The New Science Literacy: Using Language Skills to Help Students Learn Science

Whether you're a teacher new to science or a veteran teacher of science, here's a powerful new tool for teaching the subject through language literacy. This book explains how―how instructional synergy and power result from combining the two subjects. And it shows how―how teachers can use practical classroom techniques for combining these subjects at different grade levels, from elementary to high school.

Unlike other books that concentrate on reading and writing, this book defines "literacy in science" as more encompassing: it includes speaking, listening, and media analysis. In chapters devoted to each of these literacy skills, authors Marlene Thier and Bennett Daviss detail specific metacognitive techniques that teachers can use to coach students to become independent learners. By combining science, language, and guided inquiry, teachers can empower students to think and express themselves about science more effectively, improving their learning and retention. To this end, the authors provide lists of explicit performance expectations in each of the five areas of literacy for learning science. Reproducible pages including these performance expectations, graphics, and other metacognitive aids can be used by teachers and students alike to guide and assess growth in the use of language through science activities.

In addition to helping teachers in their daily teaching practices, The New Science Literacy addresses more widespread concerns among today's science educators, including the needs

Marlene Thier, a 25-year veteran of the classroom, has been a science materials developer, teacher educator, and internationally recognized leader in the movement to link science and literacy education. She has made presentations on the subject at conferences from California to South Africa, Brazil and Hong Kong and has worked closely with many schools to implement programs based on her concepts.

She has been a developer and Teacher Education Coordinator for the Science Education for Public Understanding Program (SEPUP) and the Chemicals, Health, and the Environment, and Me (CHEM) program, at the Lawrence Hall of Science on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. She also has been involved in developing literacy connections in more than a dozen other inquiry-based science courses and modules.

Thier coordinated the "Elementary Science Teacher Leadership" (ESTL) program. As part of this program, she authored a publication entitled: "Linking Science and Literacy" and co-authored, with other educators, the other nine teacher enhancement guidebooks.

She has also been an adjunct professor of education at California State University, Hayward, where she specialized in preparing teachers of reading and science, chairing several conferences and institutes for teachers' professional enhancement in science. She developed and coordinated the Issue-Oriented Elementary Science Leadership program for elementary teachers, which was funded by the National Science Foundation.

She continues to work in Hong Kong where she works with teachers to help them use the materials she developed as part of Sustain US, the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Curriculum Project for the Hong Kong Middle Schools, which was developed through STYL (Science Technology Youth and Literacy), of which she is a principal investigator.

She has published more than 14 journal articles in addition to the Delta Special Education Science Series and developed the Student Journals as part of the Science Curriculum Improvement Study program. In addition she has been a contributing author on the following projects: Media Literacy: Transforming Curriculum and Teaching, The 104th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (2005), and English Through Science: A Guide for Teaching Science (K-8) to English Language Learners, NSTA (2005).

Read Marlene’s latest article in Science Scope: Science and Literacy: Tools for Life

Bennett Daviss is an award-winning journalist, co-author of two previous books on educational innovation, and writer of more than 400 articles on education, science, technology, and business.