Integrating Science Inquiry and Literacy Instruction for Young Children

Early elementary teachers are under great pressure to teach all children to read and write at highly proficient levels while simultaneously emphasizing STEM instruction to prepare students for the 21st century. Traditionally, literacy skills are taught in isolation from science instruction. However, reading and writing are the perfect tools to use for inquiry and reasoning, for creating a hypothesis, and for gathering, evaluating, and analyzing data. In this article, the authors describe how literacy and science instruction can be merged to create innovative, stimulating, and enriching learning experiences for young children.