INTRODUCTION

 

"Know ye", that what follows is an attempt to root science study in language. Hence, the title "Writing for Science".

 

In the same way that it is possible to create your own history curriculum, with a little library searching and some creativity, it is also possible to create your own science curriculum. I'd like to say it is possible for grades K - 12, but so far, my most advanced student is in jr. high, so I will limit my comments to include jr. high'ers until I can speak from personal experience.

 

PACKAGED SCIENCE CURRICULA

If you are using a pre-packaged curriculum for science, and it meets all your needs, by all means, don't fix what isn't "broke" by re-inventing the wheel. This article is for those moms who have found science curricula somewhat lacking, or not fitting very well with the classical model.

 

 In the past our family has ordered a variety of science curricula from different publishers, including materials created specifically for  homeschoolers.  Like anyone else, I like the ease of   a complete curriculum  all laid out and ready to go. However,  I have continued to be dissatisfied with little details in each curriculum I have used. After spending needlessly large amounts on books, instruments and supplies, and long hours tinkering with the materials to get it the way I want it, I have ended up using only a few  books from pricey curriculum , "X".  My shelves are filled with supplies and equipment which have never been used.  Not very cost effective. Always, always, the curricula are OK on introducing new concepts to the kids, even OK on recommended experiments, but weak on students' writing and also weak on doing written exercises in science. Furthermore, every time I have purchased a science curriculum which was "all in a box." I have been amazed at the over-priced lab materials.  To include rubber bands and corks is very considerate, but what they charge for that convenience is ridiculous.

 

When I complained about my purchases of homeschool science curricula, which either didn't represent my view of creation, were too pricey, or simply weren't  thorough enough, my husband pointed out that I have a post graduate education in science. If I could write newsletter articles about writing, spelling and Latin, in which I have no formal training [other than on-the-job  seven years of homeschooling "training"], why could I not design my own science program? My education, after all, is  in science.  Why would I want to buy some other homeschool parent's work when I was fully qualified to design my own? A logical argument, so I decided to give it a "whirl".

 

This article is an edited  and slightly expanded reprint from a post I recently submitted on a private Christian Classical E mail loop. After some encouraging posts from list members  to publish my science hints in the public domain, what follows is my meager offering towards a basic understanding of how and where science fits in  the classical curriculum.

 

Creating your Own Science Curriculum:

 

Our home-spun science curriculum is divided into  four year cycles.  Note that there are many ways to "skin this cat":

 

Susan Wise Bauer in her book The Well-Trained Mind , recommends doing science in four year cycles divided into  categories of

 

Kathryn Stout's Science Scope has:

 

 

Our family chose four categories:

 

 

I recommend both the Well-Trained Mind [WTM] and Science Scope [SSc] as reference materials for designing your own science curriculum.  WTM contains helpful sections, both in getting your child writing in science and also a wonderful book and resource list for science.  SSc is a science topic reference list. Kathryn Stout takes her science categories, divides each into topics and sub topics to cover and then further distinguishes between elementary, middle school and high school knowledge and skills.

 

TEXTBOOKS

If there is any one area that "modern" education does half way decently, it is science education. Science has for centuries the driving philosophy behind our approach to thinking and education. Of course, the modern science materials are not "wholesome" in a spiritual sense. They are atheistic or agnostic at best, but both the methodology and thoroughness are present in most secular texts. Unless you're dealing directly with Origins and Cosmology, most secular texts will not be that offensive to a Christian, where they do "offend" your beliefs, use it as a spring board to discuss orthodoxy [correct teaching] with your children.

 

When choosing and using science books I generally steer away from Christian books. There are fewer Christian science books available, and some are not very well written or researched. I find it harder to "undo" theology  I don't agree with,  than  to add in and solidify  the concept of the Sovereignty of God in Creation  in my children's minds using  a secular textbook.

 

I look  for text books with a thorough presentation of  concepts, solid methodology and careful attention to important details in the presentation. That taken care of,  as we study science, *I* make sure the kids are fully aware of God, as the mastermind behind this universe, His masterpiece. However, what follows in this article is not at all dependent whether you choose a secular or Christian publisher for your science materials.

 

For my elementary students, I mostly use topical junior science library

books. Those are chosen week by week in conjunction with our children as we visit the library and do our searches together. Our library also has many neat books which suggest simple experiments for the younger set, mostly with materials which you have around the house, and at worst requiring materials you can purchase at your local grocery store.

 

For junior high I buy our laboratory kits at the local teacher supply store and on-line.  Do an Internet search for science supplies and compare prices before you buy.  At this stage I am not as concerned about the technical sophistication of the experiments, as I am concerned about the kids learning good laboratory habits, logical troubleshooting thinking, and good and consistent laboratory writing skills

 

All that to say, that what I am proposing below should work with pretty much any texts and labs you care to use.

 

THE CURRICULUM

 

Generally speaking, I want any science curriculum

contain the following components:

 

 

 

 

1. Teaching/Lecture style of *concepts* two times per week 30 mins each.

 

 

2.  INDEPENDENT WORK:  two times per week 30 minutes each.

 

3. Testing science *concept* in the laboratory

 

.... this is tricky because your  labs and the "lectures" will not always match entirely.  F.ex. in our home right now, we're discussion quarks and gluons. Our home is sadly lacking in the equipment and materials to generate the "quark-gluon plasma",  but then again when I was in college lecture and labs mismatches were a frequent occurrence  there as well. Why sweat it?

 

Laboratory work involves the following:

 

Our Friday afternoons from 3-5:30pm are dedicated to laboratory time. This time includes

i) time to set up, do experiment and clean up

ii)  subsequent  science notebook keeping and report writing *)

skills [see below]   We generally take  two weeks per experiment, that's including keeping the notebook and writing up the report.

 

*) Elementary and jr. High students have different notebook keeping and report writing requirements

 

4) History of science.

 

Students  during  their assigned reading time  will read at least 3 science related books per semester. I always tie those in with our history study. My elementary students are studying American history, so they are reading biographies of Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Albert Einstein, etc.  My jr. higher is studying Ancient Greece and I have had him read selections from Immortals of Science, such as Hippocrates and Archimedes.

 

I have three categories here:

 

i) general history of  the specific subject of science of the year

ii) biographies of famous people  regarding our science subject

 

and for jr. high and up...

 

iii) selections of original writings of famous scientists through the ages. These  works are the Great Books: Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein just to name a few. These works usually hard reading, some of it we don't totally understand, but it's still important to make a connection with the Great minds of science, and in the very least to read the introductions to some of their great works. Much of it, apart from complicated mathematics, can be understood in small quantities with some effort. With my jr. higher, we usually read selections from Great Books, or "condensed versions" of Great Books after lecture time. Right now we are reading selections from Aristotle on the nature of matter, to complement our study of Atoms.

 

I do require, a book report. It is usually an outline of the events in the book read, followed by a brief essay/precis based on the outline.

 

 

 

 

 

WRITING SKILLS FOR SCIENCE

 

Elementary students keep a bound composition lab notebook [I prefer the ones with quad paper rather than lined paper]. Good lab notebook habits should be formed as early as  elementary school. The following principles are ones which adult scientists  work with all through their careers:

 

A lab notebook is a complete account of all work performed in the laboratory.

the crossed out mistake.

 

A lab notebook should contain the following daily components:

 

  1. Title of experiment and today's date
  2. What we set out to do
  3. How we set it up [including diagrams]
  4. What everything in our diagram is [label and define]
  5. What we measured [in a table or graph form]
  6. What went right
  7. What went wrong
  8. What we concluded
  9. How it compares with what we set out to do. [were we successful?]

 

The report contains the very same 9 elements [with the exception quite often of 7], but unlike the lab notebook it is cleaned up and condensed to show only the highlights of the experiment and its conclusions. Poor data which flopped because we made a mistake and had to start over, need not be in the final report unless they are of some significance to the experiment.

 

 

For junior high and up, I prioritize writing for science as the most

important skill, because if you can't communicate what you have learned, you haven't really learned anything worthwhile at all. Being forced to write down what we learned in science  ties the conceptual understanding of the subject with our deductive and inductive logic studies. You can't write an accurate and detailed scientific account of something you don't understand . Also, long term if the student doesn't remember the details of a specific science concept,  if he has analyzed and retraced its derivation logically and  written it up, he is more likely to be able to  re-construct it from first principles  on paper at a later time, rather than recall it in fragmented pieces from rote memory.

 

There are  three  very different writing skills required for jr. high and up science:

 

1) Taking notes in class, which will go in your three ring binder for class

notes under theory

 

2) Keeping a  bound composition laboratory Notebook. This will be a  neatly kept complete record of your daily work in the lab, mistakes and all!!!

 

3) Writing a final report on a science experiment/discovery  the copy you

would give to your boss, if you worked in an industrial lab.

 

I teach these  three skills, separately and gradually,  not all at once. Each science session or two  we add a skill requirement to the writing portion of our work.   IOW, not every laboratory experiment  will be written up with a complete report according to the outline below. In fact in n the beginning while we are honing beginning Lab notebook writing skills, we will feature a couple of experiments with no report at all.

 

 

 

1) How to teach NOTE-TAKING in lectures [jr.high and up]

 

  1. Lecture notes should be contained in orderly sequential fashion on a sheet of paper kept in a 3 ring binder
  2. Date and title  [subject] each page of notes
  3. Neat orderly spacious note taking is the key to legibility and comprehension when notes are reviewed later.
  4. See rest of "lecture note taking skills"  at   http://www.utexas.edu/student/utlc/handouts/862.html

 

2) How to keep a LABORATORY NOTEBOOK

 

A lab notebook is a complete account of all work performed in the laboratory.

Your daily experimental  entries should contain the following:

 

3) How to write a laboratory report or scientific paper

[Teach your children that a well-kept laboratory notebook, makes the report or paper a cinch to write, a poorly kept notebook, often necessitates a trip back to the lab in order to obtain the data to write a proper report]

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

Excellence in classical science is characterized by  

 

1) a careful study the history of science, to know what went before our era in this area. We are, after all, standing on the shoulders of giants, and science, while it has boomed in modern times, was far from invented nor refined during our times, rather it has a long rich heritage, which we need to be aware of.

 

2) a careful theoretical study of the current theory and methodology

 

3) an application of science principles theoretically in working out science problems on paper [like math exercises] using thinking skills

 

4) laboratory experiments to verify those truths by personally observing them and measuring them in nature

 

5) the ability to communicate in writing, what has been learned through study, through written exercises and through laboratory experimentation. The aim is to write  well enough that another can read our writing and understand and re- think those same precise thoughts after us.

 

With this I conclude, in hopes that this article may help some think about integrating writing into their science curriculum.  I hope in the future to write another article dealing with the content area of science [books of theory, laboratory materials and history of science] as well as diagramming, graphing and drawing for science. All questions, corrections and comments regarding this article may be directed to me at MikeJaqua@Worldnet.att.net . 7-28-02 lmj