Reading in the Science Classroom

ASSIGNMENT:  Due Dec. 2, 2008.

A.  Choose one of the texts you will be using during student teaching.  Evaluate the text for readability using any of the criteria from GEOL 301 or referenced here. Include a discussion of the following:

1. interest and motivation,

2. legibility, including type, layout and reading conditions,

3. sentence structure, including readability formulae,

4. reading ages for the textbook.

Feel free to include other criteria in your evaluation.  You have done this before so this section should be fairly quick and easy to do.  Keep it short and to the point.

B.  Select one chapter from the textbook you will be using in your student teaching. Using one of the reading techniques described in the class review, prepare a reading activity and assess its effectiveness with an additional activity. You will present this in class so bring sufficient copies and a sample of the chapter on which this assignment is based.

C.  Find and review Standard 19 (indicators A-G) of the Illinois Science Teaching Core and the corresponding standard in the Language Arts Core. Write a two to three paragraph reflection explaining explicitly how these activities address these indicators.