Welcome, once again,
to the
Natural
Inquirer
Writing Course
Session 11: Reading
and Writing Science
In the first part of this session, we will focus on reading science.
The Natural Inquirer is unique among science education resources
primarily because of its focus on reading science.
In the second part of this session, we’ll start exploring how to
write a Natural Inquirer article.
Let’s start this session by -- you guessed it -- reading! The
following essay was written by Dr. Stan Metzenberg, California
State University Northridge. There is no date on the essay, and you
will read only a part of what was written.
It has become fashionable in science education to mold K12 students around an idee fixe [obsession] of a modern
scientist; formulating hypotheses, observing, measuring,
and discovering through hands-on investigations.
What has been left unsaid is that real scientists don’t
actually spend very much of their day “observing” and
“measuring.” They read!
Reading for understanding of content is the core process
skill of science, and there is no substitute for practice at
an early age.
A student who has not developed the skill of learning
through reading has no professional future in science.
Without a foundation in scientific vocabulary and with
minimal knowledge of scientific fact, their words bear an
accent of ignorance that is impossible to conceal and
nearly impossible to remediate.
While young people should be encouraged to enter
science, they must also be given the education that will
permit them to succeed.
Hands-on investigative activities ought to be sprinkled
into a science program like a “spice;” they cannot
substitute for a “main dish.” The best “hands-on” program
would be one in which students can get their “hands-on”
an informative textbook!
Dr. Metzenberg may be undervaluing the contribution of hands-on
learning, but he certainly is not over-stating the importance of
reading science.
There is no question that hands-on investigative activities are an
important part of the science curriculum.
However, providing hands-on investigation
without the other process skills that make
up the entire scientific process gives an
unbalanced science education and robs
students of the knowledge and skills to
successfully complete an entire scientific
investigation, or to understand an
investigation completed by others.
Now, let’s continue our reading exercise with another essay on
reading science. This was written by Dr. Patricia Bowers,
Associate Director, Center for Mathematics and Science
Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Just like peanut butter and jelly, science and the
communication skills of reading and writing are natural
partners for today’s classroom. The teaching of science
concepts combined with communications skills is an
approach whose time has come.
…To meet the needs of the compacted day, it is necessary
to teach "smarter"—to teach more in the same amount of
time. One way to do this is to implement an integrated
curriculum where more than one subject is taught at the
same time.
Science and reading complement each other well because of
the similarities between reading skills and science process
skills. The meshing of the skills in both subject areas make
them natural partners for integration.
For some skills, such as identifying
main ideas and details and classifying,
different terms are used to describe the
same process. For other skills, such as
drawing conclusions, the terms and
processes are the same for both
subject areas.
In the illustration on the following slide, Dr. Bowers shows how
science, reading, and writing process skills align. For our purposes
now, we focus on science and reading process skills. However,
writing process skills can be practiced through the Natural
Inquirer’s FACTivity section.
As you examine the next slide, make notes in your notebook about
the similarities in science and reading process skills. Don’t forget to
think about how you might use writing process skills in a
FACTivity or a lesson plan! (See example below.)
From “Moving Spore-adically,” Invasive Species Edition FACTivity:
Write a story for your children about living with oak trees. If you have a favorite
oak tree, you can write about that tree. You could tell about climbing an oak tree
or building a tree house, or you could write about that one big oak tree standing
alone in the park. You may include drawings with your story.
Comparison of Science, Reading, and Writing Skills (P. Bowers)
Science
Reading
Writing
Classifying
Identifying main idea/details
Outline science information
Experimenting
Sequencing
Write up a procedure to use
Drawing conclusions
Drawing conclusions
Study experiment results and write up what
you think happened based on the facts
Writing up experiment results
Expository writing
After conducting an experiment, write up the
results
Observing/inferring
Distinguishing cause and effect
List causes and effects in a given experiment
Determining cause and effect
Determining cause and effect
List causes and effects in a given experiment
Comparing and contrasting
Comparing and contrasting
Prepare a chart that gives similarities and
differences between two similar organisms
In these initial sessions, you are building a foundation of
knowledge that will be applied later as you write your first
Natural Inquirer article.
As you go through these slides, please think reflectively and
make notes in your notebook. In particular, always think ahead
and ask yourself….
How can I apply this knowledge to
writing a Natural Inquirer article?
Preparing to write at the 7th grade level
It’s not easy being green. It’s also not easy writing at a 7th grade
level. Use the following guidelines when you are writing for middle
school students:
• Keep sentences short. Make them as short as possible. Maximum
sentence length should be between 14 and 22 words. For reference,
the average sentence length in a Reader’s Digest is 15 words.
• As many words as possible in an article should be one or two
syllables. This is a challenge when writing a scientific article! For
reference, an average Reader’s Digest contains about seven percent
hard words.
• TV Guide and Reader’s Digest, with the largest circulations in the
world, are written at a 9th grade level. USA Today is written at a 10th
grade level. You will need to write more simply than a TV Guide!
How can you figure out what writing looks like at a 7th
grade level?
• You can read a middle school textbook.
• You can read excerpts from the following authors:
1. John Grisham
2. Tom Clancy
3. Stephen King
4. Frank McCourt
5. Michael Crichton
•You can read a Natural Inquirer!
From Frank McCort, ‘Tis (1999):
When the MS Irish Oak sailed from Cork in October 1949, we expected to be
in New York City in a week. Instead, after two days at sea, we were told we
were going to Montreal in Canada. I told the first officer all I had was forty
dollars and would Irish Shipping pay my train fare from Montreal to New
York. He said, No, the company wasn’t responsible.
From Michael Crichton, Timeline (2000):
He should never have taken that shortcut.
Dan Baker winced as his new Mercedes S500 sedan bounced down the dirt
road, heading deeper into the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. Around
them, the landscape was increasingly desolate: distant red mesas to the east, flat
desert stretching away in the west. They had passed a village half an hour
earlier- dusty houses, a church and a small school, huddled against a cliff- but
since then, they'd seen nothing at all, not even a fence. Just empty red desert.
They hadn't seen another car for an hour. Now it was noon, the sun glaring
down at them.
For more examples, you can search for excerpts from
these authors and other sources on the Web. For example,
From “America’s Dumbest Criminals, Reader’s Digest:
As fantasies go, Jose Santiago, Jr., had a rather strange one. Too bad he decided
to act it out. One Sunday evening in April 2006, the 33-year-old decided his
hometown of Gurnee, Illinois, could use one more cop. Guess who? It would
help his charade that he had bought an old police car -- a 1999 Ford Crown
Victoria Police Interceptor -- and mounted red and blue lights on its dashboard.
When a driver pulled into Santiago's apartment complex, the rookie was ready
for his baptism. He blocked the guy's car with his own, then motioned him over.
A slender man with short, dark hair walked up to him, puzzled.
Although words should be kept as simple as possible, with scientific
writing this is not always possible. When you run into the inevitable
more complex word or term, each Natural Inquirer article has….
….A Glossary
•The purpose of the glossary is to provide a short definition and
pronunciation guide for new words.
•Most of these words are scientific or are related to natural
resources. Use only the definition appropriate to the article.
•Keep the glossary as short as possible. Limit is 12 words.
•Diacritical marks help students to correctly pronounce the
word.
•Diacritical marks used in the Natural Inquirer are special.
They were created because the layout artist did not have access
to proper diacritical marks.
•Therefore, the pronunciation guide must be included with the
glossary list. See a Natural Inquirer article for an example.
Glossary, continued….
•As you write, when you encounter a word that should be
defined, italicize its first occurrence in the text.
•If, at the end of your writing you find you have more than 12
glossary words, go back through your text and eliminate as
many glossary words as possible. Substitute simpler words.
•Glossary words should be those that are used more than once
in the text. In other words, do not include a glossary word just
to teach a new word. The word should be central to the
research story, and it should be so critical as to not be
substitutable.
Glossary, continued…
How do you know if a word should be included in the
glossary? This is difficult to say. You can check the Natural
Inquirer Web site glossary list to see if the word is already
there. (The glossary list can be found on the Natural Inquirer
web site.) If it is there, include it on your list. Otherwise, err
on the side of caution. If you question whether a word should
be included, either substitute a simpler word or include the
word in the glossary list. Remember, include words that
cannot be easily substituted and are central to the research
paper.
We want students to understand the article! If you question
whether a word should be included, either substitute a simpler
word or include it in the glossary.
Pronunciation Guide
a
as in ape
ä
as in car
e
as in me
Special characters, such
i
as in ice
as ä and ô, are found in
o
as in go
ô
as in for
Word under “insert”
u
as in use
then “symbol.”
ü
as in fur
oo
as in tool
ng
as in sing
Accented syllables are in bold.
Paragraphs
When a Natural Inquirer article is used in the classroom, it is
often read aloud paragraph by paragraph. Keep paragraphs short.
If possible, each paragraph should contain no more than 6
sentences.
Remember that students from grades 5-10 read the Natural
Inquirer, although our target grade is 7th. Some students will read
and comprehend at a lower level (remember too the
developmental range of adolescents).
Writing a Natural Inquirer article requires a balance between providing
challenging reading for all students. Help less skilled readers by giving
simple definitions in the glossary. More skilled readers can skip reading the
glossary, if they already know the word.
You can check and adjust the reading level of your text by using
the Lexile Framework for Reading:
The Lexile Framework for Reading is a scientific approach to reading
measurement that matches readers to text. The Lexile Framework measures
both reader ability and text difficulty on the same scale, called the Lexile
scale. This approach allows educators to manage reading comprehension and
encourage reader progress using Lexile measures and a broad range of
Lexile products, tools and services. (From the Website, http://www.lexile.com)
To access the Lexile text analyzer, visit:
http://www.lexile.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?view=ed&tabindex=2&tabid=16&tabpageid=335
Remember, keep your writing short and simple.
Good luck!
Method
The scientist used eggs that came from
Eastern Europe (figure 3). She incubated
the eggs (figure 4), which caused them
to hatch into larvae (figure 5). She
divided the larvae into two groups. The
scientist observed the first group of
larvae for the first 14 days of their
development. She observed the second
group of larvae through their
development into pupae.
Figure 4. Nun moth eggs being incubated in
a mesh packet. You can see the mesh packet
and eggs inside the petri dish.
From “And Then There Were Nun,” from the Invasive Species Edition. Note the short
sentences and glossary words italicized.
Congratulations! You have completed Session 11 of the
Natural Inquirer Writing Course!