Storytelling is a powerful tool used to convey knowledge and engage an audience. Reading stories is a common and enjoyable practice for many children. Stories help to make facts more memorable, allow readers to connect with characters and receive information in a meaningful context.
In education, stories are used to teach students about the English language, the lives of influential figures in history and about different cultures in geography and religious studies. So why not use stories in science too?
Studies have found that integrating accurate science concepts and facts into children’s storybooks can provide numerous benefits in addition to improved scientific understanding. Benefits include increased literary skills, changes in attitudes and values and a greater interest in science.
Using storytelling techniques in particular can be more engaging for young children as at early ages they are already thinking in a narrative format. This is a structure familiar to them and putting facts and concepts into a story can provide a more meaningful context for children. Not only is the format and structure accessible to children, but it is also already familiar with teacher and parents, so it will be an easy technique for you to use too!
Using Science Stories in the Classroom
There are several ways that stories can be used to support teaching science in primary schools. Here are just some of the techniques and to make it even easier for you, all of Storybook Science stories are linked to a specific curriculum topic!
Using Science Stories to Introduce a topic
Stories are a great hook to kick off a new topic. Introducing new concepts in a story can be a nice way to ease children into new subjects and put information in context right from the start. Whilst writing my first collection of stories, I gathered feedback from teachers and several mentioned using stories in this way. For example, a teacher suggested How the Giraffe Got its Neck would “be a lovely way to introduce this science topic (used as a hook) and then the class could explore what other areas of evolution and adaptation they already know”.
Another teacher has suggested that Grandma’s Garden “would be great to introduce a science investigation in a ks1 setting”. After reading the story, you could ask your class how they could plan their own investigation to test the ideas mentioned in the book. For example, how can we find out if water and light really help plants to grow?
Using Science Stories to Introduce New Vocabulary
Learning new terminology is an important part of science, what better way to learn than regularly hearing and reading those new words in context?
Several researchers have looked into how many new words children can learn from stories and have consistently found children are capable of learning on average 3-4 new words from reading a storybook. Surprisingly this number does not change with the age of the children – 4 year olds and 10 year olds can learn the same number of new words from a story.
Other studies have found that embedding target words into rhyming patterns helps children to learn and remember the words even more. When the new word is placed at the end of a stanza or rhyming couplet, children pick up on the rhyming pattern and are anticipating what the next word will be. This means they are putting more thought into the words and this helps to consolidate their memory of it.
Using Science Stories to Reinforce Learning
As well as introducing a topic, stories can also be used to summarise or revise. After teaching a topic in science, reading a story with the class at the end can be a fun way to put all of those facts into context.
The stories themselves can also be turned into activities as one teacher feedback, “I’m thinking about using the story to encourage children to identify the science in the story,”. This was in relation to How the Giraffe Got its Neck, if you’d like to try the same thing!
Using Science Stories to Link with other Subjects
In the real world, subjects are not used in isolation. Scientists collaborate with mathematicians, engineers, writers and all kinds of people all the time, so why not link with other subjects in the classroom too?
During my feedback stage of development, a few teachers raised this idea. One teacher suggested that Peter Pan and his Shadow “could be used to support children’s writing in KS2 as well as support their science topic”. Similarly, another teacher proposed that The Force Field “could easily be used cross curricular for reading comprehension purposes”. You could also set a scientific creative writing or art project by asking students to write a sequel to The Adventures of Walter the Water Droplet, further exploring the water cycle by sharing where he could end up next.
Research has actually shown that integrating science stories into the classroom can improve children’s literacy skills as well as their knowledge of science!
Reading Science Stories at Home
For parents and carers, reading science stories can fit into an existing bedtime routine to consolidate and support your child’s school learning. This provides a way for you to enhance your child’s understanding and knowledge of science without the need for an advanced understanding yourself!
This method of replacing a usual bedtime story is an example of learning by stealth, in that to your child, it does not necessarily feel like extra homework but they are still learning from it.
Additionally, reading just before bed can really help all that knowledge to sink in. Sleep is known to help the consolidation of memories; this is likely why young children require more sleep than adults. Studies have found that reading a story before napping helps children learn and remember more key words than they would without napping. They even found that sleep can help children learn even more than hearing the story multiple times.
Reading stories with your children that use the same scientific terminology that they are learning at school really helps to reinforce these terms and their definitions. Research has shown that hearing the same word in different contexts provides a richer reference to greater establish the word in a child’s vocabulary. To help with this, all Storybook Science stories include a glossary of key words and their definitions at the back of the book.
How do you use your science stories?
If you use stories to teach science at home or in the classroom, share your techniques and tips in the comments below!
