In this integrated unit, third grade students become spider scientists as they observe spiders in their classroom to debunk some common misconceptions about these intimidating creatures. Charlotte’s Web is used to capture students’ interest. In addition to addressing philosophical topics such as growing-up, death, and friendship; E.B. White’s book defines vocabulary words and incorporates scientific facts concerning arachnids. However, some of the spider information in the book is not accurate. Therefore, Charlotte’s Web can also be used to teach students to become better informed readers.
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Making connections is always an important task for teachers. Science teachers are encouraged to connect new learning with students’ prior knowledge, learning with student interests, learning with cultural experiences, and classroom activities across academic disciplines. Strategies that facilitate these connections help teachers enrich and enhance instruction. The authors have found two strategies—connections charts and book talk groups—to be excellent ways to guide teachers in using trade books and other narrative informational literature to support student learning in science. After introducing the two methods, the authors describe their experiences with implementing the methods in a fifth-grade classroom.
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Our science and literacy issue is always one of the most popular issues of the year, and we’re betting this jam-packed issue will be no exception. Why? There are many probable reasons. Many elementary teachers are more comfortable with teaching science literacy so they look for ways to use their strengths. No Child Left Behind legislation has put the spotlight on literacy in the elementary grades, sometimes pushing science (and social studies and PE and art) out of the busy day. Teaching science with literacy skills may be one way to convey important science skills while still teaching and reinforcing literacy.
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This monthly feature contains facts and challenges for the science explorer.
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Read! Read! Read! In first grade, language arts are such a driving force; and yet, we know the students love science and art! How can we integrate the subjects, maintain the integrity of each subject area, and authentically assess the students? The key is to maximize your instruction time and integrate with integrity. Here the authors share how they were able to integrate with integrity as they introduced a literacy-filled unit on insects to their first-grade students, most of whom were beginning English learners.
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Some may argue that little can be done to improve the amount of time available for science until policy makers and administrators provide support. Such support is certainly needed. However, individual teachers can make important changes that maintain the integrity of the other subject areas while making time for science. The following effective strategies are being used by several teachers and school districts to create time for science instruction.
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Children’s literature, or trade books, address many scientific topics, both in narrative and expository forms. They provide a context for developing process skills (Monhardt and Monhardt 2006) and help create a sense of place (Wells and Zeece 2007). In addition, they are often more fun to read than a dry textbook, accommodate a wide variety of reading skills and learning styles, and are often more up-to-date and inclusive of women and minorities than textbooks (Rice 2002). However, teachers need to use caution when selecting books for a given science unit. This month’s column describes some strategies that can be used to incorporate children’s literature in the science classroom effectively.
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You might be wondering why in the world we need such precise measures of time. Well, many systems we use everyday, such as Global Positioning Systems, require precise synchronization of time. This comes into play in telecommunications and wireless communications, also. For purely scientific reasons, we can use precise measurement of time to determine whether or not fundamental constants in the universe appear to be changing over time. Not something that keeps the average person awake at night, but a big deal to theoretical physicists. Before addressing atomic clocks, the author discusses the ways we measure time, in this month’s column.
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When someone asks you about the solar system or the water cycle, what pops into your mind? Chances are it’s a diagram. Powerful images like these help us understand, communicate, and remember important concepts in science. Learning how to read them is a critical part of scientific literacy. However, in order for children to become critical readers of pictures and diagrams, they need lots of opportunities to interact with and produce them. The following activity is designed to help students begin to interpret and question visual models and can be easily adapted for use in a variety of units.
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The typical use of science notebooks is for students to record information as they complete an investigation, writing down their procedure, observations, data, results, graphs, and any other factual information pertaining to their experiment. The author did the same, but also incorporated specific writing assignments to prepare students to publish “articles” about their science investigations in a class science journal. During the school year, they published eight science journals, all based on investigations or special projects the students completed. In this article, the author describes how she integrated language arts and science throughout the school year.
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“Is it time yet?” is a cry heard from many a student’s mouth. Is it time for lunch? Is it time to go home? Is it time for recess? Is it time for science? (we can always hope)… and the list can go on and on. Students often equate time with an action or event at a particular point; however, time is much more than that—it is the concept by which we track everything in history. This month we focus on helping students understand methods by which we track and tell time.
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Corn is an interesting subject for young children to explore because it grows ears in many forms, the seeds are easy to see and handle, and it is familiar to most children in one food product or another. Therefore, science activities about corn are easily integrated with social studies and language arts units because of the importance of corn to human civilizations. Exposure to ideas such as early people living in a different manner than the children do now, the spread of plants around the globe, and growth of this important plant go together in this activity about corn.
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Writing about inquiry-based science experiences can provide students with opportunities to communicate their questions, observations, and reflections while expanding our instructional and assessment options as teachers. But how can teachers encourage and assess student writing in science? In this article, the authors describe P.O.E.T.R.Y., an authentic assessment tool that can be used to analyze elementary student science journal entries and track the development of both language arts and science skills and concepts.
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Carefully selected trade books can introduce science concepts, develop background knowledge, reinforce hands-on lessons, support science-process skills, and at the same time enhance related literacy-process skills. They can also provide inspiration and structure for integrated science and literacy lessons. Based on these ideas, the authors developed the Science and Literacy Framework, which enables teachers to plan integrated lessons that capitalize on the similarities between science processes and literacy processes. This article describe three experiences from several hundred teachers who used the framework to build successful integrated lessons in their K—6 classrooms.
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