What does the study of language have in common with the life cycle of frogs? More than you might think.
Sometimes it seems impossible to combine two different subject areas in order to make a unit work across the curriculum. Two of the subject areas that seem farthest apart are science and language arts, but amazingly each one can make use of the other. Scientists would have a hard time describing the results of their experiments without the skills they learned in language arts, and there would be a whole lot less to read and debate about if scientists were not hard at work discovering new information about the world. The two subject areas can combine quite compatibly even when studying, for example, the life cycle of a frog.
Instructions
Determine Your Objectives
1. Decide what you want to accomplish by combining language study with the life cycle of a frog. Do you want to teach students to read and comprehend scientific texts? Are you trying to get them to demonstrate a more complete understanding of the frog's life cycle? Depending on your answer, you may take very different paths.
2. Explore the various proven techniques that can meet your objectives. Some focus on comprehension, and others focus on processing the knowledge students are acquiring.
3. Determine the techniques that best suit your needs and incorporate them into your unit. Keep in mind how much time you want to spend grading assignments. Not every language arts assignment needs to be an elaborate paper. Some assignments can be short and graded quickly but will still accomplish your objectives.
Consider Some of These Methods of Teaching Across the Curriculum for Reading Comprehension
4. Use the reading comprehension technique known as K-W-L to give your students a purpose for reading and paying attention to your lessons. Students need to divide a sheet of paper into 3 columns. They label the first column "Know" and list what they already know about the life cycle of a frog in this column. Then they move to the second column, labeled "Want to Know," and list anything that they are curious about regarding the life cycle of the frog. The last column is labeled "Learn." Here they will record anything they learned that either answered the questions they posed in the second column or came as a complete surprise to them. Using this method, students have a record of their prior knowledge and a study guide for the test.
5. Skim and scan. Teach students locate the information that they need by teaching them the techniques of "Skimming and Scanning" their texts to find the information that is most important to the question at hand. Show them how they can get the main idea of articles and text book chapters by skimming them to see the titles and charts and graphs that will tell them if the literature they are using will answer their questions. Then show them scan a helpful piece of information to find the sections that will provide the answers they require.
6. Explore some group activities by incorporating Reciprocal Teaching into your life cycle unit. Split your students into groups. The groups can be as small as two or as large as six to eight. Then the group discusses the text by having students summarize it, question each other about what they read, clarify any words or concepts they did not understand and predict where the author of the text will go from the point they left off. This method encourages understanding and also may show students that any problems they had with the text are not theirs alone.
Consider Some of These Methods of Teaching Across the Curriculum to Develop Writing Skills
7. Assign "Learning Logs" in which the students can talk about the process they employ when they learn something. They can describe their reactions to what they learned, and they can write down any questions they need answered.In this way students can think about their learning and how they go about it. This could make them clearer thinkers and better writers. Tell them how scientists actually keep logs very similar to learning logs as they proceed through their experiments.
8. Use a short and very effective assessment tool called RAFT Writing (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) to discover your students' understanding of the life cycle of a frog. For example you could tell them to imagine they are a newly metamorphosed frog (Role) in a dialogue to a younger tadpole (Audience) who is just about to grow legs talking (Format) about the changes that are going to occur (Topic). By what is included in what your students write, you can find out quickly how well your student understands the subject, and he or she will be able to complete the assignment no matter what level his or her skills are at.
9. Make students responsible for an Exit Ticket. Using this technique, they must write a short response to a prompt of your choice and turn it in before you will let them leave class. This is another way to get quick and complete feedback on your students' knowledge while still requiring language arts skills to be used.
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