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Sci-Lit Connector
Linking Science with Children's Literature K-6
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A. Institute Summary
There is an ancient adage that says, “Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” Linking hands-on science experiences to children’s literature has a saluatary effect in building life long “fishing skills” in both curricular areas. Interest in science and reading increase substantially. Knowledge of science content and reading skills are mutually reinforced. Active science experiences combined with reading increase long-term memory. Process skills such as observation, prediction, classification, inferring, and data analysis--the building blocks of higher level thinking--are enhanced. Join us as we connect activity-centered, hands-on science with children’s reading of literature in their language arts curriculum, e.g. The Wide-Mouthed Frog or Swimmy or The Wright Brothers, and learn the rationale for doing so.
B. Rationale for Combining Science and Reading/Literature
Parents and educators top priority for schools is having children learn to read. While science is also considered a basic, one of four major areas in the elementary school curriculum, it gets much less time and attention than reading. This practice runs counter to USA public opinion. A Gallup poll conducted during July 2000 found that 27 % of Americans surveyed believed that science education should have a greater priority in schools than reading, writing and math, 64 % believed that it should have the same priority, and only 9 % believed that science should have less of a priority than those subjects.
Strong arguments can obviously be made for teaching reading and for teaching science, each in its compartmentalized curriculum time slot, but a good case can also be made for linking them when there are educational advantages for doing so. What are some of these arguments ?
1. Time is short
Schools have a big job. We are expected to teach children all they will need for leading a successful life. Teachers find it difficult to squeeze all that into the school day, the school week, the school year, indeed, into the child’s total time in school. Because of the perceived importance of learning to read, reading gets the lion’s share of the school day. Usually, most entire mornings are devoted to reading and literature. On the other hand, science may be taught for 30 to 40 minutes two to three times per week. By finding ways to combine language arts and science, teachers may find they can teach both subjects in a little more time than the amount allocated for one subject only. Given the demands upon teachers, it could be a real educational advantage to teach two subjects for little more than the time price paid for one.
2. Children’s Literature Can Teach Science Content
In the colorful, primary, pop-up trade book, The Wide-Mouthed Frog, a frog hops along meeting various animals, including a blue-feathered bird and a furry brown mouse. He tells them that he eats flies and he asks them what they eat. After a surprise ending, children make models of frog tongues and use them to catch make-believe flies. Children observe, predict, infer, and gather and display data--all reading and science process skills. In an easy extension of this high-interest book, children can learn a multiplicity of science concepts: characteristics of organisms, predator-prey relationships, food chains, adaptations, energy flow in an ecosystem, and others.
The language arts series in most schools provides a wealth of literature selections or trade books that can be easily and conveniently combined with science. For instance, in Harcourt’s Collections, approximately 40% of the literature selections can be enhanced with science activities. Here are just a few examples:
| Grade | Story/Theme | Science Link | K
1
2
3
4
5
6
| Getting to Know You
The Big Dipper
Dear Mr. Blueberry
Marta’s Magnets
The Kid’s Invention Book
Dear Mr. Henshaw
Smoke Jumpers | Fingerprints
Constellations
Whales
Magnets
Technological Inventions
Electricity
Parachutes |
Linking reading with science is a natural way to boost interest and learning in both curricular areas.
3. Science Experiences Enhance Reading Comprehension
There is substantial research to indicate the salutary effects of combining science and reading experiences. In a classic research finding, Ruth T. Wellman synthesized evidence about the link between them and concluded that activity-centered science helps children develop language and reading competencies. Included among her findings were:
...active experience in science helps language and logic development.
...science instruction appears especially helpful for children who are considered physically or culturally “different.”
...selected science activities accelerate reading readiness in young children.
...science activities provide a strong stimulus and a shared framework for converting experiences into language.
...reading skill development stems from language and logic development which comes after concepts are formed from repeated encounters with objects and events through science activities.
Additionally, some of the benefits that intermediate-grade children have been found to derive from science instruction are: vocabulary enrichment, increased verbal fluency, enhanced ability to think logically, and improved concept formation and communication skills.
Elementary teachers often say they do not have time to teach science. Indeed, it is a short-sighted teacher who would overlook the opportunity to improve language arts skills in the context of a combined reading/science activity. The research in reading and in science shows that when science and language arts are presented together in the same lesson, both disciplines profit, and better learning is the result.
4. Linking Science with Reading Boosts Long-term Memory
Elementary school children make “fish sticks” of cut-out paper fish taped to a soda straw. They then observe the traits of their own fish and form into groups with other children who have fish that look like theirs. These groups, or schools, of fish (with their fish sticks held high), practice moving like schools of fish move, while evading make believe predators--tuna. The teacher then reads the story/book Swimmy by Leo Lionni, discussing the book and its contents with the children.
Combining these two experiences, a simulation of make believe fish schools and the book, Swimmy, enhances children’s memory of what they have learned. Research shows that learners remember 10 to 30% of what they read, hear, or view in pictures, but that they remember 90% from a simulation of a real experience or the real experience itself. Hands-on science experiences are in the 90% remembrance category. So if we want kids to remember what they learn long after they learn it, it behooves us to get them actively invoved. Linking science with reading does just that.
5. Reading and Science Develop Common Process Skills
Both reading and science expect the development of process skills in children, one of the most important aspects of schooling. Observing, describing, predicting, classifying, inferring, communicating, interpreting, hypothesizing, gathering and interpreting data, designing investigations, and formulating conclusions are a few of the overlapping skills common to both subject areas. Children in reading are asked to predict the outcome of a story before they read it. In science, they are asked to predict the outcome of an investigation. Students in literature are asked to interpret the stories they read. In science, they are asked to interpret the results of experiments. In language arts, students are asked to communicate by writing, using graphic techniques, and speaking. The same expectations are true of science. The processes of reading and science are important, in and of themselves. They are the building blocks of life-long learning. There is an old adage that says, “Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” Having students develop process skills is giving them the “fishing skills” they need for a lifetime. Reading process skills reinforce science. Science process skills reinforce reading.
6. Kids love it. It’s fun!
Kids love to read. They love to read science. And they love to do hands-on science activities. If we can develop learning experiences that take the best of both reading and science, we’ll have a winning combination sure to interest children. They will love to learn. As one first grader was heard to say about her science program which included both activities and reading stories, “Science gives me joy feels all over!"
7. A final word
Reading and science as subjects in school can each be intellectually invigorating or terribly dull and boring, depending upon how they are taught. One way to enhance both is to teach them together. However, one major difference between teaching reading and teaching science, a difference that has been alluded to earlier but not stated forthrightly, is that children can learn to read by reading but they cannot learn science by reading only. The nature of science demands that children become active participants in doing science. They observe insects, they predict weather, they gather data on populations of organisms on the school lawn, they investigate electricity, they experiment with sound. In science, it is crucial that they build up a bank of experiences, the more real the better, to help them conceptualize what they read. In science, there is a lot of truth in the Chinese proverb:
I Hear and I Forget
I See, and I Remember
I Do, and I Understand
Science instruction can be enhanced by links to reading, literature, and language arts and vice versa, but to be effective, it must involve children in doing science. Linking science, including hands-on activities, with language arts can be a powerfully-effective instructional strategy -- a best practice that is highly recommended.
C. References
Madrazo, Gerry M. Jr., “Using Trade Books to Teach and Learn Science,” Science and Children, March 1997.
Mechling, Kenneth R. and Donna L. Oliver, Science Teaches Basic Skills, Washington, DC: National Science Teachers Association, 1983.
Mechling, Kenneth R. and Lynne E. Kepler, “Start With Science,” Instructor, March 1991.
National Training Laboratories, “Preparation for Adult Life,” Adaptation Workshop: Bethel, Maine, 1994.
The Gallup Organization, The Bayer Facts of Science Education VI: Americans’ Views on Science, Technology, Education, and the Future. Princeton, NJ: July 2000.
Wellman, Ruth T., “Science: A Basic for Language and Reading Development,” What Research Says to the Science Teacher, Vol. 1, Mary Budd Rowe, ed., Washington, DC: National Science Teachers Association, 1978.
The following photos show portions of the MAIS 2002 Sci-Lit Links program in Rome:
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|  Dr. Ken Mechling, Sci-Lit Links Project Director, introduces the program at the MAIS Conference in Rome. |
|  Using spectral glasses, Ken urges participants to “see” the connections between children’s literature and science from a new perspective. |
|  Ken reads his “favorite story” and uses it as a vehicle to see the links and opportunities for learning science and reading together. |
|  Ken begins the science activity, a simulation of a frog’s tongue catching a fly. |
|  The fly is ready. |
|  The frog’s tongue is a soda straw with a Velcro tip. Participants flip their “tongues” out to attempt to catch their neighbor’s flies, each made from a pipe cleaner, string, and a Velcro body. |
|  There are some successes…and a lot of misses. Participants learn about the food chain, predator-prey relationships, energy flow in an ecosystem…and the lasting educational value of simulations as instructional strategies. |
|  Next the book, The Mixed-Up Chameleon, is introduced and participants make new simulated chameleon tongues from party blowers tipped with Velcro. |
|  Participants try catching the flies while they are moving. |
|  Even MAIS Directors get into the swing of things! |
|  Participants construct fish sticks (paper lantern fish), getting ready for schooling. |
|  They “read” the dots on the fish to classify themselves into schools of like species. |
|  Next, they learn to move in a school, avoiding barriers and escaping predators. Following the introductory simulation activity, the book Swimmy is read and related to science and process skills including observation, classification, and communication—all processes practiced by participants in the Swimmy simulation. |
|  After reading portions of the book, The Wright Brothers, participants use a stick helicopter similar to one used by the Wright Brothers to get them thinking about the role of propellers to power airplanes. |
|  Here the participants practice their flight skills to better understand the aerodynamics of helicopters. Throughout the presentation, Linking Science with Children’s Literature, children’s literature and books were linked to model instructional strategies, increase science and language arts skills, and to identify the many advantages of connecting these two subject areas. According to Dr. Mechling, “Linking these two curriculum areas is a case of adding one plus one and getting three. The benefits are greater than the individual parts.” |
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