May 11, 2023 • 43 mins
We’re continuing our investigations around science and literacy, with Doug Fisher, Ph.D., professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University. We talk about the importance of integrating science and literacy, as well as practical guidance for teachers who want to unite the two disciplines in their own classrooms.
Listen as we discuss how science and literacy can be powerful allies and talk about specific strategy areas to focus on when integrating the two disciplines. And don’t forget to grab your Science Connections study guide to track your learning and find additional resources!
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Episode Transcript
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Douglas Fisher (00:00):
It's not that you have to become a reading
specialist to integrate literacyinto science.
It's how our brains work.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections.
I'm your host, Eric Cross.
This season, we're making thecase for our favorite underdog,
which of course is science.
Each episode we're showing howscience can be better utilized
in the classroom, and making thecase for why it's so important
to do so.
In our last episode, we examinedthe evidence showing that
science and English instructioncan support each other.
(00:32):
And now on this episode, we wantto give you some more strategies
for really making that a realityin your own home or classroom or
community.
So to help me, I'm joined onthis episode by Dr.
Douglas Fisher, Professor andChair of Educational Leadership
at San Diego State University.
Dr.
Fisher is actually someone whohas conducted literacy training
at my own school, so I'm excitedto be able to share some of his
(00:55):
wisdom with all of you.
Oh, and just a heads up, Dr.
Fisher dropped some gems aboutthe ways teachers can integrate
literacy and science in theirclassrooms.
So you may want to have anotepad.
Ready.
And now here's my conversationwith Dr.
Douglas Fisher.
Well, Doug, thank you for yourtime and for being willing to
(01:15):
come and talk about literacy andscience.
I know you're busy, all over theplace, and so I was
super-excited that we were ableto lock you in and talk about
this.
And, on this episode, we'regonna talk about the ways that
science and literacy can supporteach other.
And one of the reasons why I'mreally excited for you is
because you said some really keythings for me as a science
teacher, when you talked aboutliteracy and supporting
students.
(01:36):
That just resonated so deeply inme.
And I was like," I need moreDoug!" Because we're on that
same frequency.
And I know it's a subject thatyou've spent a lot of time
writing about.
So can you tell us a little bitabout how this became an area of
interest or a passion for you?
Just literacy, and all of thework that you've put into it?
Douglas Fisher (01:54):
Yeah.
So I've wanted to be a teacherfor a really long time.
And I went to San Diego State asan undergraduate, and I was
taking English class and we wereassigned topics.
You know, like, you'll do anassignment, you'll write a paper
for this English class.
And I got the topic"illiteracy,"and I was a freshman at San
Diego State reading all of thesethings about adults who don't
(02:16):
read very well or not at all.
And I ended up writing my veryfirst college essay on
illiteracy— at the time, youknow, called illiteracy, at the
time.
And so I got super interested inthis.
And so as I moved throughcollege and into my teaching
career, literacy became a reallyimportant thing for me to think
about, because it's thegatekeeper.
(02:37):
You know, you can be takenadvantage of, if you're not very
literate.
People can use vocabularyagainst you, if you're not very
literate.
We know that people who havehigher levels of literacy have
better health outcomes.
They have better lifespans,longer lifespans.
I mean, there's just— literacyimpacts so much more than"Are
you reading your fourth-gradetextbook?" It really has
(03:00):
lifelong implications.
Eric Cross (03:01):
That part that you said about being taken advantage
of...
I just got a flyer in the mailyesterday.
It was one of these mailers thatlooked like it was an authentic
debt-reduction type of thing,but it was really just like a
marketing email.
If you read the fine print atthe very bottom, it had all of
this jargon about"This is apaid, you know, for-profit
company." But when you look atit, it had official stamps all
over it.
And I could imagine if someone'sreceiving that, that probably
(03:24):
fools a lot of people.
Is that kinda like what you'retalking about, like being taken
advantage of?
Douglas Fisher (03:28):
Yes.
I had a student turn 18, got aletter from a" credit card
company" that was offering herdaily compounding interest.
And if you don't know what thatmeans— at 23 percent!— if you
dunno what that means, you aregonna be a victim.
Literacy really influences a lotof our life.
It's also how our brain works.
We have a language-based systemin our brain.
(03:50):
We read, w rite, speak, l isten,a nd view.
And the things we learn, welearn through speaking, reading,
writing, listening, and viewing.
From what we know, we are theonly species that has an
external storage mechanism.
Like, we have the ability tostore complex information
outside of our body, in the formof notes.
We can type them.
(04:10):
We can write them.
And we can then go back andretrieve t hat information, that
complex orthographic informationlater.
And it means the same thing.
We can say we have a storagesystem and we've been doing this
for a really long time.
Way back to, you know,hieroglyphics and messages on
cave walls.
And throughout the ages ofhumans learning, how to store
(04:35):
information that they canre-access again later.
That's become asuper-complicated system.
It's how computers operate.
And we send messages to eachother and we text each other and
we write things down, and we'rereally good at putting ideas,
information out there.
(04:56):
Now, if it's just speaking a ndlistening, then we can forget
it.
We can say,"No, you said this,"or"I said that." But when it's
written, and it's printliteracy, y ou know, it's the
orthographics there, you can goback to the same message and
over and over again.
Now, you might change theinterpretation of it, but the
message is still there.
Eric Cross (05:16):
Right.
And that is such a key element,at least of modern education, is
this written element of it.
It's what many schools live anddie by.
They're quantitatively andqualitatively analyzed by it.
It's public.
They can see it.
And so there's this heavyemphasis.
And why do you think science andliteracy can be powerful allies
(05:38):
together?
Douglas Fisher (05:38):
Awesome.
Well, it's hard to learn scienceif you're not literate.
Eric Cross (05:42):
This is true.
Douglas Fisher (05:42):
But that's a one-way direction.
And yes, science teachers andscientists do a lot of reading,
writing, speaking, and listeningand viewing.
They use the five literacyprocesses all the time.
When we interview scientists,they spend a lot of their time
reading the work of otherscientists and writing their
findings, writing grantproposals, presenting at
(06:04):
conferences, you know.
So a huge part of the work of ascientist is not just at a bench
conducting experiments.
But even if you're conductingexperiments, you're using your
literacy processes to thinkabout what you're seeing in your
experiment.
So that's a one-way direction.
And I do think literacy has aninfluence on science.
But since science goes the otherway, it influences literacy.
(06:26):
As you learn more and youunderstand more about the world,
your background knowledge grows,your vocabulary grows, you
become more literate in thosedifferent areas.
And how you think.
So if I'm learning about lifescience; I'm learning how the
world works in a more, biologicphysical world.
And that knowledge helps methink about when I'm reading a
(06:48):
novel, and there's an appeal tosome science knowledge or a
concept that gets played with,you know, perhaps time-space
continuums...
well, if I don't have thescience knowledge of how I think
the world works, it's hard forme to understand what this
author is doing.
So it does go both ways.
They feed each other.
And the more literate we become,the more complex science
(07:10):
information we can understand.
'Cause our background knowledgeand our vocabulary influence how
much we understand about what weread.
And as we access more complexscience information, it starts
to change the way we think aboutother things in our world.
Eric Cross (07:23):
There was a couple of things that you said in that,
but one of the first things thatkind of perked my ears is when
you said grant proposals.
Because I have friends that arescientists— and this is one of
the things that when I was inschool, they don't talk about—
but how much of their researchis reliant upon getting funding—
Douglas Fisher (07:37):
Mm-hmm.
,
Eric Cross (07:38):
— which you don't think about if you're becoming a
chemist or a physicist or abiologist or working in the
field, is that that funding,coming from the NSF or anywhere
else.
And sometimes students ask inclass like,"Why am I writing so
much?
Like, I want to go intoscience!" Or"I wanna do this!"
And this is a real-life exampleof how the writing could
actually apply, in addition toall of the things of collecting
data and conclusions andresults.
(07:59):
But that grant proposal thingjust really perked my ears,
yeah.
Douglas Fisher (08:01):
And if you can't write a grant proposal, your
ideas and experiments are notgonna get funded.
And if you can't write a strongproposal, that compellingly
convinces your readers to fundyou, you're not gonna get
funded.
But then once you get the grant,you have to write publications.
You have to share your work withother people.
Make PowerPoint presentationsand write journal articles or
(08:22):
books or whatever.
So it's a cycle that literacyinfluences the things we do,
including the things we do inscience.
Eric Cross (08:31):
Now to get in maybe some data, if you were trying to
convince someone that like thishappy marriage can exist, what
would be like your number onepiece of evidence to support
this, this back and forth ofsupporting each other?
Douglas Fisher (08:44):
Awesome.
So the quote I'll often say— andthis is from studies from more
than two decades ago now— but ingeneral, in high school science,
students are introduced to 3000unfamiliar words, 3000.
Each year! Because there arewords that are used in a
scientific way that are usedcommonly in other places.
(09:04):
And there arediscipline-specific words.
So 3000 words a year in highschool science.
The Spanish 1 textbook only has1500 words in it.
So science teachers have doublethe academic-language vocabulary
demand that a typicalintroductory world-language
class has.
(09:25):
So just the vocabulary aloneshould say to us, literacy is
gonna be important if you'regonna learn science.
And if you don't understandthese technical words, and you
don't understand the way scienceuses this particular word in
this particular way...
.
When you say the word"process,"it means something very specific
In science.
"Division"— cellular division isnot the way we think about it in
(09:49):
mathematics; there's a similarconcept, but cellular division
is different than dividingnumbers.
And those are words that getused in multiple areas.
Then you have all thesetechnical terms that you have to
be able to use, to understandthe concepts.
To share the concepts.
To talk to other people.
(10:10):
Whether you're in, you know,fifth grade and talking science,
or you're a universityprofessor, there's a shared
language, appropriate for ourgrade level, that we have shared
meanings of.
Eric Cross (10:22):
And we're essentially...
what I'm hearing you say is...
most of the people that arelistening to this are science
teachers.
We're we're also languageteachers.
In a sense.
Douglas Fisher (10:29):
So my frustration is when people say,
"Every teacher's a teacher ofreading." And I don't like that.
I've written against thatphrase.
I don't think all teachers areteachers of reading, any more
than all teachers are teachersof chemistry.
Or all teachers are teachers ofalgebra.
But what I will say is the humanbrain learns through language.
And all of us— every teacherthat I've ever met understands
(10:52):
that language is important in myclass.
If my students don't have stronglistening skills and speaking
skills; reading, writing, andviewing skills; I'm gonna have a
hard time getting them to learnthings.
If I can help them grow theirspeaking, listening, reading,
writing, and viewing in mycontent area, I'm gonna do a
service for my learning of mysubject and also their more
(11:14):
broad literacy development.
Eric Cross (11:16):
OK.
So, at a high level, what doesit look like to integrate
science and literacy?
We've done education for thelast, what, hundred years?
Douglas Fisher (11:24):
Mm- hmm.
< affirmative>
Eric Cross (11:25):
—kind of pretty similarly, right?
Kind of siloed way.
What does this look like at the30,000-foot level?
You're a professor, departmentchair.
Run schools.
Speak everywhere.
Like, when you think about thisfrom that high level, what does
it look like?
Douglas Fisher (11:39):
A high level?
Every time I meet with studentsin a science class, you know,
biology or fifth grade orwhatever?
They should be reading, theyshould be writing, they should
be speaking and listening.
Every class.
So what print do you want themto access?
And it can be a primary sourcedocument, it can be an article,
it can be from a textbook.
Are they reading something?
Are they writing to you?
Because writing is thinking.
(12:00):
If they are writing, they arethinking.
As soon as their brain goessomewhere else, they stop
writing.
The pen won't move or thefingers don't type.
And then speaking and listening,of course, is the dynamic of our
classes.
So every day we should see someamount of reading, writing,
speaking, and listening, viewingin our classes.
That's at a high level.
There are some generic thingsthat seem to work across the
(12:24):
literacy.
So, learning how to take notes.
Focusing on vocabulary.
Using graphic organizers.
These are generic things that aseducators we can use in our
classes.
Then there's more specializedthings.
So, scientists and scienceteachers think differently than
historians and literary criticsand art critics.
(12:45):
So scientists, if you look atthe disciplinary literacy work,
there's a whole body of researchwhere they interview and study
high-end experts in their field: chemistry, physics, biology, et (12:53):
undefined
cetera.
And there are somecharacteristics that were more
disciplined, specific.
Scientists like cause and effectrelationships.
They look for them when they'rereading.
They like sourcing information.
"Where this come from?""What'sthe history of this idea?"
Scientists have a long view interms of time.
(13:16):
Historians have a shorter viewof time.
English teachers have evenshorter view of time.
Scientists tend to think in longperiods of time.
And so all of that influenceshow a scientist reads and how we
should apprentice young peopleafter they get past the generic
"I know how to take notes.
I know how to study myvocabulary.
(13:37):
I know how to do summary writingfor my teacher in my notebooks
and things," there's somegeneric tools.
Once we get past those, we needto be looking at specifically
how do people in science useliteracy.
Eric Cross (13:52):
I've never had my thought process of reading
deconstructed just now, but wejust described how scientists
read.
I was like,"Yeah, that's prettymuch how I read, right there." I
also like how you said how weshould a pprentice young people.
And I feel like y ou as theliteracy g uy, you chose that
word very specifically, as faras apprenticing young people.
That is a view, I think, that'sreally important to hold.
(14:13):
'Cause that's what we're doingessentially...
is, if we're doing what weshould be doing, we are
apprenticing these young people.
Douglas Fisher (14:18):
Yes.
Eric Cross (14:18):
And helping them develop.
Now, let's imagine there's alistener out there and they're
interested in getting better atintegrating science and literacy
instruction.
They want to start somewhere.
Before we dive in, do you haveany initial words of
encouragement for the personwho's like,"Everything is like a
priority right now," in theirclassroom or in their world?
Douglas Fisher (14:37):
Yeah.
So I'll talk about elementaryfor just a moment.
When we're reading informationaltexts in our literacy block, we
should be reading informationthat is aligned to what kids
need to learn in science andhistory in, in that grade level.
Why are we reading things thatare gonna be in conflict with
what they're gonna learn inscience later that day in fourth
(14:58):
grade, for example?
So when we look at ourstandards, our expectations,
what is it that third gradersneed to know in history,
science, mathematics, languagearts?
And when we're reading text andwe're learning to apply our
reading strategies during ourliteracy block, why aren't we
reading topics that build ourbackground knowledge for our
(15:19):
science time?
So we're seeing some synergythere.
We should be looking at lifecycles in grades that are
appropriate for life cycles andknowing there's more to life
cycles than the frog and theplant or the seed.
There are all kinds of lifecycles.
And we call'em life cycles for areason.
That's a general concept.
Now in science, we're looking atthis particular lifecycle right
(15:41):
now.
And so that's a high level.
If we could get more connectionto the content standards during
our literacy blocks, it would bevery good.
When we talk about the time atwhich we call"science" in the
day, in more of the K–8continuum, the science needs to
include some primary sourcedocuments.
(16:03):
Some real things that studentsare reading.
Read about a scientist; readabout a scientist's discovery;
read about what they discovered.
So that we're building ourbackground knowledge.
So when we go to do things,activities, labs, simulations,
we have background knowledge andwe understand what we're
(16:24):
experiencing.
It can't be like—I watched thisawesome lesson on lenses and the
teacher had all these differentlenses in the room and the
students came in and they werebrand new.
They don't know anything.
They were picking'em up.
They're exploring them.
They're trying to figure out,and they're trying to come up
with theories about what this isand how it works.
And then the teacher gave them areading, a short reading, on
(16:46):
refraction of light.
And they read this thing.
And the clarity that they hadabout what these lenses must do,
well! All of a sudden they'reputting them up to the lights!
They're asking if they can goget the lights out of the
storage unit!'Cause there's— andthey're shining different lights
through the lenses to see whathappens to the light.
Because that little bit ofreading turned some focus on for
(17:09):
the students.
And it allowed them to take whatI'm thinking about, what I'm
trying to figure out, how thisthing works in another
direction.
That's the power of usingliteracy in our classes.
Eric Cross (17:20):
And what I'm hearing essentially is transfer across
disciplines, across contentareas, ultimately.
And in an elementary schoolclassroom, would it be fair to
say, probably the teacher hasmore autonomy to be able to do
that, since they're teaching allthe subjects?
But secondary, logistically,planning and those types of
things...
from what you've seen, is itfair to say this kind of needs
(17:41):
to be like a top-down, fullvertical alignment, to teach
like this?
Douglas Fisher (17:45):
I think that would be awesome to do that.
But if I'm a sixth grade EnglishLanguage Arts teacher and I'm
working with my sixth gradescience teacher, the
conversation should be,"Whatunits are you teaching?" Because
I'm choosing informational text.
My job is to teach them how tofind central ideas.
My job is to teach them how tofind the details in the text.
(18:06):
My job is to have them make aclaim and support that claim
with evidence.
The stuff I use is generic.
Yes, we do read some literatureand some narratives, but we also
read about 50% of the text inEnglish around informational
text.
So if I can help you andaccomplish my standards as well,
(18:27):
fantastic.
So let's have this conversationand say,"Oh, this is what you're
teaching in science in the nextthree weeks?
I'm gonna choose some texts andwe're gonna analyze'em for
central idea.
We're gonna analyze'em fordetails.
We're gonna, for mood or tone orwhatever that we're teaching.
And by the way, I'm buildingbackground knowledge.
So when they come to you, theyknow some stuff about what
(18:47):
you're going to be teachingnext." So I don't think it's
impossible to say teams ofteachers could come together and
say,"What do we believe that ourstudents need to know and learn
and be able to do?
And then how do we choose thingsthat are gonna help them
accomplish exactly that?"
Eric Cross (19:01):
And that's empowering.
Because that's one thing that wecan control maybe is this
East-West, peer-to-peer,different content areas.
A system may not be able tochange as quickly, but I can
definitely go talk to my Englishteam or math team and check in
and kind of see,"Hey, where dowe have overlap in that?" And I
know the times th at I'veaccidentally had overlap with
the teams, it's super-exciting.
(19:22):
And the students have been morebought in! Because it's like,
we've done something on thehuman microbiome an d w e've
talked about genetics and allthese different things, and then
when they read The Giver, orthey read some book about
genetics, they have all thisknowledge.
And they're excited.
And they talk aboutcolorblindness or they come to
my class and th ey're l i ke,"Hey, we read about this!" It's
(19:43):
almost like they saw a magictrick, the fact that these
things linked up.
And the engagement has been somuch higher when it's the same
content in different classes,but through different lenses.
At least, that's what I've seenin my years of teaching.
Douglas Fisher (19:54):
I saw a lesson on space junk that was so cool.
Middle-school students learningspace junk.
And the history teacher had apart of it, science teacher had
a part of it, English LanguageArts teacher had a part of it.
And these students, I mean, youwatch them look up all the time,
'cause there's space junk upthere.
Where'd it come from?
(20:14):
Why is it there?
What are the politics of this?
How do we clean it up?
I mean, it was just sointeresting to watch them when
the teachers came together.
And the teachers met theirstandards in this
couple-week-long space-junkexploration.
Investigation was met.
Politics was met.
All these different things.
Economy.
(20:34):
You know, how much does it costto clean up this problem?
So there's really coolopportunities when teachers come
together and realize we can worktogether and improve the
literacy and learning of ourstudents.
Eric Cross (20:50):
Absolutely.
So before this recording, wepicked your brain a bit.
And I know that there were threespecific strategy areas that you
wanted to touch on.
And one of those— which is kindof coming back to the 3000-words
language teachers— wasvocabulary.
So what are the opportunitiesthat you see, as far as the way
of educators to approachvocabulary?
(21:10):
Because, you know, there's a lot.
We got a lot of it.
T he 3000 words.
Douglas Fisher (21:14):
Yeah.
There's a lot of it.
So the worry is, we make avocabulary list and have
students look up the words indefinitional kinds of things.
That's not really gonna help.
Students need to be using thewords.
They need to be using the wordsin their conversations, in their
writing, in how they think aboutyour content in science.
So vocabulary is a hugepredictor of whether or not you
understand things.
Vocabulary is also a pretty goodpredictor if you can read on
(21:36):
grade level.
So when we think aboutvocabulary, there's something
called word solving.
You show students a piece oftext and you're reading it,
you're sharing your thinking,and you say,"Oh, here's a
context clue!" Or"I know thisprefix or suffix or root!" And
in science, a lot of the wordsare prefixed, suffixed, or root
words.
We tend to add things togetherwith a lot of prefixes and
(21:58):
suffixes and have roots andbases in science.
So we can help students thinkabout,"Oh, what does geo- mean?
We already know what geo- meanshere.
It means the same thing in thisword.
Let's apply that knowledge." Soword solving is part of it,
showing students how we thinkabout words that we might not
know.
The second is more directinstruction of vocabulary.
As students encounter the words,we work on what it means, how we
(22:23):
say it.
We practice it a few times.
The process is calledorthographic mapping.
It's kind of a scientific ideahere.
But you have the sound and therecognition of by-the-word, by
sight, and what it means.
And your brain starts toautomatically recognize that
word in the future.
So I don't have to slow down,disrupt my fluency, and try to
figure out what the word issaying.
(22:44):
'Cause I've seen it enough.
I've heard it pronounced enough,I've pronounced it enough, and I
know what it means.
So teachers should be saying,"What words in sixth grade
science, what words in thirdgrade science, do my students
really need to know?" And I'mgonna have them encounter those
words over and over.
I'm gonna have them use thewords.
I'm gonna have them see thewords.
I'm gonna have them say thewords.
(23:04):
I'm gonna say the word and we'regonna be over and over with
these terms, so that studentsincorporate them into their
normal view of,"These are thethings I know about the world."
By the way, when they go to readthat next thing, and they
understand"geology," you know,for sixth graders, for example,
they know how to say it.
They don't stumble on it.
And it activates a whole bunchof memories in their brains.
(23:27):
"This is what geology is." Thereare branches of geology, there's
physical geology, there's allthis thinking that activates as
they read.
Eric Cross (23:35):
There was a practice that I participated in and am
trying to incorporate— I don'tknow what the name of it is.
But essentially what happenedwas we were dissecting a flower.
And the instructor had us nameparts of the flower.
But we got to come up with ourown names for it.
Douglas Fisher (23:49):
Ah.
Eric Cross (23:50):
So, for instance, the stamen we call"the fuzzy
Cheeto." And we all used our ownwords and then everything was
legitimized.
And so we went through andlearned the whole activity using
our own vocab words.
But then, in the end, after wepresented and talked about it,
then the words, the actualacademic language was attached
to our word.
(24:12):
And we were able to say,"OK, thefuzzy Cheeto is the stamen," and
this, this, this, and this.
But it was such an interestingpractice, because it kind of
legitimized all of ourdefinitions.
But we weren't stumbling onthese long Latin terms and
things like that.
Is there a name for that?
Or.
...
?
Douglas Fisher (24:29):
Yes.
I don't know the name for that.
I think it's really smart.
So here's what I would say aboutthat, is: we don't learn words,
we learn concepts.
Words are labels for ourconcepts.
So what that teacher did for youwas allow you to develop
concept, a concept knowledge.
"There's a part of this plant,it goes like this, we're gonna
call it fuzzy Cheeto.
Now I have this concept.
(24:49):
And look, it occurred in allthese plants.
And those people called it thatand that other group called it
that.
We called it a fuzzy Cheeto.
Here's the part of it." And thenthe concept is in your brains.
And the teacher said,"It'sreally called stamen." And it's
an instant transfer, because youalready had the concept.
What we often see is studentsare trying to learn a really
(25:09):
hard academic word and theconcept for the word at the same
time.
And so it slows down the wholeprocess.
And there's higher levels offorgetting.
Because human beings, we don'tlearn words; we learn concepts.
If you don't have the concept,if I gave you a word out of the
blue that you've never seen,never heard, and a week from now
(25:30):
I asked you to remember it, youprobably would not, because it
didn't register.
It wasn't part of your schema.
You didn't have a way toorganize the information.
You don't have a concept.
So that teacher?
It's a great idea.
Got you to develop conceptknowledge.
And then said,"Here's a reallabel for it: What some other
people called it when they hadthe chance to come up with their
own names."
Eric Cross (25:50):
Shout out to my teacher, who was—
Douglas Fisher (25:51):
Right.
Eric Cross (25:52):
It was learned then.
It was a great practice.
And the fact that you're right,like, I just mean from my own
personal experience, I agreethat learning concepts versus
complicated words.
And it's interesting that yousaid higher levels of
forgetfulness, you know.
And you often hear thatcomplaint about it:"Students
forget! Students forget!" Butthis complex topic and this
complex word that's new to me,and I have to remember both of
those things.
Douglas Fisher (26:12):
That's right.
Eric Cross (26:13):
And the other neat thing that it did, is it
actually honored the backgroundand like the founts of knowledge
of all the different groups inthe classroom.
You just said something about"this group called it this and
this group called it this," andso by letting different groups
share all of those names, nowwe're starting to build these
kind of interesting connections.
That's at least what I rememberexperiencing.
And so this, even this practiceof this approach is very
layered, beyond just kind ofgenerating new knowledge of
(26:37):
things.
So I appreciate that aspect ofit.
Now another area that youmentioned was complex text.
Douglas Fisher (26:41):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (26:42):
And how we can get students into complex text.
So what can we do there?
Douglas Fisher (26:46):
I think science is an ideal place to get
students reading things that arehard for them.
And I do believe that some partsof school should be a struggle.
Not all day, every day.
But there should be doses ofstruggle, which are good for our
brains.
And these complex pieces oftexts that don't give up their
meanings easily allow studentsto go back and reread the text
and maybe mark the text and talkto peers about the text and
(27:11):
answer questions with theirgroups.
And the whole point of complextext is to say,"We persevere
through it.
We may not understand it fullyon our first read.
But we go back and we mightunderline, we might highlight.
We might write some marginnotes.
Our teacher might say,'What didthis author mean here?' And we
go back and look at that partand we take it apart.
(27:32):
What do we think about that?
And we talk to each other.
It's showing that when we readthings, we work to understand.
We work through our thinking,often in the presence of other
people.
And our understanding grows aswe go into the text over and
over and over again." So I saidgeology earlier.
(27:53):
There's about a two-page articleon"what is geology" that sixth
graders often read.
And some kids find it superboring.
It's a once-read,"OK, geology, Idon't really understand it.
There's a bunch of words in herethat I don't understand." But if
you go back to it a few timesand you start taking apart,"What
are the branches of geology?
Oh, I'm gonna go reread that."How are these two branches
(28:16):
related to each other?""What arethe subtypes of each branch of
geology?""How do geologists dotheir work?" You start asking
questions where students aregoing back into the text.
You spend a little bit of time.
Now, the introduction togeology, the students know so
much more.
So whatever you do next— videoexperiments, whatever—they have
(28:38):
a frame of reference, because ofthat deep, complex read.
It's probably better than simplytelling them,"Here's the
information."
Eric Cross (28:45):
Right.
And I even feel like as aneducator, when I reflect on my
own learning in the classroom,and then looking at it through
the perspective of an educator, you find this
difference between how you weretaught and then what the data
says good teaching is.
Douglas Fisher (28:59):
Mm-hmm.
mm-hmm.
.
Eric Cross (29:00):
It's so easy to slide back into how you were
taught!
Douglas Fisher (29:02):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (29:02):
Even though, you know, you mentally assent to,
"This is the best way.
This is the data shows." And youfind yourself kind of sliding
back at times.
Douglas Fisher (29:10):
Yep.
And there's good evidence tosupport what you just said, that
most people teach the way theyexperienced school.
And it is very hard to changethat.
And people have studied this.
And it's very hard to changethat.
Because it worked for us.
And we have an n of 1, and itworked for us.
(29:30):
Now, remember, there were awhole bunch of other kids in the
class that it may not haveworked for.
And we chose to be in school therest of our lives, and some of
your peers did not choose to bein school the rest of their
lives.
In fact, some of them hatedschool and found no redeeming
qualities of their experience.
So just because it worked for usin a case of one, n of 1,
(29:52):
doesn't mean it worked for allof the kids, or even the
majority of them.
Eric Cross (29:57):
Very well said.
It's that, what is that, thesurvivor bias?
Survivorship bias?
Where you were the one that madeit.
But you don't think about allthe other folks.
'Cause we're thinking aboutourselves.
Douglas Fisher (30:05):
That's right.
Eric Cross (30:06):
Great case for empathy too, is thinking about
the people left and right.
Because my friends are like,"Ihated science." And I say,"Who
hurt you?
Like, what did they do?
It's so amazing, so much fun!"
Douglas Fisher (30:16):
"What happened to you?
Science is the coolest.
Right?
It's so amazing!"
Eric Cross (30:21):
But I also had a unique experience in seventh
grade with my teacher who didsome of these things, and made
it accessible for so many of us,in opening opportunities that I
wouldn't have had otherwise.
But you're absolutely right.
That was my story.
That wasn't the story ofeverybody that was around me.
And I think that's reallyimportant.
(30:41):
Now, I know this is also a bigone for you, but I wanna talk
about writing.
What are the opportunities thatyou see in terms of writing
specifically?
Douglas Fisher (30:51):
So would love it if science teachers had short
and longer writing tasks in thescience time.
Of course, you can integratesome of the science writing, the
longer ones, in the Englishlanguage arts time, especially
if you're the elementary teacherand you can have control of the
whole day.
But I said this earlier; I'llsay it again.
Writing is thinking.
While you are writing, there'snothing else you can do but
(31:14):
think about what you arewriting.
Your brain cannot do somethingelse.
So if a science teacher wants toknow, do their students really
understand the concepts?
Have them write.
Now some of the shorter ones, Ilike something called"given
word" or"generative sentences": "I'm gonna give you a word: (31:28):
undefined
CELL.
C-e-l-l.
We're in science.
I want you to write the word'cell,' c-e-l-l, in the third
position of a sentence.
So it's gonna go word, word,cell, and then more words." You
could also say,"I want thesentence longer than seven
words," or whatever.
But the key is, I'm telling youwhere I want the word.
(31:50):
You will know instantly if yourstudents have a sense of what
the word"cell" means in thecontext of science.
If they write"my cell phone,"they don't get it.
If they write about spreadsheetcells or jail cells or whatever,
they didn't get it.
But if they talk to you aboutplant cells and animal cells and
the components of those cells,and then once they have that
(32:10):
sentence down, you can say tothem,"Now write three or four
more sentences that connect tothat sentence." It's super
simple.
So whatever concepts you'reteaching, put'em in a specific
position.
Now you don't have to only putit in the third position.
You can say the first position,the fifth position, the fourth
position.
But it forces them to thinkabout what they know about the
word and then how to construct asentence for you.
(32:33):
That's a very simple way to getsome writing from your students
that helps you think about whatthey understand.
Other kinds of writing, you canhave quick writes, you can have
exit-slip writes.
There's something in theresearch space called the
muddiest part, where halfwaythrough the lesson you have them
write so far what has been theleast understood or the most
confusing part of this lesson.
(32:55):
And they do a quick write, rightthere, at the muddiest part.
And as a teacher, you flipthrough these and you start to
say,"Oh, these are the pointsthat are confusing to my
students." So if 80% of them allhave the same thing, I gotta
reteach that.
If these five got,"This is themuddiest part," If these five
thought,"This is the muddiestpart," these seven,"I thought
this was the muddiest part,"what do I need to do?
Because it's gonna be hard tomove forward if this is their
(33:16):
area of confusion.
There are also all kinds ofwriting prompts that have a
little bit longer.
My favorite one is RAFT.
What's your Role?
Who's your Audience?
What's the Format?
And what's the Topic we'rewriting about?
Super flexible writing prompt.
When you teach something, wedon't want students to only
think they write to theirteacher.
So your role is an atom.
(33:38):
You are writing to the otheratoms.
What do you wanna write about?
What's the topic?
What's the format of it?
Is it a love letter?
Is it a text message?
Is it...
so we, we mix it up withstudents in saying, how do they
show some knowledge through aprompt that we give them?
And then of course, longerpieces as they get older.
(34:00):
More opinion pieces throughfifth grade.
More claims and argumentsstarting in sixth grade.
So that they're starting to see,"I have to use the evidence from
things I've learned, read,listened to, watched, and
construct something (34:15):
an opinion, an argument where I back it up
with reasons or evidence." Andthose longer pieces, you know,
less frequently.
The shorter pieces, prettyregularly.
So the teacher sees the thinkingof the students.
Eric Cross (34:29):
When you were speaking about these really
creative writing prompts, therewere specific students coming
into mind, that were coming intomind...
they're, they're great sciencestudents, but they also have
this really strong artsy sidedrawing, creative writing, and
things like that.
And when you said somethingabout atoms talking to each
other, it elicited, in my brain,certain students that would
really love this aspect ofcreativity in the sciences.
(34:51):
And it's not how we're typicallytrained as science teachers, to
kind of incorporate this, likeyou said.
A book of props.
But I'm imagining, like, as ascience teacher, if I took this,
this would be a great way toreach more students to be able
to show what they know, in a waythat might resonate with their
own intrinsic"Oh, I get to writecreatively!" So I was kind of
writing furiously as you weresharing all that information
(35:11):
there.
Douglas Fisher (35:12):
So here, I'll give you another example for
elementary people.
Again, with RAFT.
There's a book called WaterDance.
It's a pretty popular book forelementary teachers.
It's really about the life cycleof water.
For example, you are a singledrop of water.
You are writing to the land.
The format is a letter.
And you're explaining yourjourney.
(35:34):
Now, if they can do this,they're essentially explaining
to you the cycle of water.
But you got it in a way thatpeople are now,"Oh, I'm a drop
of water.
So it's me.
My perspective.
Where do I go from?
Where do I start?" Because youcan start anywhere in the cycle,
right?
My drop could have started inthe clouds.
My drop could have started inthe ground.
My drop could have started inthe lake.
(35:56):
But it has to show you thejourney.
So there are many ways ofshowing you the right answers.
Eric Cross (36:02):
And that's using the RAFT protocol.
Douglas Fisher (36:04):
That's RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic.
It's been around 20 or 30 years.
Eric Cross (36:09):
You just gave the name to something a teacher
shared in our podcast community,Science Connections: The
Community, on Facebook.
Teacher shared a Google slidedeck and on it were just three
slides.
And the role that the studenthad to have is they had to show,
then tell, the story of ajourney of a piece of salmon
being eaten, a piece of starchfrom pasta being eaten, and then
(36:30):
an air molecule in a child'sbedroom.
And they had to give the path oftravel and the experience from
the mouth and then breaking downinto protein and all those kinds
of things.
And this teacher shared it and Iwish I knew the teacher's name
because I wanna give'em credit,but they shared it.
And so I used it with mystudents and then had'em read
aloud their stories anddramatize it.
And they were so into it!
Douglas Fisher (36:49):
So cool.
Eric Cross (36:50):
But through it, I was able to see that they
understood different parts ofthe body.
They understood cellrespiration.
The whole thing.
And it was fun! To watch themget so into this creative
writing.
And now I know the name of it.
That's been 30 years they wereusing RAFT.
So you just talked a bit aboutcomplex texts and writing.
And before we go, I wanted tocircle back to something that
(37:12):
you said, because I think it'simportant, and if you could
elaborate on it a little bit,about the value of struggle.
Can you talk more about that?
Douglas Fisher (37:21):
Sure.
I do believe in a lot of the U.
S.
we're in an anti-struggle era ofeducation.
And it predates Covid.
I think it made it worse duringCovid.
We front load too much.
We pre-teach too much.
We reduce struggle.
We quote,"over-differentiate"for students.
And there's value in struggle.
(37:44):
The phrase,"productive struggle"— if you haven't heard it,
Google productive struggle— it'san interesting concept, that we
actually learn more when weengage in this productive
struggle.
Now, productive struggleoriginally came from the math
world, and it was this idea thatit's worth struggling through
(38:05):
things to learn from it, thatyou're likely to get it wrong,
and then there was productivesuccess.
And there are times when we wantstudents to experience success
and we make sure we put thingsin place for productive success.
But there are times where wewant them to struggle through a
concept.
'Cause it feels pretty amazingwhen you get on the other side,
(38:27):
when you know you struggled andyou get to the other side.
If you think about the things,listeners, think about the
things in your life where youstruggled through it and you are
most proud of what youaccomplished.
I want students to have that.
I don't wanna eliminatescaffolding, eliminate
differentiation.
But I do want some regular dosesof struggle.
(38:48):
So if you look at thescaffolding, we have a couple
choices.
We have front-end scaffolds,distributed scaffolds, and
back-end scaffolds.
Right now we mostly usefront-end scaffolds: We
pre-teach, we tell studentswords in advance, that kind of
stuff.
But what if we refrained fromonly using front-end scaffolds,
and we use more distributedscaffolds, when they encounter.
(39:09):
So there's a difference between"just i n case" and"just i n
time" support for students.
So we tend to plan on the"inadvance, here are all the things
we're gonna do to remove thestruggle before students
encounter the struggle." What ifinstead we said,"Let them
encounter some struggle.
Here's the supports we're gonnaprovide.
We're gonna watch; we're gonnaremove those scaffolds, and
(39:30):
allow them to have an experienceof success, where they realize,
'I did it.
I got it.'" Every scienceteacher I've ever worked with,
when they do an experiment or alab or simulation, they are
looking for productive struggle.
They don't tell the answers inadvance.
They don't tell if the answersare right.
That's your data.
What does your data tell you?
(39:50):
I mean, this is what you do.
But then the other part of yourday when you move into, like,
reading, you don't do that.
You fall into the trap ofremoving struggle.
And so allow them to grapplewith ideas.
Allow them to wonder what wordsmean.
Allow them to say,"I'm notgetting this, teacher! It's
really frustrating!" And yousay,"Yeah, this is really hard.
T his i s why we're doing it atschool.
(40:12):
'Cause it's really hard.
If it was easy, I'd have you doit at home.
But we're doing it here,'causeit's really hard and it's OK not
to get it at first." And createa place where errors are seen as
opportunities to learn, andstruggling through ideas and
clarifying your own thinking andarguing with other people to
(40:32):
reach an agreement or reach aplace where we a gree to
disagree i s part of the powerof learning.
Eric Cross (40:38):
There's a teacher, who I took this from.
My master teacher when I wasstudent teaching.
And she said that there's nosuch thing as failure in
science, just data.
And I took that same mantra.
And I resonate with what yousaid about how science teachers,
all of us, hold onto thatproductive struggle, because
it's part of being a scientist.
It's part of the experiments.
That genuine"aha" moment.
(41:00):
Or it didn't work out?
That's great! That's totallyfine! Let's write about it and
let's take photos and let'spublish it and let's be
scientists.
That's totally true.
As we wrap up, Dr.
Fisher, is there any finalmessage that you have to
listeners about bringing scienceand literacy together?
I know you speak everywhere, butfor everyone that's listening,
(41:20):
if you can put out yourencouragement or message or
suggestion...
you've given so many great tipsand practical applications.
But, any final thoughts on thesubject?
Douglas Fisher (41:32):
I think many science teachers are intimidated
because they think they have tobe reading teachers.
And there's a knowledge base toreading.
And some teachers are readingteachers and science teachers,
and I don't wanna dismiss that.
But it's not that you have tobecome a reading specialist to
integrate literacy into science.
It's how our brains work.
(41:52):
And so as you think about theway in which you are learning
and the ways in which you wantyour students to learn, what
role does language play?
What role does speaking,listening, reading, writing,
viewing, play in your class?
And then provide opportunitiesfor students to do those five
things each time you meet withthem.
Eric Cross (42:12):
Dr.
Fisher, thank you so much forbeing here and for your
encouragement, and sharing yourwisdom and experience.
And then personally serving mycity, here in San Diego, and my
students, when they make it toyour high school and ultimately
the alma mater of San DiegoState University.
Douglas Fisher (42:30):
That's right.
Eric Cross (42:31):
Yeah.
We really, really appreciate youin serving all kids and lifting
the bar and making things moreequitable for all students.
And encouraging teachers.
So thank you.
Douglas Fisher (42:39):
Thank you very much.
Eric Cross (42:42):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Dr.
Douglas Fisher, Professor andChair of Educational Leadership
at San Diego State University.
Check out the show notes forlinks to some of Doug's work,
including the book heco-authored titled Reading and
Writing in Science (42:58):
Tools to Develop Disciplinary Literacy.
Please remember to subscribe toScience Connections so that you
can catch every episode in thisexciting third season.
And while you're there, we'dreally appreciate it if you can
leave us a review.
It'll help more listeners tofind the show.
Also, if you haven't already,please be sure to join our
Facebook group, ScienceConnections: The Community.
(43:20):
Next time on the show, we'regoing to continue exploring the
happy marriage between scienceand literacy instruction.
Speaker (43:26):
I had this moment of realization I felt a few months
ago (43:28):
I'm like, if I don't teach them how to use the AI as a
tool, as a collaborator, thenthey're gonna graduate into a
world where they lose out topeople who do know how to do
that.
Eric Cross (43:39):
That's next time on Science Connections.
Thanks so much for listening.
It's not that you have to become a reading
specialist to integrate literacyinto science.
It's how our brains work.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections.
I'm your host, Eric Cross.
This season, we're making thecase for our favorite underdog,
which of course is science.
Each episode we're showing howscience can be better utilized
in the classroom, and making thecase for why it's so important
to do so.
In our last episode, we examinedthe evidence showing that
science and English instructioncan support each other.
(00:32):
And now on this episode, we wantto give you some more strategies
for really making that a realityin your own home or classroom or
community.
So to help me, I'm joined onthis episode by Dr.
Douglas Fisher, Professor andChair of Educational Leadership
at San Diego State University.
Dr.
Fisher is actually someone whohas conducted literacy training
at my own school, so I'm excitedto be able to share some of his
(00:55):
wisdom with all of you.
Oh, and just a heads up, Dr.
Fisher dropped some gems aboutthe ways teachers can integrate
literacy and science in theirclassrooms.
So you may want to have anotepad.
Ready.
And now here's my conversationwith Dr.
Douglas Fisher.
Well, Doug, thank you for yourtime and for being willing to
(01:15):
come and talk about literacy andscience.
I know you're busy, all over theplace, and so I was
super-excited that we were ableto lock you in and talk about
this.
And, on this episode, we'regonna talk about the ways that
science and literacy can supporteach other.
And one of the reasons why I'mreally excited for you is
because you said some really keythings for me as a science
teacher, when you talked aboutliteracy and supporting
students.
(01:36):
That just resonated so deeply inme.
And I was like," I need moreDoug!" Because we're on that
same frequency.
And I know it's a subject thatyou've spent a lot of time
writing about.
So can you tell us a little bitabout how this became an area of
interest or a passion for you?
Just literacy, and all of thework that you've put into it?
Douglas Fisher (01:54):
Yeah.
So I've wanted to be a teacherfor a really long time.
And I went to San Diego State asan undergraduate, and I was
taking English class and we wereassigned topics.
You know, like, you'll do anassignment, you'll write a paper
for this English class.
And I got the topic"illiteracy,"and I was a freshman at San
Diego State reading all of thesethings about adults who don't
(02:16):
read very well or not at all.
And I ended up writing my veryfirst college essay on
illiteracy— at the time, youknow, called illiteracy, at the
time.
And so I got super interested inthis.
And so as I moved throughcollege and into my teaching
career, literacy became a reallyimportant thing for me to think
about, because it's thegatekeeper.
(02:37):
You know, you can be takenadvantage of, if you're not very
literate.
People can use vocabularyagainst you, if you're not very
literate.
We know that people who havehigher levels of literacy have
better health outcomes.
They have better lifespans,longer lifespans.
I mean, there's just— literacyimpacts so much more than"Are
you reading your fourth-gradetextbook?" It really has
(03:00):
lifelong implications.
Eric Cross (03:01):
That part that you said about being taken advantage
of...
I just got a flyer in the mailyesterday.
It was one of these mailers thatlooked like it was an authentic
debt-reduction type of thing,but it was really just like a
marketing email.
If you read the fine print atthe very bottom, it had all of
this jargon about"This is apaid, you know, for-profit
company." But when you look atit, it had official stamps all
over it.
And I could imagine if someone'sreceiving that, that probably
(03:24):
fools a lot of people.
Is that kinda like what you'retalking about, like being taken
advantage of?
Douglas Fisher (03:28):
Yes.
I had a student turn 18, got aletter from a" credit card
company" that was offering herdaily compounding interest.
And if you don't know what thatmeans— at 23 percent!— if you
dunno what that means, you aregonna be a victim.
Literacy really influences a lotof our life.
It's also how our brain works.
We have a language-based systemin our brain.
(03:50):
We read, w rite, speak, l isten,a nd view.
And the things we learn, welearn through speaking, reading,
writing, listening, and viewing.
From what we know, we are theonly species that has an
external storage mechanism.
Like, we have the ability tostore complex information
outside of our body, in the formof notes.
We can type them.
(04:10):
We can write them.
And we can then go back andretrieve t hat information, that
complex orthographic informationlater.
And it means the same thing.
We can say we have a storagesystem and we've been doing this
for a really long time.
Way back to, you know,hieroglyphics and messages on
cave walls.
And throughout the ages ofhumans learning, how to store
(04:35):
information that they canre-access again later.
That's become asuper-complicated system.
It's how computers operate.
And we send messages to eachother and we text each other and
we write things down, and we'rereally good at putting ideas,
information out there.
(04:56):
Now, if it's just speaking a ndlistening, then we can forget
it.
We can say,"No, you said this,"or"I said that." But when it's
written, and it's printliteracy, y ou know, it's the
orthographics there, you can goback to the same message and
over and over again.
Now, you might change theinterpretation of it, but the
message is still there.
Eric Cross (05:16):
Right.
And that is such a key element,at least of modern education, is
this written element of it.
It's what many schools live anddie by.
They're quantitatively andqualitatively analyzed by it.
It's public.
They can see it.
And so there's this heavyemphasis.
And why do you think science andliteracy can be powerful allies
(05:38):
together?
Douglas Fisher (05:38):
Awesome.
Well, it's hard to learn scienceif you're not literate.
Eric Cross (05:42):
This is true.
Douglas Fisher (05:42):
But that's a one-way direction.
And yes, science teachers andscientists do a lot of reading,
writing, speaking, and listeningand viewing.
They use the five literacyprocesses all the time.
When we interview scientists,they spend a lot of their time
reading the work of otherscientists and writing their
findings, writing grantproposals, presenting at
(06:04):
conferences, you know.
So a huge part of the work of ascientist is not just at a bench
conducting experiments.
But even if you're conductingexperiments, you're using your
literacy processes to thinkabout what you're seeing in your
experiment.
So that's a one-way direction.
And I do think literacy has aninfluence on science.
But since science goes the otherway, it influences literacy.
(06:26):
As you learn more and youunderstand more about the world,
your background knowledge grows,your vocabulary grows, you
become more literate in thosedifferent areas.
And how you think.
So if I'm learning about lifescience; I'm learning how the
world works in a more, biologicphysical world.
And that knowledge helps methink about when I'm reading a
(06:48):
novel, and there's an appeal tosome science knowledge or a
concept that gets played with,you know, perhaps time-space
continuums...
well, if I don't have thescience knowledge of how I think
the world works, it's hard forme to understand what this
author is doing.
So it does go both ways.
They feed each other.
And the more literate we become,the more complex science
(07:10):
information we can understand.
'Cause our background knowledgeand our vocabulary influence how
much we understand about what weread.
And as we access more complexscience information, it starts
to change the way we think aboutother things in our world.
Eric Cross (07:23):
There was a couple of things that you said in that,
but one of the first things thatkind of perked my ears is when
you said grant proposals.
Because I have friends that arescientists— and this is one of
the things that when I was inschool, they don't talk about—
but how much of their researchis reliant upon getting funding—
Douglas Fisher (07:37):
Mm-hmm.
Eric Cross (07:38):
— which you don't think about if you're becoming a
chemist or a physicist or abiologist or working in the
field, is that that funding,coming from the NSF or anywhere
else.
And sometimes students ask inclass like,"Why am I writing so
much?
Like, I want to go intoscience!" Or"I wanna do this!"
And this is a real-life exampleof how the writing could
actually apply, in addition toall of the things of collecting
data and conclusions andresults.
(07:59):
But that grant proposal thingjust really perked my ears,
yeah.
Douglas Fisher (08:01):
And if you can't write a grant proposal, your
ideas and experiments are notgonna get funded.
And if you can't write a strongproposal, that compellingly
convinces your readers to fundyou, you're not gonna get
funded.
But then once you get the grant,you have to write publications.
You have to share your work withother people.
Make PowerPoint presentationsand write journal articles or
(08:22):
books or whatever.
So it's a cycle that literacyinfluences the things we do,
including the things we do inscience.
Eric Cross (08:31):
Now to get in maybe some data, if you were trying to
convince someone that like thishappy marriage can exist, what
would be like your number onepiece of evidence to support
this, this back and forth ofsupporting each other?
Douglas Fisher (08:44):
Awesome.
So the quote I'll often say— andthis is from studies from more
than two decades ago now— but ingeneral, in high school science,
students are introduced to 3000unfamiliar words, 3000.
Each year! Because there arewords that are used in a
scientific way that are usedcommonly in other places.
(09:04):
And there arediscipline-specific words.
So 3000 words a year in highschool science.
The Spanish 1 textbook only has1500 words in it.
So science teachers have doublethe academic-language vocabulary
demand that a typicalintroductory world-language
class has.
(09:25):
So just the vocabulary aloneshould say to us, literacy is
gonna be important if you'regonna learn science.
And if you don't understandthese technical words, and you
don't understand the way scienceuses this particular word in
this particular way...
.
When you say the word"process,"it means something very specific
In science.
"Division"— cellular division isnot the way we think about it in
(09:49):
mathematics; there's a similarconcept, but cellular division
is different than dividingnumbers.
And those are words that getused in multiple areas.
Then you have all thesetechnical terms that you have to
be able to use, to understandthe concepts.
To share the concepts.
To talk to other people.
(10:10):
Whether you're in, you know,fifth grade and talking science,
or you're a universityprofessor, there's a shared
language, appropriate for ourgrade level, that we have shared
meanings of.
Eric Cross (10:22):
And we're essentially...
what I'm hearing you say is...
most of the people that arelistening to this are science
teachers.
We're we're also languageteachers.
In a sense.
Douglas Fisher (10:29):
So my frustration is when people say,
"Every teacher's a teacher ofreading." And I don't like that.
I've written against thatphrase.
I don't think all teachers areteachers of reading, any more
than all teachers are teachersof chemistry.
Or all teachers are teachers ofalgebra.
But what I will say is the humanbrain learns through language.
And all of us— every teacherthat I've ever met understands
(10:52):
that language is important in myclass.
If my students don't have stronglistening skills and speaking
skills; reading, writing, andviewing skills; I'm gonna have a
hard time getting them to learnthings.
If I can help them grow theirspeaking, listening, reading,
writing, and viewing in mycontent area, I'm gonna do a
service for my learning of mysubject and also their more
(11:14):
broad literacy development.
Eric Cross (11:16):
OK.
So, at a high level, what doesit look like to integrate
science and literacy?
We've done education for thelast, what, hundred years?
Douglas Fisher (11:24):
Mm- hmm.
< affirmative>
Eric Cross (11:25):
—kind of pretty similarly, right?
Kind of siloed way.
What does this look like at the30,000-foot level?
You're a professor, departmentchair.
Run schools.
Speak everywhere.
Like, when you think about thisfrom that high level, what does
it look like?
Douglas Fisher (11:39):
A high level?
Every time I meet with studentsin a science class, you know,
biology or fifth grade orwhatever?
They should be reading, theyshould be writing, they should
be speaking and listening.
Every class.
So what print do you want themto access?
And it can be a primary sourcedocument, it can be an article,
it can be from a textbook.
Are they reading something?
Are they writing to you?
Because writing is thinking.
(12:00):
If they are writing, they arethinking.
As soon as their brain goessomewhere else, they stop
writing.
The pen won't move or thefingers don't type.
And then speaking and listening,of course, is the dynamic of our
classes.
So every day we should see someamount of reading, writing,
speaking, and listening, viewingin our classes.
That's at a high level.
There are some generic thingsthat seem to work across the
(12:24):
literacy.
So, learning how to take notes.
Focusing on vocabulary.
Using graphic organizers.
These are generic things that aseducators we can use in our
classes.
Then there's more specializedthings.
So, scientists and scienceteachers think differently than
historians and literary criticsand art critics.
(12:45):
So scientists, if you look atthe disciplinary literacy work,
there's a whole body of researchwhere they interview and study
high-end experts in their field: chemistry, physics, biology, et (12:53):
undefined
cetera.
And there are somecharacteristics that were more
disciplined, specific.
Scientists like cause and effectrelationships.
They look for them when they'rereading.
They like sourcing information.
"Where this come from?""What'sthe history of this idea?"
Scientists have a long view interms of time.
(13:16):
Historians have a shorter viewof time.
English teachers have evenshorter view of time.
Scientists tend to think in longperiods of time.
And so all of that influenceshow a scientist reads and how we
should apprentice young peopleafter they get past the generic
"I know how to take notes.
I know how to study myvocabulary.
(13:37):
I know how to do summary writingfor my teacher in my notebooks
and things," there's somegeneric tools.
Once we get past those, we needto be looking at specifically
how do people in science useliteracy.
Eric Cross (13:52):
I've never had my thought process of reading
deconstructed just now, but wejust described how scientists
read.
I was like,"Yeah, that's prettymuch how I read, right there." I
also like how you said how weshould a pprentice young people.
And I feel like y ou as theliteracy g uy, you chose that
word very specifically, as faras apprenticing young people.
That is a view, I think, that'sreally important to hold.
(14:13):
'Cause that's what we're doingessentially...
is, if we're doing what weshould be doing, we are
apprenticing these young people.
Douglas Fisher (14:18):
Yes.
Eric Cross (14:18):
And helping them develop.
Now, let's imagine there's alistener out there and they're
interested in getting better atintegrating science and literacy
instruction.
They want to start somewhere.
Before we dive in, do you haveany initial words of
encouragement for the personwho's like,"Everything is like a
priority right now," in theirclassroom or in their world?
Douglas Fisher (14:37):
Yeah.
So I'll talk about elementaryfor just a moment.
When we're reading informationaltexts in our literacy block, we
should be reading informationthat is aligned to what kids
need to learn in science andhistory in, in that grade level.
Why are we reading things thatare gonna be in conflict with
what they're gonna learn inscience later that day in fourth
(14:58):
grade, for example?
So when we look at ourstandards, our expectations,
what is it that third gradersneed to know in history,
science, mathematics, languagearts?
And when we're reading text andwe're learning to apply our
reading strategies during ourliteracy block, why aren't we
reading topics that build ourbackground knowledge for our
(15:19):
science time?
So we're seeing some synergythere.
We should be looking at lifecycles in grades that are
appropriate for life cycles andknowing there's more to life
cycles than the frog and theplant or the seed.
There are all kinds of lifecycles.
And we call'em life cycles for areason.
That's a general concept.
Now in science, we're looking atthis particular lifecycle right
(15:41):
now.
And so that's a high level.
If we could get more connectionto the content standards during
our literacy blocks, it would bevery good.
When we talk about the time atwhich we call"science" in the
day, in more of the K–8continuum, the science needs to
include some primary sourcedocuments.
(16:03):
Some real things that studentsare reading.
Read about a scientist; readabout a scientist's discovery;
read about what they discovered.
So that we're building ourbackground knowledge.
So when we go to do things,activities, labs, simulations,
we have background knowledge andwe understand what we're
(16:24):
experiencing.
It can't be like—I watched thisawesome lesson on lenses and the
teacher had all these differentlenses in the room and the
students came in and they werebrand new.
They don't know anything.
They were picking'em up.
They're exploring them.
They're trying to figure out,and they're trying to come up
with theories about what this isand how it works.
And then the teacher gave them areading, a short reading, on
(16:46):
refraction of light.
And they read this thing.
And the clarity that they hadabout what these lenses must do,
well! All of a sudden they'reputting them up to the lights!
They're asking if they can goget the lights out of the
storage unit!'Cause there's— andthey're shining different lights
through the lenses to see whathappens to the light.
Because that little bit ofreading turned some focus on for
(17:09):
the students.
And it allowed them to take whatI'm thinking about, what I'm
trying to figure out, how thisthing works in another
direction.
That's the power of usingliteracy in our classes.
Eric Cross (17:20):
And what I'm hearing essentially is transfer across
disciplines, across contentareas, ultimately.
And in an elementary schoolclassroom, would it be fair to
say, probably the teacher hasmore autonomy to be able to do
that, since they're teaching allthe subjects?
But secondary, logistically,planning and those types of
things...
from what you've seen, is itfair to say this kind of needs
(17:41):
to be like a top-down, fullvertical alignment, to teach
like this?
Douglas Fisher (17:45):
I think that would be awesome to do that.
But if I'm a sixth grade EnglishLanguage Arts teacher and I'm
working with my sixth gradescience teacher, the
conversation should be,"Whatunits are you teaching?" Because
I'm choosing informational text.
My job is to teach them how tofind central ideas.
My job is to teach them how tofind the details in the text.
(18:06):
My job is to have them make aclaim and support that claim
with evidence.
The stuff I use is generic.
Yes, we do read some literatureand some narratives, but we also
read about 50% of the text inEnglish around informational
text.
So if I can help you andaccomplish my standards as well,
(18:27):
fantastic.
So let's have this conversationand say,"Oh, this is what you're
teaching in science in the nextthree weeks?
I'm gonna choose some texts andwe're gonna analyze'em for
central idea.
We're gonna analyze'em fordetails.
We're gonna, for mood or tone orwhatever that we're teaching.
And by the way, I'm buildingbackground knowledge.
So when they come to you, theyknow some stuff about what
(18:47):
you're going to be teachingnext." So I don't think it's
impossible to say teams ofteachers could come together and
say,"What do we believe that ourstudents need to know and learn
and be able to do?
And then how do we choose thingsthat are gonna help them
accomplish exactly that?"
Eric Cross (19:01):
And that's empowering.
Because that's one thing that wecan control maybe is this
East-West, peer-to-peer,different content areas.
A system may not be able tochange as quickly, but I can
definitely go talk to my Englishteam or math team and check in
and kind of see,"Hey, where dowe have overlap in that?" And I
know the times th at I'veaccidentally had overlap with
the teams, it's super-exciting.
(19:22):
And the students have been morebought in! Because it's like,
we've done something on thehuman microbiome an d w e've
talked about genetics and allthese different things, and then
when they read The Giver, orthey read some book about
genetics, they have all thisknowledge.
And they're excited.
And they talk aboutcolorblindness or they come to
my class and th ey're l i ke,"Hey, we read about this!" It's
(19:43):
almost like they saw a magictrick, the fact that these
things linked up.
And the engagement has been somuch higher when it's the same
content in different classes,but through different lenses.
At least, that's what I've seenin my years of teaching.
Douglas Fisher (19:54):
I saw a lesson on space junk that was so cool.
Middle-school students learningspace junk.
And the history teacher had apart of it, science teacher had
a part of it, English LanguageArts teacher had a part of it.
And these students, I mean, youwatch them look up all the time,
'cause there's space junk upthere.
Where'd it come from?
(20:14):
Why is it there?
What are the politics of this?
How do we clean it up?
I mean, it was just sointeresting to watch them when
the teachers came together.
And the teachers met theirstandards in this
couple-week-long space-junkexploration.
Investigation was met.
Politics was met.
All these different things.
Economy.
(20:34):
You know, how much does it costto clean up this problem?
So there's really coolopportunities when teachers come
together and realize we can worktogether and improve the
literacy and learning of ourstudents.
Eric Cross (20:50):
Absolutely.
So before this recording, wepicked your brain a bit.
And I know that there were threespecific strategy areas that you
wanted to touch on.
And one of those— which is kindof coming back to the 3000-words
language teachers— wasvocabulary.
So what are the opportunitiesthat you see, as far as the way
of educators to approachvocabulary?
(21:10):
Because, you know, there's a lot.
We got a lot of it.
T he 3000 words.
Douglas Fisher (21:14):
Yeah.
There's a lot of it.
So the worry is, we make avocabulary list and have
students look up the words indefinitional kinds of things.
That's not really gonna help.
Students need to be using thewords.
They need to be using the wordsin their conversations, in their
writing, in how they think aboutyour content in science.
So vocabulary is a hugepredictor of whether or not you
understand things.
Vocabulary is also a pretty goodpredictor if you can read on
(21:36):
grade level.
So when we think aboutvocabulary, there's something
called word solving.
You show students a piece oftext and you're reading it,
you're sharing your thinking,and you say,"Oh, here's a
context clue!" Or"I know thisprefix or suffix or root!" And
in science, a lot of the wordsare prefixed, suffixed, or root
words.
We tend to add things togetherwith a lot of prefixes and
(21:58):
suffixes and have roots andbases in science.
So we can help students thinkabout,"Oh, what does geo- mean?
We already know what geo- meanshere.
It means the same thing in thisword.
Let's apply that knowledge." Soword solving is part of it,
showing students how we thinkabout words that we might not
know.
The second is more directinstruction of vocabulary.
As students encounter the words,we work on what it means, how we
(22:23):
say it.
We practice it a few times.
The process is calledorthographic mapping.
It's kind of a scientific ideahere.
But you have the sound and therecognition of by-the-word, by
sight, and what it means.
And your brain starts toautomatically recognize that
word in the future.
So I don't have to slow down,disrupt my fluency, and try to
figure out what the word issaying.
(22:44):
'Cause I've seen it enough.
I've heard it pronounced enough,I've pronounced it enough, and I
know what it means.
So teachers should be saying,"What words in sixth grade
science, what words in thirdgrade science, do my students
really need to know?" And I'mgonna have them encounter those
words over and over.
I'm gonna have them use thewords.
I'm gonna have them see thewords.
I'm gonna have them say thewords.
(23:04):
I'm gonna say the word and we'regonna be over and over with
these terms, so that studentsincorporate them into their
normal view of,"These are thethings I know about the world."
By the way, when they go to readthat next thing, and they
understand"geology," you know,for sixth graders, for example,
they know how to say it.
They don't stumble on it.
And it activates a whole bunchof memories in their brains.
(23:27):
"This is what geology is." Thereare branches of geology, there's
physical geology, there's allthis thinking that activates as
they read.
Eric Cross (23:35):
There was a practice that I participated in and am
trying to incorporate— I don'tknow what the name of it is.
But essentially what happenedwas we were dissecting a flower.
And the instructor had us nameparts of the flower.
But we got to come up with ourown names for it.
Douglas Fisher (23:49):
Ah.
Eric Cross (23:50):
So, for instance, the stamen we call"the fuzzy
Cheeto." And we all used our ownwords and then everything was
legitimized.
And so we went through andlearned the whole activity using
our own vocab words.
But then, in the end, after wepresented and talked about it,
then the words, the actualacademic language was attached
to our word.
(24:12):
And we were able to say,"OK, thefuzzy Cheeto is the stamen," and
this, this, this, and this.
But it was such an interestingpractice, because it kind of
legitimized all of ourdefinitions.
But we weren't stumbling onthese long Latin terms and
things like that.
Is there a name for that?
Or.
...
?
Douglas Fisher (24:29):
Yes.
I don't know the name for that.
I think it's really smart.
So here's what I would say aboutthat, is: we don't learn words,
we learn concepts.
Words are labels for ourconcepts.
So what that teacher did for youwas allow you to develop
concept, a concept knowledge.
"There's a part of this plant,it goes like this, we're gonna
call it fuzzy Cheeto.
Now I have this concept.
(24:49):
And look, it occurred in allthese plants.
And those people called it thatand that other group called it
that.
We called it a fuzzy Cheeto.
Here's the part of it." And thenthe concept is in your brains.
And the teacher said,"It'sreally called stamen." And it's
an instant transfer, because youalready had the concept.
What we often see is studentsare trying to learn a really
(25:09):
hard academic word and theconcept for the word at the same
time.
And so it slows down the wholeprocess.
And there's higher levels offorgetting.
Because human beings, we don'tlearn words; we learn concepts.
If you don't have the concept,if I gave you a word out of the
blue that you've never seen,never heard, and a week from now
(25:30):
I asked you to remember it, youprobably would not, because it
didn't register.
It wasn't part of your schema.
You didn't have a way toorganize the information.
You don't have a concept.
So that teacher?
It's a great idea.
Got you to develop conceptknowledge.
And then said,"Here's a reallabel for it: What some other
people called it when they hadthe chance to come up with their
own names."
Eric Cross (25:50):
Shout out to my teacher, who was—
Douglas Fisher (25:51):
Right.
Eric Cross (25:52):
It was learned then.
It was a great practice.
And the fact that you're right,like, I just mean from my own
personal experience, I agreethat learning concepts versus
complicated words.
And it's interesting that yousaid higher levels of
forgetfulness, you know.
And you often hear thatcomplaint about it:"Students
forget! Students forget!" Butthis complex topic and this
complex word that's new to me,and I have to remember both of
those things.
Douglas Fisher (26:12):
That's right.
Eric Cross (26:13):
And the other neat thing that it did, is it
actually honored the backgroundand like the founts of knowledge
of all the different groups inthe classroom.
You just said something about"this group called it this and
this group called it this," andso by letting different groups
share all of those names, nowwe're starting to build these
kind of interesting connections.
That's at least what I rememberexperiencing.
And so this, even this practiceof this approach is very
layered, beyond just kind ofgenerating new knowledge of
(26:37):
things.
So I appreciate that aspect ofit.
Now another area that youmentioned was complex text.
Douglas Fisher (26:41):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (26:42):
And how we can get students into complex text.
So what can we do there?
Douglas Fisher (26:46):
I think science is an ideal place to get
students reading things that arehard for them.
And I do believe that some partsof school should be a struggle.
Not all day, every day.
But there should be doses ofstruggle, which are good for our
brains.
And these complex pieces oftexts that don't give up their
meanings easily allow studentsto go back and reread the text
and maybe mark the text and talkto peers about the text and
(27:11):
answer questions with theirgroups.
And the whole point of complextext is to say,"We persevere
through it.
We may not understand it fullyon our first read.
But we go back and we mightunderline, we might highlight.
We might write some marginnotes.
Our teacher might say,'What didthis author mean here?' And we
go back and look at that partand we take it apart.
(27:32):
What do we think about that?
And we talk to each other.
It's showing that when we readthings, we work to understand.
We work through our thinking,often in the presence of other
people.
And our understanding grows aswe go into the text over and
over and over again." So I saidgeology earlier.
(27:53):
There's about a two-page articleon"what is geology" that sixth
graders often read.
And some kids find it superboring.
It's a once-read,"OK, geology, Idon't really understand it.
There's a bunch of words in herethat I don't understand." But if
you go back to it a few timesand you start taking apart,"What
are the branches of geology?
Oh, I'm gonna go reread that."How are these two branches
(28:16):
related to each other?""What arethe subtypes of each branch of
geology?""How do geologists dotheir work?" You start asking
questions where students aregoing back into the text.
You spend a little bit of time.
Now, the introduction togeology, the students know so
much more.
So whatever you do next— videoexperiments, whatever—they have
(28:38):
a frame of reference, because ofthat deep, complex read.
It's probably better than simplytelling them,"Here's the
information."
Eric Cross (28:45):
Right.
And I even feel like as aneducator, when I reflect on my
own learning in the classroom,and then looking at it through
the perspective of an educator
difference between how you weretaught and then what the data
says good teaching is.
Douglas Fisher (28:59):
Mm-hmm.
Eric Cross (29:00):
It's so easy to slide back into how you were
taught!
Douglas Fisher (29:02):
Yeah.
Eric Cross (29:02):
Even though, you know, you mentally assent to,
"This is the best way.
This is the data shows." And youfind yourself kind of sliding
back at times.
Douglas Fisher (29:10):
Yep.
And there's good evidence tosupport what you just said, that
most people teach the way theyexperienced school.
And it is very hard to changethat.
And people have studied this.
And it's very hard to changethat.
Because it worked for us.
And we have an n of 1, and itworked for us.
(29:30):
Now, remember, there were awhole bunch of other kids in the
class that it may not haveworked for.
And we chose to be in school therest of our lives, and some of
your peers did not choose to bein school the rest of their
lives.
In fact, some of them hatedschool and found no redeeming
qualities of their experience.
So just because it worked for usin a case of one, n of 1,
(29:52):
doesn't mean it worked for allof the kids, or even the
majority of them.
Eric Cross (29:57):
Very well said.
It's that, what is that, thesurvivor bias?
Survivorship bias?
Where you were the one that madeit.
But you don't think about allthe other folks.
'Cause we're thinking aboutourselves.
Douglas Fisher (30:05):
That's right.
Eric Cross (30:06):
Great case for empathy too, is thinking about
the people left and right.
Because my friends are like,"Ihated science." And I say,"Who
hurt you?
Like, what did they do?
It's so amazing, so much fun!"
Douglas Fisher (30:16):
"What happened to you?
Science is the coolest.
Right?
It's so amazing!"
Eric Cross (30:21):
But I also had a unique experience in seventh
grade with my teacher who didsome of these things, and made
it accessible for so many of us,in opening opportunities that I
wouldn't have had otherwise.
But you're absolutely right.
That was my story.
That wasn't the story ofeverybody that was around me.
And I think that's reallyimportant.
(30:41):
Now, I know this is also a bigone for you, but I wanna talk
about writing.
What are the opportunities thatyou see in terms of writing
specifically?
Douglas Fisher (30:51):
So would love it if science teachers had short
and longer writing tasks in thescience time.
Of course, you can integratesome of the science writing, the
longer ones, in the Englishlanguage arts time, especially
if you're the elementary teacherand you can have control of the
whole day.
But I said this earlier; I'llsay it again.
Writing is thinking.
While you are writing, there'snothing else you can do but
(31:14):
think about what you arewriting.
Your brain cannot do somethingelse.
So if a science teacher wants toknow, do their students really
understand the concepts?
Have them write.
Now some of the shorter ones, Ilike something called"given
word" or"generative sentences": "I'm gonna give you a word: (31:28):
undefined
CELL.
C-e-l-l.
We're in science.
I want you to write the word'cell,' c-e-l-l, in the third
position of a sentence.
So it's gonna go word, word,cell, and then more words." You
could also say,"I want thesentence longer than seven
words," or whatever.
But the key is, I'm telling youwhere I want the word.
(31:50):
You will know instantly if yourstudents have a sense of what
the word"cell" means in thecontext of science.
If they write"my cell phone,"they don't get it.
If they write about spreadsheetcells or jail cells or whatever,
they didn't get it.
But if they talk to you aboutplant cells and animal cells and
the components of those cells,and then once they have that
(32:10):
sentence down, you can say tothem,"Now write three or four
more sentences that connect tothat sentence." It's super
simple.
So whatever concepts you'reteaching, put'em in a specific
position.
Now you don't have to only putit in the third position.
You can say the first position,the fifth position, the fourth
position.
But it forces them to thinkabout what they know about the
word and then how to construct asentence for you.
(32:33):
That's a very simple way to getsome writing from your students
that helps you think about whatthey understand.
Other kinds of writing, you canhave quick writes, you can have
exit-slip writes.
There's something in theresearch space called the
muddiest part, where halfwaythrough the lesson you have them
write so far what has been theleast understood or the most
confusing part of this lesson.
(32:55):
And they do a quick write, rightthere, at the muddiest part.
And as a teacher, you flipthrough these and you start to
say,"Oh, these are the pointsthat are confusing to my
students." So if 80% of them allhave the same thing, I gotta
reteach that.
If these five got,"This is themuddiest part," If these five
thought,"This is the muddiestpart," these seven,"I thought
this was the muddiest part,"what do I need to do?
Because it's gonna be hard tomove forward if this is their
(33:16):
area of confusion.
There are also all kinds ofwriting prompts that have a
little bit longer.
My favorite one is RAFT.
What's your Role?
Who's your Audience?
What's the Format?
And what's the Topic we'rewriting about?
Super flexible writing prompt.
When you teach something, wedon't want students to only
think they write to theirteacher.
So your role is an atom.
(33:38):
You are writing to the otheratoms.
What do you wanna write about?
What's the topic?
What's the format of it?
Is it a love letter?
Is it a text message?
Is it...
so we, we mix it up withstudents in saying, how do they
show some knowledge through aprompt that we give them?
And then of course, longerpieces as they get older.
(34:00):
More opinion pieces throughfifth grade.
More claims and argumentsstarting in sixth grade.
So that they're starting to see,"I have to use the evidence from
things I've learned, read,listened to, watched, and
construct something (34:15):
an opinion, an argument where I back it up
with reasons or evidence." Andthose longer pieces, you know,
less frequently.
The shorter pieces, prettyregularly.
So the teacher sees the thinkingof the students.
Eric Cross (34:29):
When you were speaking about these really
creative writing prompts, therewere specific students coming
into mind, that were coming intomind...
they're, they're great sciencestudents, but they also have
this really strong artsy sidedrawing, creative writing, and
things like that.
And when you said somethingabout atoms talking to each
other, it elicited, in my brain,certain students that would
really love this aspect ofcreativity in the sciences.
(34:51):
And it's not how we're typicallytrained as science teachers, to
kind of incorporate this, likeyou said.
A book of props.
But I'm imagining, like, as ascience teacher, if I took this,
this would be a great way toreach more students to be able
to show what they know, in a waythat might resonate with their
own intrinsic"Oh, I get to writecreatively!" So I was kind of
writing furiously as you weresharing all that information
(35:11):
there.
Douglas Fisher (35:12):
So here, I'll give you another example for
elementary people.
Again, with RAFT.
There's a book called WaterDance.
It's a pretty popular book forelementary teachers.
It's really about the life cycleof water.
For example, you are a singledrop of water.
You are writing to the land.
The format is a letter.
And you're explaining yourjourney.
(35:34):
Now, if they can do this,they're essentially explaining
to you the cycle of water.
But you got it in a way thatpeople are now,"Oh, I'm a drop
of water.
So it's me.
My perspective.
Where do I go from?
Where do I start?" Because youcan start anywhere in the cycle,
right?
My drop could have started inthe clouds.
My drop could have started inthe ground.
My drop could have started inthe lake.
(35:56):
But it has to show you thejourney.
So there are many ways ofshowing you the right answers.
Eric Cross (36:02):
And that's using the RAFT protocol.
Douglas Fisher (36:04):
That's RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic.
It's been around 20 or 30 years.
Eric Cross (36:09):
You just gave the name to something a teacher
shared in our podcast community,Science Connections: The
Community, on Facebook.
Teacher shared a Google slidedeck and on it were just three
slides.
And the role that the studenthad to have is they had to show,
then tell, the story of ajourney of a piece of salmon
being eaten, a piece of starchfrom pasta being eaten, and then
(36:30):
an air molecule in a child'sbedroom.
And they had to give the path oftravel and the experience from
the mouth and then breaking downinto protein and all those kinds
of things.
And this teacher shared it and Iwish I knew the teacher's name
because I wanna give'em credit,but they shared it.
And so I used it with mystudents and then had'em read
aloud their stories anddramatize it.
And they were so into it!
Douglas Fisher (36:49):
So cool.
Eric Cross (36:50):
But through it, I was able to see that they
understood different parts ofthe body.
They understood cellrespiration.
The whole thing.
And it was fun! To watch themget so into this creative
writing.
And now I know the name of it.
That's been 30 years they wereusing RAFT.
So you just talked a bit aboutcomplex texts and writing.
And before we go, I wanted tocircle back to something that
(37:12):
you said, because I think it'simportant, and if you could
elaborate on it a little bit,about the value of struggle.
Can you talk more about that?
Douglas Fisher (37:21):
Sure.
I do believe in a lot of the U.
S.
we're in an anti-struggle era ofeducation.
And it predates Covid.
I think it made it worse duringCovid.
We front load too much.
We pre-teach too much.
We reduce struggle.
We quote,"over-differentiate"for students.
And there's value in struggle.
(37:44):
The phrase,"productive struggle"— if you haven't heard it,
Google productive struggle— it'san interesting concept, that we
actually learn more when weengage in this productive
struggle.
Now, productive struggleoriginally came from the math
world, and it was this idea thatit's worth struggling through
(38:05):
things to learn from it, thatyou're likely to get it wrong,
and then there was productivesuccess.
And there are times when we wantstudents to experience success
and we make sure we put thingsin place for productive success.
But there are times where wewant them to struggle through a
concept.
'Cause it feels pretty amazingwhen you get on the other side,
(38:27):
when you know you struggled andyou get to the other side.
If you think about the things,listeners, think about the
things in your life where youstruggled through it and you are
most proud of what youaccomplished.
I want students to have that.
I don't wanna eliminatescaffolding, eliminate
differentiation.
But I do want some regular dosesof struggle.
(38:48):
So if you look at thescaffolding, we have a couple
choices.
We have front-end scaffolds,distributed scaffolds, and
back-end scaffolds.
Right now we mostly usefront-end scaffolds: We
pre-teach, we tell studentswords in advance, that kind of
stuff.
But what if we refrained fromonly using front-end scaffolds,
and we use more distributedscaffolds, when they encounter.
(39:09):
So there's a difference between"just i n case" and"just i n
time" support for students.
So we tend to plan on the"inadvance, here are all the things
we're gonna do to remove thestruggle before students
encounter the struggle." What ifinstead we said,"Let them
encounter some struggle.
Here's the supports we're gonnaprovide.
We're gonna watch; we're gonnaremove those scaffolds, and
(39:30):
allow them to have an experienceof success, where they realize,
'I did it.
I got it.'" Every scienceteacher I've ever worked with,
when they do an experiment or alab or simulation, they are
looking for productive struggle.
They don't tell the answers inadvance.
They don't tell if the answersare right.
That's your data.
What does your data tell you?
(39:50):
I mean, this is what you do.
But then the other part of yourday when you move into, like,
reading, you don't do that.
You fall into the trap ofremoving struggle.
And so allow them to grapplewith ideas.
Allow them to wonder what wordsmean.
Allow them to say,"I'm notgetting this, teacher! It's
really frustrating!" And yousay,"Yeah, this is really hard.
T his i s why we're doing it atschool.
(40:12):
'Cause it's really hard.
If it was easy, I'd have you doit at home.
But we're doing it here,'causeit's really hard and it's OK not
to get it at first." And createa place where errors are seen as
opportunities to learn, andstruggling through ideas and
clarifying your own thinking andarguing with other people to
(40:32):
reach an agreement or reach aplace where we a gree to
disagree i s part of the powerof learning.
Eric Cross (40:38):
There's a teacher, who I took this from.
My master teacher when I wasstudent teaching.
And she said that there's nosuch thing as failure in
science, just data.
And I took that same mantra.
And I resonate with what yousaid about how science teachers,
all of us, hold onto thatproductive struggle, because
it's part of being a scientist.
It's part of the experiments.
That genuine"aha" moment.
(41:00):
Or it didn't work out?
That's great! That's totallyfine! Let's write about it and
let's take photos and let'spublish it and let's be
scientists.
That's totally true.
As we wrap up, Dr.
Fisher, is there any finalmessage that you have to
listeners about bringing scienceand literacy together?
I know you speak everywhere, butfor everyone that's listening,
(41:20):
if you can put out yourencouragement or message or
suggestion...
you've given so many great tipsand practical applications.
But, any final thoughts on thesubject?
Douglas Fisher (41:32):
I think many science teachers are intimidated
because they think they have tobe reading teachers.
And there's a knowledge base toreading.
And some teachers are readingteachers and science teachers,
and I don't wanna dismiss that.
But it's not that you have tobecome a reading specialist to
integrate literacy into science.
It's how our brains work.
(41:52):
And so as you think about theway in which you are learning
and the ways in which you wantyour students to learn, what
role does language play?
What role does speaking,listening, reading, writing,
viewing, play in your class?
And then provide opportunitiesfor students to do those five
things each time you meet withthem.
Eric Cross (42:12):
Dr.
Fisher, thank you so much forbeing here and for your
encouragement, and sharing yourwisdom and experience.
And then personally serving mycity, here in San Diego, and my
students, when they make it toyour high school and ultimately
the alma mater of San DiegoState University.
Douglas Fisher (42:30):
That's right.
Eric Cross (42:31):
Yeah.
We really, really appreciate youin serving all kids and lifting
the bar and making things moreequitable for all students.
And encouraging teachers.
So thank you.
Douglas Fisher (42:39):
Thank you very much.
Eric Cross (42:42):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Dr.
Douglas Fisher, Professor andChair of Educational Leadership
at San Diego State University.
Check out the show notes forlinks to some of Doug's work,
including the book heco-authored titled Reading and
Writing in Science (42:58):
Tools to Develop Disciplinary Literacy.
Please remember to subscribe toScience Connections so that you
can catch every episode in thisexciting third season.
And while you're there, we'dreally appreciate it if you can
leave us a review.
It'll help more listeners tofind the show.
Also, if you haven't already,please be sure to join our
Facebook group, ScienceConnections: The Community.
(43:20):
Next time on the show, we'regoing to continue exploring the
happy marriage between scienceand literacy instruction.
Speaker (43:26):
I had this moment of realization I felt a few months
ago (43:28):
I'm like, if I don't teach them how to use the AI as a
tool, as a collaborator, thenthey're gonna graduate into a
world where they lose out topeople who do know how to do
that.
Eric Cross (43:39):
That's next time on Science Connections.
Thanks so much for listening.
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