Problems of Practice

High school students are often ill-equipped to grapple with the reading in content-area classes, such as science. They also hampered by difficult-to-read disciplinary text. Most science teachers lack the reading expertise needed to guide students through science texts. Finding time to teach reading strategies is also an issue for teachers.

Adolescents do not have adequate skills to read-to-learn in science.
Many students in urban settings lack the literacy skills to support the kind of reading necessary for success in high school and beyond. In particular, they are poorly prepared for content area science reading requirements. They have not achieved a level of competence to tackle the reading and data-analysis tasks required of inquiry science units.

Disciplinary text is difficult to understand.
Disciplinary texts are often difficult to comprehend, even when written at grade level. They present a problem for teachers who need to use the texts to help students gain deeper access to the subject area concepts. For example, sentences are often complex and multi-clausal sentences are typical. Transitions are often subtle. Definitions are embedded within text, and the vocabulary is difficult.

Most science teachers lack the reading expertise needed to guide students through science texts.
Many science teachers have little experience with supporting reading comprehension in their subject areas while teaching subject area concepts. They also rarely think about themselves as teachers of reading in science. The result is that teachers may expect students to not closely read and analyze the full text. Teachers may instead lift out important material and discuss abbreviated selections.

Science teachers must cover large quantity of content in a limited time frame.
In the context of the academic year, teachers do not have enough time to cover the state, district, or school science curricula much less have time to teach reading within their classes.