Title: Essential questions
1Essential questions
- What literary devices are used to create meaning
within science? - How do we teach students to master these devices
so that they become agents of social change?
2Essential VisionWe seek to create access to
the evolving language of work power and
community and to help students design their
social futures and achieve success through
fulfilling employment.
- -The New London Group, 1996
3Critical Literacy and Printed Texts A
Win-Win Situation
4Literacy Demands for Science Texts
- Genre
- Multiliteracies
- Nominalization
- Tenor
- Use of adjectives and adverbs
- Mode
- Passive Voice
- Gaps and silences
5Important Definitions
- Genre Use of a language associated with and
constituting part of some particular social
practice. (Fairclough, 1995) - Grammatical Metaphor The substitution of one
grammatical class, or one grammatical structure
by another. (Unsworth, 1996) - Nominalization Using a phrase to compact a great
deal of information. (The New London Group, 1996) - Critical Literacy Teaching and learning how
texts work, understanding and re-mediating what
texts attempt to do in the world and to people,
and moving students toward active
position-takings with texts to critique and
reconstruct the social fields in which they live
and work. (Luke, 2000) - Metalanguage A language for talking about
language, images, texts, and meaning-making
interactions. (The New London Group, 1996) - Social Semiotics The systematic study of the
systems of signs themselves and the study of how
people use signs to construct the life of a
community. (Lemke, 1990)
6Genres
Not in Presentation
Procedural
Discussion
7- Helping Students Access Science Textbooks
- Challenge Students find science textbooks
challenging to read. - Solution Deconstruct the texts to facilitate
content learning and writing.
8Elementary School Text Example
- What is a habitat?
- Tomatoes are growing in the garden. What other
living things do you see? - A habitat is a place where plants and animals
live. A habitat has everything a plant or animal
needs. - This garden is a habitat referring to picture on
page for many living things. There is food,
water, and air for the animals. There is
sunlight, water, and air for the plants. - What animals live in this garden? What do they
eat? Where do they find water?
Genre Explanation
9Middle School Text Example
- Habitats
- All plants and animals live in a habitat. For
example, a whales habitat is an ocean. Habitats
provide food, water, and shelter that animals
need for survival. The ocean provides for all of
the needs of a whale. Look at the woodland
habitat in the picture. How do you think this
habitat meets the needs of the plants and animals
that live there? - Red squirrels depend on trees for nuts, seeds,
and buds. Using twigs and leaves, squirrels build
nests high up in trees where their young will be
safe. - Foxes make homes underground. During the day,
they come out to search for food. - Hummingbirds build tiny nests held together with
spiderwebs! They gather nectar from flowers and
also eat insects and spiders. - Grass and soil are home to many tiny animals,
such as grasshoppers, spiders, and earthworms.
Grasshoppers eat grasses, and earthworms eat dead
plants and animals.
Genre Explanation
10High School Text Example
The biosphere is the total of all of Earths
ecosystems The biosphere is the global ecosystem
that portion of Earth that is alive, or all of
life and where it lives. The most complex level
in ecology, the biosphere includes the atmosphere
to an altitude of several kilometers, the land
down to water-bearing rocks about 1500 meters
deep, lakes and streams, caves, and the oceans to
a depth of several kilometers. Isolated in space,
the biosphere is self-contained, or closed,
except that its photosynthesizers derive energy
from sunlight, and it loses heat to
space. Another feature of the biosphere is its
patchiness, and we can see this on several
levels. On a global scale, we see it in the
distribution of continents and oceans. On a
regional scale, patchiness occurs in the
distribution of deserts, grasslands, forests,
lakes, and streams, for example. The aerial view
of a wilderness area in Figure B shows patchiness
on a local scale. Here we see a mixture of
forest, small lakes, a meandering river, and open
meadows. If we moved even closer, into anyone of
these different environments, we would find
patchiness on yet a smaller scale. For example,
we would find that each lake has several
different habitats (places where organisms live),
each with a characteristic community of
organisms. Abiotic factors, especially water
depth, temperature, and dissolved O2, largely
determine the kinds of organisms that live in the
different lake habitats. Standing in a
wilderness can be misleading the lakes and
streams appear untouched, and the forest seems
almost boundless. Views from space are more
sobering, for they show planet Earth as only a
small sphere in the vastness of the universe.
Unfortunately, we humans tend to treat the
biosphere as an unlimited resource for our own
consumption. Note Nominalized words are in bold.
Genre Explanation
11Comparing the texts Grammar
- Paragraph Length
- Elementary School No paragraphs. Sentences.
- Middle School Shorter paragraphs.
- High School Longer Paragraphs.
- Use of Nominalization
- Elementary School None
- Middle School None
- High School 11 times
12(No Transcript)
13Proportion of Page comprised of Images versus
Words
High Image
High Image. Low Word
High Image. Moderate Word
Low Image
High Word
Low Word
14Proportion of Page comprised of Images versus
Words
High Image
High Image. Low Word
High Image. Moderate Word
Elementary School
Middle School
High School
Low Image
High Word
Low Word
15- From elementary to high school
- Increase in nominalization
- Increase in paragraph length
16- From elementary to high school
- Increase in communication via printed words
- Decrease in communication via images
17Putting it into practice
18Assessment Tool
- Create text for elementary school science
textbook - Based on a section in high school textbook.
- Design section for elementary text book.
- Examples Plant Physiology, Classification,
Ecology
19Critical Literacy
- Understanding the register of the text
- Field
- Things and events and the relationships between
them - Who participates, how are they talked about?
- Tenor
- Social relationships between reader and writer
- What person is the text written in, what type of
adjectives, modal verbs, adverbs used? - Mode
- The way language influences the text
- How is theme utilized, what voice is used and
when? - Understanding reader positioning
- Gaps and Silences
- Understanding the social purpose of the text
20Global warming risks not taken seriously(an
example of tenor from a newspaper)
- The United States government and the public are
not taking the risk of global warming seriously. - Americans continue to drive fuel-guzzling SUVs.
- There is going to be large change
- Climate change is already under way.
- Bush pulled out in 2001, arguing Kyoto was too
expensive and unfairly excluded developing
nations. - The United States is the worlds biggest
polluter - Ice sheets are highly vulnerable to global
warming - In the next 100 years, unless immediate action is
taken - http//www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/16/10872449
83232.html?oneclicktrue - June 17, 2004 Sydney Morning Herald
-
-
Genre Exposition
Bold and underlined words are adjectives/adverbs
21Real Facts About Global Warming (an example of
mode from a website)
- Global warming has been particularly strong over
the past 20 years. - Temperatures are predicted to rise another 2.5 to
10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the
century. - North Pole arctic sea ice has shrunk almost 40
percent in recent decades, attributable in part
to global warming. - If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, sea
levels could rise by another 16 to 30 feet,
flooding coastal regions in places like Florida
and Lousiana. - Droughts could become more frequent, putting
central and western agricultural areas in the
United States at risk. - El Nino events, which can lead to significant
damage, could become more frequent and severe. - Tropical diseases could expand their range into
areas further north, including the southern
United States - http//www.dayaftertomorrowfacts.org/explore/index
.html
Genre Exposition, Explanation
Bold and underlined words are in passive voice
22Global Warming (an example of gaps/silences from
a textbook)
- Since the Industrial Revolution, the
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been
increasing as a result of the combustion of
fossil fuels and burning of enormous quantities
of wood removed by deforestation. - If CO2 emissions continue to increase at the
present rate, by the year 2075, the atmospheric
concentration of this gas will be double what it
was a the start of the Industrial Revolution. - While scientists debate how increasing levels of
atmospheric CO2 will affect global temperatures,
there is mounting evidence that a doubling of CO2
concentration, which could occur by the end of
the next century, might produce an average
temperature increase of 3-4 C.
Genre Explanation
Bold and underlined words are nominalized
23Questions to ask when reading a text
- Who is the audience?
- Whose point of view is being represented?
- Whose ideas are missing from the text?
- Whose interests are served by this
representation? - What is the social purpose?
- How does the text try to position you in relation
to its message?
24Juxtaposing texts exposes
- Genres with different social purposes
- Gaps and silences
- Reader positioning
25Juxtaposing with a text set
- EPA website on global warming
- Professor William M. Grays article on global
warming
26U.S. EPA on Global Warming
- Our Changing Atmosphere
- Since the beginning of the industrial revolution,
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have
increased nearly 30, methane concentrations have
more than doubled, and nitrous oxide
concentrations have risen by about 15. These
increases have enhanced the heat-trapping
capability of the earth's atmosphere. - Scientists generally believe that the combustion
of fossil fuels and other human activities are
the primary reason for the increased
concentration of carbon dioxide. - http//yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont
ent/climate.html - What's Known for Certain?
- Scientists know for certain that human activities
are changing the composition of Earth's
atmosphere. - It's well accepted by scientists that greenhouse
gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and
tend to warm the planet. By increasing the levels
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, human
activities are strengthening Earth's natural
greenhouse effect. - http//yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont
ent/climateuncertainties.html
Genre Explanation, Descriptive and Taxanomic
Report
27Dr. William M Gray on Global Warming
- This small warming is likely a result of the
natural alterations in global ocean currents
which are driven by ocean salinity variations.
Ocean circulation variations are as yet little
understood. - Human kind has little or nothing to do with the
recent temperature changes. We are not that
influential. - It is not the human-induced greenhouse gases
themselves which cause significant warming but
the assumed extra water vapour and cloudiness
that some scientists hypothesise. - It has been extended and grossly exaggerated and
misused by those wishing to make gain from the
exploitation of ignorance on this subject. - This includes the governments of developed
countries, the media and scientists who are
willing to bend their objectivity to obtain
government grants for research on this topic. - http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/
climate_change/1023334.stm
Genre Exposition, Explanation
28Accessing the Truth
- These texts are not an innocent statement of
fact. Like all texts, they deploy a variety of
grammatical means of colouring its argument to
position the reader to see it from the writers
viewpoint. - Unsworth, 1996
29Assessment
- Students choose a topic from the following
(cloning, stem-cell research, animal testing,
evolution) and write within a genre (explanatory,
exposition, descriptive/taxonomic report) to
persuade a particular audience to a point of view - Teacher provides a written document on a
particular topic. Students use their
transdisciplinary toolbox (understanding of
nominalization, passive voice, positive and
negative adjectives and adverbs, critical
literacy questions) to deconstruct the text to
determine the genre, identify the social purpose
of the text, and identify the position of the
writer.
30A Fable for Tomorrow
- There was once a town in the heart of America
where all life seemed to live in harmony with its
surroundings - Rachel Carsons use of narrative in her seminal
work Silent Spring is an excellent example of the
utilization of a different genre that can be
applied in the classroom.
Genre Narrative