From Theory into Practice…
Inquiring into Literacy – A Toyota Tapestry Project
By Sherry Schaaf

Students at Forks Elementary and Forks Middle Schools in Forks, Washington, have been part of an exciting grant project this year.  With a $10,000 Toyota Tapestry grant, students have been helping teachers put theory into practice in Forks’ classrooms.  In the last two years teachers have been trained in specific literacy strategies as part of a literacy focus at Forks Middle School; this year, with assistance from this grant, teachers of science in grades 5, 6, 7 and 8 have continued to receive specific instruction to assist them in helping their students become better readers through the use of non-fiction science tradebooks.  Teachers have been trained in the use of specific reading strategy instruction such as activating schema, making connections, questioning, determining importance, inferring, and synthesizing.  Combining these strategies with those for inquiry-based science is not a stretch, as inquiry using many of the same strategies such as observing, questioning, inferring, hypothesizing, recording, sorting/classifying, comparing and synthesizing

Teachers strive to use interesting tradebooks to help students become better readers and also become more scientifically literate.  For instance, using tradebooks on Tornadoes and another on Hurricanes, students in Ms. Carroll’s and Mrs. Keene’s 7^th grade classes are learning more about  Catastrophic Events, a middle school science unit from Science, Technology and Children.   6^th Grade students use tradebooks on Classification, Mammals, and Reptiles in Ms. Stewart’s room to learn more about animal diversity.  And 5^th grade students in Mrs. Bell’s class use tradebooks on various simple machines, such as Pulleys, Levers, and Gears to help them inquire into what makes things work.  The facilitators for this project are Patti Fouts, Dave McIrvin and Sherry Schaaf.  For more information please contact Sherry Schaaf at sschaaf@mail.wavcc.org.

 

	Students use their tradebooks to answer questions they have about the investigations they are doing.  For final projects after doing a science unit, the tradebooks are valuable sources of information.
7th Grade students use their trade-books to read to younger students.	Teachers use the books in class to teach literacy strategies to help their students become better readers.

For further information contact Sherry Schaaf at sschaaf@mail.wavcc.org
This is a Toyota Tapestry Grant project.

December, 2003