SUBJECT: Science
GRADE LEVEL: 3rd Grade
STANDARDS: Common Core State Standards (CCSS), World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Standards, and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards.
OBJECTIVES
Language: Students will learn the vocabulary and terminology specific to science education required to develop language and literacy skills in science.
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Content: Learners will be able to create scientific meanings individually to express their scientific ideas.
ASSESSMENT
Formative Assessment Strategy 1: Learning journals
Formative Assessment Strategy 2: In-class discussions
Formative Assessment Strategy 3: Oral description of concepts
Digital/Technological Tool 1: Kahoot!
Summative Assessment Technique: Unit Tests
Alignment with one language acquisition theory and three literacy development methods
This process aligns with the interactionist theory of language acquisition, which proposes that students learn a language based on a desire to communicate with people around them. Social interaction, thus, influences language acquisition (Sarem & Shirzadi, 2014). Based on this theory, the environment that students develop in influences how they learn a language. The present process involves personalized activities that enhance interaction, such as in-class discussions and oral explanation of concepts, to ensure that students create scientific meanings individually.
The interactionist theory also demonstrates that students will learn about commonly utilized phrases and vocabulary first, and then they will learn how to converse instead of just memorizing terms (Sarem & Shirzadi, 2014). In turn, this ensures that students remember the terms they use regularly even when they expand their vocabulary, which aligns with the present process since the objective is to help students develop scientific vocabulary and terminology to express their ideas individually.
The process also aligns with literacy development techniques such as the skills-based technique for teaching reading, the whole language technique and the language experience strategy. The skills-based technique is based on the idea that students should master discrete language elements at the inception of the reading instruction onset to learn how to read (Westwood, 2012). The present process aligns with this technique as it involves first teaching students to be proficient in the vocabulary and terminology of science before they start expressing themselves in a scientific language.
Based on the whole language technique, there must be a meaningful introduction to reading, which must be developed based on real communicative situations in the student’s life (Paris & Turner, 2012). The present process involves learning about the native language, prior school proficiency, and prior science understanding of students to find their past experiences and to use the experiences as the basis for teaching science skills. The students’ past experiences will motivate them to enjoy learning about science (Paris & Turner, 2012). The language experience technique will be used with the other two strategies and is based on the idea that every learner has a native language, which can be used as the material for teaching (Hoffman & Roser, 2012). The technique entails activating the learners’ language and encouraging them to share their experiences with the class.
References
Hoffman, J. V., & Roser, N. (2012). Reading and writing the world using beautiful books: Language experience re-envisioned. Language Arts , 89 (5), 293-304.
Paris, S. G., & Turner, J. C. (2012). Situated motivation. In Student motivation, cognition, and learning (pp. 229-254). Routledge.
Sarem, S. N., & Shirzadi, Y. (2014). A critical review of the interactionist approach to second language acquisition. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research , 1 (1), 62- 74.
Westwood, P. (2012). Reading and learning difficulties . David Fulton Publishers.
