Writing Together 2005

Science

The Writers in Schools Project is funded by Cripplegate Foundation and supported by CEA@Islington and the London Borough of Islington. Since it started in January 2003, the project has reached over 1,300 children in 28 projects in 15 different schools in South Islington, offering residencies of up to 8 days a term and a ‘menu’ of options, which includes creative writing, plays, Victorian children, Black History, a transition to secondary school project and science.

Summary

Science booklet, What Can Forces Do? (2003)

With science writer, Angela Royston, two classes of Year 5 children at Charles Lamb Primary School in Islington did a printed 28-page booklet called What can forces do? intended as a resource for other children to use. It explores balancing forces, friction, gravity, air and water resistance from a child’s point of view, with the children’s experiments written up and illustrated by their own drawings, supported by dramatic black-and-white photos of key moments in their learning.

Angela provided specially-written science handouts as ‘scaffolding’ to help the children structure and sequence their writing, which helped them reach a high standard of report writing. They were encouraged to be careful to define what they meant in their science writing, and in the booklet they write, for example: ‘Our task was to find out what size parachute was the best at resisting gravity. By best we mean the slowest to float to the ground’. The end product gave the children a real sense of pride in their achievement with one child saying: ‘When I’m old, I’m still going to keep it’. Copies were sent to every primary school in Islington and are now used in class in some schools.

Full report

Science booklet, What Can Forces Do? (2003)

The Writers in Schools Project did an ambitious 28-page printed booklet on forces with two Year 5 classes in Charles Lamb Primary School in Islington with science writer, Angela Royston, who has written over 200 science books for this age group.

The booklet explores balancing forces, friction, gravity, air and water resistance from a child’s point of view, with the children’s experiments written up and illustrated by their own drawings, supported by dramatic black-and-white photos of key moments in their learning. It was planned as a resource for other children, so we had to find a balance between the child-writer’s individual expression of ideas and the child- readers’ comprehension of them.

We also, of course, had to be sure that the science itself, although simplified for the age group, was accurate. The children were encouraged to define carefully what they meant so, for example, they wrote in the section on testing home-made parachutes: ‘Our task was to find out what size parachute was the best at resisting gravity. By best we mean the slowest to float to the ground.’

Forces were chosen because, although they are invisible and you can only observe their effects, they are a stimulating topic for children, especially the experiments on water resistance, which end up with splashing on the floor. Angela made sure that all the concepts were illustrated by everyday examples, so that children could understand them more clearly. On friction, for example, one child wrote: ‘When you go skateboarding, if you had too much friction, it would make you stop.’

Angela did an 8-day residency, doing 1.5 hour sessions with each of the two Year 5 classes, extended by a visit to the Launchpad and Flight Gallery at the Science Museum which gave the children enjoyable hands-on experience. She had first to teach the children sufficient theory about forces so that they could understand their experiments. Angela and the two class teachers worked as a team, with the writer taking the lead as she had the necessary specialist knowledge in science for such an in-depth study.

From the beginning, children wrote up their observations and examples, using the ‘scaffolding’ that Angela provided in the form of handouts each week. This was essential given the very wide range of writing ability in the class and the difficulties nearly all the children faced in expressing quite complex scientific ideas in written form. The handouts gave the basic scientific facts and asked children to think of examples or answer the questions posed. This helped the children to structure and sequence their ideas and reach the necessary standard of report writing. Using a ‘book map’ that plotted exactly what was to go on each page, Angela guided the children’s work towards these goals.

Usually the children’s texts were combined and edited for the booklet, but occasionally they wrote such vivid prose that it did not need more than an introductory sentence and some editing to length.

What we did was get a balloon and blow it up then we tied a knot in it. Next we got a bucket of water and put it on the table. Then we got the balloon and put it in the water. We pushed it down and then it go to see what would happen. It popped up and it fell out of the bucket. Then it fell off the table and splashed us.

There were a number of challenges in this project, such as time pressures, the difficulty of forces for Year 5s, the ‘tyranny of the end product’ with an ambitious integrated layout of text, photos, drawings and captions, and attendant technical problems of transfer from Word into Quark. There were also huge demands on the writer and teachers in the selection and editing of the children’s writing from the handouts. The parts the children found hardest were actually doing the writing, keeping the scientific language accurate, and moving from notes to connected prose.

In spite of all this, with an immense amount of work from everyone, the booklet was a success and gave the children themselves a great sense of pride in what they’d achieved – one child said: ‘When I’m old, I’m still going to keep it.’ and another commented: ‘I like it because it’s fun and we get to do lots of things like experiments’. As we had hoped, the children’s viewpoint on science came through loud and clear, for example: ‘If we didn’t have any forces, we wouldn’t be able to move. It would be a boring life.’

These Year 5 children gained in self-confidence from all the effort, teamwork and perseverance they had to put into an extremely demanding project. With adult help, they had written a whole booklet; without any help they had written the captions, glossary and an appealing blurb that said ‘Do you think science is boring? Well, when you read our book on forces, you will change your mind completely!’

They finished with a short piece of reflective writing, for example, ‘It was fun because I have never actually created a book before and it’s my first time!’ and ‘My best bit was riding the bike. We were trying to find out if the brakes would grip with water. It was quite difficult to be fair.’ The two project teachers were delighted with both the process and the product.

The booklet was used in school by Year 6 children, who came to ask for copies to revise forces for their SATS. Copies sent to all Islington schools were very well received. Claire Smith, a Year 5 teacher at Winton Primary said that they had six copies of the booklet and now used them instead of professionally produced books on forces because the children enjoyed reading the work of other children like them and they identified with the children in the photos.

Angela said that: ‘Extended contact with the same children over a period of time was very useful to me as a writer, giving me a more detailed and immediate sense of the range of children I write for.’ What she thought was most fascinating was that the children had instinctive scientific knowledge (for example, they knew which way to move a weight on a mobile to make it balance), but, as already mentioned, often had difficulty in putting their instinctive knowledge into words and even more difficulty in putting their new understanding into written words. However, after such intensive work during the residency, these children seemed to find their voices in science writing.

Pat Farrington Project Manager Writers in Schools Project Feb 2005