Michigan Science Teachers Association Conference 2020 (MSTA)

Children come to school curious and excited to make sense of the world around them. In support of this curiosity, the new Michigan Science Standards suggest that students should be engaged in rich sensemaking around science phenomena starting in Kindergarten. However, current and past educational policies have necessitated an early focus on literacy and math, which often leads to science being pushed out of elementary classrooms. In this talk, we argue for the importance of providing students with opportunities to build on their science curiosities from the start of school. Additionally, we will argue that a focus on science is critical for supporting students’ literacy learning AND that language and literacy are critical for supporting children’s scientific sense-making. When students have opportunities to work on making sense of science phenomena, they develop a need to obtain information from texts, to use new vocabulary, and to engage in new ways of talking about their ideas which supports both science and literacy goals in the early grades of school. We use lessons learned from our SOLID Start project (Science, Oral Language, and Literacy Development from the Start of School) to show how to engage in this type of integrated learning beginning in the early elementary grades.