In this recorded professional learning session, Lyn Rogers and Anne Barker explore how science and literacy can be integrated by:
- discussing how science topics and activities can be used as contexts to deliberately foster students’ literacy skills
- exploring some simple strategies to support vocabulary development, comprehension, oral language and writing in science.
This session will be useful for primary, intermediate and junior secondary school teachers.
Definitely will be linking my reading programme more with science inquiry
Teacher
Click on the links above to view the video of this professional development session and the PowerPoint presentation. You may find it easier to download these.
Wonderful resources that will help us teachers to integrate our students’ learning across all the subjects, thank you!
Teacher
To join in on discussions about integrating science and literacy, register in our online discussion forum on Slack.
Nature of science
This webinar models the way science works in terms of developing an understanding of the tentative nature of science: connecting primarily to the ‘Understanding about science’ strand of the NZC. It models a process that can be used with students to foster the concept of scientists using evidence to develop their theories and that the theories may change as a result of new evidence coming to light.
Related content
These ideas are explored in further in the PLD sessions Science and literacy – making connections, Literacy in the secondary science classroom and Science through picture books.
Many articles and teacher PLD sessions also relate to the content of this webinar. Several were referred to in the webinar, including Observation and science, Vegetable caterpillar, Science and literacy – making connections, Classification system, Developing an eagle eye and Making sense of what we see. The video Integrating numeracy and literacy uses rocket science as the context to provide a clear purpose to engage in extensive reading and explanatory writing.
Looking for an engaging science book to add to your next teaching plan/topic? We have created a curation of ones we like in our Pinterest board here.
Activity ideas
There are many activities on the Science Learning Hub that relate to the content of this webinar. Some of these are referred to in the webinar itself and include Observing bubbles, DIY fern classification and Observation: learning to see.
Acknowledgement
We thank Anne Barker for joining us in this webinar. Anne is an accredited PLD provider working with Te Whai Toi Tangata – Institute of Professional Learning, University of Waikato.