Reading in Amplify Science
Amplify Science provides students with well-written, grade-level appropriate informational texts alongside explicit, embedded instruction on reading in science. Throughout the program, students are apprenticed into reading like scientists – that is, reading actively, curiously, and critically, with a focus on making meaning and using the text as a source of evidence. As students read science texts in conjunction with other multimodal experiences around a topic (doing, talking, visualizing, writing), they increase their skill in accessing these complex texts, as well as their understanding of the importance of text for finding information. Reading informational text is inexorably linked to students’ investigations in each unit. Firsthand investigations provide background knowledge and context for students’ reading, and, in turn, the text provides information, evidence, and support for investigations in progress. In addition, the program includes many books and articles that introduce diverse scientists currently working in the field to highlight science and engineering as a vibrant and viable career choice for students.
Reading in Amplify Science is approached from an inquiry stance – students ask questions, make connections, evaluate information, search for evidence, and clarify difficult concepts as they read. This approach focuses on the practices and processes by which experts in a field obtain, evaluate, and communicate information, including arguments, explanations, data, and visual representations used to explain scientific concepts. Across the program, the teacher models, and students practice, reading like scientists while using reading strategies and approaches that are appropriate to the task, purpose, and grade level. Along with explicit instruction, teachers model strategic reading by thinking aloud as they read, asking questions, and linking the information in the text to their class’s investigations. Students are then provided with multiple opportunities to read and discuss ideas with peers, using the text as a resource for information and evidence. Reading and discussing texts in these ways builds students’ capacity to read strategically while simultaneously building their understanding of science content. The scaffolded reading experiences at each grade level help students learn to approach complex texts in systematic ways and will aid them as they read other science texts throughout their school careers.
Text design and accessibility
Each Amplify Science unit includes custom-written informational texts. In grades 6–8, there are multiple student articles per unit. These informational texts are designed to support students’ understanding of science ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts, as well as to showcase the work of diverse scientists. An important goal of the Amplify Science program is to provide appropriately complex science texts for students that support, link to, and expand their firsthand science learning. To accomplish this goal, it is critical that the texts are accessible to as many students as possible. All student articles and other student materials are therefore reviewed for accessibility and readability using the three-dimensional model of text complexity (qualitative, quantitative, and reader-and-task considerations) set out by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA).
The qualitative dimension of text complexity focuses on the purpose, structure, language conventions, and knowledge demands of a text. Articles were written, reviewed, and edited by members of the Lawrence Hall of Science team of professional educators and science writers during the development of each unit. They are tailored to address concepts students are learning in the unit, and use the same language and vocabulary throughout so students encounter consistent terminology across modalities of learning (reading, writing, doing investigations, discussing).
The texts also include carefully created or selected visual representations such as diagrams, photographs, and illustrations that support and/or provide additional information. The placement of each book or article within the instructional sequence was carefully designed and classroom-tested so that the text is supportive of student content learning in a variety of ways, and provides just-in-time information that reinforces key ideas or introduces new ones within the unit.
On the quantitative dimension, each article was designed and reviewed using internally developed criteria for each grade. Each article was analyzed against a list of commonly used words as well as criteria for calculating the difficulty of decodable words. The number of unique hard words in each text was controlled, with the percentage of hard words varying based on the grade level. At the same time, a small set of core science vocabulary words related to the science ideas students are learning was repeatedly used across a set of books or articles because repeated encounters with words in context is one way that students learn and internalize them. In addition to our internal approach to readability, each article was analyzed by MetaMetrics and assigned a Lexile Measure. This allowed us to ensure that articles fall within recommended Lexile Measures found in the updated Text Complexity Band in Supplemental Information for Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy: New Research on Text Complexity.
Reader and task considerations are related to whether a particular text is appropriate for particular students and particular tasks. The placement of articles within the Amplify Science program of instruction was carefully considered as part of unit design. Articles were strategically placed within the sequence of instruction to ensure they are appropriately tied to what students are learning, and that students are adequately prepared to read them with appropriate support. Sometimes this means that students read a text before conducting a firsthand investigation because it serves the purpose of activating and enhancing students’ background knowledge about a topic and sparking an interest in a scientific idea. At other times, students read a book after they have had a chance to investigate and develop ideas about the phenomenon firsthand because reading will help them generate more evidence to support claims. We cannot know all the individual learning needs of every reader our program reaches; however, the design and placement of the articles was also informed by survey data from field trial teachers. These teachers were asked to evaluate field trial versions of the articles and accompanying lessons based on several criteria, and to comment on how well the instruction and respective text worked for different readers.
Reading in grades 6–8
Instructional approach
In middle school, students use a variety of strategies to make sense of increasingly complex science texts — an approach dubbed Active Reading. Active Reading is a student-centered process of thoughtful, reflective reading where students work to unpack meaning as they read. Students deepen their understanding of a text by leveraging their background knowledge and working to uncover places where they do not understand the text, and to ask and answer their own questions through careful rereading, discussion with peers, and making connections to what they are investigating. In this way, Active Reading situates students at the center of science reading instruction. In order to personalize and focus students’ engagement with the text, the Active Reading approach supports students in making annotations as they read. Student annotations can include questions about the content, ideas, or words that need clarification; comments about things in the text that are surprising, confusing, interesting, or that need further investigation; and connections to the outside world, and to other disciplines and ideas. Active reading includes guided peer discussions that prompt students to cite evidence from the text in discussions and subsequent activities, to reread the text for specific purposes, and to closely analyze the images and data in the text in order to build understanding. Each article becomes a resource to which students can return and refer as they continue to investigate ideas and try to solve the unit’s central problem. In inviting students to work together to understand a challenging text, Active Reading takes advantage of the social nature of the middle school learner.
Active Reading components
In Active Reading, students are encouraged to begin by annotating the text, taking notes, and recording questions as they read. After they read, students discuss their questions and notes with partners, and both students dig back into the text to help each other answer questions or gain more insight into an interesting point. The teacher later uses these student-generated ideas and questions to inform further class discussions of the text, helping the class grapple with important ideas in the text and come to a greater understanding.
Active reading is introduced in the launch unit and built upon and scaffolded in all subsequent units. The approach typically takes up one and a half periods of instruction for a feature article, and a portion of a session for reference materials (10–30 minutes, depending on the length of the article). A crucial step in Active Reading is teacher modeling. The teacher reads part of the text aloud and thinks aloud as they do so, drawing from the skills and knowledge they bring to the text as a science teacher. The Instructional Guide of each Active Reading lesson provides explicit support for teachers to include this type of metacognitive modeling in their classrooms. After articles are introduced through modeling, students read each article twice and create their own annotations.
The two reads of each article serve different but equally important purposes. Students’ first read is individual and allows students to become familiar with the content of the text and the way in which it is presented. This read prioritizes students’ engagement with the text and is meant as a strategic opportunity to become familiar with the article, surface questions, and make connections. The second read has a particular purpose, such as to examine a specific visual representation, answer a question, find evidence to support a claim, or draw conclusions across texts. The reread is thus more focused, and includes a close reading of a particularly complex section of the text and/or visual representation. After both the first and the second reading, students are given the chance to discuss the text with peers. Students always annotate during the first read, and may also annotate during the second read.
In addition to the teacher modeling that beings the Active Reading instruction, students’ own annotated texts also serve as excellent models of ways to think about and interact with text. Middle school students are particularly interested when their own work, or the work of their peers, is shown and discussed with the class. Examining past student work before students embark on reading a new article can motivate other students, presenting possible ways for them to engage with the text that they may not have considered on their own. Teachers are encouraged to review students’ annotations after the first reading and then choose some annotations to highlight in class on the day of the second reading. Amplify Science provides a custom feedback tool – the annotation tracker – for teachers to use to easily and quickly compile student annotations. Student annotations also provide a set of authentic formative assessment data that the teacher can respond to quickly in class, targeting misconceptions and offering support to all students. In addition, by pulling out students’ examples of thoughtful questions and thinking, strong reading strategies are modeled and peer work is highlighted in a positive way.
Students should be encouraged to think carefully about and annotate ALL texts or visual representations that they encounter in a unit, and should have as many opportunities as possible to reread and return to reference articles.
Text design for accessibility
As with the titles in the elementary grades, the middle school articles are written to reflect reading expectations for the students, and to provide appropriately complex science texts that support, link to, and expand their firsthand science learning. The science and literacy instruction surrounding the texts scaffolds students’ access through careful attention to reader and task considerations of complexity. All students read the same core texts and the level of scaffolding for students is adjusted to meet their needs. Suggestions for these modifications are provided in the Differentiation Brief that accompanies each lesson (for more information see the “Access and Equity” section). It is also worth noting that because of the multimodal instruction within each unit, many teachers using the program are pleasantly surprised that students are able to tackle books that they had thought might be too difficult at first glance. When students read while also having other multimodal experiences around a topic, more students are able to access science texts and see their utility in finding information. In addition, due to Amplify Science’s multimodal approach to vocabulary learning, the difficult science vocabulary found in the books is generally familiar to students by the time they are reading about the ideas.