Review of

Content Area Literacy: Individualizing Student Instruction in Second-Grade Science

Christopher Bolster





Instructor Dr. Mark Esch
RDG 507 Content Area Literacy
Assignment: Journal Article Review
9/21/14
Christopher Bolster
RDG507 Content Area Literacy
Instructor Dr. Mark Esch
9/21/14
Review of Content Area Literacy: Individualizing Student Instruction in
Second-Grade Science
Citation: Connor, C., Kaya, S., Luck, M., Toste, J., Canto, A., Rice, D., ... Underwood, P. (n.d.).
Content Area Literacy: Individualizing Student Instruction In Second-Grade Science. The Reading
Teacher, 474-485. Retrieved September 22, 2014, from
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/stable/pdfplus/25615837.pdf?acceptTC=true
Review
The article started out with the recounting of a lesson on earthworms. It followed the
events of the second day of the unit, the explain day, but students had previously read a book
with their teachers. Different groups of students required differing levels of scaffolding to
understand the reading and the day is then spent reviewing/explaining the reading and the
observations made the day previous. A variety of techniques, like modeling and informal
assessments, are used. This leads into the main thrust of the article which is concerning the
effectiveness of incorporating general literacy into science content in a grade school level.
With two-thirds of kids failing to read at level by the 4
th
grade, and those in poverty
even lower, literacy is a large concern. The traditional idea that once students can decode text
that comprehension naturally follows, known as inoculation, has failed according to the article.
Some research has suggested that teaching literacy in content instead of only in an English class
can help improve that. This seemed to be a good fit for the new inquiry based learning methods
that science content was adopting, but research has shown that students who have low
vocabulary and background knowledge have very little of the gains show by their peers when
exposed to inquiry based learning. This suggested that there is a minimum threshold of
language skills needed before inquiry based learning would offer its benefits.
The Individualizing Student Instruction Science (ISI-Science) curriculum was thus
developed in Florida to address that. Students were broken up into three levels of groups based
on reading ability, and received content on the same topics but the worksheets would be
differentiated based on their relative abilities. This gave teachers clear spots to focus their
attention in delivering extra attention and scaffolding, with the goal of getting the lower orange
group to achieve independent reading as well. Techniques like think-pair-share, brainstorming,
and expository text training were delivered to all groups. At the end of the six week unit the
students were tested with a comprehensive exam, which was then compared to a pre-test that
the students had taken before instruction began. The results showed that the students in the
lowest reading levels showed gains within close range of the students with the highest starting
scores and reading ability.
Response
I find the article to be promising in its initial assertions. I have seen the inquiry model for
science teaching in action, and it does seem to gain engagement from students. The problem
with low language skill students not being able to get involved in that inquiry seems possible
too. At the seventh grade level where I am teaching currently, there are a lot of background
knowledge abilities I would have assumed students to have before I entered the field that I
know now must be reviewed. If we launched straight into inquiry, they wouldnt have the base
abilities to even begin formulating questions, much less answers.
That they were able to get gains for low skilled students similar to those of the
highest skilled ones is impressive. Their study, however, only covered one unit and it sounded
like the teachers had support during it. I would like to see a variety of units taught and the
teachers be kept from interacting with the researchers till it is over. Also the practicality of
building three different levels of curriculum seems questionable against the conditions I am
seeing in the field.
The school I am at seems to do something similar, but perhaps not as defined. Already
one teacher has all of his sections as Honors students. We have a mix of normal students with
a few IEP and ELL students, while the other seventh grade science teacher reports a large
number of IEP and ELL students in his own. In the test classrooms they broke kids up into three
groups then had to teach them differently within each class, I could see this being scaled so that
each group would go to a separate classroom altogether with those of similar ability.
The amount of preparation it took to sort them though isnt something that I currently
have access to. A thorough assessment of reading levels every grade, and then that information
being made available to the teacher, could be helpful if allowed to do this kind of sorting.
Currently I only really get that kind of detail if the student has an IEP for me to review.
The researchers admit that much more research needs to be done, and that their testing
didnt compare the efficacy of their principles to other strategies; just that low skilled students
didnt fail to make gains. They mention in closing that theyve been testing a new properties of
matter unit and are seeing similar parity of gains between low and high skilled students, so the
first study is looking to not be a fluke. These were all grade level classes though, research would
need to be continued to the secondary level to see if it holds true there as well. Perhaps
language skills are developed enough by then that it wouldnt make as much of a difference.