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Hello! I am currently a junior at Penn State Harrisburg majoring in early education. I have been placed in a first grade classroom for this semester. I have had discussions with my mentor teacher and she told me that they do not do any science until about 3rd grade. Why is this? I feel like students at this age would really enjoy science activities and expiremented. When I was in school I remember doing some kind of science in these early years of school. 

Hi, Jessica. I had the same experience this semester with my observation of a 1st-grade classroom. I am not sure if it is the same story with the school you were in but in the school, I was at the majority of the morning just focused on ELA topics, from learning new vocabulary words or listening to the teacher read a story then draw an image from the story and write three things you learned from the story. After lunch, the students would work on their penmanship some time. So probably schools think it is more vital for students to learn how to read and write in the early development of students. I remember learning science from 3rd-grade on, but I really do not remember learning any form of science in 1st grade. If I did it probably was the water cycle and photosynthesis.          

Hi, Jessica! I experienced this during my student teaching semester at a local elementary school. My mentor teacher told me that her first graders rarely had time to learn science concepts because most of the school day focused on mathematics and ELAR. I also noticed that she tried to integrate Science TEKS into a few math lessons, but it only happened about twice a month. I think a lot of schools are trying to help students grow their ELAR and Math skills in this way. Their main focus is on those two subjects, but they try to integrate other subjects as well. 

Hello! I am in a second-grade classroom and our school rarely has time to talk about science with their students. I think a great way to fix this is to integrate other content areas with the science topic you want to teach. There are also various websites your students can get on that are all about science and allow them to complete simple 'experiments' online. Maybe even try to complete an experiment with your students about once every two weeks to help your students thinking in terms of the STEM program. Hope this helps! 

Hi there! I am experiencing the same thing currently in my first grade placement. I also remember learning about science at this age, and doing very fun projects and age-appropriate experiments, so I was bummed when I found out my classroom doesn't have a designated time for science. The reasoning for this for my classroom at least, is because my students are so behind due to them being online for kindergarten, so we are really trying to catch them up, and get them ready for second grade, and hopefully have the majority of them at the level of a typical second grader pre-pandemic by the end of the year. My cooperating teacher and I still try to integrate science concepts into other content areas, like ELA. We have found that it is easiest to incorporate these concepts into their writing time, like having them write about the weather. I hope this helps! 

I am currently in a first grade student teaching placement and we also dont really do science. We have somuch insturction that we need to get through that we dont have time to do science. this makes me sad because I find science very interesting and would love to do some with my students. I know they would really enjoy it. It was explained to me that since it isnt tested, we usually focus on what they NEED to know and the rest will come later. 

I hope you're doing well!