Science lessons can provide many contexts in which children can develop their language and literacy skills. Children observing and describing scientific processes need to be able to explain their ideas verbally and in writing. Science provides opportunities for exploratory and investigative talk and questioning, and for teaching fiction and non-fiction texts. Stories and poems can be used to provide a context for science work carried out by children. Stories and poems can also be the end product, written by the children to demonstrate their understanding of a topic.

Stories

Stories provide a good way to allow children to demonstrate their understanding of scientific concepts and make links between those concepts and real-world experiences.

Reading stories as a class can be used to provide an overarching theme for a topic or to stimulate an investigation. For example, you could use Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar to introduce the idea of animal life cycles, or Jack and the Beanstalk as an introduction to what plants need in order to grow. Maybe use The Gruffalo’s child as a way into a lesson about shadows.  The STEM website has some great ideas for stories you can link to science topics.

Children can also write their own stories as a way of demonstrating learning. For example, they could write about the history of a water particle within the water cycle or the journey of a ham sandwich through the body.

Writing “science fiction” stories allows the blending of real science alongside imaginary situations to expand creativity. The premise of a science fiction story will often be a “What if?” idea. This is good for group discussion first, then expanding on the ideas in story form.

Here are some starting points for science-fiction stories:

• What if humans could photosynthesise?
• What would it be like to live on Mars?
• What if things no longer rotted and decayed?
• What if the Earth stopped spinning?

See also: Science Ideas for World Book Day

Science and Poetry

It may not seem obvious to approach science learning through poetry, but the two have more in common than would first appear. Like science, poetry can also involve making observations of the world and producing precise descriptions of particular phenomena.

Getting children to write science-inspired poetry can help deepen their understanding of concepts while developing their literacy. Start by asking children to brainstorm descriptive adjectives, verbs and nouns related to a particular topic area. They can generate similes and metaphors to describe their observations. These can then be used to create different kinds of poem.

Read the children examples of science-related poems to give them models upon which they can draw. A great book of science-related poems is Centrally Heated Knickers by Michael Rosen, but there are many others available. His poem “Chocolate” is a great starter for an investigation on melting.

As another example try using the poem “The Sound Collector” by Roger McGough, when teaching sound in Year 4. This contains many descriptions of everyday sounds such as the “squeaking of the chair” and the “ticking of the clock”. The children could use the same structure to create their own descriptions of sounds, which could then be combined into new verses of the poem. Divide the class into groups, with each group writing a new verse that could then be combined into one long poem that the whole class could perform (and record).

Writing For an Audience

In her book Creative Science, Rosemary Feasey explains that it is important to take the audience into account when writing about science. The children should be encouraged to consider how they might change the style of communication according to different audiences when writing about their findings in an experiment or the information gathered about a topic.

Different audiences might include: Younger children, a local business, parents, imaginary characters from books or movies

Ask the children to write letters, product instructions, local newspaper articles, blog posts, information leaflets or comic strips. You could share the results on a class blog or school website – helping the children to find a real audience!

Using Scientific Vocabulary

Children will already have their own words for the different parts of the body. For example, they might refer to the entire lower abdomen as their tummy or belly. They might even refer to it as their stomach – demonstrating that they know the word, but they don’t have an understanding of what it specifically refers to.

Where appropriate, the children can discuss any words that have special meanings in a scientific context, and so be helped to realise the difference between “everyday” words and scientific vocabulary.  Also consider words like Force – how many different phrases / sayings etc use the word Force? They could also be prompted to think of alternative words that have almost the same meaning.

Children should be able to explore their emerging scientific ideas and share what they understand. For this to happen they need to develop a solid base of literacy skills, which will enable them to communicate how they think and work in a science context. The children should become confident in their use of language and their knowledge and understanding of science.

Literacy skills can be used and developed in science, as they can in other subject areas. Science can offer a wide range of contexts for written and oral work for the children, especially when related to experiential or real-world situations.

If you’ve got other great ways to link science and literacy, please share in the comments!

Note: A version of this blogpost was originally written for Reach Out CPD. See the full version, and the rest of the course, here.