Framing Our Reading II

This week Jess and I chose to use the article, Plants Do Math to Survive the Night, located here: http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/plants-do-math-to-survive-the-night-130624.htm. This article touches on both our content areas, math and biology. Just like the last article, it shows how math and biology go hand in hand. This article explains how plants use math in order to maintain homeostasis. It is a great example of how math is used in the real world, specifically in terms of organisms. In regards to biology, this article discusses the concept of organisms adapting to their environment in order to maintain homeostasis.

The text frames of this article include cause/effect and concept/definition. The author explains that when plants' environments change, specifically the change from light to dark, the plant alters how to use the stored starch in the most efficient way. The author also explained that research was done to determine if the plants could do this when they changed the amount of time the plants were in the dark. The result showed that the plants maintained the same maximum efficiency of food usage.

In terms of the concept/definition text framing, the author focuses on the concept of adaptation to maintain homeostasis, as mentioned above. By presenting the research of the biologists from John Innes Center, the author showed readers one way plants maintain homeostasis during a specific environmental change. Although the article doesn't provide information on the specific chemical reactions that take place for this adaptation to happen, the author explains that the adaptation happens by altering the energy usage in the plant by using math. However, it should be noted that the plants are not consciously performing math problems.

For this reading, I chose to use the Knowledge/Question/Response Charts strategy to promote guided thinking. Frank Smith presented an idea that reading is thinking (McLaughlin, 2015). Hiebert, Pearson, Taylor, Richardson, and Paris continue with this idea, saying that students should be taught how to think when reading (McLaughlin, 2015). This is exactly what this strategy accomplishes. The Knowledge column of the chart helps students to focus on important details of the text. Teachers may also have to guide students to ensure that the parts of the texts in this column are truly important. After writing down statements from the text, students are encouraged to ask questions. The teacher should ensure that the questions are meaningful. This column encourages and reminds students to ask questions about what they are reading. Lastly, in the Response column, students are to write down previous knowledge or experience that relates back to the text, as well as respond to what the author has written.

This strategy, while promoting thinking, also promotes the Transactional Theory of Reading. This theory recognizes that readers are individuals and that in order to obtain meaning from a text, an individual should connect themselves to the text (Probst, 1987). By using the Knowledge/Question/Response Charts, students can ask their own questions and connect their experiences to the new knowledge.

Here is an example of using the Knowledge/Question/Response Charts strategy with the chosen article.

Knowledge                                   Question                                       Response                    Researchers changed              Would the outcome                 If I slept longer than I
amount of time plants              change if they turned              would normally, I usually
spent in the light by                   on the lights earlier?                 wake up hungrier.
turning off the lights after
an 8-hour day instead
of their normal 12-hour
day to test if the plants
used energy just as
efficiently.                  


Works Cited
McLaughlin, M. (2015). What Do We Know About Reading Comprehension?. In M. McLaughlin (Ed.), Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness (pp. 30-48). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Probst, R.E., (1987). Transactional Theory in the Teaching of Literature. ERIC Digest. Retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-926/theory.htm

Framing Our Reading

My partner, Jess, and I decided on using the article Math Explains How Lobsters Swim, found here: http://news.discovery.com/animals/math-explains-how-lobsters-swim-140909.htm. I When we graduate I will be a Biology teacher and Jess will be a Math teacher, so I decided that I liked this article because the information touched on both biology and math. Specifically for biology, this article teaches students about the neural pathway, which allows for the lobsters to swim. This article also shows students a connection between math and science and although I won't be specifically teaching students all the ways science and math go hand in hand, I think it is beneficial to remind students that both science and math are important due to this relationship between the two content areas.

The text frames concepts, as well as connecting the dots between content areas. The concepts of biology include the neural system and how it affects movement. The article shows that math can solve questions pertaining to the biological world.

The reading strategy that I chose to use for this article is the B/D/A Questioning Charts. I like this strategy because it allows students to focus on what they need to know as they are learning information about the neural pathway. It also allows students to learn how to pose questions and think critically while reading a text.

Questions before reading should focus on how neural pathways play a part in movement and, more specifically to this article, how lobsters move. While reading, students should focus on information such as the most efficient way for lobsters to swim and how lobsters, specifically, go about this type of movement. Lastly, after reading students should focus on asking questions about information they still didn't understand. One such question could be what is the Mexican wave-style swimming.