Getting interested in astronomy is tough when you're 14 years old, never leave New York, and have never really seen the stars because of the city lights. My students are ready to experience the wonder of the cosmos - they just need a narrative to pull them in to the wider universe.
My students are low-income 7th and 8th graders attending a large public middle school.
Many of them are recent arrivals to the United States; some come to my classroom with no English. When I first meet them, many of my students say that they can't do math or science, and will completely tune out when presented with numbers on a chalkboard. My experience is that these very same students will jump right into hard work if they are hooked by exposure to interesting phenomena. Each and every one of the 25 kids I teach wants to learn and wants to succeed. My challenge is showing them that science is relevant to their lives. Once these students understand the importance of a topic, they take responsibility for the hard work of learning it.
My Project
Last year, I bought five copies of Ender's Game to test the idea of integrating it with my astronomy and physics curriculum. The test was not set up for success; I gave the books to kids who didn't like to read, and told them that they didn't have to read it if they didn't want to. Nonetheless the student response was incredible. Students invested heavily in the book's story and found themselves reading more than they had all year. One told me that his mother asked if he was sick because he was reading instead of playing video games! Kids who had never liked reading would finish the book and pass it to other kids who didn't like reading. And every student seemed to make connection between the book's setting in a space station and the work we had done on space and physics! I was blown away.
This year, I'm working with a Literacy teacher to integrate Ender's Game into his curriculum so that the rest of our students can benefit from this engaging story.
For many of us, being pulled into the universe of a wonderful book is the most profound and meaningful experience an education can offer.
This book effectively draws students in. In doing so, it improves their reading, and it gives them some working background knowledge in the mechanics of space and physics. With two classroom sets (and some graphic novels for struggling readers) we can give all of our students a chance to transport themselves into great fiction and great science.
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