Introduction
One of my areas of concern stems from what I have observed in the past five years of my student life. A majority of students do not have the basic ability to access content. Specifically, the weakness I have observed is the level of literacy. Students are usually unaware about how to extract relevant information from the irrelevant. I, as a student, have often observed that while reading a sentence, even if the students understand all the words, they have no idea as to what they are reading. I am curious about exploring the notion of conceptual change. I am intrigued by the idea of how students who are repeatedly exposed to a concept still do not understand it. How do conceptual changes involving changes in strategies regarding literacy affect students’ achievements in a classroom? What changes appear in their reading ability as they use conceptual change and various literacy strategies? What changes will students observe in their own academic development?
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine how conceptual change revolving around literacy affects students’ progress in a class. The relevant
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(2000) referred to Rivard & Straw (1996). They argued that the idea of literacy being involved in conceptual change has yet to receive due attention. It is my objective to determine if this is still the case in today’s scenario. Rivard (2000) further cites Bereiter, who proposed that students should take to writing to clarify their preconceptions and utilize their prior knowledge in order to be able to be more pro-active in their thinking process. Mason et al. (2000) studied fourth graders who used writing to bring about conceptual change in their scientific knowledge. They found that writing allowed the children to express their current ideas and provided a way for students to think about what they already knew. It also gave the students the opportunity to reflect on their