Short-Form Science: A “Close Reading” Unit on the History of the Atom

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Close reading is the practice of investigating a short (ranging from one or two paragraphs to three pages) piece of high-quality text. The text should be complex enough to be worthy of multiple readings and sufficiently supportive of learning goals (Brown and Kappes 2012, p. 2). In this article, we share a lesson plan and strategies that we used to implement close reading in a physical science class. Students spanned a wide range of reading ability, including multilingual learners. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Close reading is an effective core practice for engaging deeply with text. Characteristics of close reading include (Brown and Kappes 2012, p. 3): [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Multiple readings: This often occurs over multiple class periods. Teachers can model active reading and students can read independently, in pairs, or in small groups (Frey and Fisher 2013, pp. 33.38). * Annotation: Students use text-marking strategies to note unknown words or phrases, important ideas, connections to prior knowledge, and questions. * Text-dependent questions: Teachers can use these to guide students in making meaning of what they read (for online guides for writing questions, see gOn the webh). * Writing and discussion: Discussion is critical to student understanding. Students should reference the text to support their claims and arguments (Fisher et al. 2015, pp. 26.27; Frey and Fisher 2013, Chapter 3). Close reading requires science students to engage text in new ways and teachers to model best practices and gradually transfer responsibility. Teachers can remove scaffolds at their discretion, based on individual student needs, as students may understand close reading practices at different rates--even if they are investigating the same text. Examples of teaching strategies to enable differentiation include * The teacher works with a group of struggling readers to guide and model close-reading practices while other groups work independently. * Assigned reading pairs annotate together while taking turns reading aloud. * Based on each student groupfs level of understanding, groups receive different text-dependent questions of varying complexity. After each group answers its questions, students rearrange into mixed groups to share their responses and discuss other questions with classmates. Selecting text is a complex process. Many factors contribute to a text's difficulty level (Frey and Fisher 2013, p. 9; see On the web). Factors that make scientific text complex include vocabulary and technical language, prior knowledge demands, and the norms of scientific communication. Texts for science also include data tables, graphs, and scientific illustrations. Atomic structure unit Students often turn to Wikipedia for information; however, even though this information is easily accessible, students have a difficult time understanding it. For this reason, we chose to revamp our existing atomic structure unit to incorporate modified Wikipedia readings (see On the web for a list of articles) about key developments in the understanding of atomic structure. The revised five-day unit centers on close reading about the work of John Dalton, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrodinger. To reinforce the learning that students gain through reading, we also incorporate demonstrations, interactive games, and mini lectures. John Dalton: Day 1 Teachers first use John Dalton's drawings of atoms and molecules (Figure 1, p. 36) to lead the class through the Critical Response Protocol. Critical response is an arts-based technique for engaging students in equitable and critical discourse (Ellingson et al. 2016). The complex visuals can elicit important insights and support the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for literacy in science (NGAC and CCSSO 2010). Important characteristics of the Critical Response Protocol are that teachers ensure that all students contribute, document all student responses, and encourage students to engage with the visual without the teacher front-loading information. …