Judd, Emma J.; Clark, Sarah K. (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Clark, Sarah (Education, Teacher Education)
The study examined the integration of science into literacy instruction for the early grades. The study specifically explored how science-infused literacy instruction influenced the quality of compare and contrast science informational text produced by second graders, compared to literacy instruction alone. Additionally, the motivation of the students to read was examined in connection to the quality of the informational text they produced. The participants were second-graders (N = 72) between the ages of 7 – 9 and were enrolled in the first quarter of the school year at a Title 1 school. Seventy-three percent of these students were White, 22% were Hispanic, 2% were Asian, and 1% were Black, with 63% of the students eligible for free or reduced lunch. The treatment group (N = 35) received science-infused literacy instruction and the control group (N = 37) received their regular literacy instruction. Two instruments for measurement were used: a motivation survey which measured the students’ motivation to read, and a weighted writing rubric with an emphasis on signal words, content-specific vocabulary words, and word count, which was used to score the informational text writing samples produced by the students. The students took the reading motivation survey and answered the same informational text writing prompt before and after the instruction. The instruction for compare and contrast writing took place over the course of a four-week unit, and consisted of three 30-minute lessons weekly. The research was designed as quasi-experimental using a paired samples t-test with follow-up effect size measures. The results demonstrate that students in the treatment group produced significantly higher reading motivation scores but wrote lower-quality text, while students in the control group produced lower motivation scores but wrote higher-quality informational text. Implications from this study will be provided for educators and literacy instructional practices, and for researchers and future studies.