How do teachers identify the potential for greater depth writing and encourage children to meet their full potential? This book was created by people who are not only passionate about primary education, but who are also leading experts in their own particular areas. They have made use of their wide experience to offer practical guidance on greater…

As an instructional framework, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can guide science teachers to purposefully apply evidence-based instructional practices to increase engagement and learning of students with disabilities (Israel, Ribuffo, and Smith 2014; Marino et al. 2014; Ok et al. 2016). This article describes how to use the Universal Design…

One challenge of teaching science is getting students to communicate as scientists do. Scientists employ many different forms of communication as they develop and pass on information to others. Unfortunately, in many classrooms, student communication about science concepts is limited to filling in information on worksheets, finishing…

Many times students are given the task of keeping a science notebook, but do not fully understand the process or purpose of this endeavour. Science notebooks contain not only data but also questions, predictions, observations, and reflections from their experiences in science. To maximize the effectiveness of the science notebook, teachers must…

This article presents an authentic writing opportunity to help ninth-grade students use the writing process in a science classroom to write and illustrate picture books for fourth-grade students to demonstrate and share their understanding of a biology unit on cells. By creating a picture book, students experience the writing process, understand…

In this study, we examined opportunities for reasoning and meaning making that read-alouds of children's literature science information books and related hands-on explorations offered to young Latina/o students in an urban public school. Using a qualitative, interpretative framework, we analyzed classroom discourse and children's writing…

In the Budding Science and Literacy project, we explored how working with an integrated inquiry-based science and literacy approach may challenge and support the teaching and learning of science at the classroom level. By studying the inter-relationship between multiple learning modalities and phases of inquiry, we wished to illuminate possible…

This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine whether fourth-grade students who engaged in collaboratively writing letters to 11th-grade students performed better on tests of conceptual understanding of a unit on force and motion than students who did not. The participants included 835 fourth-grade students and 416…

Students are using the tools of scientists when keeping a science notebook. They are also keeping track of their thinking and the changes to their original ideas. To bring students' existing ideas out for examination, the author implemented a "quick-write," which entails asking an open-ended question and having the students write all they know in…

Children love to learn about new topics and share what they have discovered with their teachers, families, and friends. The authors designed the "Book Bag Buddies" project to give their third-grade students a chance to channel their enthusiasm and research from science investigations into writing. In this creative project, students integrated…

A critical component of science is the role of inquiry and argument in moving scientific knowledge forward. However, while students are expected to engage in inquiry activities in science classrooms, there is not always a similar emphasis on the role of argument within the inquiry activities. Building from previous studies on the Science Writing…

In this "O-"fish"-ial" research project, third-grade students use multiple resources to research several fish species, write a research paper and develop a PowerPoint presentation to communicate their findings. In addition, students actually examine these species up close with samples from the local market, and then conclude the project with a…

The typical use of science notebooks is for students to record information as they complete an investigation, writing down their procedure, observations, data, results, graphs, and any other factual information pertaining to their experiment. The author did the same, but also incorporated specific writing assignments to prepare students to publish…

This study aims to add to the growing research related to the implementation of non-traditional writing tasks in classrooms to encourage science literacy. A secondary reanalysis methodology was employed to review student interviews collected as a part of several individual studies during a ten year research program. This method established an…

It is natural to study astronomy outdoors, but it is not quite as natural to study astronomy during the daytime. This lesson uses the Earth's closest star as a subject of study within the schoolyard. The importance of the rising sun is combined with hands-on inquiry in which students explore the properties of shadows. Students (a) complete a…