Effective Curriculum Products for Teachers and Students

The Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading® program consists of two series: a collection of integrated science and literacy units and a parallel collection of literacy units, each paired with a set of 4-color student books.

Science and Literacy Units

The Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading science and literacy units involve students in doing, reading, writing, and talking about science.  At each grade band there will be two units approximately eight weeks long and two units approximately four weeks long, each requiring one 60-minute session each day. Of the five sessions each week, roughly 2.5 could be considered standards-based science time and the other 2.5 could qualify as standards-based literacy time.

Each unit includes nine student books (for 8-week units; 4 or 5 books for a 4-week unit). This allows for one book for each week of the unit and one that is used as a reference book throughout the unit.  Units will come with a teacher’s guide, 18 copies of each student book, a complete materials kit, and a student investigation notebook. There is an emphasis on use of 50 important science process words that students need to learn.

The teacher's guides feature an innovative design that displays the information teacher's need in a thoughtful way, making the information accessible in the context needed. Left-hand pages detail steps to follow in presenting sessions. Right-hand pages provide teaching support and considerations for the facing page. Assessments, materials, standards, special considerations, and more are all presented in a useable format, as shown on these sample pages.

Currently there are four Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading units for 2nd-3rd grade students.  When complete, the entire series will include 12 units for grades 2–5. 

Teaching all four Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading science and literacy units at a grade-level can provide a substantive science program as well as the much needed content-rich literacy instruction which is underrepresented in many literacy programs—with a special focus on reading and writing informational and nonfiction text genres.

The units provide specific guidance for educators as to how to address the needs of English language learners. Cognates (words with the same root in both languages are more common and map more closely to Spanish common usage when using scientific language in English) making the science words used in the Seeds/Roots program more accessible for language learners. A list of words used in the program demonstrates this, and a detailed paper provides further explanation.

Students who are exposed almost exclusively to narrative text in the primary grades can confront particular challenges as they transition to content area reading and writing. Increasing students’ experience with a variety of text genres is considered key to addressing the problem, as is working to develop students’ word knowledge within specific domains. Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading will help students become stronger content-area readers as they master reading comprehension skills within the context of informational and other non-fiction texts.

Literacy Units—The Reading About Science Series

The Reading About Science series is a set of literacy units designed around accessible, thematically related science books. With Reading About Science, you can help your students develop the ability to read and learn from a range of content-rich text genres. The use of thematically related science books situates literacy instruction in an organized knowledge domain that provides a natural context and purpose for authentic reading and writing.

With three instructional sessions for each book, Reading About Science takes a systematic and thorough approach to literacy development. Each unit includes a Reading About Science teacher's guide; 18 copies of each student book; and, a materials kit with posters, vocabulary cards, and other materials as described in each guide. The science topic and number of books in each unit is the same as described above for the science and literacy units.

Reading About Science units equip teachers with the tools they need to help students develop strategies that enhance comprehension and fluency, to help students communicate effectively with both oral and written language, and to support students’ acquisition of knowledge about the world along with related conceptual vocabulary.

The literacy series and the integrated science and literacy series use the same student books, but emphasize different learning goals.

Strategy Guides for Student Books

Correlations to Standards