Annually, thousands of U.S. students fail high school introductory biology. The language demands of biology are large, and science teachers are often unprepared to support students’ language needs. Here, we describe a 4-week summer high school introductory biology course executed in a large West Coast city. Our aim was to help 33 students recover their biology credit. A centerpiece of the 4-week course was the embedding of metacognitive language support tools in class lectures and assessments. Of 29 regular attendees, 28 passed with a C or better. Student science learning was reliably associated with use of the language support tools.
BalfanzR.LetgersL.JordanW. (2004). Catching up: Effect of the talent development ninth-grade instructional interventions in reading and mathematics in high-poverty high schools. NASSP Bulletin, 88, 3-30.
4.
BarabS.SquireK. (2004). Design-based research: Putting a stake in the ground. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13, 1-14.
BransfordJ. D.BrownA. L.CockingR. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
7.
BrownR.PressleyM.Van MeterP.SchuderT. (1996). A quasi-experimental validation of transactional strategies instruction with low-achieving second grade readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 18-37.
8.
CallendarA.McDanielM. (2009). The limited benefits of rereading educational texts. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34, 30-41.
9.
CohenJ. S.SmerdonB. A. (2009). Tightening the dropout tourniquet: Easing the transition from middle to high school. Preventing School Failure, 53, 177-184.
10.
CoiroJ. (2003). Rethinking comprehension strategies to better prepare students for critically evaluating content on the Internet. The NERA Journal, 39(2), 29-34.
11.
ConleyM. (2008). Cognitive strategy instruction for adolescents: What we know about the promise, what we don’t know about the potential. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 84-106.
12.
CubukcuF. (2008). Enhancing vocabulary development and reading comprehension through metacognitive strategies. Issues in Educational Research, 18, 1-11.
13.
FinkelsteinN.FongA.Tiffany-MoralesJ.ShieldsP.HuangM. (2012). College bound in middle school and high school? How math course sequences matter. Sacramento, California: The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd.
FreireP. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder.
16.
GomezK.KwonS.GomezL.ShererJ. (2014). Supporting reading to learn in science: The Application of Summarization technology in multicultural urban high school classrooms. Chapter 7. In BloymeyerR.GaneshT.WaxmanH. (Eds.), Research on technology in multicultural settings (pp. 139-158). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publications.
17.
GomezK.ShererJ.HermanP.GomezL.ZywicaJ.WilliamsA. (2010). Supporting meaningful science learning: Reading and writing science. In RodriguezA. (Ed.), Science education as a pathway to teaching language literacy (pp. 93-112). Rotterdam, Netherlands: SENSE Publishing.
18.
GomezL.GomezK. (2007, November). Reading for learning: Literacy supports for 21st century work. Phi Delta Kappan, 89, 224-228.
19.
GomezL.HermanP.GomezK. (2007). Integrating text in content-area classes: Better supports for teachers and students. Voices in Urban Education, 14, 22-29.
20.
GormallyC.BrickmanP.HallarB.ArmstrongN. (2009). Effects of inquiry-based learning on students’ science literacy skills and confidence. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 3, Article 16.
21.
GreenleafC.LitmanC.HansonT.RosenR.BoscardinC.HermanJ.. . . JonesB. (2011). Integrating literacy and science in biology: Teaching and learning impacts of reading apprenticeship professional development. American Educational Research Journal, 48, 647-717.
22.
GuthrieJ.Van MeterP.HancockG.AlaoS.AndersonE.McCannA. (1998). Does concept-oriented reading instruction increase strategy use and conceptual learning from text?Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 261-278.
23.
HaggisT. (2006). Pedagogies for diversity: Retaining critical challenge amidst fears of “dumbing down.”Studies in Higher Education, 31, 521-535.
24.
HeitinL. (2016, January20). Science teachers need more training to get ready for next generation standards. Education Week.
25.
HermanP.GomezL.GomezK.WilliamsA.PerkinsK. (2008). Metacognitive support for reading in science classrooms. In KirschnerP. A.PrinsF.JonkerV.KansellarG. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th international conference of the learning sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 342-349). Utrecht, Netherlands: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
26.
HermanP.PerkinsK.HansenM.GomezL.GomezK. (2010). The effectiveness of reading comprehension strategies in high school science. In GomezK.LyonsL.RadinskyJ. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th international conference of the learning sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 857-864). Chicago: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
27.
IrvineJ. J. (2010). Foreword. In MilnerH. R. (Ed.), Culture, curriculum, and identity in education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 11-15.
28.
JonesE. (2011). A second chance to graduate on time: High school students’ perceptions on participating in an online credit recovery program. Unpublished dissertation. Virginia Commonwealth University.
29.
KireyevK.LandauerT. K. (2011). Word maturity: Computational modeling of word knowledge. In Proceedings of the 49th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics: Human language technologies (pp. 299-308.). Portland, OR: Association for Computational Linguistics.
30.
LandauerT. K. (1998). Learning and representing verbal meaning: The latent semantic analysis theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7, 161-164.
31.
LandauerT. K.FoltzP. W.LahamD. (1998). An introduction to latent semantic analysis. Discourse Processes, 25, 259-284.
32.
LegtersN.KerrK. (2001, January). Easing the transition to high school: An investigation of reform practices to promote ninth grade success. Paper presented at a forum convened by The Civil Rights Project. Cambridge, MA.
33.
LemkeJ. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
34.
MarxR. W.BlumenfeldP. C.KrajcikJ. S.FishmanB.SolowayE.GeierR.. . . TalR. T. (2004). Inquiry-based science in the middle grades: Assessment of learning in urban systemic reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41, 1063-1080.
35.
MargolisJ.EstrellaR.GoodeJ.HolmeJ. J.NaoK. (2008). Stuck in the shallow end: Education, race, and computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
36.
MilnerH. RIVLomoteyK. (2014). The handbook of urban education. New York, NY: Routledge.
37.
MokhtariK.ReichardC. (2002). Assessing students’ metacognitive awareness of reading structures. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 249-259.
NorrisS.PhillipsL. (2003). How literacy in its fundamental sense is central to scientific literacy. Science Education, 87, 224-240.
40.
OrellanaM.ReynoldsJ. (2008). Cultural modeling: Leveraging bilingual skills for school paraphrasing tasks. Reading Research Quarterly, 43, 48-65.
41.
PeskeH. G.HaycockK. (2006). Teaching inequality. How poor and minority students are shortchanged on teacher quality. Washington, DC: The Education Trust.
42.
PressleyM. (2005). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching (Solving problems in the teaching of literacy) (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
43.
RiefL. (2002). Quick-writes: Leads to literacy. Voices from the Middle, 10(1), 50-51.
44.
RoderickM.CamburnE. (1999). Risk and recovery from course failure in the early years of high school. American Educational Research Journal, 36, 303-343.
45.
RomanceN.VitaleM. (2005, May). A knowledge-focused multi-strategy for enhancing student reading comprehension proficiency in grade 5. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Reading Association. San Antonio, TX.
46.
RosenshineB.MeisterC. (1997). Cognitive strategy instruction in reading. In StahlS.HayesD. (Eds.), Instructional models in reading (pp. 85-107). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
47.
SaldañaJ. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
48.
SchwendimannB. A. (2011). Mapping biological ideas: Concept maps as knowledge integration tools for evolution education (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.
49.
SilverD.SaundersM.ZarateE. (2008). What factors predict high school graduation in the Los Angeles Unified School District (Report No. 14). Santa Barbara, CA: California Dropout Research Project.
50.
StraussA.CorbinJ. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
51.
TateW.JonesB.Thorne-WallingtonE.HogrebeM. (2012). Science and the city: Thinking geospatially about opportunity to learn. Urban Education, 47, 399-433.
52.
Wade-SteinD.KintschE. (2004). Summary street: Interactive computer support for writing. Cognition and Instruction, 22, 333-362.
53.
WigfieldA.GuthrieJ. T.PerencevichK. C.TaboadaA.KlaudaS. L.McRaeA.BarbosaP. (2008). Role of reading engagement in mediating the effects of reading comprehension instruction on reading outcomes. Psychology in the Schools, 45, 432-445.
54.
WoodK. D. (2002). 2000 national survey of science and mathematics education: The status of high school biology teaching. Chapel Hill, NC: Horizon Research, Inc.
55.
ZywicaJ.GomezK. (2008, October). Annotating to support learning in the content areas: Teaching and learning science. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52, 155-164.
