In science, like other lessons, children and their teachers use language – speaking, listening, reading and writing – to discuss, explain, question and understand concepts and to encode them in writing. We think of science involving much practical work and recording using diagrams, but even in these contexts language helps organise the learning achieved. Part of learning in science is to do with acquiring a technical vocabulary to clinch the concepts. This vocabulary is used and explained in the non-fiction texts children use in science lessons – work cards, reference books like science dictionaries and encyclopedias and in information books and software on topics like Electricity, Water and Magnets. The Internet is also a source of a great deal of information. So children’s literacy is developed through their work in science; this link between science and literacy has been strengthened by the use of science texts in the shared reading and writing part of the Literacy Time as an example of scientific genre. We need to look for certain qualities in the science materials we select for children of different ages, interests and abilities and the criteria we might keep in mind for information books and CD-ROMs are discussed under the appropriate entries. Let me just say that I think a good science book, as well as scoring well on accuracy, clear format, quality of writing and illustration, needs to encourage an enquiring mind and a curiosity to find out more.
It is worth mentioning here those science books that have a lyrical quality, and use imagery in ways we associate more with arts subjects. For example, in Think of an Eel by Karen Wallace and Mike Bostock, the young elver is an ‘eel-leaf’ and the creature ‘wriggles, slips and climbs’. These poetic images are precise enough to help children learn. The books of Mick Manning and Brita Granström on nature and wildlife, for example Voices of the Rain Forest, use language and illustration in an imaginative and lyrical way (Mallett, 2006).
Perhaps we are less likely to think of fiction as a source of inspiration for science, but stories and poems can link science and English in a fruitful and sometimes exciting way. There is some evidence that girls in particular find a story approach to science humanises the subject for them and makes it more attractive (Frost, 1999). In her interesting book Creativity in Primary Science Jenny Frost describes how five and six year olds enjoyed hearing a Masai story called Who’s in Rabbit’s House told by Verna Aadema (1978). The story tells how Rabbit returns to his house to hear some rather puzzling sounds inside. The tale was used as a starting point for making Rabbit’s house out of cardboard and then developing a listening activity; some children made noises using shells, pencils and so on and asked the other children to guess which implement is making the sounds. Each child speaker held a large conch shell when it was their turn to guess. One outcome was a wonderful hard-backed book with charts showing the results of the listening activities. Another source of inspiration for linking science and fiction is Find that Book, which reminds us that Ted Hughes’ modern fairy tale The Iron Man can stimulate an interest in magnetism and, for younger children, Verna Aadema’s Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain can reinforce the understanding that plants need water and light to grow (Lewisham Professional Development Centre, 1999).
Of course there are many aspects of science which fiction tends not to relate to. I think the most promising areas for poems and stories arise from environmental and animal welfare issues. There are many works of fiction that reach out to children’s love of and interest in wildlife and the natural world. If we want scientists who care about the environment deeply and about wildlife we should not underestimate the role of fiction in awakening concern and interest in issues of conservation. After all it is often scientific interference which causes problems. Younger children enjoy Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (Frederick Warne) and reading this would be a good preliminary to reflecting on the fate of the red squirrel, once prolific but now rare in the British Isles. Since the turn of the century we have lost much of the woodland that was this creature’s habitat. The same sort of problems have affected the animals introduced in fictional guise in the children’s classic Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (Methuen). The book creates the riverbank environment before pollution wrought its havoc. In The Willows and Beyond, William Horwood has created sequels to the original stories in which the Wild Wood has been cut down by housing developers. Texts like Ted Hughes’ The Iron Woman and Barbara Jeffers’ Brother Eagle, Sister Sky (a retelling of an American Indian legend) are also used to bring home environmental issues, and manage to take on the complexity of these.
Poetry too can link science and English. Children aged about 5–8 years would like Adrian Henri’s H25 – a three-verse poem about hedgehogs and the poet’s wish to save them and badgers, frogs and toads from death crossing the motorway (this is one of the poems in Roger McGough’s Ring of Words, Faber & Faber). Referring to this poem in Child Education, January 1999, Sian Hughes of The Poetry Society comments that the idea of a hedgehog motorway is not so far-fetched: there are underpasses built for animals under busy roads in some places and groups of people go out at night to carry toads across dual carriageways safely to their ponds. The poem could be the start of lively discussion about how we can help as well as study animals and might also lead to children’s writing. For a leaflet about helping hedgehogs survive send an SAE to British Hedgehogs Preservation Society, Knowbury House, Know-bury, Shropshire SY8 3LQ. Poems for older children that encourage the questioning of certain environmental strategies include Judith Nicholls’ selection Earthways: poems on conservation (Oxford University Press, 1993).
Find that Book: Making Links between Literacy and the Broader Curriculum (1999) London: Lewisham Professional Development Centre.
Frost, Jenny (1997) Creativity in Primary Science Buckingham: Open University Press.
Hughes, Sian (1999) ‘Hedgehogs’ in Child Education, January.
Mallett, M. (2006) The Lyrical Voice in Non-fiction Leicester: English Association, bookmark 3.
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