Learning: Comprehension Style

In the Comprehension Model of teaching science, students learn science by reading the textbook and learning the vocabulary words. If students can be successful in those two areas, they will do well in their science class.

Reading a science textbook is not as intuitive as it seems. Informational texts have special features to help them convey information, but students unaware of these features cannot take advantage of them. Here are a few ideas to help your students make sense of their science textbook:

• Read the heading on the page or title of the chapter. Ask students what they think they will learn about on the page/chapter. At the end of the reading, ask students if they learned what they thought they would learn. Encourage them to read the section again if they did not find the answer the first time.
• Give the students a graphic organizer to fill out as they read. Are the topics in the book arranged linearly, or are they all parts of one idea? Do they have a cause and effect relationship, or would a compare and contrast model be better? As your students become better at filling out graphic organizers, you could challenge them to make their own graphic organizer to show how they think the information is related.
• Have students pause periodically as they read to summarize their reading. This might be at the end of a paragraph, page, or chapter. Students can write their summaries in a journal or share their summaries with a student sitting next to them. If they cannot summarize what they have read, the students should reread the section and/or ask questions, writing the questions in their journal or asking the questions to a partner.

When students can understand their textbook, they will be able to learn science.

Here are some more ideas that specifically focus on learning vocabulary:

• Draw attention to any bold, italic, or underlined words on the page. Ask the students if there are any clues within the word as to what it might mean (root words, affixes, etc.). Then, ask if there are any clues in the sentence the word is in. Extend the search to the sentence right before and right after the word. Show the students how to turn to the glossary to check their definition or to find a definition of a word without context clues.
• Teach students common root words and affixes. You can start simply, asking students if they know any words that have similar parts to the new word. This can be especially helpful when teaching words that are similar to each other, like solute, solvent, and solution. All three have to do with dissolving, so they start with the same letters. The part they play in dissolving shows up in the ending word parts that are different.
• Use opposite pairs to help students distinguish words. Students who know what a vertebrate is will have a stronger knowledge of what an invertebrate is. This also works will less visually similar words. Students will have a better understanding of producers when they understand consumers. The opposite words help to clarify meaning by showing what each word is not.