Introduction
How it all began…
I am teaching 5th grade at a school district that really drives test scores and college readiness to students. Students have access to the latest technology including IPods in the classroom and the class is very motivated to learn. Science and mathematics are taught with a driving force in the district to have students achieve growth in test scores, which places added pressure on students to excel in science and mathematics. I personally feel like science is a very interesting subject that I really enjoy teaching and I try to instill this to my students. I really would like my students to be as enthusiastic about science as I am. I have noticed that throughout my student teaching experience that writing is something that students are really enthusiastic about doing and are for the most part really good at. Writing literacy does not have the same emphasis placed on it for test scores and can sometimes take a back seat to science. Literacy common core will have writing expectations students need to prepare and practice in school. I have noticed that students are able to bring in their own personal touch and feelings to writing that they are unable to do in other subjects like science. One event in particular that I can remember was when I first entered the classroom and the students were engaged in writing a narrative piece about what they did over summer. The students were so excited about sharing their ideas of what they would write about with each other. I walked around and students were so incredibly engaged in writing you could hear a pin drop in the classroom. Then the teacher rang a bell to indicate science time was starting and students needed to put their writing away. There was a collective sigh in the class and a disgruntled look on the students faces as they prepared for science. They really enjoy writing from my observations during our language arts time so this got me thinking….
How do my students feel and think about writing and science?
What if writing was something we could do more often in class for other subject’s to make for a more engaging atmosphere? I thought I would just spend some time observing interactions in my class and detail what transpired during language arts and science lessons. I noticed that many students are struggling with science and not as engaged as I thought they would be. For the first couple of weeks of observations I noticed students struggling with science but really excelling in writing. What if I could somehow transfer their enthusiasm, progress, and writing skills to another subject like science? I decided to see the overall attitude towards science in the classroom by surveying my students.
I am teaching 5th grade at a school district that really drives test scores and college readiness to students. Students have access to the latest technology including IPods in the classroom and the class is very motivated to learn. Science and mathematics are taught with a driving force in the district to have students achieve growth in test scores, which places added pressure on students to excel in science and mathematics. I personally feel like science is a very interesting subject that I really enjoy teaching and I try to instill this to my students. I really would like my students to be as enthusiastic about science as I am. I have noticed that throughout my student teaching experience that writing is something that students are really enthusiastic about doing and are for the most part really good at. Writing literacy does not have the same emphasis placed on it for test scores and can sometimes take a back seat to science. Literacy common core will have writing expectations students need to prepare and practice in school. I have noticed that students are able to bring in their own personal touch and feelings to writing that they are unable to do in other subjects like science. One event in particular that I can remember was when I first entered the classroom and the students were engaged in writing a narrative piece about what they did over summer. The students were so excited about sharing their ideas of what they would write about with each other. I walked around and students were so incredibly engaged in writing you could hear a pin drop in the classroom. Then the teacher rang a bell to indicate science time was starting and students needed to put their writing away. There was a collective sigh in the class and a disgruntled look on the students faces as they prepared for science. They really enjoy writing from my observations during our language arts time so this got me thinking….
How do my students feel and think about writing and science?
What if writing was something we could do more often in class for other subject’s to make for a more engaging atmosphere? I thought I would just spend some time observing interactions in my class and detail what transpired during language arts and science lessons. I noticed that many students are struggling with science and not as engaged as I thought they would be. For the first couple of weeks of observations I noticed students struggling with science but really excelling in writing. What if I could somehow transfer their enthusiasm, progress, and writing skills to another subject like science? I decided to see the overall attitude towards science in the classroom by surveying my students.
I conducted an individual likert survey with my students. The chart below has the questions asked and the student responses on a scale of never, rarely, some of the time, most of the time, and all the time. I had students use privacy boards so other students could not see each other’s answers and told students to just respond by indicating how they feel.
I gained so much valuable insight into how my students approach science and writing. The results indicated the following to me:
- My students at the current time are not as engaged and interested in science as I would like them to be. There is a disconnect that I would like to try and bridge.
- They do not learn science best with the traditional model of memorizing facts and that my idea for writing in science is justified as a valid idea to research. What if writing could bring a new learning modality that has students more engaged in learning about science.
- They learn best for the most part when writing because they are actively learning and more engaged in the subject. Students are able to bring in creative ideas, have a voice, and produce a piece of work that they can be proud of.
- They have a genuine interest in incorporating more writing into the science curriculum and at the current time there is a need they see in the classroom environment for more writing. This is shown in my observations and the responses of my students. They genuinely want more writing in the classroom and feel they learn best when writing about a topic.
First attempt at teaching writing in science
With this question in mind, I taught a science writing lesson to get a baseline of how well students are able to write in science and if they are able to transfer writing skills from their language arts assignments to science. Could my students be engaged in science and have fun writing at the same time? I started by teaching my science lesson with a creative writing activity that I thought would be fun and engaging for my students. I first taught my science lesson on the Earth’s atmosphere and the four layers. After I felt my students had a good grasp of the science material on the Earth’s atmosphere I included a writing activity on the following prompt: “Pretend that you are falling from space toward Earth. Write a story describing what you see and feel as you go through each layer of the atmosphere.” Students completed the writing assignment and I collected their work to analyze the data, I was surprised by how much fun students were having with the assignment and they were very engaged.
The following is her work sample from the atmosphere-writing lesson as you can see she really excelled at this writing activity for science:
With this question in mind, I taught a science writing lesson to get a baseline of how well students are able to write in science and if they are able to transfer writing skills from their language arts assignments to science. Could my students be engaged in science and have fun writing at the same time? I started by teaching my science lesson with a creative writing activity that I thought would be fun and engaging for my students. I first taught my science lesson on the Earth’s atmosphere and the four layers. After I felt my students had a good grasp of the science material on the Earth’s atmosphere I included a writing activity on the following prompt: “Pretend that you are falling from space toward Earth. Write a story describing what you see and feel as you go through each layer of the atmosphere.” Students completed the writing assignment and I collected their work to analyze the data, I was surprised by how much fun students were having with the assignment and they were very engaged.
The following is her work sample from the atmosphere-writing lesson as you can see she really excelled at this writing activity for science:
For my needs assessment I collected all of the writing samples and read through them multiple times. The main things I noticed are that students are engaged and having fun in writing in science. They were so excited to share their papers with the class at the end of writing time. Students would come up to the front and share their papers with the class clapping afterwards. It was a lot of fun for the students. Some students are excelling at the writing activity and this gave me a baseline of how well students are able to write in science. The student above shows how voice comes through the paper and the creativity in what the child sees when falling through each layer of the Atmosphere is great. I would continue to plan science lessons that incorporated science into the curriculum and I wanted to see if maybe writing in science would also boast students abilities with different forms of writing in the literacy common core. I want to look at incorporating different forms of writing into the science curriculum as well that reflect the common core state standards expectations. I started collecting their language arts writing as well to help me compare the two subjects as I progressed in my needs assessment. The main goal of my first writing in science activity is to see if students are engaged and having fun in science by writing.
Open-ended survey to ask my students how they are feeling about writing in science.
Continuing to think about writing and science I had students complete an open-ended survey writing response that I collected on the following prompt: Did you enjoy our science activity about writing as if you were falling through the atmosphere? Should writing be part of science? Why or why not? What ways do you think we could use writing to help us be better science learners in this class? The following are three student responses to the prompt:
Continuing to think about writing and science I had students complete an open-ended survey writing response that I collected on the following prompt: Did you enjoy our science activity about writing as if you were falling through the atmosphere? Should writing be part of science? Why or why not? What ways do you think we could use writing to help us be better science learners in this class? The following are three student responses to the prompt:
I found that students were really excited to think of other ways and activities to tie writing into science. They were very open to telling me how much they enjoyed the science writing activity and ways to incorporate into future science lessons. I did notice some students (student response #1) indicate that they do not like science in our current classroom environment but they really enjoyed science when I included the writing activity. I found this very interesting and took note of this in my needs assessment that students seem to be enjoying science more when writing is involved. I thought it was so interesting how students gave ideas for future writing activities in science, for example, writing a paragraph about the clouds (student response #1), writing about the water cycle (student response #2), and writing about being a water droplet being evaporated then forming a cloud (student response #3). These examples from students could be literacy common core expository and opinion writing topics we could do in class. I had so much fun seeing the excitement in my student’s responses and was so excited to get started planning science lessons with my student’s ideas for writing in mind…
…It was the end of the day and a student came up to me and told me a very interesting observation she had made. She said, “Mr. Brown, I just wanted to let you know that I never really liked or enjoyed science, and never thought that I was any good at science, until today when you had us complete that fun writing activity! I really felt like I can be good at science because I am able to write about science and I am a great writer!” I was so happy for her and said, “That is great! Excellent job today.” I would like to research this idea of how students feel about writing in science further. Looking at how this concept might help students with writing in the new common core state standards. This could be a benefit of writing in science with helping students meet the expectations placed on them by common core literacy writing.
…It was the end of the day and a student came up to me and told me a very interesting observation she had made. She said, “Mr. Brown, I just wanted to let you know that I never really liked or enjoyed science, and never thought that I was any good at science, until today when you had us complete that fun writing activity! I really felt like I can be good at science because I am able to write about science and I am a great writer!” I was so happy for her and said, “That is great! Excellent job today.” I would like to research this idea of how students feel about writing in science further. Looking at how this concept might help students with writing in the new common core state standards. This could be a benefit of writing in science with helping students meet the expectations placed on them by common core literacy writing.
Below are the questions driving my research:
The main research question guiding my process is:
-What happens when writing is incorporated into the science curriculum?
The sub questions I will also be exploring are:
-What impact will writing have on students who are not strong in science and/or have a dislike for science?
-What is the impact of incorporating writing on students’ academic achievement in science?
-What is the impact of incorporating writing on students’ attitude toward and engagement with science?
-How will integrating writing into the science curriculum align and prepare students for success with common core literacy writing expectations?
The main research question guiding my process is:
-What happens when writing is incorporated into the science curriculum?
The sub questions I will also be exploring are:
-What impact will writing have on students who are not strong in science and/or have a dislike for science?
-What is the impact of incorporating writing on students’ academic achievement in science?
-What is the impact of incorporating writing on students’ attitude toward and engagement with science?
-How will integrating writing into the science curriculum align and prepare students for success with common core literacy writing expectations?