We talked about a very important aspect of teaching science today... literacy and science! Literacy development is not just an ELA outcome. Literacy skills are critical for all subject areas. (Literacy skills are also mandated by the 21st Century Learning Competencies by AB Education.) Last class, our instructor challenged us to find an article that would compliment our grade level and topic. Why an article? An article of student interest would be a perfect way to encourage students to further read about a current class topic. We are currently building a unit plan for grade 6 science - Trees & Forests. I wanted to investigate this further..., so I took a trip over to the Dawe Public Library in Red Deer. I chose this library because they have a vast amount of children's literary resources. Some of the magazines that they carry are: National Geographic Kids, Owl, Wild, and Kayak: Canada's History Magazine for Kids. All of these magazines are within the reading level of grade 6. In Wild (Feb/March 2017), the magazine had a great article on the at risk species of the Western Chorus Frog. This frog species is only found in parts of Ontario and Quebec. In the past 10 years, this frog population has dropped 30 - 37%. Populations have dropped because "habitats have been drained, or they have been replaced with new housing developments" (Wild, 2017). This frog has a very unique sound and it is a critical part of the marsh food web. Literary skills are very important, but how could I assess this activity? One assessment strategy could be creating comprehensive questions from the article. For example, students could create the questions and submit their questions with the article for other classmates to answer. For the Western Chorus Frog article, we could look at the following questions;
6-10 Describe characteristics of trees and the interaction of trees with other living things in the local environment. 1. Identify reasons why trees and forests are valued. Students meeting this expectation should be aware that forests serve as habitat for a variety of living things are are important to human needs for recreation, for raw materials and for life-supporting environment. Below, check out this frog! Citation: Wild. (2017, February/March). Western Chorus Frog, Volume 20, Number 6, pp. 20. Kanata, Ontario.
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Lorie PennerA scientist can be anyone, as long as you as you are curious enough to want to know why! Archives
December 2017
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