Today I’m sharing with you 3 ways to write about science in your First Grade classroom!
It never fails, I get to the end of the day (my science/social studies block) and I’m not done with math or I need to go back and re-teach a reading skill.
Let’s be honest, science and social studies are just not top priorities in a Kinder, First or Second grade classroom! BUT, I knew I had to find a way to fit it in.
So I thought to myself… “No Time for Science Lesson? Let’s Write about it!”
I found a way to maximize my instructional time by integrating science into my writing time. And guess what… you can, too!
Let’s look at 3 ways to write about science in a First Grade classroom:
1: Informational Writing
2: Creative Writing
3: Share the Pen
Informational Writing
Informational writing is perhaps the most traditional way to write about science. This form of writing has students analyzing and recording facts about a certain topic.
For most students, this is the easiest form of writing because it does not require any creativity. Students are simply taking what they have learned and writing about it.
You can easily differentiate this activity several different ways.
-Easiest: labeling a picture
-Middle: write 1-3 sentences
-Hardest: 4 page booklet
Ex: Research Booklet about an Animal
- page 1- animal looks like
- page 2- animal lives
- page 3- animal eats
- page 4- fun fact
Creative Writing
Creative writing about science provides an opportunity for a little more fun. Students take what they have learned about a subject and use their imagination to write about what their life would be like as a bat, or write what they would do if they discovered a dinosaur fossil.
Creative writing is a two-step process so it is a little more difficult. Students first must process information and identify facts. Then they must take those facts and create a possible scenario given the new information that they learned.
You can still differentiate creative writing in several ways:
-Provide sentence stems: “If I could visit the moon, I would see___”
-Complete graphic organizers whole group to help students brainstorm
-If writing a 3-4 page booklet, give students “topics” for each page
- Page 1: present the facts “Did you know… there are 8 planets”
- Page 2: introduce possible scenario “If I were an astronaut, my first stop would be____ because___”
- Page 3-4 continue possible scenario
**Anytime you want to challenge students, make them use “because” in their answer/writing
Share the Pen
Share the pen writing is honestly one of my favorite activities! If I know I will be running short on time, or simply do not have the time to devote to an entire writing project, I “share my pen” with my students when creating an anchor chart about our science topic.
You can do this several ways.
First, you can start from scratch and have the students write most, if not all of the information on the chart.
But, if you are running short on time (which is me ALWAYS), then I pre-write the information on the chart with blanks for the students to help me fill in!
How to Get Started
Thanks so much for sticking around to read about the three ways I write about science in my classroom. If you are looking for done-for-you science based writing activities, look no further!
I’ve created science resources for the ENTIRE YEAR that are full of writing opportunities.
I love having options because I never know how much time I’m going to have for Science.
Some weeks I like to do one page writing projects, some weeks I choose four page booklets and some weeks I’m struggling to simply “share my pen”.
Browse my done-for-you science units…
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