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Hi everyone! Last week I presented a lesson to my class where I integrated science and writing. I am currently a student teacher in a writing only class, where we have been going over compound sentences. To be honest, I found integrating science and writing very challenging. I did not want my lesson to be mostly science because I am in a writing only class. I didn't want my students to get confused. I know that my students, just finished the weather unit in their science class. That's when the bright idea of creating a weather report using compound sentences came to mind!
I would love to hear other ideas on how any of you would integrate science and writing! Please share your lesson ideas!
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Hi Carina,
I am a pre-service teacher from Wartburg College. In my science methods course, we talk a lot about cross-curricular lessons and I think it is a great idea to incorporate science into your writing class. I like your idea of the weather report, and you could always try to tie what you are writing in with what they are doing in science.
However, you could also take a different approach and talk about science-related topics in your writing class and then do an activity with whatever topic you wanted to focus on. For example, you could talk about the National Parks and then have your students write about which park they would choose to visit and why, which that topic could also tie into social studies. I think your possibilities are endless!
Patricia ten Hoeve
Wartburg College '20
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Carina,
I am currently studying Elementary Education at the University of Northern Iowa. I love your idea of writing weather reports! it is very important to integrate different subjects into one another. Another way to integrate science and writing is to teach a mini-lesson about a science topic and have the students reflect on their learning, or as you mentioned, implement a specific writing component such as compound sentences. I think you should definitely keep it up!
-Makayla Bauer
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Hi Carina,
I am currently a pre-service teacher at the University of Northern Iowa. I am currently in a science methods course where we have talked about integrating writing into science lessons. I feel as though your situation is more difficult as you are focusing more on the writing aspect. I liked your idea of having students create a weather report. I wonder if there is a way you could have students write a play (using compound sentences, of course) about an entire news cast. I feel like this would make it less confusing for students as it is not TOO science related where they get the classes confused with each other.
Hope this helps!
Stephanie Kohls
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Carina,
Incorporating cross-curricular topics in your writing class is a great idea. I think your science and writing lesson is a great one. You could do something as simple as having students complete a creative writing activity about the weather that day or about a unique experience they had with weather such as driving through a snow storm. This will not only integrate science and writing, but students will also be connecting it to their own lives. I hope this helps!
Claire Schroeder
Pre-Service Teacher
Wartburg College
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Hello Carina,
I am a 3rd year pre-service teacher at Wartburg college and we talk about using cross-curricular in the classroom. I really like your idea of using cross-curricular in the classroom with the use of the weather. Maybe try using the weather for the students to journal about what they see outside and the temperature daily. Another idea, is that students could write a story about a time that they had a trip and how the weather affected their trip. Kind of like a story. Finally, I would collaborate with the science teacher and come up with some ideas together to incorporate both writing and sceince. Hope this helps!
Connor Neuroth
Wartburg College
3rd Year pre-service teacher
Elem. Ed. with reading endorsement
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Hi Carina! I am a senior Elementary Education major at the University of Northern Iowa. I am currently enrolled in a science methods course. Over the semester we have discussed cross-curricular lessons. It is important to teach in a way that students can see how different subjects are interelated. I think the weather report is a great way to incorporate science and writing together.
In my science methods course we used the SeeSaw app to journal about what we had learned that day, what we predicted, our observations, what we wanted to learn more about, ect. I really enjoyed using this app and thought it was a great way to also incorporate writing into the science lessons. I think this could be a beneficial app for you to use for your students in an subject. I plan to use this app in my future classroom with many subjects! I hope this helps you!
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Hi Carina! I love the idea of writing a weather report while emphasizing on compound sentences. I am a pre-service teacher at the Univeristy of Northern Iowa, and in several of my classes we talk about the importance of cross-curricular teaching; which is exactly what you're doing by bringing writing into science and vice versa. Really, you can integrate writing into science many ways. You could create science journals for your students, which they could use to keep track of observations, experiencents, and results. Exit slips are another fun way to get students writing at the end of science. You can have them answer a question at the end of a lesson, or write 3,2,1: 3 important ideas, 2 questions, 1 thing they want you to know. These are just a couple ideas I have off the top of my head to get students writing. Hope this helped! :)
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Hi, Carina!
In a recent science class, we did something that I have never done before. We were given a scenario where we had to investigate the situation. The situation could have been interpreted in several different ways, but each student was able to brainstorm their own ideas and investigate their ideas. Each person had to write what they believed and why using supporting evidence from research. This could easily be translated into a paper where everyone had to write their beliefs and their evidence to back up their beliefs.
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Hi Carina,
I am a senior Elementary Education major at the University of Northern Iowa. I am currently enrolled in a science methods class. Last week we worked on an activity that incorporated science and writing. We were given a scenario to read through, we then had to write down our ideas of what we thought happened, in our writing, we had to provide evidence, make a claim, and the reasoning for our theory. This activity can easily be modified to any grade level and it easily integrates science and writing!
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Hello Carina,
Well, I see where you would be worried about the students getting confused with the science and writing, but I feel like being in an all writing class is really flexible to accommodate to any content since writing is everything if you think about it. So even by conducting an experiment in class, one can have the students write their observations practicing like in your weather report compound sentences and with that, the students are enjoying the experiment and getting their writing portion and purpose done.
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Hi! I think that is a great idea to have your students create a weather report! To further their writing, you could also have your students write about what they did in their science classes uses the types of sentences you are teaching them at the time. This would be beneficial to both you and your students science teacher to show that they are making sense of and benefitting from your lessons. It would be a great way to informally assess them!
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Hi Carina,
Have you considered using poetry in science?
You can also use writing as an assessment. For example: pretend you are a piece of food traveling through the digestive system. Explain the journey of an invasive plant in a new area.
Hope that helps.
Mary Lynn
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Hey Carina! I'm in a Science Methods course at UMBC. We talk about this often in class and are very focused on inquiry based science. When using inquiry based learning I think it is possible to overlap in other subjects ultimately extending your science lessons. For example, if you're doing a lesson on plants you can do your lesson and possibly have a class plant that you can take data on and and analyze in math or you could practice research skills during ELA. These are just a few examples of integrating science with two different subjects.
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Hi Carina! I’m a preservice teacher in a science methods course at University of Northern Iowa. I think that science and other subjects can be intertwined quite often! I think that as long as you are having the students write about their science experiences, they won’t be losing focus on the writing aspects. If you think they are losing focus, you can reteach a mini lesson and remind your students that you want to make sure they are writing. I think that a weather report is a great idea. You could have students write about anything, really! If you are studying life cycles, students could write about what happens during each stage, for example. I’m not sure what grade you are teaching, but NGSS has performance expectations that connect to other common core standards. Here’s an example: https://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/3-ls4-4-biological-evolution-unity-and-diversity. In this case, you could have students write an opinion piece or an explanatory text about a solution to a problem. Best of luck!
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Hello Carina,
I am a 3rd year preservice teacher at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa and our education system is huge on cross-curricular connections. I think there are many writing activities that you can incorporate science into your writing classes. I think a weather report is a great idea! You could also have your students keep journals that are reflections of their science class. It would also be very beneficial to collaborate with the science teacher to get some ideas as to how you can tie in their class to your writing class!
Hope this helps!
Andrea
Wartburg College
Elementary Education
Reading and Special Education
Wartburg College class of 2020
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Using the R.A.F.T. Model
RAFT assignments encourage students to uncover their own voices and formats for presenting their ideas about content information they are studying. Students learn to respond to writing prompts that require them to think about various perspectives:
Role of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A movie star? The President? A plant?
Audience: To whom are you writing? A senator? Yourself? A company?
Format: In what format are you writing? A diary entry? A newspaper? A love letter?
Topic: What are you writing about?
Your students could be a rain drop in the water cycle writing about their journey, an insect going through metamorphosis, or any other item you can think about.
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Hi Carina,
As a pre-service teacher at UNI, we have been working on integrated curriculum. The other day in class, we were given a mystery to investigate the possible scenarios that caused the death of a man. After being given the story, students were asked to write what they think may have happened by providing evidence, reasoning, qualifiers, claims, and rebuttals. This is an activity that works on reading and writing but also shows how scientist work to use surrounding evidence and thoughts to support their claims.
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Hello Carina,
I am a student at the University of Northern Iowa and Icurrently taking a science methods course. I loved your idea of having your students write their own weather report. Not only would that be a great learning experience they are for your students, it would also be a lot of fun for them as well. Another way you could incoprporate science into writing would be to have your students create their own journals from what they are working on in science. This is a great way for students to put what they are learning in science into words for their writings. Students can also read a scientific scenario and then they can write their claims to these scenarios. Mini science lessons would also be a good idea to use. That way the focus isn't on science, but it is on the writing portion. Complete a small experiement like asking students to observe a plant and then have them explain what they see in writing. There are endless possibilities!
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Hello Carina,
I am currently a student at University of Northern Iowa. I'm takig a science elementary methods course and saw that you were trying to implement other subject areas into your writing. I think it's a great idea to cross-curriculum subjects to enrich our students learning experience overall. For example, I'm not a big science fan, but I do love to read. So reading about weather patterns would personally peak my interest! Our methods class started using science notebooks which could help incorporate science into your writing as well. Students can write about what they are learning in science in their notebooks. Students can also write their predictions, observatiosn, and final thoughts during a lesson. There's plenty of different scenarios where you can cross science with writing. On the NGSS website, there are a lot of lesson plans that invovle cross-curricular subjects that may be helpful for you as well.
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Carina,
I am a pre-service teacher taking a Science Methods course. In this class, we discuss often the importance of incorporating other subjects into our lessons. I think your idea of having your students write a weather report was a great way to encorporate both science and writing in a lesson! Another way you could encorporate science into your writing class would be to choose a science topic that your students find interesting. After learning about this topic, have your students write compound sentences about the topic. These compound sentences could consist of facts they learned about the topic. You could also encourage your students to write questions about what they would like to elarn more about. I think it is really great that you are taking the time to integrate science into your class. Keep up the good work!
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Hi Carina,
I am currently enrolled in a science methods class at the University of Northern Iowa. In class, we talked about the importance of integrating multiple subjects within a lesson. We used an app called SeeSaw. This app allowed us to write about our investigations, predictions, and observations. It is a great way for students to keep a science journal. We also got to do an do a investigation with a science related mystery where students had to figure out how 'Mr. Xavier died.' With this activity, students are able to write down their predictions, work on reading and writing skills, and still learn about new science concepts. Because science isn't a subject focused on that much in elementary classrooms, I think it is so importnat to incorporate it into other subjects like reading. Keep up the good work!
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Hi Carina,
I am also a student from the University of Northern Iowa, taking my science methods course. We talked a lot of curricular integration throughout our semester. Your idea about having the students write a weather report is awesome! To further integrate writing and science, you could have your student journal about what they are doing in science. I also think you could have your students perform mini-investigations into a science phenomenon and have them record their thoughts and how they made sense of it. Not only are the writing about their experience but they are also having fun with science. There is so much you can do with integrating science and writing! Good luck!
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