in disruptions.

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Supporting Literacy in the Science Classroom

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There are a variety of ways to incorporate literacy strategies in science education without sacrificing content.

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"Integral to the scientific method is the ability to:

ask questions

listen to explanations

present a conclusion.

Scientific language can be incredibly dense for some students, and in many cases every day and scientific uses of words or terms differ. For example,

"weight" and "mass" are used interchangeably in everyday situations, whereas in science they have completely different meanings

in science, the word “culture” refers to the process of growing living material, not the set of shared attitudes, beliefs and values of a group of people.

By using targeted literacy teaching strategies, teachers are able to support:

students to understand and correctly use new scientific vocabulary and terms

students’ ability to question, predict and explain.

These skills not only support students’ ability to navigate the scientific method, but also help students to clarify, extend and communicate their developing knowledge of scientific content."

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This section is focused on literacy in Science.

The information and resources address the reading and viewing, writing, and speaking and listening modes across the Science curriculum.

Literacy in Science is not the same as scientific literacy, but the two are interconnected.

Literacy in Science:

refers to the literate practices and strategies that enable individuals to understand, synthesise and communicate Science content knowledge

relates to the reading, viewing, writing, speaking and listening practices that students use to access, understand and communicate scientific knowledge.

Scientific literacy refers to:

an individual's understanding of scientific concepts, phenomena and processes, and their ability to apply this knowledge to new and, at times, non-scientific situations (PISA, 2018).

For students to develop scientific literacy, they must first engage in literate practices to develop their understanding of scientific concepts. Put another way, improving students' literacy in Science will help them to better develop their scientific understanding and scientific inquiry skills, which increases their scientific literacy.

Language is fundamental to Science. Literacy strategies allow students to develop their understanding of science and to do and communicate science (Yore et al., 2003). Knowing how to read and write scientific texts and diagrams, for example, facilitates students' understanding of complex scientific knowledge and processes.

Integral to the scientific method is the ability to:

ask questions

listen to explanations

present a conclusion.

Scientific language can be incredibly dense for some students, and in many cases every day and scientific uses of words or terms differ. For example,

"weight" and "mass" are used interchangeably in everyday situations, whereas in science they have completely different meanings

in science, the word "culture" refers to the process of growing living material, not the set of shared attitudes, beliefs and values of a group of people.

By using targeted literacy teaching strategies, teachers are able to support:

students to understand and correctly use new scientific vocabulary and terms

students' ability to question, predict and explain.

These skills not only support students' ability to navigate the scientific method, but also help students to clarify, extend and communicate their developing knowledge of scientific content.

Communication and writing in Science is highly specialised. Students must be able to read and write texts that are often dense, technical and abstract (Fang, 2005).

Scientific texts are also complex as they are comprised of multiple genres. Explicitly teaching students about the textual features of the various genres they will encounter in Science should help to improve students' reading and writing. The common genres students will read and write in Science include:

procedural recounts

explanations

discussions.

Scientific texts are also typically multimodal, containing written language, diagrams and images. Teaching students how multimodal elements of a text work together to create meaning will help them to develop and communicate their scientific understanding.

In this video, Prof Jan van Driel and Dr Victoria Millar discuss the importance of teaching literacy in Science. They also outline the various genres students encounter in the Science classroom.

Teacher prompts

What are the range of texts students write in your classroom? How do you support your students to write these texts?

How do you support students to read in science? How do you ensure diverse learners are able to meet the complex demands of reading in science?

Literate practices are embedded in the aims of the Victorian Curriculum: Science. For example, the curriculum aims to make sure students develop an:

interest in science as a means of expanding their curiosity and willingness to explore, ask questions about and speculate on the changing world in which they live

ability to communicate scientific understanding and findings to a range of audiences, to justify ideas on the basis of evidence, and to evaluate and debate scientific arguments and claims (VCAA, n.d.).

The Science Inquiry Skills strand emphasises the subject-specific nature of language and literacy requirements as part of the scientific method. Within Science, students do reading and viewing, writing, and speaking and listening to:

identify and construct questions

propose predictions

plan experiments

record and analyse data

communicate information and ideas.

The literacy demands of Science go beyond the inquiry skills. Being able to read, view, write, speak about and listen to a variety of texts in Science allow students' to access new scientific content, and as a result,develop their scientific knowledge.

Fang, Z. (2005). Scientific literacy: A systemic functional linguistics perspective. Science education, 89(2), 335-347.

PISA. (2018). Scientific literacy

VCAA. (n.d). Victorian Curriculum: Science.

Yore, L., Bisanz, G. L., & Hand, B. M. (2003). Examining the literacy component of science literacy: 25 years of language arts and science research. International journal of science education, 25(6), 689-725.

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This section is focused on literacy in Science. The information and resources address the reading and viewing, writing, and speaking and listening modes across the Science curriculum. Literacy in Science is not the same as scientific literacy, but the two are interconnected.

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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Making Sense of Literacy in Science: Applying Literacy Strategies to Science, Disciplinary Literacy in Science, and/or Scientific Literacy

Notions of literacy in science run in several directions that do not always have clear definitions or delineations. Several resources describe how teachers can apply literacy strategies to support student understanding. Current literature emphasizes "disciplinary literacy" in science, while longstanding commentary also emphasizes the importance of a scientifically literate populace. Below, I propose definitions for these three ideas--applying literacy strategies in science, disciplinary literacy, and scientific literacy--that connect the terms science and literacy, providing examples to illustrate how they differ. At the end, I describe two science lessons, one from lower elementary and one from middle school, showing how these strategies and frameworks intersect.

Applying Literacy Strategies to Science
Generally, when I hear about science and literacy, it involves helping students comprehend their science textbook or other science reading. It's a series of strategies from the field of literacy that educators can apply in a science context. For example, teachers could ask students to do a "close reading" of a text, pulling out specific vocabulary, key ideas, and answers to text-based questions. Or, a teacher might pre-teach vocabulary, and have students write the words in sentences and draw pictures illustrating those words. Perhaps students provide one another feedback on the effectiveness of a presentation. Did you speak clearly and emphasize a few main points? Did you have good eye contact? Generally, these strategies are useful, but they're not science specific. They could be applied to any disciplinary context. These types of strategies are often mislabeled as "disciplinary literacy." I would advocate they are not. Disciplinary literacy is not just a new name for reading in a content area.

Disciplinary Literacy
Scientists have a unique way of working with text and communicating ideas. They read an article or watch a video with a particular lens and a particular way of thinking about the material. Engaging with disciplinary literacy in science means approaching or creating a text with that lens. Notably, the a text is not just a book. The Wisconsin DPI defines text as any communication, spoken, written, or visual, involving language. Reading like a scientist is different from having strategies to comprehend a complex text, and the texts involved have unique characteristics. Further, if students themselves are writing like scientists, their own texts can become the scientific texts that they collaboratively interact with and revise over time. In sum, disciplinary literacy in science is the confluence of science content knowledge, experience, and skills, merged with the ability to read, write, listen, and speak, in order to effectively communicate about scientific phenomena.

As a disciplinary literacy task in a classroom, students might be asked to write an effective lab report or decipher the appropriateness of a methodology explained in a scientific article. They might listen to audio clips, describing with evidence how one bird's "song" differs throughout a day. Or, they could present a brief description of an investigation they're conducting in order to receive feedback from peers.

Scientific Literacy
Scientists use a set of skills that is broader than text, moving beyond the realm of "literacy" in terms of language, to specific ways of thinking about and interacting with particular phenomena. Therefore, disciplinary literacy in science is a subset of the broader abilities described within the concept of scientific literacy.

Building on ideas from the National Science Education Standards (p. 22, 1996), scientific literacy implies a base level of scientific understanding and ability that enables a student to effectively "ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about everyday experiences." Literacy skills generally connect with science understanding as a student researches a phenomenon of interest or even watches the news. Further, scientific literacy and disciplinary literacy merge in the ability to "read with understanding articles about science in the popular press and to engage in social conversation about the validity of the conclusions." Further, "a literate citizen should be able to evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it"--a process that requires an understanding of scientific practices along with the literacy skill of evaluating sources.

Clearly, disciplinary literacy and scientific literacy work together. Because "scientific literacy implies that a person can identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions and express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed," our students must develop the skills and understanding to clearly communicate complex, scientific information through various media. They must also learn "to pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and to apply conclusions from such arguments appropriately." Argumentation with evidence is a literacy skill that applies across all disciplines, but it requires an ability to apply unique disciplinary lenses to evidence and communication methods to effectively carry it out in a scientific context.

Continuing with the brief bird song example mentioned above, scientific literacy skills would be necessary to generate meaningful questions, such as, "Why do birds sing?" Or, further, "Do variations in bird song correlate with particular behaviors?" Students might start with making observations of bird behaviors and songs through a set timeframe, then comparing and contrasting bird songs. Determining a proper timeframe, sufficient subjects for study, and other investigation parameters would be aspects of scientific literacy. Effectively collaborating with classmates to conduct the investigation and communicating explanations with evidence would involve essential disciplinary literacy skills.

In other words, scientific literacy encompasses a broader range of work with scientific practices than disciplinary literacy. Students can show some ability and understanding of science practices through text, but scientific literacy also requires physical performance of these practices. Further, it requires background knowledge, whereas a disciplinary task in science, such as creating an effective data table, might not require such knowledge. Students planning and conducting a chemistry experiment moves beyond textual interaction to knowing when to use a fume hood and how to be safe more generally in a lab. Scientific literacy also requires mathematical thinking and a comprehension of scale for effective study of daily phenomena. These skills come into play in defining and modeling a particular system, with all relevant components.

Two Annotated Lessons to Show How Concepts of Literacy Might Continually Intersect in a Science Classroom

Building on my ideas above, I next describe two lessons, labeling the literacy components of each lesson. For reference, connections to literacy strategies (L), disciplinary literacy (DL), and scientific literacy (SL) are labeled within the descriptions of the lessons below. Because each reference to disciplinary literacy (DL) would also be a reference to scientific literacy, for clarity it's only labeled as DL (not as SL too).
Elementary
In a kindergarten classroom, a teacher puts a stuffed animal on a rolling chair in front of the room. The teacher asks, "How could we make 'Stuffy' move? Share an idea with a partner" [DL]. She then circulates to hear student talk [L]. She randomly asks a few students to come describe and demonstrate their method [DL]. As students share their method, she'll be pointing out terms they use, particularly highlighting or prompting the terms push and pull. Next, she has students write in their science notebooks, "A force is a push or a pull" [L]. This writing may be scaffolded by having some students just trace these words on a worksheet glued into the notebook [L]. Above that writing, she asks students to draw a picture of their idea, or another pair's idea, for how to move the animal [DL]. Some student pairs that haven't shared yet are then given the opportunity to share and explain their drawing [DL]. Students are specifically asked to explain, "What is causing the force in your picture?" [SL].

For homework, students are asked to somehow show their parents a push and a pull and tell them that a push or a pull is a force [DL]. For accountability, parents could help students write or draw about what they did, or students would just know they would have to share the next day.

In class the next day, the teacher asks students to share some of the pushes and pulls they showed their parents, asking them to use the word force [DL]. She then asks students to talk with their partner about, "Why did the animal in the chair sometimes move far and sometimes not move as far when we added a force?" [SL]. She then asks some students to demonstrate and describe an idea for making the animal/chair more far or less far; ideally, students will push or pull with varying degrees of force [SL]. Students are then asked to write in their notebooks, "A big force makes it move more!" [L] With a teacher example as needed, they also draw an image of what this might look like [DL].

As a possible extension: how would a scientist decide for sure which went further? How would she measure it? The class could discuss and perform different means for measurement, standard and nonstandard [SL].
Middle School
Student groups begin with a set of rocks and crystals at their table. The teacher asks them to generate a set of science-related questions in relation to them, noting those questions in their notebooks [SL]. Each group shares one of their questions, looking for one that's different from other groups and adding new ideas they like to their list [L]. The teacher then asks students to observe the rocks and crystals with a goal of generating a list of characteristics based on/related to those patterns [SL]. Groups share how they've characterized the rocks, adding interesting new ideas shared to their own lists [L]. Tools such as microscopes or magnifying lenses will be useful in their observations [SL].

Students next read an article on rock and mineral types, including characteristics of those rocks and minerals [L]. The teacher asks them to specifically find information on characteristics of the rock types that relate to or are similar to the list of characteristics (groupings) that they've generated [DL]. Finally, groups of students put their rocks into groups based on the categories and characteristics provided in the text, providing written rationale and evidence for why each rock would be placed within each group [DL].

Extension: Before reading the text, the teacher could also elicit background information and use characteristics generated by students to have them predict what types of processes would have been required to create these rocks and crystals, with the given characteristics [SL]. One possible question, "What do you observe about the rocks that makes you think different processes might have been involved in forming and shaping them?" Further, they could model and investigate where the energy involved in creating the rocks came from, linking processes with types of energy (such as gravity providing the energy for erosion due to water or the thermal energy of earth's core providing energy for metamorphosis of rocks and creation of crystals) [DL and SL].
Concluding Thoughts
As I labeled the literacy facets of these lessons, I more fully realized how integrated these components should be in a classroom all the time. Effective science instruction constantly: 1) supports the literacy work that students do (L), 2) as it encourages them to interact with text like scientists (DL), 3) while they engage in meaningful scientific thinking and practice (SL).

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Making Sense of Literacy in Science: Applying Literacy Strategies to Science, Disciplinary Literacy in Science, and/or Scientific Literacy Notions of literacy in science run in several directions that do not always have clear definitions or delineations. Several resources describe how teachers can apply literacy strategies to support student understanding.

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 Introduction to literacy in Mathematics 

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 Introduction to literacy in Mathematics 

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"The ability to develop understanding and communicate mathematics requires students to be able to understand and correctly use:

notation

subject-specific language

conventions

representations.

Students need to be able to meet these literate demands when:

constructing reasoning or mathematical arguments

using mathematics in a range of contexts."

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Integrating Literacy Instruction with Science and Social Studies

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Integrating Literacy Instruction with Science and Social Studies

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"a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies, grades 2-12, reported that having students write about the texts they were reading improved reading comprehension and the learning of information from the texts (Graham & Hebert, 2010). Writing about the texts had a bigger impact on learning than reading or reading and rereading. Various kinds of writing in response to texts were effective. Text summarizations or retellings were most effective with younger students and more extended writings (analysis, critique, synthesis) had a bigger learning payoff for the older ones.

Studies continue to accumulate showing that combining reading and writing can enhance learning, particularly when these combinations are carried out in content areas like history (De La Paz & Felton, 2010; Monte-Sano, 2011; Monte-Sano, De La Paz, & Felton, 2014; Sielaff & Washburn, 2015; Wiley & Voss, 1999)."

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Teacher question: I wonder why you never write about curriculum integration. This year my district is all about including social studies in all of our lessons and my sister (a teacher in another state) is doing something like that with science in the upper grades. Do you have any advice for teachers like us?
Shanahan's response:
As a teacher I was a strong advocate of integrating reading and writing instruction at a time when that kind of thing wasn't common. Later, when I became an academic, I studied reading-writing relationships and that blossomed into an interest in the combination of other curricula as well which eventually led to my work on disciplinary literacy.

In the late 1990s, I wrote about curricular integration with a great deal of angst (Shanahan, 1997). At that time, there were only a handful of studies that had explored the impact of combining reading with writing or any other subject. Even worse, those few efforts were unsuccessful; teaching various subjects together seemed to result in less learning, not more. We had good reasons to think integration could be beneficial, but no real supporting evidence. What a disappointment.

But 1997 was a long time ago.

Since then, there have been dozens of studies exploring issues of curriculum integration. As research has progressed, the newer studies have become more ambitious in curriculum design, more detailed in their results, and more rigorous in their research design. There has been so much of that kind of work we even have several meta-analyses of it.

For example, a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies, grades 2-12, reported that having students write about the texts they were reading improved reading comprehension and the learning of information from the texts (Graham & Hebert, 2010). Writing about the texts had a bigger impact on learning than reading or reading and rereading. Various kinds of writing in response to texts were effective. Text summarizations or retellings were most effective with younger students and more extended writings (analysis, critique, synthesis) had a bigger learning payoff for the older ones.

Studies continue to accumulate showing that combining reading and writing can enhance learning, particularly when these combinations are carried out in content areas like history (De La Paz & Felton, 2010; Monte-Sano, 2011; Monte-Sano, De La Paz, & Felton, 2014; Sielaff & Washburn, 2015; Wiley & Voss, 1999).

Another body of studies has examined reading instruction in the context of middle school and high school social studies and science classes. These studies (Swanson, Wanzek, Vaughn, Roberts, & Fall, 2015; Vaughn et al., 2013; Wanzek, Swanson, Roberts, Vaughn, & Kent, 2015) emphasized text reading, connecting text-based learning to prior learning, and applying the knowledge gained from texts to problem-solving activities in the content areas. Such literacy activities enhanced performance on measures of content knowledge, content reading comprehension, and standardized reading comprehension.

A meta-analysis of 16 such studies (Swanson, Wanzek, Vaughn, Roberts, & Fall, 2015) examined the impact of reading interventions delivered with social studies content. Such approaches proved effective with learning disabled students across grade levels - they did best in the upper grades. Studies in this synthesis focused on graphic organizers, mnemonics, reading and answering questions assignments, guided notes, and other related practices, and reported positive results with both social studies content and reading comprehension. A similar meta-analysis (Kaldenberg, Watt, & Therrien, 2015), this one examining reading instruction using science texts, reported similar outcomes with learning disabled students.

Not only were these approaches successful with struggling readers, but they have evidently worked with students from a wide array of demographic backgrounds (economic, racial, ethnic, linguistic).

Recently, this kind of research has taken an important turn. Now there are high-quality studies that have examined the impacts of curricular integration in elementary school, including in the primary grades.

For instance, the use of learning projects that address a combination of social studies and literacy standards led to increased learning of both content and improved ability to read informational text (Duke, Halvorsen, Strachan, Kim, & Konstantopoulos, 2021). That study took place in second-grade classrooms.

Likewise, teaching social studies and science units within the literacy block in grades K-4 was found effective in increasing content knowledge and informational text reading skills (Connor, Dombek, Crowe, Spencer, Tighe, Coffinger, Zargar, Wood, & Petscher, 2017). These effects were greater for social studies and science knowledge than reading, though there were some reading improvements. Similar results were evident with science knowledge - but not with reading comprehension - in a study conducted with fourth-grade science content (Cervetti, Barber, Dorph, Pearson, & Goldschmidt, 2012).

What does all that mean?

The use of content texts in reading comprehension lessons can improve content knowledge and reading ability.

Teaching students how to use reading and writing in content classrooms can also have these kinds of dual effects.

Curriculum integration can have positive outcomes across a wide range of grades and with a wide range of students (including demographics and learning abilities).

I sure feel better about all of this than I did in 1997. However, there are both important insights and cautions to be drawn from these studies.

1. Integration has led to greater gains in content knowledge than improvements in literacy. This is to be expected as the studies often aligned their knowledge tests with the content taught in their lessons - and reading was often evaluated with more general standardized assessments. I suspect it's easier to teach a specific set of facts than to improve someone's reading skills. In any event, given these findings, the successful combination of reading and science or social studies should not encourage schools to reduce the amounts of explicit reading instruction that they provide. Kids still need to develop print awareness, phonemic sensitivity, decoding skills, oral reading fluency, general vocabulary, grammatical skills, as well as general reading comprehension abilities. Those are not likely to benefit from these integration efforts.

2. Also, it is important to remember that the reading teachers have special responsibilities when it comes to literature. Literature is a content, just like social studies and science. It seems wise to focus some reading units on the reading of informational or expositional texts. It is just as wise to provide a similarly sharp focus on reading literature and understanding how it works.

3. Even with integration, we should be delivering high quality science and social studies lessons. There is more to these subjects than text reading, though text reading certainly matters. At this stage, integration should create opportunities for double dosing and extending lessons, rather than to making the curriculum more efficient. Such efficiencies may be a reasonable long-range goal, but we don't know enough for that yet.

4. Some states/districts/schools limit what can be included in their literacy block. Those rules and regs would prevent teachers from the kind of curriculum integration discussed here. Those limitations should be rethought to allow teachers to teach students to read social studies and science, including the use of informational texts that may not be drawn from the approved reading textbooks.

5. In many of these studies, the teachers were guided to make accommodations in the text difficulty students were asked to read. This was done by putting the lowest readers in easier texts. This may have been part of the reason why there were greater gains in content than reading. If students are practicing reading comprehension with texts they can already read satisfactorily, progress will be low. I'd encourage teachers not to reduce the text complexity - except possibly for the very low readers (K-1 level) but spend time showing students how to make sense of unknown vocabulary, complicated sentences, subtle cohesive links, and complex text organization. This should include showing students how to read and reread content texts in small chunks, linking those pieces together as you go. (Such lessons could easily replace the kinds of round robin reading so ubiquitous in social studies and science classes).

6. The research has produced several successful examples of integration. I assure you that in none of these cases did they just slap the subjects together. No, they came up with well-organized schemes for these combinations. For example, a common practice was to focus on culminating reports, projects, electronic presentations, and so on. These outcomes helped to make the student efforts purposeful, provided motivation, and allowed teachers and students to appraise the learning. Also, there were schemes for connecting new concepts to student knowledge and to clarify the meaning of what was read (with teachers and the other students), there were research and information recording systems, and organizational schemes that included whole class, small group, and individual work. Teachers that want to take on the challenge of integrated instruction would be advised to follow these models closely.

7. Finally, it is crucial that teachers recognize that curriculum integration is more than an alternative way of teaching. Its purpose, ultimately, is to increase the intellectual challenge of our curriculum and to foster a greater depth and appreciation of knowledge and research. In these studies, that was often evident in the curriculum designs, though surprisingly, it was rarely addressed in the evaluations. Integrated instruction should do more than improve reading comprehension (e.g, understanding or remembering facts). With such curricula, students should be reading more critically (such as recognizing the fallibility of sources). And, content outcomes should be more than longer lists of facts the students have managed to memorize but a deeper understanding and appreciation of the nature and value of scientific and historical knowledge.

References and other relevant sources

Cantrell, R., Fusaro, J., & Dougherty, E. (2000). Exploring the effectiveness of journal writing on learning social studies: A comparative study. Reading Psychology, 21(1), 1-11. doi:10.1080/027027100278310

De La Paz, S. (2005). Effects of historical reasoning instruction and writing strategy mastery in culturally and academically diverse middle school classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97(2), 139-156. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.97.2.139

De La Paz, S., & Felton, M. (2010). Reading and writing from multiple source documents in history: Effects of strategy instruction with low to average high school writers. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 35(3), 174-192. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.03.001

De La Paz, S., & Wissinger, D. (2015). Effects of genre and content knowledge on historical thinking with academically diverse high school students. Journal of Experimental Education, 83(1), 110-129.

Dobao, A. (2012). Collaborative writing tasks in the L2 classroom: Comparing group, pair, and individual work. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(1), 40-58. doi:10.1177/0013124512446221

Fernandez Dobao, A., & Blum, A. (2013). Collaborative writing in pairs and small groups: Learners' attitudes and perceptions. System, 41(2), 365-378. doi:10.1016/j.system.2013.02.002

Guthrie, J. T. (2003). Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction: Practices of Teaching Reading for Understanding. In C. Snow & A. Sweet (Eds.), Reading for Understanding: Implications of RAND Report for Education. New York: Guilford.

Kaldenberg, E., Watt, S., & Therrien, W. (2015). Reading instruction in science for students with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis. Learning Disability Quarterly, 38(3), 160-173. doi:10.1177/0731948714550204

McCulley, L., & Osman, D. (2015). Effects of reading instruction on learning outcomes in social studies: A synthesis of quantitative research. Journal of Social Studies Research, 39(4), 183-195. doi:10.1016/j.jssr.2015.06.002

Monte-Sano, C. (2008). Qualities of historical writing instruction: A comparative case study of two teachers' practices. American Educational Research Journal, 45(4), 1045-1079.

Monte-Sano, C. (2011). Beyond reading comprehension and summary: Learning to read and write in history by focusing on evidence, perspective, and interpretation. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(2), 212-249.

Monte-Sano, C., De La Paz, S., & Felton, M. (2014). Implementing a disciplinary literacy curriculum for US History: Learning from expert middle school teachers in diverse classrooms. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(4), 540-575.

Reynolds, G., & Perin, D. (2009). A comparison of text structure and self-regulated writing strategies for composing from sources by middle school students. Reading Psychology, 30(3), 265-300.

Sielaff, C., & Washburn, E. (2015). The PEA strategy: One teacher's approach to integrating writing in the social studies classroom. Social Studies, 106(4), 178-185. doi:10.1080/00377996.2015.1043616

Snow, C., Lawrence, J., & White, C. (2009). Generating knowledge of academic language among urban middle school students. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2(4), 325-344. doi:10.1080/19345740903167042121.

Storch, N. (2005). Collaborative writing: Product, process, and students' reflections. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14(3), 153-173.

Storch, N., & Wigglesworth, G. (2007). Writing tasks: The effects of collaboration. In M. Garcia Mayo (Ed.), Investigating tasks in formal language learning (pp. 157-177). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Swanson, E., Wanzek, J., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G., & Fall, A. (2015). Improving reading comprehension and social studies knowledge among middle school students with disabilities. Exceptional Children, 81(4), 426-442.

Vaughn, S., Swanson, E., Roberts, G., Wanzek, J., Stillman-Spisak, S., Solis, M., & Simmons, D. (2013). Improving reading comprehension and social studies knowledge in middle school. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(1), 77-93. doi:10.1002/rrq.039

Wanzek, J., Swanson, E., Roberts, G., Vaughn, S., & Kent, S. (2015). Promoting acceleration of comprehension and content through text in high school social studies classes. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 8(2), 169-188. doi:10.1080/19345747.2014.906011123

Wiley, J., & Voss, J. (1999). Constructing arguments from multiple sources: Tasks that promote understanding and not just memory for text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(2), 301-311. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.91.2.301

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Integrating Literacy Instruction with Science and Social Studies | Reading Rockets

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Teacher question: I wonder why you never write about curriculum integration. This year my district is all about including social studies in all of our lessons and my sister (a teacher in another state) is doing something like that with science in the upper grades. Do you have any advice for teachers like us?

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Literacy across learning: Principles and practice

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Literacy across learning: Principles and practice

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"Language and literacy are of personal, social and economic importance. Our ability to use language lies at the centre of the development and expression of our emotions, our thinking, our learning and our sense of personal identity. ...

Literacy is fundamental to all areas of learning, as it unlocks access to the wider curriculum. Being literate increases opportunities for the individual in all aspects of life, lays the foundations for lifelong learning and work, and contributes strongly to the development of all four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence.

Competence and confidence in literacy, including competence in grammar, spelling and the spoken word, are essential for progress in all areas of the curriculum. Because of this, all teachers have responsibility for promoting language and literacy development. Every teacher in each area of the curriculum needs to find opportunities to encourage young people to explain their thinking, debate their ideas and read and write at a level which will help them to develop their language skills further."

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The Five Cs of Digital Curation: Supporting Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning

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The Five Cs of Digital Curation: Supporting Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning

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Collect, categorize, critique, conceptualize, and circulate.

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Literacy AND Social Studies Across the Curriculum: Interdisciplinary Opportunites for Literacy, Social Studies and Inquiry

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Literacy AND Social Studies Across the Curriculum: Interdisciplinary Opportunites for Literacy, Social Studies and Inquiry

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Physical Education and Literacy — The Odd Couple or a Match Made in Heaven?

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Physical Education and Literacy — The Odd Couple or a Match Made in Heaven?

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"In spite of all of our best efforts and practices, there are students who lack the confidence and understanding necessary to apply the literacy skills we know they should have. In some cases, we know that a student is missing a critical fundamental component or link in the content sequence. In other cases, we know that a child has the fundamental knowledge and understanding but lacks the practice and experiences that build confidence in application and creativity. Whether you teach math, science, reading, or yes, even physical education, there is one goal that is universal — we want all of our students to use literacy skills in our content area."

"Discussions began among the 28 members of the K-12 physical education department. What would be different about physical education if it became a core subject? What if we were to develop a PE program that emphasized health-related fitness, moving and learning connections, and character development in addition to the motor skills component we are known for? Not that we shouldn’t play team sports and competitive games, but what if they were just a piece of the puzzle? What if we were to focus on developing lifelong active lifestyles? What if we were to expand the concept of physical education to include activities like brain gym, yoga and project adventure?"

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Creating a magazine gives students a chance to learn about real-world applications of math.

"When will I ever use this?" If you're a math teacher, this is a question you're very familiar with. As the math curriculum becomes ever more abstract in middle and high school, it's difficult for students to see when and where the material they're learning will be applicable.

Just telling them that the material will be useful for their following math courses or future academic career doesn't cut it-and it shouldn't. This is when the " unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics," as explored through reading and writing, is the ace up the sleeves of teachers.

Reading and writing are complex, fundamental, integrative learning skills that should be used to their potential in math class. Reading is a two-part process that is similar to mathematics in that it requires first the transfer of encoded information to the reader and then the comprehension of that information. And writing is one of the most powerful modes of learning because it engages both hemispheres of the brain -one side generates ideas, the other structures them.

Effective writing also clarifies and organizes a student's thoughts, and the slow pace of writing is conducive to student learning because it allows them to reason carefully to make sure they're correct before they state their thoughts. Studies have shown that writing is valuable specifically for the math classroom-for example, it seems that a student's ability to explain concepts in writing is related to the ability to comprehend and apply them.

And of course written explanations also allow the teacher to understand and assess the student's thinking in a way that computational steps alone may not provide.

Writing in Math Class

Although writing prompts for the elementary-and less frequently for the middle school-math classroom have been available for some time, they generally focus on attitudes and dispositions, likes and dislikes, and thoughts, concerns, and feelings about math or math class. They include journals, math autobiographies, letters to the teacher, and freewriting activities. They involve writing about a concept or a process the students are studying, or center on metacognitive skills such as effort, goals, expectations, study habits, and so on.

These prompts can be adapted for high school students, but I've found it more useful to use reading and writing to illustrate how mathematics is embedded in every aspect of life. Reading and writing are particularly effective in developing a quantitative understanding of the world around us because they can be used to lead students to reflect on everyday experiences. One assignment that I've found effective is having students create a magazine of excerpts of articles about various applications of mathematics in real life.

The magazine-I've included an issue here-is composed of summaries of published articles, so to get students started, I keep an updated list of articles that highlight the ways math is present in different facets of the real world-from the probability that a soccer team ends up in a particular World Cup group to gerrymandering, fractals in Jackson Pollock's paintings, black holes, the fairness of social media, invisibility cloaks, and more.

I select articles from a variety of newspapers, journals, and magazines, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times (especially the Upshot section), The Economist, New Scientist, Scientific American, and The Atlantic, as well as from blogs, websites, podcasts, videos, and other online resources. The app MathFeed ( downloadable for free in the Apple App Store), curated by mathematician Francis Su, is my most valued and trusted source-it allows me to find the most important news and views about math in the media in a single place.

After picking an article that has piqued their interest-from the list I provide or other sources of their choice-the students read it carefully, summarize it, and post it on the online magazine. (If they want to work with an article they have found, they have to ask me first so we don't end up with repetitions in the magazine.) They know they're required to understand the article content properly, edit their summary thoroughly, provide a visual to aid their readers' comprehension, and cite their source.

I give them access to the draft of the magazine, and they also have to upload their article and take care of any technical issues that may arise.

For assessment, I've created a simple rubric that looks at content understanding, clarity of communication, editing, critical thinking, initiative, and creativity.

This has been one of my most popular projects-students are amazed to discover some of the myriad applications of math. They also enjoy being able to choose articles according to their interests, and appreciate that the end product, the magazine, can be easily shared with family and friends and stored in their own e-portfolios.

This is a valuable activity that encourages students who enjoy reading and writing more than the computational side of math and gives all a deeper understanding and stronger appreciation of the usefulness and effectiveness of mathematics.

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Creating a magazine gives students a chance to learn about real-world applications of math.

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Curriculum & Leadership Journal | Digital literacy across the curriculum

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Technology is playing an increasing role in culture generally and particularly in the lives of young people. To negotiate this environment effectively, young people need digital literacy, which consists of the skills, knowledge and understanding that enable critical, creative, discerning and safe pr…

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Spread the loveChildren begin their education by learning how to read. As they get older, they read to learn. By the time they are in the sixth grade, the average child has a receptive vocabulary of 50,000 words. They've read millions of words in fiction, online, and in textbooks.

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6 things every educator should know about digital equity

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6 things every educator should know about digital equity

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Digital equity is easier to define than it is to solve. It's about making sure students have equal access to technology like devices, software and the internet, and that they have trained educators to help them navigate those tools.

That can be a heavy lift when you consider all the types of students on the playing field - those from low-income districts or rural communities, kids with physical or learning challenges, and girls or minority students who are not getting the same opportunities and support that would set them up for careers in tech fields.

"A lack of digital access is a lack of access to education period," said Terry Godwaldt, director of programming at The Center for Global Education in Canada.

Read these five articles to get a full picture of how digital equity affects living and learning for a broad spectrum of students.

1. No internet at home? Tap into your community to narrow the digital divide. When schools implement 1:1 computing initiatives that allow students to bring devices home, they often neglect a crucial component: internet access outside school hours. Learn how Rowan-Salisbury schools in North Carolina partnered with stakeholders in the community to narrow the digital divide.

2. Ensure equity in your BYOD classroom. BYOD programs, which allow students to bring their tech from home, are proliferating in the U.S. But not all students have laptops, tablets or smartphones with unlimited data plans. Professor and ISTE author Liz Kolb shares tips on how to connect learning with any phone.

3. Maker movement: Bridging the gap between girls and STEM. Lisa Abel-Palmieri, a former director of technology and innovation at an all-girls school in Pittsburgh, explains how maker education is allowing girls to learn and apply STEM skills to solve problems, while developing dexterity, teamwork and ideation skills.

4. 27 tools for diverse learners. Educators Luis Perez and Kendra Grant share more than two dozen Universal Design for Learning tools to make classrooms more flexible, accessible and personalized.

5. How digital equity can help close the homework gap. Authors Keith R. Krueger and Marie Bjerede share some surprising ways that edtech affects achievement and the successful approaches savvy districts are using to close the homework gap.

This is an updated version of a post that originally published on Jan. 15, 2016. April is Advocacy Month. Join the ISTE Advocacy Network to find out how you can make your voice heard for edtech!

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5 things every educator should know about digital equity

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Digital equity is easier to define than it is to solve. It's about making sure students have equal access to technology like devices, software and the internet, and that they have trained educators to help them navigate those tools.

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Digital divide persists even as Americans with lower incomes make gains in tech adoption

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Digital divide persists even as Americans with lower incomes make gains in tech adoption

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More than 30 years after the debut of the World Wide Web, internet use, broadband adoption and smartphone ownership have grown rapidly for all Americans - including those who are less well-off financially. However, the digital lives of Americans with lower and higher incomes remain markedly different, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021. In fact, the shares of Americans in each income tier who have home broadband or a smartphone have not significantly changed from 2019 to 2021.

Roughly a quarter of adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year (24%) say they don't own a smartphone. About four-in-ten adults with lower incomes do not have home broadband services (43%) or a desktop or laptop computer (41%). And a majority of Americans with lower incomes are not tablet owners. By comparison, each of these technologies is nearly ubiquitous among adults in households earning $100,000 or more a year.

Americans with higher household incomes are also more likely to have multiple devices that enable them to go online. Roughly six-in-ten adults living in households earning $100,000 or more a year (63%) report having home broadband services, a smartphone, a desktop or laptop computer and a tablet, compared with 23% of those living in lower-income households.

Pew Research Center has studied Americans' internet and technology adoption for decades. In continuing this research, the Center surveyed 1,502 U.S. adults from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, 2021, by cellphone and landline phone. The survey was conducted by interviewers under the direction of Abt Associates and is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, education and other categories. Here are the questions, responses and methodology used for this analysis.

Conversely, 13% of adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year do not have access to any of these technologies at home, while only 1% of adults from households making $100,000 or more a year report a similar lack of access.

With fewer options for online access at their disposal, Americans with lower incomes are relying more on smartphones. As of early 2021, 27% of adults living in households earning less than $30,000 a year are smartphone-only internet users - meaning they own a smartphone but do not have broadband internet at home. This represents a substantial increase from 12% in 2013. In contrast, only 6% of those living in households earning $100,000 or more fall into this category in 2021. These shares are statistically unchanged since 2019, when the Center last polled on this topic.

This reliance on smartphones also means that the less affluent are more likely to use them for tasks traditionally reserved for larger screens. For example, smartphone owners with lower incomes were especially likely to use their mobile device when seeking out and applying for jobs, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center report.

The disparity in online access is also apparent in what has been called the "homework gap" - the gap between school-age children who have access to high-speed internet at home and those who don't. In 2015, 35% of lower-income households with school-age children did not have a broadband internet connection at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

The digital divide has been a central topic in tech circles for decades, with researchers, advocates and policymakers examining this issue. However, this topic has gained special attention during the coronavirus outbreak as much of daily life (such as work and school) moved online, leaving families with lower incomes more likely to face obstacles in navigating this increasing digital environment. For example, in April 2020, 59% of parents with lower incomes who had children in schools that were remote due to the pandemic said their children would likely face at least one of three digital obstacles to their schooling, such as a lack of reliable internet at home, no computer at home, or needing to use a smartphone to complete schoolwork.
Note: Here are the questions, responses and methodology used for this analysis. This is an update of a post originally published March 22, 2017, and later updated on May 7, 2019 by Monica Anderson and Madhumitha Kumar.
Read the other posts in our digital divide series:

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Digital divide persists even as Americans with lower incomes make gains in tech adoption

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The shares of Americans in each income tier who have home broadband or a smartphone have not significantly changed from 2019 to 2021.