Zhihui Fang

The Language Demands of Science Reading in Middle School

The language used to construct knowledge, beliefs, and worldviews in school science is distinct from the social language that students use in their everyday ordinary life. This difference is a major source of reading difficulty for many students, especially struggling readers and English‐language learners. This article identifies some of the linguistic challenges involved in reading middle‐school science texts and suggests several teaching strategies to help students cope with these challenges. It is argued that explicit attention to the unique language of school science should be an integral part of science literacy pedagogy.

Going Beyond the Fab Five: Helping Students Cope With the Unique Linguistic Challenges of Expository Reading in Intermediate Grades

As students transition from primary to intermediate grades, the kind of materials that they are expected to read and write become more heavily dominated by expository texts. Expository texts contain grammatical patterns that are distinct from those used in primary-grade storybooks. These linguistic features pose new comprehension challenges for students. This article identifies some of the special linguistic features of expository texts and describes several classroom-based strategies for helping students develop insights on the language through which expository texts are constructed. It argues that reading instruction for intermediate grades needs to go beyond the “Fab Five” (i.e., phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension strategies) endorsed by the National Reading Panel in the United States to include tasks that specifically address the unique linguistic challenges of expository reading.

Improving Middle School Students’ Science Literacy Through Reading Infusion

ABSTRACT Despite recent calls for border crossing between reading and science, few studies have examined the impact of reading infusion in the science curriculum on students’ science literacy. In this quasi-experimental study, the authors investigated the effects of an inquiry-based science curriculum that integrated explicit reading strategy instruction and quality science trade books on the development of science literacy among middle school students. Students in 10 sixth-grade science classes from 1 public middle school in the United States were randomly assigned to 2 conditions: inquiry-based science only (IS) and inquiry-based science plus reading (ISR). Results from the analyses of covariance showed that the ISR students significantly outperformed their IS peers on all measures of science literacy. It was suggested that even a modest amount of reading infusion could have a positive impact on middle school students’ science literacy. The limitations and implications of the study were also discussed.

Disciplinary Literacy : What You Want to Know About It

The recent call for a disciplinary perspective on literacy instruction in the content areas has generated considerable interest among literacy educators. This column addresses some of the questions that have been raised about disciplinary literacy. These questions concern the definition and assessment of disciplinary literacy, as well as the timing, teacher capacity, evidence base, and target audience for disciplinary literacy instruction.

Language Correlates of Disciplinary Literacy.

Disciplinary literacy is defined here as the ability to engage in social, semiotic, and cognitive practices consistent with those of content experts. Characterizing literacy development as a process of braiding 3 language strands of everyday language, abstract language, and metaphoric language, this article describes the lexical and grammatical patterns typical of disciplinary texts in the subjects of language arts, science, mathematics, and history, showing how language is used in discipline-specific ways to present knowledge, construe value, and create specialized texts. It argues that literacy instruction in academic disciplines should move beyond the time-honored focus on basic skills (e.g., vocabulary, fluency), general cognitive strategies (e.g., predicting, inferencing), and generic learning strategies (e.g., highlighting, note taking) to embrace an emphasis on discipline-specific practices that promote simultaneous engagement with disciplinary language and disciplinary content.

Integrating Reading into Middle School Science: What we did, found and learned

Recent calls for border crossing between reading and science have heightened the need to support science teachers in integrating reading into science and to verify the robustness of this approach in the context of inquiry‐based science. In this paper, we share what we did, found, and learned in a collaborative project in which a team of university‐based reading educators and school‐based science teachers worked together to infuse reading strategy instruction and quality science trade books into inquiry‐based sixth‐grade science classrooms. We suggest that infusing reading into middle school science enhances science teaching and learning, but is a complex, multifaceted undertaking.

Approaches to Developing Content Area Literacies: A Synthesis and a Critique

This column synthesizes and critiques three dominant approaches to developing content area literacies.

Teaching With Challenging Texts in the Disciplines

The Common Core State Standards highlight the need to read–independently, closely, and proficiently–increasingly complex texts. However, they do not specify how such reading is to be done. This column provides a brief critique of text complexity and close reading and offers some concrete ideas for operationalizing these two concepts in secondary subject area classrooms.

Learning to Teach Against the Institutional Grain: A Professional Development Model for Teacher Empowerment

During the past decade, federal and state governments have become increasingly involved in legislating what to teach and how to teach in American public schools. Nowhere is the government intrusion more evident than in early literacy instruction. With recent education legislations spotlighting accountability, teachers are under immense pressure to use prepackaged commercial programs and to teach to high stakes tests. At peril in this educational climate is teacher autonomy. This paper describes a longitudinal professional development project in Florida schools that supported literacy teachers to make pedagogical transitions from total reliance on prepackaged commercial programs to independence in making informed decisions about curriculum and pedagogy. It is suggested that developing teachers’ content knowledge, professional wisdom, and psychological strengths is key to their professional empowerment.

Developing written discourse knowledge in whole language and code emphasis classrooms

BACKGROUND Although there have been a plethora of studies comparing the effects of whole language vs. code emphasis instruction on childrens literacy development, few have examined what children actually learn about features of written discourse in the two instructional settings. AIM The purpose of this study was to compare the development of written discourse knowledge among young children in whole language and code emphasis classrooms. SAMPLES Participants were 64 first grade children, 29 boys and 35 girls, in four intact classrooms from a mid-western school district of the United States. About half of them (N = 34) received whole language instruction and the other half (N = 30) code emphasis instruction. METHODS Each child was individually asked to compose a book-like story about a personally relevant experience for others to read at the beginning and end of the school year. The texts were analysed linguistically and statistically in terms of three fundamental features of written discourse--autonomy, conventionality, and specialised grammar. RESULTS The children developed more knowledge about the autonomy and conventionality features of written discourse, but their understanding of its specialised grammar remained inchoate. Further, the whole language and code emphasis groups did not demonstrate statistically significant differences in their working knowledge of written discourse. CONCLUSIONS The nature of instructional programme (whole language vs. code emphasis) appears to have little impact on childrens developing understanding of written discourse.