Mixing It Up: Integrated, Interdisciplinary, Intriguing Science in the Elementary Classroom

Book excerpt: This book—a compilation of 25 practical articles from NSTA’s elementary school journal, Science & Children—offers a wealth of lesson plans and idea starters using interdisciplinary, integrated, and thematic approaches. Discover how a language arts unit on survival can include student inquiry into properties of ice, ways to improve students’ observational skills as they write haiku about nature, how to use data collection and math in mapping the ocean floor, and more. To engage students schoolwide or in the great outdoors, several articles offer project-based interdisciplinary units that are widely adaptable. Each article is categorized by grade level, the National Science Education Standards it addresses, and whether it is interdisciplinary, integrated, thematic, or a combination of the three. Even teachers who lack a strong science background will find these concrete techniques especially valuable for teaching science through other subjects (and vice versa).