How to Improve Science and Writing in the Elementary Grades

A child engaged in the writing process

As an elementary school teacher, you may be responsible to teach several subjects to your students. Because math and reading are often emphasized at the early grades, science and writing can often fall by the wayside. You can use various techniques to make these two subjects more engaging and instructional for students, which will help to improve their skills in these areas.

Instructions

Science

1. Build on what students already know about the science topic. For example, if you are teaching about volcanoes, ask students to volunteer information that they know about volcanoes, and incorporate their responses into your instruction.

2. Discover and correct any misunderstandings your students might have. For example, some students might believe that clouds in the sky form from pollution. Once you know that, you can correct this misconception and explain where clouds really come from.

3. Introduce students to science concepts through hands-on discovery activities whenever possible, such as planting a seed and watching it grow or examining ant holes to understand the insect world.

4. Ask provocative science questions and encourage students to respond and discuss possible answers, rather than merely teaching concepts directly. Encourage students to come up with experiments or observations that could answer the question.

5. Integrate several scientific disciplines (e.g., biology, chemistry, earth science) into as many lessons as possible in order to show students how they are interconnected.

6. Integrate other subjects, such as writing and math, into science class as well. You can do this by encouraging students to write short papers or lab reports, and to make simple calculations based on the science concepts they have learned.

Writing

1. Make writing as tangible and meaningful as possible by connecting it to students' lives. For example, you may want to encourage students to keep a journal or write letters to a real person in order to show them how purposeful and important writing can be.

2. Encourage students to take notes during important events in their lives or during pre-writing exercises. Then show them how to weave these notes together into an essay or a creative nonfiction story.

3. Provide students with a high-quality reading selection. Reading as much as possible can help them improve vocabulary, sentence structure and overall organization in their own pieces of writing.

4. Consider letting students use popular songs, poems or quotes that they like, and then trying to craft a piece of writing that is similar.

5. Emphasize the importance of revision in the writing process. Allow plenty of time for students to read each other's writing, give constructive feedback and make revisions based on that feedback.

Tips & Warnings

• Incorporate contributions from other cultures into your science lessons whenever possible.

• Make sure to give students plenty of time to write, and make sure to respond to what they have written.

References

• National Science Teachers Association
• U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement