Wachstumshormone

Jun

2

Storytelling in Science Education

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by Brian “Fox” Ellis

I learned early on that storytelling is one of the most important tools for teaching science. If you think about it . . . what is science? Science is an attempt to understand the universe.

A well-told science story does three important jobs: It brings facts to life; it makes abstract concepts concrete; and through the virtual reality of storytelling, it walks listeners through the process of scientific inquiry.

Children are curious about information and science facts if they’re presented in an intriguing way. Historically, teaching science education meant spending an inordinate amount of time memorizing facts. Facts are important, and storytelling is one of the most effective ways of delivering them. But if you stop with facts you are not teaching science. Science is a verb, an activity, not simply a body of knowledge.

Ideas such as the food web, evolution, the water cycle, and animal adaptation are examples of the “big picture” ideas that are critical to understanding modern science. But if you stop with concepts, you still are not teaching science. You are building a necessary conceptual framework for ordering and understanding facts. Again, science is something you do, a way of asking questions and seeking answers.

Storytelling can be used to introduce or implement all of the science standards. Though it is obviously a prime example of language arts and science communication skills, I often include mathematics problems in the science stories to emphasize the importance of mathematics in science education.

Science-process skills are the methods or strategies that scientists employ to discover and understand the story of the universe. A good story involves the listener in many of the strategies of gathering the facts of the story, making predictions about the outcome, and checking their hypothesis against the unfolding details of the tale. Also, you can use a story to make abstract concepts personal and tangible. Important facts can be conveyed within a dynamic context so the facts stick; they have more meaning and impact

Let me share a short story that will show you what I mean.

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