Reading Apprenticeship Inspired Assignment or Lesson

Patricia Foley, General Chemistry

Reading Activities for OpenStax Chemistry 2e Text

Purpose

Students are often asked to ‘read the chapter’ before discussing that material in class. However, students don’t always know how to read the resource with a specific goal of understanding concepts in mind. These activities are designed to 1) help students to direct their reading to gain understanding, and 2) provide a framework where students can share understand or lack of understanding with each other in a safe and collaborative environment.

Context

This activity is designed to be incorporated as a semester-long routine. It is appropriate for incorporation into any class as long as guiding questions have been developed for that course/text. The activity can serve as an introduction to reading for understanding and metacognitive techniques.

Criteria

Both parts of each activity are required for credit. Each student’s copy of the guiding questions and notes can be collected immediately following the group sharing activity. Activities can be graded out of 5 points, using the following rubric:

Engagement	Points Earned
Student completed at least the 5 guiding questions including “What is one thing you did not understand in this chapter?”, and participated in the group sharing activity	5
Student completed at least the 5 guiding questions, but omitted “What is one thing you did not understand in this chapter?”, and participated in the group sharing activity	4
Student completed 3-4 guiding questions including “What is one thing you did not understand in this chapter?”, and participated in the group sharing activity	2
Student completed all guiding questions, but was not present for the group sharing activity	0*

*Sharing our understanding is a crucial part of learning, but I understand that there may be outside factors that prevent students from attending a particular class session. For this reason, the two reading activities with the lowest scores will be dropped from each student’s total.

Metacognitive Conversations

The activities provide short, guided questions about the content of each chapter. These support the student in reading for understanding, and help them to hone in on important concepts in the chapter.

Each activity also asks students to state one thing in the chapter that they do not fully understand. This helps the students to surface points of confusion prior to class discussions.

The in-class conversations are an essential component of the routine. These peer discussions build upon the social dimension of learning. Students have the opportunity to communicate their understanding of the material to others. In addition, the activity acknowledges that learning is a process, and allows for areas of incomplete understanding to be discussed. Students become aware of both their own and their classmates’ gaps in understanding.

Details

Students are introduced to the activity and its underlying goals in the first week of class. The following handout can be used to introduce students to the routine:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kb6N5htzNPahFWR0WpnMgmgOKEX92Bs9/view?usp=sharing

Guiding questions for each chapter should be distributed in the class period immediately preceding the start of a new chapter. These activities are intended to be completed asynchronously. Students should record an answer for each question, and where they found that information.

Group shares should occur immediately before discussing the chapter. If the class continues from one chapter to another in one period, these can serve as a distinct break in the class meeting. Student groups will work in small groups (2-4 students) for approximately 15 minutes to discuss the guiding questions of the activity. Instructor will visit groups, and explicitly highlight and stimulate discussion about points of confusion (i.e. the last question of each activity). The students’ notes can be collected after these discussions, and the instructor can provide short, individual feedback and/or encouragement prior to the next class period.

Text and Materials

This semester-long routine aims to build students’ ability to engage with the textbook, and make their thinking visible to classmates prior to formally discussing material in class. An introduction to the routine that can be distributed early in the semester is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kb6N5htzNPahFWR0WpnMgmgOKEX92Bs9/view?usp=sharing

Reading activities have been designed to be used with the OpenStax Chemistry 2e textbook:

https://openstax.org/details/books/chemistry-2e

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cslKOdA7sr7mFoIq8Ebl9PluDR6diMHH?usp=sharing

The routine can be adapted to other classes by creating worksheets to accompany that text.