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Sci-Lit Connector
The Electronic Newsletter of the Sci-Lit Links Project
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Madrid K-3 Sci-Lit Links
The American School of Madrid library was the site of the MAIS K-3 Sci-Lit Links Pre-Conference program on October 31 and November 1, 2001. It all began with introductions of teachers from throughout the MAIS region: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Morocco, and Tunisia. After constructing “I Love Science” visors, 19 MAIS teachers from 14 different schools then spent an intensive, 2-day, MAIS Sci-Lit Links Pre-Conference doing high-interest, hands-on science activities linked to children’s literature, either in their language arts curriculum or in trade books.
Teachers engaged in a wide variety of activities, all meeting the USA National Science Education Standards. They read The Wide-Mouthed Frog and practiced catching flies with make-believe frog tongues. They classified buttons and read The Button Box. They observed, measured, and recorded data about peanuts and read The Life and Times of the Peanut. They explored emperor penguin characteristics including mating calls, egg laying, and huddling behavior and read Antarctica, plus poems from Antarctic Antics. They felt human body vibrations, tested pitch with tongue depressors, and made soda straw kazoos before reading Sounds All Around. They studied their own inherited human characteristics and linked them to the book, We’re Different, We’re the Same. They learned about chameleons, technology, seeds and germination, bioluminescence, life cycles, camouflage, trees, clouds, magnets, center of gravity and more. And for all the activities in which they were engaged, they read a children’s book or story from a K-3 language arts curriculum. Science was linked to literature. Participants were encouraged to use the Sci-Lit Links model in their own classrooms and share the model with other teachers in their own schools and electronically via the project’s internet web site www.scilitlinks.org
In addition to all the children’s books (participants got to keep 15-16 books for use in their own classes) and science activities, instruction also focused on research related to linking language arts with science, effective instructional strategies, process skills shared by science and language arts, and participants roles' as home-school leaders. Each participant is expected to implement science-literature links in her own classroom, share the Sci-Lit model with colleagues, and prepare two QuickPlans for the QuickPlan “bank” found on the project web site.
Sci-Lit Links is a project of MAIS, Reina O’Hale, Executive Director. It is funded with a grant from the Overseas Council of American Schools. Dr. Ken Mechling of Clarion, PA is the project director and he is assisted by Amy Mechling, science teacher at Immaculate Conception School in Clarion and Cheri Keys, elementary and middle school teacher in Brookville Area School District, Brookville, PA.
What did the participants think of their two long days with Sci-Lit Links in Madrid? Says Sarah Zarzo of the American School of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain “The workshop was great and inspiring!” Katie Kane of the American International School of Lisbon, Portugal, called it “valuable and thoroughly enjoyable.” Others reported the program as “fun,” “outstanding,” “very worthwhile,” and “one of the best I’ve attended.” |
|  Amy Mechling, a Sci-Lit Links instructor, reads the children’s book, Little Lumpty, to introduce a science-technology activity in which participants drop eggs into eggcatchers they have designed and built. |
|  Katie Kane, the American International School of Lisbon, leads the Sci-Lit Links program in a fun song about caterpillars. |
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