Students raise important questions about using reading, information texts, and the like when learning science.

1. Guest speaker:
Dr. Donna Mahar
Making Textbook Reading Meaningful
SER/VE Meeting 6 March 2012
Roll Call:
Christopher Allen- physics
Tamara Miles- biology- documenter
Karla Nelson- biology

2. What do you do if it is your first year
teaching and you have a text passed
down from the previous teacher that is a
terrible text with significant errors- how
do you develop dedication to a subject
then?
Well, we could make the
necessary corrections and
use it or we could
supplement with other
sources.
Yes! As Dr. Mahar
said, “effective teachers go
beyond the textbook and
use a variety of materials”!
Karla, Christopher, and I could all barely hear over the seagulls- but
we could all speak!

3. All students should be able to
read scientific articles, but
where do we begin
presenting this information
to them to increase their self-
efficacy?
Dr. Mahar suggests that we should
“supplement text with outside readings
as often as possible because creating
questions out of curiosity motivates
- “you just can’t take a
students to do more reading and makes
text and think you are
them think like a scientist!”
giving students the
.
analysis skills
necessary to be
college ready!”

4. In terms of using social
motivation…
How do you assess
what motivates them in
order to use what Dr. Mahar says it is
motivates them? important not to “dummy
down the text” or be too
critical and use real-
world examples!
Dr. Mahar says that effective teachers
will set up opportunities for assessing
text, or thinking of ways they choose
to utilize the information.
To motivate students we should match the text to their
reading levels and supply different media to link to the text.
Dr. Mahar says this is particularly important for ESL learners.

5. It was suggested that we
supplement texts with outside
reading materials, but what do we
do if we are in an environment or
community that is very restrictive of
what these readings can be?
We could run into some really big
fights with parents about evolution
for example.

6. Some schools have a
suggested list of
texts, what is a good
way to deal with
outside controls?
Students should have an
opportunity to read deeply
about topics they are
interested in.
We could use
demonstrations…