About a week ago, I was talking with a colleague who teaches history. (I teach my honors physics class in his classroom, so he is often working at his desk while I teach the class.) After my class was over and before his class came into the room, I commented on how many of my students have significant difficulty keeping track of where they are in a multi-step problem that involves algebra. He remarked that he observes the same thing with reading comprehension in history.
This gave some interesting food for thought. Reading comprehension, algebra, and science experiments all require students to repeatedly keep track of the body of information they already have, acquire new information, and assimilate the new information into the existing body of information. If this is indeed the limiting factor, there should be a correlation between students’ reading comprehension (especially of a text they’re reading aloud) and their ability to set up and execute multi-step math problems and science experiments.
Moreover, if assimilating newly-acquired information into a body of existing information is indeed the limiting factor, then there should be ways of developing and practicing this skill, which should make a significant difference in students’ reading and math skills. Some activities that come to mind include:
- ELA: Students should read out loud–not just when they’re toddlers who haven’t learned to read yet, but even as elementary, middle, and high schoolers. Work on reading out loud with appropriate inflection, which requires that they assimilate enough of the story in order to have the necessary context.
- Math: Students should explain math problems (both orally and in writing) as they solve them, giving reasons for each step.
- Science: Students should explain their experimental procedure (both orally and in writing), giving reasons for each procedural step.
- History: Students should explain the causes (and relationships between the causes) of significant historical events (revolutions, wars, etc.). [This is something students already do in most history classes.]
- ELA: As students are reading a book for an ELA class, they should practice (both orally and in writing) summarizing the story from the beginning up to the point they have just read.
- Math: As students are solving math problems, they should practice (both orally and in writing) summarizing the process at a high level (E.g., “First isolate the term with x in it and then isolate x itself.”) and explaining how each step contributes to that high-level goal.
- Science: As students are conducting experiments, they should practice (both orally and in writing) summarizing the experiment at a high level. This is one of the huge benefits of inquiry-based science–it forces students to do this before the experiment (E.g., “We need to measure two different temperatures and volumes of the gas. The first one can be room temperature. But then we need to change the temperature and find a way to measure the volume at the new temperature.”) and again afterwards.
- History: Students should be able to explain how the events of each historical era brought about the next, over the course of the entire time period covered since the beginning of the course (e.g., from the Age of Exploration through the American Civil War).
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice this correlation, but I’d appreciate pointers to any relevant research.
