Running Head: SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR SUCCESS IN GRADE NINE BIOLOGY
Skills and Knowledge Needed for Success in Grade Nine Biology
Anna Rhodes
Merrimack College
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SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR SUCCESS IN GRADE NINE BIOLOGY
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Abstract
The science taught to most grade 9 students in Massachusetts is biology, and in that course they
will cover topics such as structures and processes of life, ecosystems, heredity, and biological
evolution with an overarching focus on developing an understanding of scientific reasoning.
This will require the development of more advanced literacy skills, including the ability to
understand and parse scientific syntax, understand the structure and purpose of different forms of
scientific writing, understand how to read and extract data from non-verbal forms of writing such
as graphs and tables, to assess the credibility of scientific writings, and acquire a working
understanding of about 500 new vocabulary words. In addition, students will need to learn to
demonstrate understanding of biological systems and functions, present evidence-based
arguments for discussion, to integrate new information, and to construct revised explanations
based on new evidence.
Keywords: literacy, vocabulary, syntax, biology, science, writing, reading,
understanding, evidence, teaching, skills
SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR SUCCESS IN GRADE NINE BIOLOGY
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Skills and Knowledge Needed for Success in Grade Nine Biology
While Massachusetts grade 8 science covers modules on Earth and Space Science, Life
Science, Physical Science, and Technology/Engineering, it has an overall focus on Cause and
Effect, that is, developing abstract thinking skills to explain causes of complex phenomena, to
identify and explain patterns, and to make predictions about future events (MA DESE, 2016,
p.60). Similarly, while the topic of study for most grade 9 students is biology, a course that will
cover the structures and processes of life systems from molecules to organisms, ecosystems and
how energy and matter move between organisms and their environment, heredity and the
inheritance and variation of traits, and biological evolution, guiding both unity and diversity in
populations, there is also an overarching focus, which is the development of the skills needed to
being able to apply scientific reasoning to evaluate complex real-world problems: questioning,
making hypotheses, gathering and analyzing information, formulating answers, communicating
information, engaging in argumentation from evidence, and constructing revised explanations
based on valid and reliable evidence (MA DESE, 2016, p.72).
This focus presents a very real challenge to teachers who must teach, in addition to the content
knowledge of the course, a mode of thinking that challenges students to be active in their
acquisition of knowledge rather than passive. They must train their students to question and
search for answers, teach them the process of looking for information through scientific research
or library research, help them understand and analyze what they find either way, model and
encourage them to communicate and discuss their findings, staying open to the possibility of new
information, and eventually to integrate what they have come to understand into an explanation
of a biological system, mechanism, or function. This is not a small task.
SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR SUCCESS IN GRADE NINE BIOLOGY
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Additionally, while this focus requires continued development of skills the grade 9 students
should have already begun to learn in previous grades, such as developing models to describe
systems, and analyzing and interpreting data to identify patterns and make hypotheses (MA
DESE, 2016, pp.60-64), it also challenges them to learn new skills, such as finding and reading
to understand multiple forms of scientific literature, understanding how to evaluate the
credibility of a piece of scientific writing, and incorporating perhaps 500 new scientific and
technical terms into their vocabulary.
So, in addition to teaching scientific reasoning, grade 9 biology teachers will have to focus on
introducing the structure of different forms of scientific writing; how to extract information from
non-verbal forms of scientific writing, such as graphs or tables in a scientific research paper; how
to parse scientific syntax, which often includes unfamiliar grammatical forms such as the
nominal apposition, embedded clauses, and the use of the passive tense; how to tackle unknown
scientific words and phrases, which often have unfamiliar Latin and Greek roots; and the criteria
we use to evaluate how much trust we put in scientific writing, such as looking for sources of
bias, peer-review, reproducibility, etc. (Lee & Sprately, 2010, pp.3-5; Heller & Greenleaf, p. 7)
Finally, students will need to be able to read a text to achieve a functional understanding. In
other words, they will need to be able to locate texts and prepare themselves to read the texts by
looking for clues that will activate their previous knowledge (title, section headers, figures, etc.)
and develop questions in their minds, and even help them make predictions about what they will
find in the text. While reading, they must be able to understand most, if not all, of the words,
and know what to do if they don’t. They should be able to understand how the piece of writing
is organized and where to find the most important pieces of information. They should be able to
look for evidence of bias or other factors that might diminish credibility. They should be able to
SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE NEEDED FOR SUCCESS IN GRADE NINE BIOLOGY
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read with the understanding needed to confirm or alter their predictions and recognize if they
aren’t understanding and know what to do and how to get help. When finished reading, they
should be able to retell the information to a classmate and discuss what they learned and even
apply it to a real-world problem (Daniels & Zemelman, 2014, pp. 36-37).
If a student can master the ability to read scientific writing with sophisticated understanding and
analysis, the world of science will be opened to him or her. If the goal of teaching science is “to
introduce students to the ways in which experts in the core academic disciplines look at the
world, investigate it, and communicate to one another about what they see and learn” (Heller &
Greenleaf, p. 6), then there is no better way to do this than by opening him or her to the world of
scientific literature.
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REFERENCES
Daniels, H., & Zemelman, S. (2014). Subjects Matter: Exceeding Standards Through Powerful
Content-Area Reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Heller, R., and Greenleaf, C. (2007) Literacy instruction in the content areas: Getting to the core
of middle and high school improvement. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.
Lee, C.D., and Spratley, A. (2010) Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent
literacy New York: NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. (2016). Massachusetts
Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework. Malden, MA. Retrieved
from www.doe.mass.edu