﻿Morning Session: Introductions and Current Integration of Science and ELA

Morning Session: Introductions and Current Integration of Science and ELA

4/15/2017

Take a moment to introduce yourself (to me mainly) including your name and the grade level, content focus, and/or specialization that you teach. Share how you currently teach science and what strategies and opportunities you have to integrate science into your ELA instruction. Give specific examples if you have them. Feel free to raise concerns or questions. Finally, what are your expectations and needs at this moment in order to feel more confident with this practice and how best would you like to use our time today?

12 Comments

fharris link

4/17/2017 05:33:26 am

Nice layout. Easily accessible.

Gina

4/17/2017 05:37:20 am

Good Morning All!!!

My name is Gina and I am a 2nd grade Bilingual teacher. I enjoy teaching science and I love the new curriculum for K-2 because it is a lot more hands on. I face two very big challenges daily and one is lack of supplies for all the projects and lack of Spanish resources. Luckily a lot science terms are true cognates and I am able to make a lot of connections during my Spanish teaching times, but I wish that I had access to more science related ELA resources. Hopefully, I will be able to gain more access to better resources and have a better idea on how to implement them in a meaningful way in my classroom.

Rosalind 'Roz' Neal

4/17/2017 05:37:58 am

5th Grade Science and SS
I teach Science 3 days a week for 80 minutes.
When teaching Science, I try to make it fun. We do labs, watch videos and discuss, create hands-on activities. We play Kahoot when we are reviewing concepts. The students do research and create google slides and present to their peers. When I find articles, we discuss and then I have them answer 3-4 opened questions.
I would like to incorporate trade books into the lesson in a fun way because the students tend to not like to read.

Brenda Maher

4/17/2017 05:38:12 am

I am a special education teacher in a 4th grade regular education classroom. I teach with Jaimie Tringali at Washington School. We teach Science 3 days a week. We use the district site to guide our teaching. We have textbooks that the students share. We also use our chrome books to access razkids books. We also have a google classroom for science activities that include videos, reading and responding.

Gina

4/17/2017 05:45:00 am

Is razkids a paid online resource? How are the texts? Do they come with questions?

Gina

Stephanie P-L

4/17/2017 05:38:35 am

My name is Stephanie Prybella-Lemchak, I am a SPED teacher, I teach 4th and 5th grade. I teach all subjects Resources and lesson plan ideas, would be great to get out of this. My students do well when we are reading. I teach Science anyway I can, through videos and then guided notes from the videos, or guided notes along with power point. I do not have a smart board of any kind so I usually just use my computer.

Reg Parham link

4/17/2017 05:39:00 am

I am a 5th grade Science & Social Studies teacher. I alternate
3 day /2 day split per week. I attempt to include hands on activities as often as possible. I am always in the hunt for more activities. I also have enjoyed using google documents to incorporate writing into the science program. We did one unit on the digestive system culminating with and informational essay as well as a hands on diagram model.

vincent

4/17/2017 05:41:14 am

My name is Vincent Salvato. I am a 4th & 5th grade teacher at Woodland School. I teach reading and science. I use Google Classroom, A Closer Look text, videos, and random sources of information for science. I attempt to teach science 2-3 times a week for 45-60min periods.

Donna McGregor

4/17/2017 05:43:02 am

My name is Donna McGregor and I teach 4th grade Science and Social Studies. I teach 80 minutes of science 3 days a week to 3 groups. I currently integrate science and ELA using Scholastic News and various trade books. My administrator encourages the integration of the subjects. I meet with the ELA and math teachers and we talk about whatever we're currently teaching. We work on academic vocabulary and content specific vocabulary to better prepare the students for the state assessments. One of the obstacles I face with teaching science is sufficient time. Because I have to also teach social studies, I can't always complete what's expected in science. Lack of materials is also a challenge.

Lamont link

4/17/2017 05:43:16 am

I teach 5th grade inclusion. Within our setting we attempt to teach science twice a week for two blocks. The year started great having students really engaged learning material that usually ended with lab or some type of hands ons investigation. Sadly, as the year progressed and the availabity of resources ran short, so did the labs. We continued to present an have the students watch videos of the labs, but their excitement for the subject dropped quite a bit. Some online research projects have worked, but the students enjoyed the hands on labs much more. I would like to find more ways to create "kitchen cabinet" labs to keep their interest high.

Aaron

4/17/2017 05:43:58 am

My name is Aaron Richard and I currently teach fourth grade at Clinton School. I teach all content areas as a self contained teacher. I teach science through use of non fiction materials such as ISTATION resources. For example, finding the main idea and teaching the strategy of "getting the gist" by determining who or what the article is about and finding the most important details about the who or what paragraph by paragraph. I usually include a small clip with a reading informational to further enhance comprehension. I also build vocabulary or skim as pre reading strategies for more complex articles related to science.
I have included 3 experiments this year. Being pro active and finding the materials so that you can conduct an experiment is up to the teacher if I really want to be able to have hands on activities. I have done a warm water cold water experiment, a sink or float experiment and a conductor insulator experiment. These types of things my students obviously love and gain the most knowledge from.
I would like to have somewhat of a pacing guide experiment list with resources to be included so that as we teach a science unit we have an experiment with resources correlated with the material. Definitely more materials related to physics with building ramps and testing different gradients and surfaces to see how gradient and surface material effects speed and distance. Overall, more hands on materials would make me a more effective science teacher. It is also up to the teacher if the materials aren't present to be able to do the best that you can to find materials to be hands on.

fred harris link

4/17/2017 05:47:47 am

Hi. I'm Fred Harris. I teach 4th grade Science & Soc. Studies at Emerson School. I incorporate ELA by focusing on "Comprehension" tasks. Aside from reading passages, students must be able to glean info from tables, charts, graphs and maps. I frequently give students opportunities to work on all of these. Most recently, various types of maps.

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