science

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Great apes learning language

Learning to do science is about learning to think. Experiments, direct teaching, group activities and discussions all have a part to play. So do science news stories.

 

Like other non-fiction texts, science stories contain different kinds of statements. To get at the science behind the words - and to make reading them an active experience - students should pull a text apart and explore the kinds of statement it contains.

 

We’ve met some of these in the later questions of the previous activity. Science news stories usually include the aims of the research or reasons for doing it. They often contain a hypothesis. Sometimes evidence for a hypothesis is given, or a hypothesis is used to make a prediction. Towards the end of a story the direction of future research the scientists are planning is often discussed, as well as outstanding questions the research will be designed to answer.

 

All these types of statement occur in some science stories. Virtually all science stories, however, will contain statements of the following four types:

• new findings or developments;
• the technology and methods the scientists used;
• previous or accepted knowledge, which may or may not be supported by the new findings;
• issues, implications and applications of the research.

 

So the next activity is designed to engage students with the latest science news by exploring the meaning and structure of a story as revealed by the content and balance of these four statement types:

 

Pulling it apart

In groups students should read through the story looking for new findings or developments. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the statements about what the scientists have just discovered or achieved, they can compare their thoughts with ours.

 

In groups they should go through the story again looking for the technology and methods the scientists used in their research. Once they have reached agreement or consensus, and have underlined the statements that talk about the methods and equipment the scientists used, they can compare their thoughts with ours.

 

They should repeat the activity for existing knowledge and compare their thoughts with ours.

 

Any areas of disagreement in these activities - whether among the students, between teacher and students, or between their ideas and our own - should be regarded as opportunities for discussion rather than errors to be corrected.

 

Having fully engaged with the latest science news through the above activities, students will be far better able to talk and think about the science and its implications than those who have simply read about it in a newspaper or watched a brief item on television.

 

Now it’s time for them to get to grips with the issues raised by the research.

 

Young people have opinions. But school science traditionally allowed little scope for forming and expressing these - which is why it turned many of them off the subject for life.

 

Putting it together again

In groups, students should read through the latest story looking for issues, implications and applications. Once they have reached agreement, or at least consensus, and have underlined all the relevant statements in the story, they can compare their thoughts with ours.

 

Having done all this the students should be well armed to explore the issues raised by the story.

Further classroom activities

A set of activities based on the orangutans news story can be found here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More classroom activities

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