Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Arrykka S. Jackson
Regent University
Students need time to practice their reading and writing skills, yet students also need to
learn how to investigate. Discovery speaks of childhood, yet in school discovery has gone.
Through inquiry-based, interdisciplinary exploration, children interact and learn better. Using
science and reading together allows adequate time for development of reading and science.
[I]ncreased time for K-5 science would provide more opportunities for students to actively
explore their world, design and conduct investigations, construct evidence-based explanations,
and expand their knowledge through related literacy practices, (Romance & Vitale, 2012). In
this unit, the students learned more about adaptations through writing and scientific inquiry with
My first artifact is a book that a student made as his final project of the unit. I gave
students a choice as to what they could do to show me what they learned about animals, their
adaptations, and how that relates to the interconnectedness of nature as in SOL 3.6 (Virginia
Department of Education [VDOE], 2010b). Because one of the focuses of this expression of the
projected, I worked with the child on sentence structure. I also showed the student how scientist
communicate their findings through writing. I had the student practice using scientific
vocabulary. Students learn about nonfiction texts, yet this gave them an opportunity to produce
nonfiction text. In producing nonfiction text, we also had to look at the features of nonfiction
text. This all supported the language arts writing objectives, SOL 3.9a,b,c, &f (VDOE, 2010a).
My second artifact is a journal page that the students filled out as we did our investigative
discovery activity. The students had to answer questions at the beginning, the middle, and the
end of the activity. Students were given an owl pellet to investigate SOL 3.5 (VDOE, 2010b). At
CONTENT KNOWLEDGE IN INTERDISCPLINARY CURRICULUM 3
first I did not tell them what an owl pellet was. I had them use their senses to see if they could
figure out what it was without opening it. I told them that it was an owl pellet. I asked the
students to describe what they noticed and to make a prediction as to what they think they would
find. The students then filled out the first part of the worksheet. Then I asked the students to open
the foil the pellet was wrapped in and make observations about the outside. I asked them to use
vocabulary that they think a scientist would use to highlight English SOL 3.2e (VDOE, 2010a).
This was difficult, although we did talk about adaptations, it was difficult still. Lastly the
students dissected the pellets and wrote about what they found and whether their predictions
were correct. Students used sequencing, making inferences and predictions, and communicating
That was a well-planned unit and the students had plenty of chances to communicate their
writing. Romance and Vitale (2012) explain that students do not have enough exposure to
science literature and more importantly the discovery and inquiry-based aspects are generally
squashed. They propose that students need to have a science curriculum that contains inquiry-
based instruction while also providing the proper reading and writing elements in a standard
curriculum. They talk about how increasing the science time while including the reading and
writing aspects of the curriculum throughout the year will allow students to grow in their reading
comprehension as well as their science background. This practice allows students to do more of
the things that we would like them to do. Students need to be challenge and need to discover and
explore. I have found that integrating science and language arts has been successful and
engaging.
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It has also been shown that English Language Learners (ELLs) benefit from an integrated
science and language arts curriculum. ELLs who go through the integrate curriculum
outperformed the ELL who did not, yet also performed just as well or better than their native
English-speaking peers (Tong, Irby, Lara-Alecio, & Koch, 2014). This is relevant because I have
quite a few students who are ELLs or who speak a language other than English at home. Taking
this approach with the integration of science and language arts provides a more equitable
situation in teaching science. Science has difficult language because of the nature of its
specificity. Learning English as well as learning specific science vocabulary can be daunting and
overwhelming, yet integrating reading will improve reading comprehension and writing skills
In general, students need to communicate their thoughts and ideas. A very pertinent area
in which kids have little practice of communication is in the science curriculum. The lack of
usage of science vocabulary in ordinary language causes science to be more difficult than other
levels.
concepts, and ideas that are themselves a network of further relationships, then all
learning is interdependent in the sense that what is learned about one part of a topic
affects what is learned about every other part (Nuthall, 1999, p. 336).
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References
Nuthall, G. (1999). The way students learn: Acquiring knowledge from an integrated science and
social studies unit. The Elementary School Journal, 99(4), 303-341. Retrieved from
http://0-www.jstor.org.library.regent.edu/stable/1002174
Romance, N. R. & Vitale, M. R. (2012). Expanding the role of K-5 science instruction in
Tong, F., Irby, B. J., Lara-Alecio, R., & Koch, J. (2014). Integrating literacy and science for
/english_framewks/2010/framework_english_k-5.pdf
Virginia Department of Education. (2010). Science standards of learning for Virginia public
/2010/k-6/stds_science3.pdf