Student Creativity and Learning: Writing about a science topic

While the primary focus of this site is to provide examples of science activities that allow students to begin to DO science through experimentation, projects, and other hands-on work, there is another way for students to be fully engaged as well as creative in learning certain topics: they can create and write stories, plays, poems, songs, newscasts, or have debates based on what they learn about a topic.

An important aspect of doing science is the creative side of the process. When professional scientists and engineers are trying to discover or build something for the first time, the process is often incredibly creative - new equipment or measuring tools might need to be designed, built, and tested; new techniques and methods may need to be created for new experiments; a long process of trial and error or troubleshooting could take place...the teaching and exposure to student creativity is often forgotten in classroom work.

An example of a poem written to teach younger students about the general structure of an atom, and to introduce the notion of quarks (that make up protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus), can be used as a model of what students can try to do. 

A second example is a children's picture book written by a high school student for elementary students. It introduces the notion of Newton's 3rd law of motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) both in physical terms, but also includes in the story action-reaction in the relationships between the characters - it ends up teaching us being mean in any way can cause a reaction of others being mean back to us, and that we should try to avoid this by being nice to each other and more inclusive.

Even if this is not done as an assignment or project for a whole class, some teachers may consider a writing club or have this as an option for a project that students can select from. Some students who are good at or prefer writing to more traditional science activities tend to learn science topics better and more fully through a writing/creative approach.