Supporting Science in our Elementary Classrooms

I was recently talking about the need for more science in elementary classrooms in a recent podcast I did with PocketLab's David Bakker (click here to listen). Sometimes you might feel pressure from your admins to only focus on reading and math, but I've got some great arguments to support spending time on science, too. It's not only the amazing ways science helps build thinking skills; science is a powerful tool to support reading and math instruction.

In the podcast, Dave and I dive deep into the importance of fostering scientific minds and creative teaching strategies. This Edutopia article (click here to read)  gives some great ideas on how to stimulate your students' curiosity for science:

• using real-life examples (phenomena)
• incorporating art and literature (cross-curricular connections)
• mixing up our instructional strategies.

These are all research-based ways to improve our science outcomes, and many of them work well with our goals for other subjects. For example, you can introduce a phenomenon with a fun demo, then have students read a high-interest, non-fiction article to hit an informational text ELA goal. Have students try their own version of the demo, then write up the procedure (ELA - writing instructions) and give visual data for their results (math - charts and graphs). Wins all around!

Do you find your science time being taken up by students being pulled out for other activities? This article from STEM Teaching Tools (click here to read) has links to research about giving science more attention. If you're struggling to convince admin that students miss out when they miss science, something in here might help. 

There's also this cool study from Harvard (click here to read). It proves that when students are actively involved in learning, they do better and remember more - even if they feel like they're not learning as much! Active learning is hard, but it pays off, and it gets those kids in the back of the class (like I was) excited to participate in their learning. By pairing the hands-on aspects of science with the goals of math and ELA, students have more opportunities to succeed.

Here's to sparking curiosity and making learning fun!

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