Interdisciplinary Subjects : Week of July 17th
I commonly teach language arts, in fact it is required to take up a huge portion of the day's schedule in the elementary classroom. No doubt, because NCLB requires all students to be proficient in language arts and math by 2014, a chunk of the day must be devoted to the skills on the test. Every day, practice in comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and reading takes place in the classroom. I believe that a lot of this content can be dry, repetitive and boring. It causes the students to check out during instruction, and therefor lose educational value. I have a heavy desire to incorporate other subject matter into language arts, especially science, so students can learn valuable language arts skill through rich and meaningful texts and hands on experiences. Whoever said that literature had to be structured in rigid ways, and multiple choice questions had to follow? No! Literature can be fun, interesting, colorful, and interactive. As science is already lacking in many classrooms, I am currently seeking research and activities for ways to incorporate and fuse these two subjects together.
I came across another fellow blogger; Melissa Stewart and a nonfiction writer of over 150 science books for children. She advocates an interdisciplinary approach to teaching science through language arts. She claims on her blog that "nearly 86 percent of scientists who reported loving their jobs could trace their interest in science to someone they knew or an experience they had when they were 7 to 10 years old." As an elementary teacher, it is so exciting and inspiring to know that we have such incredible power to light their interests this young! Melissa gives several links and strategies for infusing science through language arts.
Reading Buddies adapts science-themed picture books into fun Reader's Theatre scripts that Elementary students will love practicing and performing.
Using animal books for Readers Theatre. Scripts based on animal books can easily include a role for every student in the class.
Pairing fiction and nonfiction literature is a great way to introduce and reinforce science concepts. This link gives great science titles for literature too.
You can find Melissa Stewart's website here.
Blogs I responded to:
Debamitra http://rdguha.blogspot.com/
Christina http://missbaronian.blogspot.com/
I came across another fellow blogger; Melissa Stewart and a nonfiction writer of over 150 science books for children. She advocates an interdisciplinary approach to teaching science through language arts. She claims on her blog that "nearly 86 percent of scientists who reported loving their jobs could trace their interest in science to someone they knew or an experience they had when they were 7 to 10 years old." As an elementary teacher, it is so exciting and inspiring to know that we have such incredible power to light their interests this young! Melissa gives several links and strategies for infusing science through language arts.
Reading Buddies adapts science-themed picture books into fun Reader's Theatre scripts that Elementary students will love practicing and performing.
Using animal books for Readers Theatre. Scripts based on animal books can easily include a role for every student in the class.
Pairing fiction and nonfiction literature is a great way to introduce and reinforce science concepts. This link gives great science titles for literature too.
You can find Melissa Stewart's website here.
Blogs I responded to:
Debamitra http://rdguha.blogspot.com/
Christina http://missbaronian.blogspot.com/
Labels: interdisciplinary education, language arts, sceince
posted by Sarafin at
12:13 PM
3 Comments:
Thanks Sarah for the wonderful resources. I will love to use them. I agree with you that interdisciplinary teaching makes subject matter so much more interesting as doing reading and math all day can be repitive and boring to the students.
Since so many schools have removed or completely neglect science curriculum in elementary school, I am excited to hear the ways to incorporate it back into the classroom (while still following the NCLB-inspired rules that demand teaching reading for a large majority of the classroom time).
I never thought of using reader's theater in conjunction with science fiction books to teach science in the classroom. I am looking forward to trying this out in my own classroom someday!
I love the resources you have found. I believe that as elementary school teachers we must find ways to teach science and social studies because most of our class time is dedicated to english and math.
I think a great way to incorporate science into the classroom putting into math lessons and reading lessons. There are many ways to do this i believe, but then my question is what happens to the content that needs to be taught in those subjects. These lessons takes a great deal of time to plan to make sure that all the subject content is covered.
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