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Kimberly,

Many elementary schools have shifted their focus to ELA and math (perhaps due to standardized testing?). It's very sad because science can provide the MOTIVATION for students to do more writing and math. In fact, I sometimes conduct PD workshops for teachers on combining science with literacy, as the two fit together quite well. Scientific experiments and phenomena provide something extremely interesting to write about! And, of course, scientists have to do a lot of writing in their work.

Mathematics is the language of science.  Almost every science topic has a mathematical component to it.  Here's something you can try:
Use a hanger and plastic cups to build a super simple weigh station. (See attached photos.)  Kids will love dropping items into the cups to see which weighs more or less. Turn it into a game by having them try to guess which object weighs more first or how many of one item weigh the same as another.

Matt

Attachments

Hanger Balance Scale (0.02 Mb)

Hanger Balance Scale 2 (0.03 Mb)

Hello Kimberly, 

I see this trend too. Schools put more focus on reading and math leaving science and social studies more of an “if we get to it” concept. I have even been in schools lately where science does not get taught the majority of the year. The best way to combat this issue is to create as many cross-curricular lessons as possible. Cross-curricular lessons take standards from a variety of topics and put them together to create one lesson. For example, a teacher could create a cross-curricular lesson with standards from science, reading, and math together. A great way to make your reading curriculum have some science within is to have students read and write about science text. Pick a book that explains a science-related topic and have that be the book the lesson covers that day. Math is also an easy one to match with science standards. Students could conduct an experiment where they have to take measurements of specific parts and also use the data at the end for statistical types of math concepts. Science is an important subject that should not be forgotten in schools. It is our job as future teachers to make sure it stays even with the limited time we have. Creating these cross-curricular lessons is one of the easiest ways to do so. 

I hope this helps, 

Chloe Zierke