What grade is your class, and which quantitative and qualitative features of the anchor text make the anchor text grade-level appropriately complex?

This text is intended for a 10th grade course. I have used the informational text rubric to analyze that this text is very complex. While the text includes quotes and is written as a news article, the background knowledge and technical language makes it very complex for 10th grade biology students who are just beginning to build their science knowledge.

What aspect of this text is relevant to the lives of your students?

This text is relevant to the lives of our students because everyone has been directly or indirectly affected by cancer.  I think that this could lead to great class discussion about the growing concern of cancer rates, and the importance of cancer research for our future. I think that this text will do a good job of pulling the students in and getting them interested, as well as leading to further inquiry on what other research is being done.

What aspect of this text is relevant to the lives of your students?

The Scorpion text is relevant to the lives of students because no student is exempt from knowing someone that has been diagnosed with cancer. Students of today will be the ones that help find cures to cancer and other diseases. The text shows that items in our lives that we may fear have an important role in our future.

What qualities of this anchor text allow for student-led investigation of the information?

The text is chunked by paragraphs, and each paragraph lends itself to a set of beginning "I Wonders" for students to investigate.  For example, I wonder what is special about this particular scorpion as opposed to other types of scorpions?  I wonder what led investigators to use scorpion venom for research in the first place --- is it used to treat conditions other than Parkinson's disease and types of Cancer?  In addition to questioning, certain pieces of the text lend themselves to diagramming by students --- such as diagramming how the scorpion venom invades a cell.  

How will you scaffold access to this text through the use of supports and other texts?

Being mindful of this very complex text it would be essential to break down vocab and investigation into categories for discussion. Separating between the scorpion, it's venom, and how the venom's proteins function within a cancerous context could open up literacy strategies to support the text making sense as a cohesive work. The text seems as though it ties in with the literacy standard as students will reason whether the information provided supports the research towards the functions of cells surrounding cancer and parkinsons. Looking at the content standard though this seems more like a support text rather than an anchor as it diverges into other issues around cell functions.

What is the content standard you are addressing, and why is this anchor text appropriate for this content standard?

Content standard: Bio.1.1 Understand the relationship between the structures and functions of cells and their organelles.

Based on the complexity of the of the text, this anchor text would not be appropriate for a 10th grade Bio. class. My undersdtanding is that it assumes the reader has a knowledge of protiens and anthropods and cancer cells. This way above a tenth grade class. However, the content is very interesting and relates to all at many levels of understanding, when it comes to cancer.

What qualities of this anchor text allow for student-led investigation of the information?

The article introduces the idea that part of the venom from a specific scorpion could be the future cure for cancer, Parkinson's, or possibly both. This idea in itself is highly intriguing and lends intself to students doing more research on the presented results. The article was published in 2015 so it would be a great task to give to students to determine if any more data has been discovered since the article was published. And if so, does it confirm the route the scientists were exploring or does it present any set backs on their initial findings. 

How will you scaffold access to this text through the use of supports and other texts?

This text is very heavy in foreign vocabulary. To scaffold this definitions of vocabulary and usge of those words in approachable ways would be needed to help students better understand the article. 

Another strategy might be to include other articles that are more approachable but still use some of the vocabulary in a way that is easier to approach. 

Last a strategy that can help is having the students read out loud and chunk this article in the more manageable parts to help them service the meaning better. 

Also annotating as they go to pull out important parts and make notes in the margins to help them simply the meaning would help many students understand this text better. 

What qualities of this anchor text allow for student-led investigation of the information?

This text will allow for student-led investifation of the information due to the higher level vocabulary in the text. Higher level vocabulary gives students an oppurtunity to research the terms and make meaning of these "new" vocabulary terms. By allowing for student-led research, students build a sense of understanding of how to read and comprehend texts that have more difficult words in it rather than just giving up when they don't understand a term or two. Teachers can guide students with techniques on how to use this vocabulary for comprehension. 

What aspect of this text is relevant to the lives of your students? 

The text is relevant in that it involves

• Research for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and cancerous lymphoma cells. Students may be somewhat familiar with persons, family members or celebrities, suffering from Parkinson's disease and various types of cancer, maybe not specifically lymphoma. Inquiry in those types of diseases and those effected may be a result.
• Relations between Mexico and the United States. The research is funded and located in Mexico and results are shared worldwide, possibly resulting in further inquiry of U.S. & Mexico relations based on the current political climate and media coverage.

What aspect of this text is relevant to the lives of your students?

Cancer has probably affected many 10th graders in some way or another. By that age, I assume most students have either been directly impacted by cancer within their family or friends, or they know of someone who has or had cancer. I am a 10th grade teacher and have several students who want to go on to become doctors and surgeons. Several of them even speak of oncology or finding a cure for cancer. These students want to make a difference in our world and solve many of its problems, one being cancer. I think this article would excite students and encourage them that there is hope for curing cancer. It would make them interested in digging deeper into the text and continuing their personal research after they finish reading the article. 

How will you scaffold access to this text through the use of supports and other texts?

This text is obviously very complex, so scaffolds would be needed even for my Honors level students to be able to fully understand the text. I would make sure to have already covered key science vocabulary within the text and I think I would separate students into groups and have them complete a Say, Mean, Matter chart where they are essentially picking important phrases or sentences from the text and deconstructing them. This would allow for student discussion on what is important and from there they can discuss what does it say, what does it mean, and why does it matter. 

3.      What qualities of this anchor text allow for student-led investigation of the information?

One of the qualities that allows the text to have student-led investigation is the introduction of new or perhaps unfamiliar content like Parkinson’s.  Students reading this text may not be familiar with Parkinson’s disease and the introduction of this disease would cause students to have to investigate what Parkinson’s is and why someone with Parkinson’s might be effected on a greater level.

What is the content standard you are addressing, and why is this anchor text appropriate for this content standard?

 Bio.1.1 Understand the relationship between the structures and functions of cells and their organelles. 

This anchor text is appropriate for this content standard because it addresses the function of cells - how they're made up and what effects them. This article makes explains how the peptides from the scoprion venom binds to cancer cells which causes their death. They look at the make up of the toxins and are testing it against the cells of cancer patients and parkinsons patients.   This text seems very appropriate for the standard given. 

What qualities of this anchor text allow for student-led investigation of the information?

The vocabulary in this text would allow students to delve deeper into the relationship between cancer, the cell cycle and peptides.  Students may explore this text after studying protein synthesis and cell reproduction so they can better understand how a disruption in the cell cycle causes cancerous cells.  Since this article focuses on scorpian venom, I would ask students to research other treatments of cancer, as well.  

What are the initial licensing rights to this document and why do you feel it can be considered open license?

It appears that this text could be considered open license because it's freely accessible on the Internet as proven because I was able to go directly to it without having to log into the website. I also googled the article title and found it. Therefore, one might assume that it is open license because anyone can seemingly find it and use it.

However, I also did an advanced search for the title and specified open license ("free to use or share") and it did not appear in the results. From looking at Science Daily, the website that it was found on, they take articles from other sources and repost them on their website. It is not apparent if they repost them with permission or not. 

What are the initial licensing rights to this document and why do you feel it can be considered open license?

My initial gut reaction when I looked over the article was - "is this article openly licensed?" I did a preliminary Google search for scorpion venom and located a much better article which was clearly labeled as Creative Commons, using the images discussed on that webste. That led me to search.creativecommons.org where I yet again completed a Google search for the article, and again, no results for this particular article. Red flags: foreign source, no identifiable CC label anywhere on article, questionable terms of service, search for topic yields other, better articles.

I agree and there were a lot of triggers for me that immediately made me think this would not be a good anchor text. One thing that kept holding me back was how poorly it was translated and I knew there had to be better sources with this information that was better written and even, perhaps, more informative.