The Stories They’d Tell: Pre-Service Elementary Teachers Writing Stories to Demonstrate Physical Science Concepts

Abstract

Preservice teachers enrolled in a science content-based course wrote stories that could help their future students understand a science concept. First, participants chose their topic and wrote the story with few guidelines to establish a baseline. In the next part, a different set of students were given a choice of three topics (based on force, electricity, and heat misconceptions), and collaborated to write stories with guidance from the instructor. Stories were analyzed for narrative and science units, and test scores examined. Without guidance, many students struggled to find ways to integrate science within a story. With guidance, participants wrote stories that included more narrative elements overall, and participants felt the stories helped them understand the concepts.

Appendices

Appendix A

Directions for Part 1 of Study

EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT: SCIENCE STORIES

Choose a concept (or two) from the list below:

• Static electricity

• Current electricity

• Ohm’s law

• Conduction

• Convection

• Radiation

• Electromagnetism

• Transverse waves

• Sound waves

• Light waves

• Electromagnetic waves

For your chosen concept(s), write a short story or anecdote. Your story can be based on personal experience, totally factual, totally fictional, or some combination of these. For example, if you have ever been fishing on a lake and noticed the sky darkened and everyone’s hair started to stand on end, you might write about that in order to illustrate static electricity. However, you might change the story to include a young boy and/or a young girl, and add some details or some excitement.

Remember that it is important that your story give some kind of illustration or explanation that might help one of your students understand the science concept.

Your story will also need to include the following things:

• 1. At least one character (can be human, animal, electron, etc. can be you but we’ll change your name)

• 2. Some kind of plot (including conflict- something has to happen to the character)

• 3. Some kind of resolution or conclusion

Along with your story, please submit your answers to the following questions:

• 1. How does your story illustrate or explain your science concept?

• 2. Did the process of writing this story help you understand the concept better than you did before? If yes, how?

• 3. What are the limitations of your story? In other words, are there some ways that this story might give your students misconceptions or make them confused about the concept?

Appendix B

Directions for Part 2 of Study

The goal of this project is to develop some physical science-related stories as a group. Working on the story together is a great way to help students have ownership over the process of learning a concept, so we’re going to try to model that on the discussion boards of WebCT. In order to get credit for the assignment, you will have to make a contribution to each phase of the story. We will decide, as lab groups, on different components of our story to include, so it is important for you to participate in that process, but it is also important for you to make suggestions for us to vote on. In order for your contribution to be considered significant, you will have to include either a suggestion for the story, or an opinion with explanation about which components should be included. The stories’ purpose will be dispelling some common misconceptions about electricity, heat, or force. As part of your process, you can decide which misconception(s) you want your story to address.

• PHASE ONE: The basics

• You will need to make suggestions and express opinions on the following:

• MISCONCEPTION: which misconception would you like to address?

• CHARACTERS (how many should there be? Name(s)? Gender(s)? Background info?)

• SETTING (where should the story take place)?

• CONFLICT: What happens to the character(s)? How does this advance the plot?

• PHASE TWO: The plot

• What should happen in the beginning of the story?

• What kind of climax should the story have?

• How should the story end?

• PHASE THREE: The details

• Story dialogue

• Story narrative

• Story pictures

At the end, I hope to be able to compile little booklets of your story to distribute to all of you. You may find them helpful in your classroom!