People keep looking at me funny when I tell them I have an internship that\u00a0involves\u00a0science and science education. \u00a0“Wait… don’t you teach language arts?” \u00a0Is the usual question I get. \u00a0And, when I proceed to tell them that I’m incorporating the science into language arts lessons, they continue to stare and ask how that might be possible.<\/p>\n
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how “possible” it might be to take lab science and create an authentic language arts lesson. \u00a0But, I like challenges.<\/p>\n
The funny thing is, I’ve really found some great ways to connect science and language arts. \u00a0As I write my lessons, I’m waiting to hit a road block, but I really haven’t hit any. \u00a0Believe it or not, I really think science and language arts go hand in hand. \u00a0I’m not saying that this whole process was too easy- no, I still had to brainstorm a lot, but I really loved every second of it.<\/p>\n
One of the citizen science lessons my group had to include involved investigating DNA sequences. \u00a0That made me a little nervous. \u00a0Because I didn’t want to just throw an article or a writing assignment at my students- boring… and too easy. \u00a0Instead, I started to think about poetry- kids really struggle with poetry, but I think once they get it, it’s all the more meaningful. \u00a0I started to think about the way poetry is woven together and how that mimics the way DNA is woven together. \u00a0If you change pieces of a poem, you get something totally new. \u00a0Similarly, if you change the sequence of DNA, you get something totally new. \u00a0Fascinating! \u00a0Poems are like DNA! \u00a0That led me to a lesson on “sequencing” poetry- chopping it apart to creating something new… Tada! \u00a0I have a connection to science.<\/p>\n
This experience has shown me how much I love finding these connections and making them meaningful to students. \u00a0I might not be good at drawing or painting, but I truly think that writing lessons requires the same finesse. \u00a0And once all your ideas click, it truly becomes a masterpiece!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People keep looking at me funny when I tell them I have an internship that\u00a0involves\u00a0science and science education. \u00a0“Wait… don’t you teach language arts?” \u00a0Is the usual question I get. \u00a0And, when I proceed to tell them that I’m incorporating… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":462,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,28,27,3,12,29,30],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-authentic","tag-citizen-science","tag-dna","tag-language-arts","tag-lesson-plans","tag-poetry","tag-sequence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-gderstine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}