Practice in Action
Integrating Science Across the Curriculum combines science investigations with content or skills from other subject areas such as math, reading, writing, social studies, technology, and the arts. These projects are frequently, but not always, long-term investigations that require instructors to plan lessons that incorporate more than one subject and related standards
Begin by communicating with the school-day teachers to find out more about the language arts, mathematics, and science skills that are being taught, how you might help students improve specific skills, and how you might incorporate these skills into science activities. For example, a science project that asks students to measure, collect and analyze data, graph, and express scientific relationships also builds math skills. You may want to begin simply by incorporating science trade books, journal writing, graphic organizers, Internet searches, and mathematics with science investigations. Later you can think about projects that could incorporate multiple areas of content knowledge, such as a year-long study of natural disasters, a butterfly garden with art mosaics of the ecosystems in your region, a robotics competition, or a health and nutrition fair.
Integrating Science Across the Curriculum works because students are engaged in their own learning; they use what they already know and construct new understandings; they are able to use different strategies, approaches, and learning styles; and they learn in a social context. The learning is not isolated, but rather it is a part of a whole.
Planning Your Lesson
Great afterschool lessons start with having a clear intention about who your students
are, what they are learning or need to work on, and crafting activities that engage students while supporting their academic growth. Great afterschool lessons also require planning and preparation, as there is a lot of work involved in successfully managing kids, materials, and time.
Below are suggested questions to consider while preparing your afterschool lessons.
The questions are grouped into topics that correspond to the Lesson Planning
Template. You can print out the template and use it as a worksheet to plan and
refine your afterschool lessons, to share lesson ideas with colleagues, or to help in professional development sessions with staff.
Lesson Planning Template (PDF)
Lesson Planning Template (Word document)
What grade level(s) is this lesson geared to?
How long will it take to complete the lesson? One hour? One and a half hours? Will
it be divided into two or more parts, over a week, or over several weeks?
What do you want students to learn or be able to do after completing this activity? What skills do you want students to develop or hone? What tasks do they need to accomplish?
List all of the materials needed that will be needed to complete the activity.
Include materials that each student will need, as well as materials that students
may need to share (such as books or a computer). Also include any materials that students or instructors will need for record keeping or evaluation. Will you need to store materials for future sessions? If so, how will you do this?
What do you need to do to prepare for this activity? Will you need to gather
materials? Will the materials need to be sorted for students or will you assign students to be "materials managers"? Are there any books or instructions that you need to read in order to prepare? Do you need a refresher in a content area? Are there questions you need to develop to help students explore or discuss the activity? Are there props that you need to have assembled in advance of the activity? Do you need to enlist another adult to help run the activity?
Think about how you might divide up groups―who works well together? Which students could assist other peers? What roles will you assign to different members of the group so that each student participates?
Now, think about the Practice that you are basing your lesson on. Reread the
Practice. Are there ways in which you need to amend your lesson plan to better
address the key goal(s) of the Practice? If this is your first time doing the activity, consider doing a "run through" with friends or colleagues to see what works and what you may need to change. Alternatively, you could ask a colleague to read over your lesson plan and give you feedback and suggestions for revisions.
What to Do
Think about the progression of the activity from start to finish. One model that
might be useful—and which was originally developed for science
education—is the 5E's instructional model. Each phrase of the learning
sequence can be described using five words that begin with "E": engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. For more information, see
the 5E's Instructional Model.
Outcomes to Look For
How will you know that students learned what you intended them to learn through this
activity? What will be your signs or benchmarks of learning? What questions might you ask to assess their understanding? What, if any, product will they produce?
After you conduct the activity, take a few minutes to reflect on what took place.
How do you think the lesson went? Are there things that you wish you had done differently? What will you change next time? Would you do this activity again?
Explore these resources to assist in implementing the Integrating Science Across the Curriculum practice in your program.
Resources for Sample Lessons associated with this practice:
University of Michigan, facts and graphics about the Earth
This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics
Savage Earth Animations
Plate Tectonics—The Cause of Earthquakes
Ring of Fire map
FEMA for Kids, information and links about natural disasters
World and Other Maps
Learning About Tadpoles
Barton, Mary Lee and Deborah Jordan. Teaching Reading in Science
. Colorado:McREL, 2001.
Bentley, D. and S.Yoon (1999). The Icky Sticky Frog
. Santa Monica, CA: Piggy Toes Press, 1999.
Honig, Bill, Linda Diamond, and Ginda Gutlohn, CORE's Teaching Reading Sourcebook
. CA: Arena Press, 2000.
A great way to set up a science project for your afterschool participants is to use WebQuest, an inquiry-oriented activity where learners find information on the Web. All you need is a computer with access to the Internet: The WebQuest Page provides detailed development instructions as well as templates to enable even technology beginners to put WebQuests online. But before you try to develop your own, check out the existing WebQuests to see if there is already one online that addresses your science learning needs. A WebQest can be used in a learning center with one computer or in a computer lab.
When you explore The WebQuest Page
, you'll find standards-based WebQuests that involve students in their own learning as they solve problems in real-world situations.