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What is a good method to combine science and literature?
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Hi Nancy!
There are so many ways to incorporate literature into your science lessons! The easiest is to find books related to what you are teaching and incorporate them into your lesson. Especially in early elementary, this really adds to student learning. I included the link to an article about using literature to deepen science understanding.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-science-bring-literature-life
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I was always taught (and am often reminded) that if you can work smarter rather than harder then do it :-) Thus, look for resources and lesson plans already created that integrate science and literature. Your community public library is one of the best resources! You can also go online to Scholastic Books and research books that integrate science or use non-fiction, student friendly books to introduce topics and engage students. PBS learning education, NGSS, Teach Engineering have some lesson plans and curriculum that integrate literature or use ELA to support students? learning. Hope this helps!
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Hey Nancy!
As a preservice teacher, I am always looking for new and different ways to integrate different subjects. One way that I've seen science and literature combined is (in early elementary), reading a science book about the topic you're studying to the class as a whole. Afterwards, making an achor chart of some sort. For example, in one of my practicums, the teacher read several books about Bats to the students across the course of several days. Throughout those days, the teacher made an anchor chart that contained facts about bats and added to it every day, based on what the students learned from the books that were read to them.
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Hey Nancy! A great way to combine literature and science is to choose readings that are related to your science unit. As an examle, let's say you're teaching a unit on space. You could choose a nonfiction reading, and a fiction reading that centers around space for your English lesson of the day. You can still do exercises that you would usually do in a reading lesson (i.e. finding main characters, plot, setting, etc.), but the students would still be getting some insight to space and keeping the science unit relevant. You could even take this one step further and give a mini writing promp. In connection to our space unit example, you could have the students read a book about astronauts and then write a mini assignment titled 'A day in the life of an astronaut'. In this assignment they could imagine what it would be like to be in space and write what they would do for a day if they were an astronaut! It's a great way to practice some writing skills and practice recalling content from the science unit. These types of exercises can be used for all kinds of topics and can be manipulated to fit different grades and student performance levels. Hope this helps you out a little!
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This is great information, thank you for sharing. As a preservice teacher I am always trying to find different ways to incorporate different subjects into lessons.
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I love the idea of doing a mini writing prompt. As a preservice teacher, I found this post super helpful. I think it is important to integrate other subjects within certain content areas. I also think doing something like that gives them a chance to be creative, while helping them enagage in the lesson.
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I always find a book that represents the topic we are discussing. For instance, in my preK class I did an experiment where colors were hidden in baking soda and when we added vinegar, the colors appeared. We read a book called Bear Sees Colors. When we got to a specific color, I had a child come up and add the vinegar and they would see the color appear. If there are magazines on your topic, scholastic or something, you could add those to your classroom. Depending on the age, you could make an assignment to find a book on the topic and bring it in.
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I agree with reading books that relate to the topic we are learning about! I think it is super cool that you made the read aloud even more interactive by completing an experiment while reading the book. That is not something I had considered. Were the kids able to focus on both the story and the experiment? I feel that maybe it could be distracting to do them at the same time. I also enjoy the idea of adding various materials for students to peruse. That makes me think about making separate bins for each topic as they occur or even to use as background builders before the unit. This would likely increase student interest in the topics.
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When you do find a (fictional) book, you will want to keep an eye out for misconceptions. If the book has them, you will want to discuss it with your students. If you do find misconceptions, you could ask your students to rewrite the vocabulary, sentence, paragraph, or page to dispel the misconception.
Integrating science with ELA and math is magical. I am so excited you are looking for ideas. Please search the articles in Science and Children for more ideas!
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Judith,
What a great point you bring up. Most of us don't think about the books having the misconceptions. I thought your post was very helpful, for right now, I am working on a science lesson that incorporates liturature. Thank you for the advice!
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Nancy,
I think the best way to incorporate literature into science is to find books or a selection of books about the unit you are teaching. This helps give students visuals if they need the extra help. Having a read aloud and then a discussion about the book as a pre-test and post-test would also be useful.
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Nancy,
I think the best way to incorporate literature and science is by finding materials and resources that have them both in it. Once you find a resource that is pertaining to literature and science, you could do a read aloud with your students and then a discussion about what they read and then decide if you wanted them to do a fun activity over what they read or not.
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Nancy,
I think the best way to incorporate literature and science is by finding materials and resources that have them both in it. Once you find a resource that is pertaining to literature and science, you could do a read aloud with your students and then a discussion about what they read and then decide if you wanted them to do a fun activity over what they read or not.
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