Etta Tricksey, reading teacher at Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, discusses teaching as part of a team and how reading skills are developed as part of science instruction. Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #3, Children as Explorers (NCREL, 1991).
"I was a remedial reading teacher, and of course my students had a great deal of difficulty in history and science, and I always wanted to help, but they were in five different teachers' rooms and those teachers were doing different things at the same time, and so it was almost impossible to help all of them. Reading is a process, and of course, before this program, I taught it individual skills, you'll learn main ideas, and we just got books and we read the main idea. Now we have a real reason for finding the main idea. You have to do this research project in science, so you have to be able to identify what you want to be able to know, and that's the main idea. So, it really helps me because we have a focus."
This Critical Issue was researched and written by Marvin Christensen, Science Professional Development Specialist, Midwest Consortium for Mathematics and Science Education, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, Oak Brook, Illinois.
Date posted: 1996