Engagement

	Text Citation or Link	Rationale for Choosing	Text Frame(s)	Strategies Used and Resource
Engagement Example	Young Blood: Elixir of Youth	This article hits all concepts of the Scientific Method, which students need to comprehend the components of. This article also enhances students’ scientific vocabulary with terms related to the cardiovascular and immune/lymphatic system.	Concept/ definition  Vocabulary/ definition	Previewing (McLaughlin    Book)

The strategy I am utilizing in this lesson plan is known as “previewing.” The term is self-explanatory. This tactic is used to elicit student’s background knowledge on a concept or topic and to also define the reasoning of why they will be reading this text/article, prior to them doing so. Based on these actions, the students should then be able to have a general understanding of what the text will be about. There are three basic components to previewing:

1.      Activating Prior Knowledge (What do I already know about this topic?)

2.      Setting Purposes for Reading (Why am I reading this text?)

3.      Predicting/Inferring (Based on what I know and what I have read, what do I think will happen in this text?)

The initial portion of my lesson plan is aimed to accomplish these three tasks. In order to activate prior knowledge on the Scientific Method, a class discussion is held and the students are asked to tell me what they know or recall about the Scientific Method from previous lessons and labs. I touch every component of the Scientific Method they have previously learned and relate it to one of their previous lab experiments. What is the main question they are answering? Do they have adequate background information on the topic or does further research on the topic need to be done? Formulate a hypothesis about the main research question. Have the materials and methods/procedures accessible and known in order to conduct the experiment. Gather data and analyze the results. Know whether or not the results supported the initial hypothesis. Draw conclusions and give an overall analysis of the findings (discussion). Each of these key concepts of the Scientific Method are harbored on in the initial classroom discussion, in order to activate the students’ prior knowledge.

In order to set the purpose for reading, I further end the discussion with addressing the importance of being able to know the Scientific Method for real world applications. Using the scientific method regularly will teach the students to look at all evidence before making a statement of fact, which makes it an integral part of science education. If we want our students to be prepared for higher education science, they must be comfortable with this most fundamental process. Depending on how this is done, I think this part of the previewing will be the most difficult because quite often students tend to separate the real world and what they learn in class. How can this strategy really get students to buy into the purpose behind the lesson and topic?

Perhaps a separate assignment or even discussion can be done, where the teacher relates the Scientific Method (or use of evidentiary support) to make a fact, and allows the student to discuss or write about some examples or experiences they have done or can think of where this is applicable in the real world.

Finally, based on the initial discussion and final point of lecture I made to address the purpose of reading, the students are readily able to predict or infer that the article they will be reading will be about an experiment using the Scientific Method. In having the article read and understood by the students, their task portion of the assignment will be to answer questions about this experiment in regards to the Scientific Method. What is the main question they are answering? What was the initial hypothesis? What were the materials and methods/procedures? What were the results? Did the results support the hypothesis? What do the results indicate about blood? How can the results be applied to the real world or future experiments?

Previewing has been shown to be a great strategic method to draw out the background knowledge students have on a topic. Any misconceptions the students have about the topic are modified to correction and any points they had previously forgotten are recalled. They then have all the necessary components and knowledge to proceed with the text/article, with a broad understanding of what the article/text will be about. This makes their task less tedious and burdensome, in doing so.

References:

Hudson, Paige (2015). “Science Corner: The Importance of the Scientific Method.” Elemental

            Blogging. <http://elementalblogging.com/importance-of-scientific-method/>.

McLaughlin, Maureen (2015). “Comprehending Content Area Text.” Content Area Reading:

            Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Pearson. 2^nd Ed. P. 54.

Ornes, Stephen (2014). “Young Blood: The Elixir of Youth.” Science News for Students.

            <https://student.societyforscience.org/article/young-blood-elixir-youth>.