Title: 'TO DRIFT WHEREVER YOU PLEASE': THE VALIDITY AND VALUE OF CREATIVE AND REFLECTIVE WRITING IN SEVENTHGRADE SCIENCE
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To drift wherever you please:
Sustained creative writing in science by two seventh graders.
(DRAFT)
Paper presented at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching
March 23 – 26, 2003
Philadelphia, PA
Dr. Richard Frazier, Central Missouri State University 
Dr. Dawna Lisa Buchanan, Central Missouri State University (frazier@cmsu1.cmsu.edu) (buchanan@cmsu1.cmsu.edu)

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”
-Muriel Rukeyser
 Overview:

Questions about why, what, and how science should be taught to children have become perennial.  Best practice standards have been established (Zemelman & Hyde, 1998) and are being implemented in schools across the nation.  What we wanted to know, specifically, is how writing might support science learning for middle school students and what implications for teaching might be identified as a result of examining such writings.
The data for this study come from creative writing in science submitted by two students throughout a school year as part of their coursework. It should be noted that the students were offered the option of writing as one alternative way of being graded for their work in science, so it was their responsibility to choose the format, the focus and the production of written pieces as they progressed through the curriculum.  Although both students and their parents gave written permission for the texts to be shared, the authors of this paper have chosen to respect and protect the identity of the young writers by simply referring to them as writer A and writer B. We have not corrected any of their original textual errors.  A study by Decoito & Nieswandt (2002) did not find any significant difference in the quality or quantity of science writing by adolescents accepted for publication, so we also decided not to identify them by gender.
Over fifty pieces constitute the data set. The two sets of writing comprise a remarkable collection of artifacts that both express and depict the engagement with science of two adolescents. One dimension of the study includes an interpretive analysis of the works as they develop through the school year and as they compare to one another. Another dimension involves the emergence of questions and issues related to the value of the students' thinking as derived from their writings. 
 	A particular campaign in science education involves the use and acquisition of language for learning science. While writing in school science textbooks fails to receive commendations from national panels of experts, an increasingly popular genre in science writing has become the reflective scientific essay.  The earliest examples of this may be found in Thoreau: his influence continues to inspire brilliant examples of writing about nature.  However, biology is not the only appropriate science for such writing, as indicated by Primo Levi’s classic The periodic table (1984) and extended in recent years by collections of science essays published as a series, such as The best American science writing 2000. (Gleick, ed., 2000).
When science writing for young people and children moves beyond the traditional textbook format, highly accessible science and literary achievement often achieve merit on both counts.  Good examples include award-winning books by Patricia Lauber, Franklyn Branley and Seymour Simon.  Judith & Herbert Kohl’s The view from the oak (1977) invites young readers to view the world and its workings through the lens of ethology.  It won the National Book Award for Children’s Literature.
"Science for all children" is a phrase holding significant motivation for a teacher (NSRC, 1997). The difficult question is whether there is one science for all children or whether each child can find a science that is personally meaningful. This debate is reflected in a larger discussion regarding the language of science and how it should be taught.

Review of the literature:

For the purposes of this discussion, our literature review addresses three branches of study relevant to the topic of language in science, literacy in general and science teaching and learning.

The language of science:
Recent comments on the connections between science and art invariably mention C.P. Snow’s (1998) famous thoughts on “The Two Cultures” (Lustig and Shepard-Barr; 2002; Cherry, 2001). The dichotomous frame Snow posed in regard to differences between the sciences and the humanities has also been invoked in the so-called “Science Wars” (Brown, 2001; Gould, 2000; Lovejoy, 2000; Editors of Lingua Franca, 2000; Gross and Leavitt, 1994). That Snow is resurrected in reference to innovative collaboration as well as vitriolic exchange illustrates the power of his ideas to capture our attention. In our discussion of the role creative writing might play in school science we, too, wish to acknowledge the gap postulated by Snow. 
There are a number of ways to envision the gap between the two cultures. One could regard the differences between the accepted practices of science and the creative writing students might do in their efforts to learn science as trivial, dichotomous, incommensurate, competitive, or complementary. The perspective a teacher takes will have important implications in the pedagogical choices the teacher makes since time and other resources are limited in school. 
An examination of both historical and contemporary connections between science and creative writing reveals what could be termed a rich symbiosis (Rodgers, 2002; Shepherd-Barr, 2002; Deming, 2001; Midgley, 2001; Flatow, 2000; Frazier, 1992). There are also examples of writers who demonstrate creative expertise in both science and literature. Certainly the tradition in English goes back to Geoffrey Chaucer whose Treatise on the Astrolabe is considered the first piece of technical writing in English. More recently, Oliver Sacks’ extended clinical essays have found themselves transformed into cinema and staged dramas (MGM, 1999 At First Sight; Columbia Pictures, 1990, Awakenings.) Playwright Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998) won a Tony in 2000 and spawned a number of symposia and special events that brought scientists and artists together.
 In an online interview with iVillage (2001) novelist Barbara Kingsolver describes how her interest in ecology and natural history helped establish both themes and structures in her highly praised Prodigal Summer:

Barbara Kingsolver: . . . My agenda is to lure you into thinking about whole systems, not just individual parts. The story asks for a broader grasp of connections and interdependencies than is usual in our culture.

iVillager claire: Do you have a background in biology or medicine, like the character in Prodigal Summer?

Barbara Kingsolver: Prodigal Summer is full of people with biological knowledge, including an entomologist, a wildlife ecologist, an agriculture teacher and different kinds of farmers. And yes, as a matter of fact, I also have an academic background in biology. I grew up with both feet planted in nature and a house full of field guides; I was a biology major in college (though I also studied and loved music, literature and anthropology); and my graduate degree is in ecology and evolutionary biology. My dissertation was on kin selection in termites, and I've worked as a scientist in fields ranging from economic botany to human physiology. Natural history is my avocation. I use my academic training in my writing all the time, particularly in the way I approach and research a novel. (I think of it as a dissertation with a better plot -- and permission to create data!) But Prodigal Summer was especially rewarding in this regard, because I was able to work in wonderful nuggets of biological info like the keystone predator concept and the Volterra principle. I've been waiting a long time to do that. 

Nobel prize winning chemist, Roald Hoffmann (2002) has published, in addition to his scientific work, volumes of poetry, creative non-fiction, and a play.  Hoffmann says some interesting things about science and poetry in his essay “Science, language, and poetry” (2002):

The language of science is a language under stress.  Words are being made to describe things that seem indescribable in words – equations, chemical structures and so forth.  Words don’t, cannot mean all that they stand for, yet they are all we have to describe experience.  By being a natural language under tension, the language of science is inherently poetic.  There is metaphor aplenty in science.  Emotions emerge shaped as states of matter and, more interestingly, matter acts out what goes on in the soul.
 
One thing is certainly not true: that scientists have some greater insight into the workings of nature than poets.  Interestingly, I find that many humanists deep down feel that scientists have such inner knowledge that is barred to them.  Perhaps we scientists do, but in such carefully circumscribed pieces of the universe!  Poetry soars, all around the tangible, in deep dark, through a world we reveal and make.

The philosopher Mary Midgley (2001) has challenged the omnicompetence of science and makes the case that poetry is, in fact, essential to intellectual life:

What, then, about poetry and the arts generally? They too play a central part in our intellectual life because they supply the language in which our imaginative visions are most immediately articulated, the medium through which we usually get our first impressions of them. Shelley said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. (p. 38)

	Hildebrand is one voice calling for creative and hybrid forms of writing in school science. She criticizes the typical forms of writing in science for narrowness in comparison to the diverse ways scientists actually work and students actually learn. She also indicts the standard genres of science for the implicit support they provide for elite and exclusive science. Her argument is bolstered by work with teachers who have used writing in various ways to help students learn. Hildebrand proposes that an “enabling pedagogy” would enable students both to succeed in science and to critique and challenge science (Hildebrand, 1998). Hildebrand has examined “anthropomorphic writing” in science in particular as a genre that “involves creative thinking, synthesis, and active researching” (Hildebrand, 2002).
	Watts (2001) asks how school science might offer a context for a variety of experiences from the scientific to the poetic. He provides a number of examples from teachers and students where poetry is used in school science. A strong reason for using poetry in science, Watts claims, is that it can contribute an emotional dimension to learning. He writes:

There is a key issue here, that all of learning (and science is no exception) has an affective dimension. Feelings and emotions shape attitudes, tastes, moods and motivations for learning. Both inside and outside of school, feelings fuel the process of learning—either creating hostility and aversion to learning, say, French or cross-country running, or enabling learners to achieve, even to become excited by the richness of scientific knowledge available to them. The alternative—for learners to tackle a subject without looking for some sense of feeling for it, for some positive reason and rationale for taking it on—can sometimes lead to simmering distaste, to strong inhibitions and rancor. At the very least it can serve to inhibit talent, resourcefulness and creativity. (p. 201)

The language of literacy:
In his chapter on “Writing to learn and learning to write”, scholar James Britton (1982) reminds us that developmentally, the most essential process for children is rich experience with talking, reading and writing – language in all its forms.  He posits that there are three kinds of writing:
Their explorations of the outer world demand the transactional; their explorations of the inner world demand the poetic, and the roots of it all remain in the expressive.

We don’t often write anything that is merely communication.  There’s nearly always an element of “finding out,” of exploration.  So it’s a very common process for us to be able to read into our own writing something which we weren’t fully aware of before we started to write.  Writing can in fact be learning in the sense of discovery.  But if we are to allow this to happen, we must give more credit than we often do to the process of sharing at the point of utterance and not inhibit the kind of discovery that can take place by insisting that children know exactly what they are going to say before they come to say it. (p. 110)

Is this true for adolescents?  Widely respected for her extensive work with adolescents in writing, Nancie Atwell (1987) reminds us that it is essential to know something about the young people with whom we are working.  She identifies three important themes that teachers must recognize in order to work effectively with young adults.  She writes:

First, teachers of junior high have to accept the reality of junior high students…by nature adolescents are volatile and social, and our teaching can take advantage of this, helping kids find meaningful ways to channel their energies and social needs instead of trying to legislate against them. (p. 25)

She also notes that students’ intellectual development, although not “quite so charming” is just as vital in young adults as it is in younger learners. (p. 25)
The third theme of teaching should be organized:

…in ways that will help our kids begin to understand and participate in adult reality.  This means more independent activity, more say in what happens in the classroom, and more responsibility for their own learning.  It also means teachers who model the importance and usefulness in our own lives of the subject we teach, demonstrating our own processes as learners and our personal knowledge of our fields, inviting students inside academia by showing that inside is a worthwhile and interesting place to be. (p. 26)

The world of adolescents can be harsh.  Atwell observes:

Adolescents see themselves and others through new, critical eyes.  They measure themselves against the way they think they should be, and they seldom measure up; suddenly the world doesn’t measure up either…Junior high kids are insincere.  They’re trying to fit in, but the ground keeps shifting.  With every mood swing, their whole world changes.  They can be ecstatic for no reason; they can fall into the deepest depressions for no reason.  They can feel connected to the whole world and utterly alone.  My students write a lot of poetry about this syndrome. (p. 30 -31).

Britton (1982) offers us these descriptions of writing as it is employed for different purposes. He defines cognitive language as that which is:

used to construct theories, to speculate…intellectual language in which we take on responsibility for abiding by that organization, obeying its rules.  We take responsibility, for example, for the existence of the things we refer to in the real world, for the reasonableness of our generalisations (sic), for the logic of our arguments.  When we use language in this way, we are said to be ‘in the role of participant’ (p. 179)

When writing poetry or plays, he says that although there is certainly an experience of order, the writing may “reflect above all our involvement in what is not going on now. (Italics are Britton’s). For this reason we might say that we are….using it ‘in the role of spectator’.”(p. 170)

He goes on to suggest that language with very little organized order, such as recalling a story or chatting with someone for pleasure may be called ‘expressive’.  This he sees as:

a starting point from which the two other kinds develop.  When the demands of a participant role – the need to get something done in the world – reaches a certain point (and are met), I would call the resulting use of language transactional; where the demands are of the other kind – those of spectator role - I would call the use that satisfies those demands poetic.  (As you might suppose, expressive language, loosely structured, is free to move at will from participant role to spectator or vice versa; it straddles, as it were, that dividing line.) (p. 179-180)

Two interesting examples of the fluency of this use for language may be found in the following examples.
Chancer & Rester-Zodrow (1997), a classroom teacher and a writer-in-residence had an opportunity to work with children from kindergarten through sixth grade.  In a series of “invitations”, they guided children and young people through a series of lenses that included science, art, creative writing, observations and demonstrations in an intensely rich study of the moon.  At the end of the program (for it is an extensive series of experiences), students are able to review and articulate many levels of learning about the moon, but the authors note that they:
are always sad and somewhat disappointed when the cycle is completed.  Their journals are filled with beautiful descriptions, celestial drama and personal reflections.  Events from their own lives are intermingled with their lunar observations.  Our students know a new moon will arrive again with a few nights, but their (italics are Chancer & Rester-Zodrow’s) moon is gone…the conclusion of this study is bittersweet; it is a good time for both personal reflection and community discussion. (p.116)

Primo Levi, (1984) in his famous essay on carbon, makes his subject matter connect to his own life.  He has followed hypothetical carbon across a century and in different forms, until at last, (in the role of Britton’s ‘participant’) he deposits it in a glass of milk which is then consumed:

…it migrates, knocks at the door of a nerve cell, enters, and supplants the carbon which was part of it.  This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of the me (italics are Levi’s) who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic miniscule game which nobody has yet described.  (p. 232)

Atwell, Britton, and other scholars acknowledge the importance of reading in the role of writing, any kind of writing.  Students become fluent in different genres of writing by having many opportunities to experience and practice them.  Tied to this is the need for reading many different examples in a range of genres.  Doesn’t it make sense that to ‘do’ good science writing, students must have multiple experiences ‘reading’ good science writing as well?

The language of teaching and learning science:
What are the implications for teaching and learning science when we look at reading and writing?
In extended conversations with scientists, Yore, Florence, Pearson & Weaver (2002) found that “scientists use writing as an interactive, constructive process to build knowledge claims, develop compelling arguments, transform data into generalizations, report research results, and persuade colleagues and other people.” (p. 13)
 Professional scientists did use metaphors and analogies in describing their science work orally, but were reluctant “to use constructivist language associated with the modern view to describe science & scientific inquiry.” (p. 19)
They continue:

Few …people actually get to see scientists doing science.  This limited context appears to emphasize science as a noun – stressing encyclopedic volumes of knowledge and lists of procedures and processes about science, rather than science as a verb – emphasizing the human endeavors, successes, failures and emotional dispositions associated with doing science as inquiry.” (p. 9).

Lemke (1993) observes that most science teaching is conducted through what he calls “Triadic Dialogue” in which the rules “heavily favor the power of the teacher” (p. 11).  He suggests that the structure of a science class is important, but that during dialogue:
students….need to find the science in the dialogue.  If they don’t, they may learn how to play the classroom game, but they won’t learn how to talk physics or biology…the science in the dialogue is not just a matter of vocabulary.  Classroom language is not just a list of technical terms, or even just a recital of definitions.  It is the use of those terms in relation to one another, across a wide variety of contexts. (p. 11-12)

He notes that if a science teacher does employ Triadic Dialogue as an instructional strategy, it may actually disable his/her ability to hear how students are talking about science and the themes they are discerning.  “Even when we do get to hear how students talk about a subject in their own terms, it can be very difficult to set aside our own thematic pattern and hear what they have to say on their own terms.” (pg. 32) 
Lemke (1993) identifies what he describes as “side-talk”, when students talk to one another during a lesson. Side-talk “provides a channel for repartee between students who are sustaining the dynamics of their personal relationships, whether friendly, joking or hostile.  This siding is essential to the development of a …functioning group dynamics in the classroom.” (p 75).  A second form of side-talk permits students to question each other about the content or process they are experiencing, a form of peer checking and affirmation about science learning.  The third form of side-talk allows students to disengage from a lesson altogether.
Lemke (1992) contends that “stylistic conventions of scientific language and the attitudes toward science and common sense that are communicated in the classroom can sustain a harmful ‘mystique’ of science” (p. 160), just as Atwell (1987), in the writing classroom, saw that when she was able to remove the barrier between reading and writing for her students: “We lost ‘the mystique of authorship’ – not a great loss- and gained its joys.  When kids write in a genre, address a theme, or try a technique, they own it.” (p.252)
Yore (et al, 2002) discovered, in extended conversation with the two highly respected scientists,  that although both were comfortable using analogies and metaphors (creative language) to communicate science, neither felt comfortable in using that kind of language to do science: designing inquiries and interpreting data. 
Hildebrand (2002) poses the following question: “Are the fiction and anthropomorphic components of imaginative writing confusing factors in the learning of science?”(p. 11).  She proposes that effective science teachers recognize that writing in their discipline has at least two purposes: “learning to write scientifically is one; the other is writing to learn science concepts.  The second reason should not be constrained by the same rules as the first because it has a different social purpose." (p. 22)
Varelas et al (2002) encourage teachers to be aware of three genres in the classroom: the youth genre, the science genre and the classroom genre.  They are not speaking of literary forms, but rather of complex social expectations and interactions.  They identify key characteristics of each genre in the following ways:
Youth genre is shaped by children’s culture and language, their gender and their attitudes – about science, about learning, and about themselves. 
A classroom genre is a dynamic system of relations, expectations, norms, habits and interactions between the teacher and the students, among the students themselves, and among the student, the teacher and the subject matter…multiple and varied opportunities for students to express and further develop understandings as opposed to a more teacher-controlled delivery of subject matter…yet …in which teachers bring to students their knowledge and understandings of cultural achievements that comprise science activity. (p. 582).

In the science genre “the emphasis is on the dialectic relationship between developing theories…and collecting and analyzing data…” and examining “the fit between theory and data…participants continually probe each other’s ideas and push one another to develop their ideas more rigorously.” (p. 582)
In a collaborative study with a committed and experienced science teacher, the authors found that writing in hybrid genres (science and rap, for example), helped students, particularly those from diverse cultural backgrounds, scaffold their understanding into scientific discourse, facilitated their development as reflective learners and gave both teacher and students an opportunity to learn about each other and how to interact with each other more openly in the science classroom. 
Keys (1999b) has investigated middle school writers in science. One study (1999b) used content analysis to examine the appearance of distinct propositions in reports students had composed during a summer program. Keys concluded that “many student reports contained only a few meaningful inferences” and that “participation in the camp science inquiry activities was insufficient to stimulate many students to generate new meanings for data in their writing.” (p. 1057) She was looking in particular at the ways students might relate their observations to meaning in writing. Keys highlights crucial issues for consideration in the study of children’s science writing:

(a) how new data interact with prior knowledge to generate new ideas, (b) how chains of reasoning operate in children’s thought processes, (c) how children seek and understand evidence to back their claims, (d) what the levels of discourse knowledge are and how to apply them, and (e) how children view their investment in writing tasks.  (p. 1059)

In a second paper that uses some of the same data from the summer science program, Keys (1999a) asks “What’s wrong with creative writing in science?” (p. 124) Her answer uses an argument of triage, claiming, “Creative writing not only takes away precious time from other kinds of science learning, but it may actively work against many of the goals for reasoning, learning about the nature of science, and communication recognized by the majority of science educators.” (p. 124) At another point, Keys writes, “creative writing assignments communicate to students that science is not intrinsically interesting, but must be infused with artificial excitement.” (p.124) Keys’ points remind us of the debates originated from the gap between the two cultures mentioned earlier.

We feel the writing presented in our study clearly falls into creative genres, poetry and creative nonfiction, rather than an easily recognizable scientific genre. We are not so certain that we can come to the same conclusions as Keys. In the next section, we first examine the writing for evidence of Best Practice standards as identified by Zemelman and Hyde (1998). Next, we discuss the particular themes our seventh grade writers explore. In each piece of the set, the writers connect experience with meaning and generate interesting and reflective ideas. While the seventh grade writers most certainly value their own creations, how we adult educators value children’s meanings remains equivocal. (See Brown, Beck, Frazier, and Rath, 1996 for an attempt to explore the related question of the value fantasy has in children’s science.)  

The data:
Richard Frazier was the seventh grade science teacher during the year the young writers produced their work. He had been working at the Singapore American School for a decade that included a move to a new campus. The science program was inspired, in part, by a curriculum project developed by the University of Hawaii’s Curriculum Research and Development Group, titled The Local Environment: FAST 1, Foundational Approaches in Science Teaching (Pottenger and Young, 1992, 2^nd edition). Most of the class time was devoted to a variety of extended inquiry projects. About half focused on physical science and half on natural history and ecology. Various tropical habitats of Singapore provided a rich context for the natural history investigations. The science classroom, as well as other facilities in the school (pool, gym, driveways, and playing fields) and neighborhood (trains) provided settings to carry out the inquiries in physical science.  Students recorded questions, procedures, and results in science notebooks and produced a variety of written reports documenting their studies. Many of the reports followed a format consistent with the typical scientific genre. Students also presented work (in a number of forms) to their own classes, to classes from the opposite seventh grade team, and to students in other grades.   
The option to submit weekly pieces of creative, reflective writing in science was one piece of a grading plan that included required core assignments and a number of other choices. Once minimum expectations were met students could budget their efforts to achieve desired grades. The plan was designed in part through discussion with students at the beginning of the school year. There were three conditions a work had to meet to be accepted for credit:

1) The writing had to be thoughtful. Students needed to be able to explain how their pieces exhibited reflection.
2) The writing had to be connected to something of relevance that had been encountered in science class during the week. Students were responsible for establishing the connection.
3) The writing had to be substantial. Five hundred words was a target length for a piece of prose. Short poems needed annotation or evidence of revision in the event that content and composition were called into question.

Many students took advantage of the option throughout the year. Poetry was quite popular and may have been influenced by the emphasis in the Reading/Language Arts classes on writing. An RLA teacher was a published poet and encouraged students’ to write. During her tenure as a seventh grade teacher, students read their works publicly in school assemblies and at bookstores, shared their poems online with students in other schools, and published a chapbook.
The writings by A and B were remarkable in terms of quality and volume. These young adolescents chose to produce creative pieces nearly every week for a school year, creating a unique record of student thinking in science. Dr. Frazier’s hope, as a science teacher, was that the weekly writing option would provide an avenue where students could explore the connections of the science work with their own lives and interests. As investigators, we also expected to learn much from students about their thinking in writings that met the three conditions as noted above.
We selected pieces of work from the data and aligned them with best practice standards as articulated by Zemelman & Hyde (1998).  In most cases, the full piece of writing will be included, but readers are encouraged to review the complete collection as it appears in the appendix.
What did we discover about our young writers?  Both are passionate, curious and observant, characteristics that describe most adolescents, but are also reflected in a description of scientists: “They exhibited traits that are infrequently associated with images of scientists – passion, high energy, curiosity, interpersonal skills, and collaboration.” (Yore, Florence, Pearson & Weaver, 2002, p.17).
The writing from our two students reveals two very different personalities: one is introspective, philosophical and attempted a wide range of writing genres.  The other chose to stick mostly with a journal entry format, did attempt one poem, and demonstrates an awareness of audience, a cheerful, outgoing disposition and an ability to work well as part of a team. 
Both young people returned again and again to themes that were important to them, some of which they shared in common.  We return to these themes in later discussion, but again, we see these dispositions reflected in the professional world:

Both scientists demonstrated distinctly different personalities, but they desired to push the envelope of understanding in their field.  Both were successful at doing this, but one stayed focused on a specific problem while the other was much more adventuress – delighting in taking excursions into new and different areas where he lacked ‘expertise’. (Yore, et al, 2002, p. 20)

Below are listed the ‘Best Practice’ standards as identified by Zemelman and Hyde (1998).  We address each with samples of writing from A and B, followed by a brief commentary on how the pieces address the standard.  Much more detailed analysis of their writing could be made, but these will suffice to illustrate the main point in each standard. In many of the selected pieces, the reader will be able to detect how the teacher (Dr. Frazier), is providing best practices for these seventh grade students.

Best Practice I: Students need opportunities to explore the significance of science in their lives.
6B.10.26
Reflection

	Motion is when an object is moving.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be going somewhere.  When an object in motion hits another object it results in impact.  The size of impact depends on the size of the objects colliding.  Without motion, the universe wouldn’t be here.  Nothing could ever happen without motion.
	To measure the motion of an object, I think you need the distance of travel, time of travel, velocity, force/momentum, and a relative point.  You need a relative point because if an object is just moving through space, there is no point for it to move closer or farther from.  If an object is just moving through nothing (open space), where it ends up later will be exactly where it ends up later will be exactly like where it started.  So basically it hasn’t moved at all.
	Einstein’s theory of relativity has much to do with motion.  Can time stand still if you move away from a clock/time at the speed of light?  The way this works is the time travels from the clock to your eyes at the speed of light.  So if you move away from the light which carries the time to you…wouldn’t time stand still?  If this true, would it be possible to go back in time if you travel faster than the speed of light?  The only way to find out is to try it and experiment.  I doubt these experiments with time travel will occur very soon.  Humans are far from travel even close to the speed of light.
	A centerfielder judging a fly ball is my specialty.  My favorite sport is baseball and I know pretty well how players judge the ball.  Seventy-five percent of judging is seeing the acceleration of the ball off the bat and determining if it is low or high ball.  A hard, low ball would reach it’s highest point in about one second.  It is quite amazing how fast the ball can accelerate into the air.  I think in races, acceleration is a key part to winning.  It’s a key part in motion! 
	(research note, drawings attached to candidate’s paper)

23A.3.4
Staring at the Stars
I am outstretched on a blanket of soil and grass,
The place where my tears turned to dust and smiles turned to tears,
Where the darkness of night fell with a velvet curtain,
Darkness engulfs the evening sky in a swallow of mystery.
I stare at the stars.
They have seen it all.
A harvest of stars that have translucent doors so we can see but not enter.
A chamber of heat that lets you into deeper minds of thoughts,
I found the key to happiness.
There was a layer of melted stars that lies under our feet,
An invisible layer that can create any impossible vision,
And that knows how to dream.
The world is still untangling tinsel and rhinestones from our eyes.
There is a sea of constellations,
As I lay here on Earth,
I sigh.
Why does darkness cause anxiety yet cure the daytime?
A zephyr shivers by things will never be the same, ever.
When whispering words knew innocence and candlelight wasn’t light.
A foot of glass as fragile as stars,
That would break with a footstep,
But still there would still be pieces,
It could never be broken enough to disappear.
A silver string lines up the stars to make the diamond necklace for the universe,
And eyelashes for the ocean.
A star fell in the ocean,
And she drowned.
At least she left a footprint in the heart of those who ever saw her,
Like we all do.
Footprints in hearts.
While I breathe, I hope.

Commentary:
Although the writing style in each of these pieces is clearly profoundly different, there are similarities which should be noted.  In B’s cheerful and inquisitive reflection, questions about the “big” science concept are posed (Einstein’s theory of relativity) and then linked directly to the young writer’s life. An expertise in baseball is described and then linked to the concept of “motion”.  
In A’s more philosophical poem, there is a mood of adolescent angst, but here, too, the “big” picture (stars burning out, falling, becoming part of the earth “under our feet”) is made clear.  The author links these larger themes to his/her own life in the final line, which becomes an affirmation: “While I breathe, I hope.”

Best Practice II: Science Study should involve doing science, that is, questioning and discovering – not just covering - material.
1B.9.8
Reflection
As another year of science approaches I must remember studies from last year.  I need to recall how to take a survey, analysis, and observation.  How to dissect a specimen, follow very closely to instructions, and handle science equipment.
It is terribly substantial to take notes, record, and sketch in science.  After you do something and you don’t remember how to do it again that might be history that has just been lost.  If you take notes and record at school it may help you on a test, project, or report.  It’s good we got notebooks here.  I plan to have mine stuffed with science work like my biology book from last year is.
Without these things science wouldn’t get very far.  Most topics require a time period for complete study.  For example to observe a growing plant would usually take days or studying erosion on a beach would take months at least.  You need to record data so it isn’t left behind in the past.  Also, if you stop working on something, but you have your notes and records someone else can pick up your work and complete it.  Notes must be reasonably readable.
Most importantly, how to ask myself questions about something I am observing and studying to help me learn more about what is actually is.  A smart Greek philosopher once used this method for teaching and learning long ago.  I think asking questions is a good, effective way to study and learn.  It kind of acts like a minor pretest you are giving yourself that makes you think about the topic.

Questions to ask yourself:
	*What is it?
	*Is it called something?  If so, what?
	*Is it alive?
	*If it is alive, what does it eat?
	*If it is alive, what does it breath?
	*If so, how does it work?
	*What does it smell like?
	*What does it look like?
	*If it can make a sound, what does it sound like?
	*Can it communicate?
	*Does it have a central intelligence center (brain)?
	*What does it taste like?
	*Does it create exhaust?

How to handle science equipment:  
	*rinse out containers
	*wipe tables when done
	*be careful and slow
	*use only as instructed
	*put everything back where it cam from

	So far, the science year has begun pretty well.  We’ve started to work with pacing and I hope we begin mapping soon.  That would be neat, fun, and interesting.

							 This reflection has 436 words.

20A.1.31
Jungle

Creeping and crawling over islands of abandoned fate.
Where the edge of the past and the future collide.
Layers of green drapes and silver wishes,
Hoping for yesterday and crying for tomorrow.
Slicing layers of airborne purple poison.
Where the vines twirl helplessly around a finger.
Silence is the past to the deaf,
And the past of death to the hearing.
It wants to be free,
Should we let it fly?
Or die.
The jungle with intense orange and green,
With ecstatic pink and fur.
Where buzzing is life,
And hushed stillness is death.
From the shrinking of each individual,
New is born.
Death creates life.
What happens when there is too much death for life?
With the acts of deforestation,
Let there be peace on Earth.

Commentary:
	In B’s piece, we read how the young writer “does” science – with notebooks and observations, along with the kinds of questions s/he believes will be helpful, along with a positive note about upcoming curriculum (“I hope we begin mapping soon.  That would be neat, fun, and interesting”).
	In A’s vivid poem an ecosystem is created with both bright colors (“The jungle with intense orange and green,/With ecstatic pink and fur…” juxtaposed with some real scientific concerns “What happens when there is too much death for life?  With the acts of deforestation…”  Although A does not comment explicitly on “doing science”, the poem contrasts life with death in a way that is most certainly echoing the “questioning and discovering” strand of the standard.

Best Practice III: Meaningful science study will aim to develop thinking, problem solving and attitudes of curiosity, healthy skepticism, and openness to modifying explanations.
1A.9.9
The Metric System
	I decided to do a reflective writing on the metric system because I became interested when we discussed how a meter was created.  I though by doing a reflective writing on this I could learn more about the metric system.
	I thought it was interesting that the French Academy a long time ago decided a meter was a one millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole through France.  Does this mean they measured from the equator to the North Pole?  This must have been what they did but at first I didn’t know that they knew the location of the equator and North Pole at that time.  From this invention of the meter, the entire metric system is based.
	Some people do not, but I consider the metric system an invention.  It takes talent to think of an efficient way to measure units and a way that’s easy to understand.  It all started with the meter, the base of the metric system.  Each name is Latin work, like centi means hundredth.  Centri also is used in other words such as “centipede”, pede meaning feet, put together it means thousands of feet.  The metric system, like all good systems of measurement should, covers weight, capacity, length, and mass.  Even though the customary system of measurement does this as well, I think the metric system has it more well thought out making it easier to understand.  
	I think the metric system is a very good way of measurement for many reasons.  It is simple because you can learn the place value (millionths, thousands, etc.) just by the prefix, such as milli (for milligram, milliliter, millisecond, etc.) or mega (for megagram, megameter, etc.) and they all always hold the same place value.  Therefore, if you forget what a measurement is, all you have to do is know the prefix.  Also, all the units in the metric system are all multiples of ten and 10 to the …….th power.  That also makes it easy to convert because all you have to do is move the decimal point.
	I found out that approximately 20-30 years ago in the United States of America, the current president declared that in certain year, all the measurements in the U.S.A. would be converted to the metric system.  This was proposed and announced, but the people of the U.S.A. disagreed to this and kept on using the customary system of pounds, feet, inches, gallons, etc.  I think it would have been better off if the U.S.A. changed to the metric system because then they would be able to communicate with the world better.  I can although understand why people would want to stick to the system of measurement they had lived with their entire lives and the change would be expensive.  I think the change would be expensive because they would have to replace all their rulers, measuring tapes, and yardsticks.  Plus, they would have to repaint all the signs on freeways reading things like “San Francisco 45 miles”.  Also scales would have to be changed.  A lot of people might go out of business and it would be confusing for children who just learned how to measure.
	Whatever the system may be, measurements are very important.  They tell us accurate readings and notices of change.  If you are repeating a recipe, it would stay the same each time with measurements.  I wonder what the world would be like without any form of measurements……………    
3B.9.24

Reflection-Maps and Surveys

	We are well underway in our mapping and surveying work.  So far we have looked at the part of the campus that has a walkway and some forest.  It’s cool (as in cold) being under the trees and when look up you only see parts of the sky peeking through the canopy.  Also to see the bugs and plants I’ve never really looked in a learningful way.  Once I think about it I’ve never looked at the rain forest and thought curious about what something is.
	On the little sheet I’m basically down as “Other” but I like to call myself “Boundary Man”.  Ryan W___ I consider “Boundary Sidekick Man”.  We have just started to try to make our group’s job easier by keeping track of things like boundaries, the sidewalk, and where things are.  We try to do this as accurately as possible just with some estimates and facts.  Vincent Chen is our group’s recorder and so far is taking sizes, distances, and observations for our group.  He also keeps track of most of the papers.  I have all my things in my Science Notebook like most everybody else so I just keep my things to myself unless I have to share them with the group.
	So far this is kind of confusing because we are just getting started and need to confirm some destinations.  We are quite unaware of where things are.  By the end of tomorrow’s class though I think absolutely everything else will be under control…except for the scaling which I am a little uneasy about.
	Thinking about how to scale down to size our area is pretty tricky.  This thing with the square meters is all right.  It’s given me a better clue than anything about how small 25 square meters actually is.  It is barely anything compared to the size of the whole area.  Maybe a Fiftieth of the area.  But how are we going to get the size of all the area.  It looks to me like the easiest way to do it is to take accurate measurements of the all the boundaries.  Between the groups and outer.  Then we can put this down on our most accurate map and use math to figure out the area.  After this step we can make that map more accurate by using the measurements to create a comparison.  For example if one boundary is 100 meters long, we can make a scale of 1:100 and for every meter in the real thing we draw a millimeter on paper.  This very example might be good size change. 
	Do you have something easier up your sleeve Dr. Frazier?

Commentary:
	A’s essay on the metric system demonstrates a curiosity about how the metric system came into being as a result of a class discussion about “meter”.  Throughout the narrative, we see the writer ponder the origins of the metric system, support it as a legitimate “invention” and unravel the taxonomy of the word while testing it against other words (“centri (sic) also is used in other words such as centipede…”)  There is also an opinionated discussion on why Americans refuse to move to general use of the metric system, (along with a modifying explanation) and a concluding question about what would happen if there weren’t any form of measurement. (A's recollection of the original meter is off by a factor of ten.)
	B’s essay shows a delightful attitude of curiosity in the refreshing phrase “I’ve never really looked in a learningful way” which is most telling.  A description of the task the group is wrestling with follows, along with an admission of some confusion and an awareness of what learning tasks the writer still must tackle (confirming destinations and scaling).  This is followed by a plan of action, and the ‘healthy skepticism’ of the standard: “Do you have something up your sleeve, Dr. Frazier?”

Best Practice IV: Students should explore fewer topics in depth, not skim many superficially.
3A.9.26
Fig Tree
	I chose to write my next reflective writing on the fig tree in the little forest of the Singapore American School.  I first thought it was really interesting when I first saw it on Monday, September 21 when we went outside to walk through the section of forest.
	At first I didn’t know it was a fig tree until Dr. Frazier told the class.  I thought maybe it had some kind of disease since it had clusters of green spheres sticking out of the trunk. I thought (and still think) it’s really neat how it’s almost like we’re in a little rainforest, but we’re still in school!  This provides hands on experiments and ability to see things in person.  Even without that, it’s still a great experience to live in Singapore as a kid.
	I didn’t realize how many types of fig trees there are!  I though maybe one or two, but there are hundreds!  I don’ think the kind in our school forest is edible however.  The appearance is fascinating though.  The leaves are a medium length and narrow.  The tree, like all of the others, is drenched in ants!  I think maybe they like the figs or just a place to live because the humidity makes the wood damp.
	Something I’m curious to know is how the tree got there.  Is it natural?  I don’t think so because most of Singapore has been clear cut.  Maybe it was planted by former students.  However it got there, there aren’t very many of them.  It’s the first I’ve seen and the only of it’s kind in the whole forest area!
	The tree is in my group’s boundaries so we have observed it.  Another interesting thing is that there are 2 trunks from the same roots.  This is pretty cool because it probably means at one time it was only one trunk and then it grew two stems and those turned into trunks.  I would like to have seen how long it took for a stem to develop into a trunk.  I think a long time because the change is pretty gradual from soft green to hard brown.  If one person planted just that tree, then they probably would have observed it.  But if they planted a whole forest, they might not.  If the forest was natural, I doubt anyone would have enough patience to just walk into a forest, pick a little green seedling, and watch it grow.
	What someone could do to see how old the tree was without cutting it down, would be to take an apple corer and stick it through a section of the tree and count the stripes on the cylinder (they would be part of the rings) and that would be how many years it was.  
	I think that fig trees are really interesting, especially this one.  The way they grow and their leaves are beautiful and unique.  I’m glad the Singapore American School has the advantage of having such a unique forest on it’s campus.
7B.10.31
Reflection

	Friday, Oct. 29, 1998, our class walked off campus to the MRT to study motion and acceleration.  While we were walking we had to calculate our average speed.  To get this, we needed the time it took us to get there and the distance.  Dr. Frazier used his watch to tell us the time which was 5:13.  Some paced to get the distance.  I am not a very good pacer and I like to be exact so used a road directory when I got home.  I used its scale to find the distance which was 530 meters.  R-rate multiplied by T-time equals D-distance.  RT=D.  If this is true than D-distance divided by T-time equals R-rate.  D/T=R. 530/313=1.7 meters per second.  We were moving at 1.7 meters per second.  
	Once we got to the station, Ryan and I volunteered to measure the tracks on the other side of the road.  The purpose of going there that day was to see what the area was like.  If there were any problems.  Measuring the tracks had a couple of problems.  One was that the place wasn’t perfectly flat.  The other was that a road went under the tracks.  We are going to have to quickly measure across the road.  We got a quite a bit of work done in fifteen minutes we were up there.  I made a rough map of the area that we would have to measure.  The size pillars after the station are the things we need to measure the space between.  This is all the same as the races except at a larger scale.  Many things in science can be done in different scales.
	As we finished up, I looked over the road to see what the class was doing.  They weren’t there!  They were walking around the corner back to the school.  I told Ryan and Rohit who was working with us too “They’re leaving us!  Let’s get outta’ here”.  We eventually caught up with them when we were told only Amit had noticed we were missing.
	Since Oct. 26, 1998 I have been careful to make sure my science log was filled in plentiful of entries.  Science this year I think is much harder than last year.  I guess that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.  (research note, drawing attached to candidate)  

Commentary:
	In the body of work created by A & B, (see Appendix), the reader will identify the main topics of study evidenced by several texts which reflect a topic repeatedly and the bridging curriculum that moved them on to the next subject.  Both these texts provide significant details about their subjects.  A’s work describes close observation of the fig tree, speculation about how it got there and how one could learn more about it.  B details the thinking and actions group members took to calculate their speed and map the area.  So absorbed are the students in their task that they are nearly left behind – sure evidence of ‘in depth’ engagement!

Best Practice V: Students grow out of misconceptions and naïve theories only by actively engaging in investigation.
2A.9.10
The Moon

Glowing like a firefly in the blanket of the sky,
A perfect circle as if cut from a bed of fresh white snow,
A silky veil of mist laid over all past, all pain
The moon of the Earth.
It’s significance in the universe like a singe grain of sand on a football field,
Yet it’s beauty is like all the people’s souls of the whole world put together,
A milky hue with a clear edge against an ebony night sky.
She watches the Earth from above,
All alone and forlorn with only an occasional visit from us
The moon is a friend of the stars,
Happily they play tag, frantically, smiling at one another,
A celestial body sent from heaven,
With glowing embers, burning hot and burning slow.
Enhanced by the light of the sun,
Smooth as a marble in the air, yet as many dents and crevices as in a pot of soil
Reminiscent of many days, for the moon has always been there,
Sometimes the color of tangerine, Harvest Moon
The color of powdery baby snow, Blue Moon
The moon, like all of Earth’s creatures, has many personalities, each different and unique.
The moon spends it’s life gazing and wandering the same road it knows so well, the only road it knows
Creating awe and wonder for many souls each night,
The moon’s beauty is internal as well,
It is soft spoken and whispers to angels
They respond with only cries, begging the moon to stay, for if it leaves, all humans will forget the 
meaning of beauty, of romance, or caring.
As long as the stars shine down from the heavens, so will the moon.
If we would cut up the face of anything perished that was beautiful and pasted it to the moon, 
everyone would wait for night for it would look so lovely,
It already is.
2B.9.10
Reflection

	For the past few days, people from the class have been demonstrating their astronomy projects in presentations.  Most have been observing the moon.  A few a have chosen other projects.  There have been several theories on the moon.  Most of them saying that the earth blocks out some of the sun’s rays, creating a shadow on the moon that appears to make it look like a crescent.  I agree with this theory.  It makes sense because there is no other star or planet close enough to cast the shadow.
	I believe a new moon is when			(research note, drawings attached to
the moon is directly or far enough						candidate)
behind earth, the sun’s rays can not
reach it.  The rays can not hit it directly
or bounce off the earth in this case.  I think
a solar eclipse may count as a new moon because
we can not see the side facing the us.
The other side blocks out all the rays.
	A full moon would have to be in
a positive where the side of the moon
that we see can catch enough sunlight
to brighten the whole side.  This light
may come directly from the sun or it may
bounce off the earth and then reach the moon.
	A half moon is easy to picture in 
your mind.  The earth is between the 
sun and the moon halfway, so only half
of the covered moon can catch the rays,
showing a half crescent.

	People have been talking about how you can see the setting moon in the morning with the rising sun.  From this I predict that if they get closer each morning, there will be a solar eclipse sometime soon.  This is probably incorrect but from this information, this is what I think will happen.
	My theory about the phase of the moon is pretty simple.  I think that when the moon revolves around earth, the size of the crescent changes.  It only appears to (sic)

Commentary:
	In A’s free-form poem there is much speculation about the moon’s relationship to the rest of the universe.  Anthropomorphism is used to create characters that interact and have meaning in the universe (“The moon, like all of Earth’s creatures, has many personalities, each different and unique”) but also describes accurately the cycle of the moon and some characteristics (“Harvest Moon…Blue Moon”).  There is a clear nod to scientific advances in moon study (“with only an occasional visit from us….smooth as a marble in the air, yet as many dents and crevices as in a pot of soil”) and yet there is the youthful transference of “feeling” as described in the moon’s moods that probably more truly reflect the young writer. (“All alone and forlorn…a friend of the stars”)  Naïve theories are being tested with a larger context, the theme of one’s place in the universe and how the individual makes a connection to the whole.
	B’s more stalwart attempt to describe the cycle of the moon through an understanding of scientific principles prompted the young writer to make several drawings on the essay text.  B acknowledges that several theories have been offered and makes a case for the one selected. He is just beginning to wrestle with the untenable consequence of imagining that phases are a kind of eclipse. The young writer also offers a prediction, along with a disclaimer (“This is probably incorrect, but from this information, this is what I think will happen.”)
	Both students are actively testing their knowledge of scientific theory.

Best Practice VI: Learning science means integrating reading, writing, speaking, and math.
4B.9.30
Reflection

	My group and I have been working well.  We are plotting the trees that we have identified as being larger than the rest.  We are doing this by taking a spot along the fence and from it connecting a tape measure to the tree.  Because we have a scale, we can take the distance from the point along the fence to the tree we are plotting and scale it down to size for our map.  Also using the tape measure we can get a pretty accurate measure of the size for our map.  Also using the tape measure we can get a pretty accurate measure of the angle the tree is at from the fence.  From the tree’s distance and angle we can accurately plot the tree with a dot on the map.
	The hardest obstacle we have
found has been dealing with the bugs.			(research note, drawings 
So far we have encountered little wasps			attached to candidate)
about 1.5 centimeters long.  Ryan is the
only one who claims he has been stung.  
By his reaction, their sting just seems really
annoying.  Also we have made contact with 
aggressive ants, white butterflies, and entertaining mosquitoes.  If a mosquito lands on me, I’ll slap him good and set him on the back of my notebook.  At the end of class, I’ll tape him down so that he can join the rest of his family.  It would be awesome if each time our class went out, I got some new family members.  At the end of the year I’d have a museum of mosquitoes covering my notebook!
	After our group finishes plotting from the fence, I think we’re moving to the sidewalk for more.  From there we can map trees that are only few meters away easily instead of setting up the tape fifteen meters away at the fence.  Also if we start plotting the sidewalk, everything else will be easy.  The sidewalk is closely relative to everything on the hill.  The sidewalk is where I’d start if I were making my own map but I guess they have pretty good reason for choosing the fence.  It is a straight line on the map, making it a very easy object to start off from… Not if it’s in the middle of the JUNGLE!
	During our days on the hill, I’ve made several drafts of the map.  The first one is quite basic (made first day).  It only has the path, gazebo, and the outside boundaries.  I made this map just so I could get a feel for the area.  The second map is just of my group’s area and is not very accurate.  I never intended on it to be though.  I just wanted it to serve as a guiding map so we weren’t completely lost in our area.  My third map is pretty detailed.  It has four of the trees we have found and the rock next to the gazebo. Also I took bearings from straight lines in between the concrete in the path.  These might help with our plotting later.  One key thing I tried to include in this map was a compass rose.
	I have control of “Bug City” tomorrow.  Help me somebody!
4A.10.6
Ants

Millions of raisin wannabes,
To us they’re just dust,
But each is a life with thoughts and feelings,
Dancing in their own path,
Working diligently as we stare in awe yet laugh,
Interpreted by us annoying pests,
To themselves they are characters with personalities.
We spend our lives in a brutal place that towers,
We think we’re so smart,
But we don’t stop and smell the flowers.
Ants observe the small beauty of life instead of seeing it as a huge globe.
Their minds are set strong on their work and know exactly what they’ll do for the rest of their lives.
Their lives might end with a quick step of a human foot paralyzing their dreams and hope.
Humans are so inconsiderate of other creature’s lives.
An ocean of endless chaos overflowing with black beads.
Their destinies are planned within each footstep towards the queen’s hill.
Spending tireless hours of planning their home like construction workers.
They do not know how to love, or do they?
They don’t hear us make fun of them and plan their deaths, or do they?
They don’t listen to music or do they?
Their conversations consist of brief bruising by of one another with an irritated glare,
We think they are so mean but maybe they’re the nicest creature of Earth.
They create themselves a puzzle,
They look up at us so largely,
Imagine how you’re an ant sitting on a giants thumbnail and you don’t ever take up that!
Look up and imagine how tall a human would be if you were an ant.
A mountain is human,
A twig is log.
Your life is a detail insignificant to the rest of the world.

Commentary:
	It is evident that in order to write these texts, the students had to observe very carefully.  In work teams, they were required to talk about their observations, develop questions and plan.  B’s writing indicates considerable interaction (“Ryan is the only one who claims he has been stung.  By his reaction, their sting just seems really annoying”).
	A’s writing, much more introspective, attributes this kind of interaction as it might occur if it happened between humans and ants – alternating points of view (“Humans are so inconsiderate of other creature’s lives….look up and imagine how tall a human would be if you were an ant.”)
	Both students demonstrate an awareness of audience in these texts.  Here is B’s voice: “I have control of ‘Bug City’ tomorrow.  Help me somebody!”
	A asks questions: “They do not know how to love, or do they?/They don’t hear us make fun of them and plan their deaths, or do they?  They don’t listen to music or do they?” – again, a more introverted but equally valid invitation for the reader to respond to the text.  
	It is clear that both students, while reading, writing and investigating, are actively employing the mathematical concept of scale.
			
Best Practice VII: Students need to consider issues of application of science and technology.
9A.11.5
MRT’s Point of View
I need some distraction.
A release from the stress.
I can never stop moving.
Moving, moving.
One million new faces a day.
Smiling, the people smile,
But never at me.
I am an innocent ghost that saves lives but no one thanks.
Approaching, people stand when my light is seen.
A light that guides through darkness.
Which way do I go?
Which path do I follow?
Where should I carry the people inside me?
A tunnel of doom if you ask me.
A tunnel of light if you ask them.
Sailing over the skies of Singapore.
Proud and determined.
Destiny glides against a cerulean sky.
I climb into forbidden paths,
And open forbidden gates.
I am large,
I make growling noises like the crushing of a soda can when I am angry.
I have to go to the doctor for annual check-ups.
They aren’t nice to me.
I am hard to describe like a shoe because I am always there.
I am strict and very lawful.
I am a business character,
Firm and precise.
So helpful I am,
I am the key source of Singapore’s transportation.
Show some respect.
I am not vain nor mysterious,
Unless you want me to be.
How can you say I’m not alive when I am always moving and my body is filled with functioning parts?
How can you say I’m not alive when each meter or my body carries many souls, 
Each unique and each one knowing other people?
Oh yes, I am alive.
Keep me alive in the eyes of Singapura.

15B.2.17
	Reflection

	This reflection is not about something I did in Science class, but something I saw that involved science and looked neat.
A few days ago we were going out to bird watch ad try out the binoculars.  I’m not really one for bird watching, but I prefer the field rather than the office.  We were walking out into the fire lane when I heard the sound of a small engine.  I didn’t know what it was until I liked across to the softball field were there about five highschoolers and an adult.  Then I saw them.  Three model helicopters: two on simulation stands and one flying with a kind of a disc on the bottom.  This definitely took my mind off of the bird watching and it was hard for me to focus.  Right after class Ryan and I sprinted over to the site excited as can be.  When we go there, there was only one highschooler still flying and a teacher watching him.  The chopper he was flying was the one with the little disc on the bottom.  Actually, it wasn’t really a disc.  It was a kind of a training wheel.  There were little plastic rods strapped to the helicopter making a * on the bottom.  On the end of each rod there was a wiffle ball attached.  The student didn’t fly it very high.  The highest he flew it was about two feet in the air.  Then, the teacher came over to where Ryan and I were sitting.  We started asking him all kinds of questions:
	
How high does it go?
up to one mile, the only thing that keeps it from going higher is the lack of air and fuel

How much does it cost?
for the helicopter and accessories it costs about $1500

Where do you get them?
some special hobby shops (I forget where)

I was shocked at the power of these small machines.  How could a model 
helicopter a little over one meter long go one mile high?  Those blades must be turning fast.  They should easily sever a finger or even a hand.  Maybe even a limb of the body.  It’s not just the blades that are powerful though.  It has got to be some remote that can give signals a mile away.
	This is the amazing part.  Ryan and I seemed so interested to the teacher that he let us fly one of the helicopters on the simulation stand!  It was so cool I couldn’t believe it.  Even though it was a lot of fun, it was very hard.  The joysticks of the remote were very fragile.  The slightest movement could send the aircraft into a dive.  As soon as a had begun flying, I thought to myself, “I HAVE GOT TO GET ME ON A’ THESE!”  And so I think I will.  Maybe in one or two years when I finally have enough money I’ll get one in the states.  I’ll take a lot of electronic courses in highschool and I’ll do all kinds of things to it.  I could set it up with a nose camera.   I could also set it up to fire bottle rockets on command and paint it military colors.  That would be cooler than cool.
This reflection is 542 words long.

Commentary:
	These writings clearly demonstrate how both students are considering the applications of science and technology.
A poses questions about how a piece of machinery, so vital to transport, is also important in terms of safety and the impact such mechanical transportation has in human lives. (“How can you say I’m not alive when I am always moving and my body is filled with functioning parts? /How can you say I’m not alive when each meter of my body carries many souls?”)
	B exhibits enormous enthusiasm – not for the bird watching which was assigned, but rather for the happy accident of meeting up with a teacher and an older student who were experimenting with model helicopters. The young writer poses questions and makes notes of points that merit further study (“I was shocked at the power of these small machines.  How could a model helicopter a little over one meter long go one mile high?”)

 Best Practice VIII: Good science teaching involves facilitation, collaborative group work, and a limited, judicious use of information giving.

	10B.12.13
Reflection

	These days there is so much to write about science it’s unbelievable.  About a week ago, we began to venture out of the classroom a lot.  We went into the jungle a couple times to take samples.  Along the way we saw some pitcher plants and bright yellow flowers.
	The samples we took were little foot long parts of tapioca stems.  When we started collecting them I knew we were going to set them in water and watch them grow.  Michael and I got a stem section that is twenty-four centimeters long, about one centimeter wide, and had eighteen little stubs.  Six stubs were bigger than the rest.  When we got back to the class I made predictions that out of the eighteen stubs, the six larger stubs would grow new, little, green branches and start another plant.  I though little roots would also grow out of the bottom.  When I cam back after the weekend, my predictions were correct except there weren’t any roots.  Only little, bright green stubs were growing out of the old ones.  It was like life was breaking out of its shell.  A few days later, I noticed that little white dots were appearing on the part of the stem that was submerged under water.  I guessed these were the things that was taking the nutrients out of the water so that the plant could grow.  I’m predicting in about a week these little dots will be growing little strings out into he water (roots).
	The next day we got to read articles on Cassava bread made by the American Indians.  It seems amazing how they knew all this stuff about which plants were poisonous and which weren’t.  I hope someone didn’t have to learn it the hard way for every poisonous plant in the forest.  Maybe they made criminals test out plants until they caught a poisonous plant and served their sentence.  That is a good punishment for people these days on death row.  They can test out plants and chemicals.  If plant or chemical puts them in great pain.  They would be killed immediately so they don’t have to suffer.  People can make a rule that if you test out one hundred things then you serve a ten year prison sentence and then go into a five year probation.  After all this they are free and much is gained from their test.
	After reading the article, a few days later we took a pop quiz on it.  They only question was “What is the procedure form making Cassava bread?”  Something like that.  I thought about it for two minutes.  I didn’t know where I had put my article but suddenly I remembered how Cassava juice is poisonous.  Dr. Frazier doesn’t want to know how much sugar or yeast you put in, just how to make the plant safe.  I brought back from memory what I could about how they extracted the white liquid from the stem.  I hope that was the right answer.

	This reflection is 512 words long.
12A.11.22
Double Check

	I wrote this poem as a reflective writing because my group got a B on our billiard ball project because we didn’t double check our work.  Therefore, because of this and a part of a dream I had, I wrote a poem about double checking:

			Waking up to realize she had over slept,
			If she only double checked.
			Rushing out of the house leaving the garage door ajar,
			If she only double checked.
			She was a doctor.
			Forgetting the patient was very sick.
			If she only double checked.
			The patient had cancer.
			The patient was very sick.
			If she only double checked.
			If she had only double checked.
			The patient came back the next month.
			His cancer was severe.
			He had read a booklet on cancer and his symptoms fit.
			If she had only double checked.
			Then, she realized she shared the symptoms of this man.
			She had cancer too.
			If she had only double checked.
			She came back to her house in tears.
For the first time in a month she parked her car away and was appalled.
Her house had been broken into from the time she left her garage door ajar.
			If she had only double checked.
			Her three pet fish had been stolen.
			The bandit broke in today,
			Even though the garage had been open a month,
			If she had only double checked.
			In shock,
			She fainted.
			She never woke up.
			She died of cancer.
			Her patient died because of her loss.
			Three fish.  One man.  One woman.
			If she had only double checked.

Commentary:
	It is clear from both these pieces of text that the science teacher has been facilitating group work and “a limited, judicious use of information giving.”
	B notes that “there’s so much to write about science it’s unbelievable”.  Noted are the opportunities to go outside the classroom, observe, read articles over a period of days and then take a “Pop quiz”.  The writer describes the thinking process used to determine an answer (“I remembered how Cassava juice is poisonous.  Dr. Frazier doesn’t want to know how much sugar or yeast you put in, just how to make the plant safe.  I brought back from memory what I could…”)
	A’s reasoning is even more practical.  “I wrote this poem as a reflective writing because my group got a B on our billiard ball project because we didn’t double check our work…”) indicating that this young person has incorporated and made personal at least one rule for doing good science.  The somewhat macabre and rather funny poem that follows this reasoning shows a very real understanding about why this rule is an important one.

Best Practice IX: Meaningful assessment of students’ learning in science must promote the objectives of a good science curriculum, and not undermine them.

This standard needs further investigation.  There is no reason to dismiss all conventional means of assessment – laboratory work, experiments, demonstrations, quizzes, seminar discussion and written tests and reports may all continue to serve a useful purpose when they are appropriately employed.  This paper models how an extensive collection of work gathered throughout an academic year creates a portfolio of work, which might then be analyzed for both the “big concepts” the student has acquired and the “details” of science s/he understands.  Rubrics could be used to assess the quality and degree of learning demonstrated.  Conferences with individual students could create a metacognitive opportunity for them to further refine scientific schema.  This would also provide the science teacher with a means of assessing the effectiveness of his/her teaching and to evaluate (or reevaluate) the instructional strategies and resources s/he selects.

Discussion:

  	Some themes emerged as we read and reread the writings of these young people. We selected the title of this paper from the line of a poem by writer A, because we felt it expressed a significant concern imbedded in the teaching of science (or for that matter, in any discipline). An explanation of the poem's context and structure is included in italics by A.

A Tennis Ball in Space vs. A Tennis Ball on Earth 

I wrote this for our unit on motion and how gravity affects our everyday life. (Note: The first line is a tennis ball in space, the second line is a tennis ball on Earth, the third line is a tennis ball in space, the fourth line is a tennis ball on Earth, etc.) 

Gliding to be free to drift wherever you please, 
Gliding in a designated path. 
Tracing your thoughts, 
Tracing the thoughts of the arm that directed you. 
Knowing you will always drift and will never end, 
Knowing you will eventually hit the ground with a thud ending all movement. 
With the whole universe to explore, 
With the whole planet to explore but not by your choices. 
Sensing the danger of a black hole, 
Sensing the danger of a playful puppy. 
Loneliness of being the only tennis ball in space, 
Loneliness of being the only thing flying. 
Being able to not feel anything for there is nothing near you, 
Being able to feel people's hands and anything that touches you. 
Many other items that feels as strange as you, 
Many other tennis balls. 
Random and spontaneous. 
Precise and assured. 
Free. 
Designated. (p. 18, Appendix)

The phrase from the first line captures what we think is a central issue in examining the place of creative writing in school science. Where is it that students go when their writing originates in science class through the thin connections of classroom experience and "thoughtfulness"? It would certainly be possible to regard A's poem as something significant. The coupling of terrestrial and celestial motion could even seem deeply poetic and scientific. Bronowski (1978) remarked on the metaphorical creativity in the connection Newton made between the apple and the moon in his exemplary gravitational calculations. Writer A explores the tension of a universe that is both determined and vast. Loneliness arises from infinite possibilities and from the lack of choice. The themes are profound and can claim heritage in the wrecking of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic paradigm as a result of the Copernican Revolution. The juxtaposition of a playful puppy with the horror of a black hole captures the poignancy of a teenager's contemplation of existence. 
On the other hand, is there (or should there be) freedom to drift wherever? What value is there in contrasting an illusory freedom of motion with a 'designated path'? Can the poet ascertain the real structure of the universe without appreciating the (mathematical) way that the universe is 'precise and assured'? Did the time spent creating the poem lead to greater understanding for the poet? Did the construction of the poetical devices contribute to the development of useful concepts? Can we tell whether or not the poet has learned anything about motion and gravity? How are we, as science educators, to value the dilemmas A poses?
	Interestingly, A visits a similar theme in many of his/her poems. Destiny and freedom are often juxtaposed, as are the small, intimate, and detailed with the large, distant, and alien. Profundity often resides, for A, in irony where scales intersect and where effects cascade from the minute to the infinite. Details matter not so much as evidence for scientific explanation, but rather as emblems full of meaning and portent. "A person carries a portion of every single creature's soul in their hearts,” A writes. "Every sign is significant."  

The moon spends its life gazing and wandering the same road it knows so well, the only road it knows
Creating awe and wonder for many souls each night,
The moon's beauty is internal as well,
It is soft spoken and whispers to angels (Excerpt, 2A.9.10, The Moon, p. 3, Appendix)

Which way do I go?
Which path do I follow?
Where should I carry the people inside me?
A tunnel of doom if you ask me.
A tunnel of light if you ask them.
Sailing over the skies of Singapore.
Proud and determined.
Destiny glides against a cerulean sky.
I climb into forbidden paths,
And open forbidden gates. (Excerpt, 9A.11.5, MRT's Point of View p. 19, Appendix)

	On the subject of humans, I decided to share another one of my theories. Imagine if everyday you just smiled at a stranger. That simple act could change the world. What if that one smile caused a person to decide to fulfill their dreams and they changed the world? I believe that every little thing we do has a deep impact on the whole universe. Maybe if we didn't just use this sheet of paper, researchers would have found a cure for cancer in the tree this came from. That definitely would change the world. Or maybe if you didn't just laugh at a single joke, the whole school would have a completely different image of you. Another bad possibility, what if you maybe picked a pretty plant from the ocean, maybe that would cause the troubling of a star millions of light years away.
	Another theory I have is about life. I believe we are not living this life. We are only experiencing it. Our lives and everyday actions have already been planned out, we're re-doing this for the millionth time. If this is true, we have no choices. (Fifth and sixth paragraphs of seven. 10A.11.6, Different People, p. 21, Appendix)

The jungle with intense orange and green,
With ecstatic pink and fur.
Where buzzing is life, 
And hushed silence is death.
From the shrinking of each individual,
New is born.
Death creates life.
What happens when there is too much death for life?
With the acts of deforestation,
Let there be peace on Earth. (Excerpt, 20A.1.31—Jungle, p. 45, Appendix)

	Writer B, too, pays attention to scale and to significance. His/her short essays rely on a structure that usually involves, in varying order, a description; a kind of evaluative or reflective commentary; and a second comment at a different scale with a finely focused example or perspective. Sometimes the shift occurs in such a way that an aesthetic note modulates to humor or a procedural narrative turns to a wry observation. The style is almost choreographic in the way B shifts and jumps. The essays dance to serious rhythms of "Isn't it curious?" and humorous melodies of  "Isn't it profound?"  

	Einstein's theory of relativity has much to do with motion. Can time stand still if you move away from a clock/time at the speed of light? The way this works is the time travels from the clock to your eyes at the speed of light. So if you move away from the light which carries the time to you…wouldn't time stand still? If this is true, would it be possible to go back in time if you travel faster than the speed of light: The only way to find out is to try it and experiment. I doubt these experiments with time travel will occur very soon. Humans are far from travel even close to the speed of light. 
	A centerfielder judging a fly ball is my specialty. My favorite sport is baseball and I know pretty well how players judge the ball. Seventy-five percent of judging is seeing the acceleration of the ball off the bat and determining if it is a low or high ball. A hard, low ball would reach its highest point in about one second. It is quite amazing how fast the ball can accelerate into the air. I think in races, acceleration is a key part of winning. It's a key part in motion! (Third and fourth paragraphs of four. 6B.10.26—Reflection, p.13, Appendix)

	When I look out into the jungle I see a mass of leaves and branches. I don't see anything making patterns. I've never quite understood the forest that way. I've never even thought of anything like that before. Something like that can only come out of the DNA of the plant which usually starts in the seed. The seed contains tons of information to tell it's new plant how to grow properly like a director in a movie. When took our cuttings, the DNA came from the old plant the cutting was from. A single basic plant is quite complex. About like us, the DNA tell the plant where to sprout new limbs. In our case where to plant an arm or leg. It was interesting to see how closely plants are related to numbers and math. But why not. Math has hundreds of patterns. Obviously plants are quite civilized. (Second paragraph of three. 12B.1.19—Reflection, p. 27, Appendix)

	A few days ago we were going out to bird watch and try out the binoculars. I'm not really one for bird watching, but I prefer the field to the office. We were walking out into the fire lane when I heard the sound of a small engine. I didn't know what it was until I looked across to the softball field and there were about five highschoolers and an adult. Then I saw them. Three model helicopters: tow on simulation stands and one flying with a kind of a disc on the bottom. This definitely took my mind off the bird watching and it was hard for me to focus. . . . Then the teacher came over to where Ryan and I were sitting. We started asking him all kinds of questions. . . . 
	This is the amazing part. Ryan and I seemed so interested to the teacher that he let us fly one of the helicopters on the simulation stand! It was so cool I couldn't believe it. Even though it was a lot of fun, it was very hard. The joysticks to the remote were very fragile. The slightest movement could send the aircraft into a dive. As soon as I had begun flying, I thought to myself, "I HAVE GOT TO GET ME ONE A' THESE!" And so I think I will. (Excerpts from two paragraphs of four, 15B.2.17—Reflection, p. 35, Appendix)

Birds are an odd kind of creature. For this I do not like them. I don't like the connection. They can fly and go places I can't. I like getting close to animals. Because of this mammals (land-walking) suite my attitude very well. I don't like scales, fins, or slimy skin. Feathers and fur is fine with me though. When I see a bird I know I'm not going to get very close so I can examine or touch it. For most mammals I can get reasonably close and if it runs away I can follow it. I can't follow a bird. Also for some reason I would much rather watch a bunch of deer or some squirrels rather than some birds making noise in the unreachable trees above. (First paragraph of four. 16B.2.22—Reflection, p. 38-39, Appendix) 

	For B the themes that contrast are mechanistic control, like that seen in the laws governing fly balls and helicopter flight, and the secret and alien intentions of birds and the hidden patterns of plants. Writer B finds that knowledge equals control and exhibits at one level a more modern sensibility than Writer A. Both students frequently reveal through their writings a kind of emotive response to the elements, entities, and ideas of science class. The directive to be thoughtful does not remain solely in the cognitive domain for these young writers. 
	They take their encounters with experiences in science class and make them fateful encounters, full of deep questions about the relationship of small events and large effects, of deterministic consequence and desired freedom, of mysterious will and controllable nature, of trivial fact and comprehensive explanation. The exact details of facts do not get in the way of their yearnings for the profound or insightful. Both make errors but the errors would not change the larger pictures they try to paint. 
	In the review of the writings produced by both of the young people, one of us ‘suddenly’ recalled the words of former student some years ago. This student was in college and enrolled in a physical science course for nonscience majors. He had identified himself as someone who had difficulty with mathematics and science. He was intelligent and articulate and agreed to serve as a subject in a case study (Frazier, 1981). His tale of youthful encounters with things scientific may bear upon an interpretation of the emotional responses seen in the texts created by Writer A and B. An interview segment (“I” designated interviewer) with the college student, Edward, (E) is transcribed here: 

I:  Tell me what you said you used to think about when you were younger. Was it infinity, randomness?

E: I had a time with that; I really did. I used to think about things when I was younger, between eight and ten I guess, and it lasted a couple of years. It would hit me any time. That’s the thing. I could be anywhere and I’d start thinking about it, and I’d get really upset. It would be this kind of thing. I’d be thinking about dying, everybody dying. First of all, when I was younger, I’d always think I was the one that wasn’t going to die. Then I realized how everybody does die and I’d think about everything being infinite. When I was younger, I was very interested in astronomy and I had a telescope. I used to go out and log the stars every night with my father. I used to look at it. Everything was so vast and infinite and I was just this little pea. When I was pretty young, I used to think about things like that, and then it would start getting me really scared, and I’m going to die and decay and end up as nothing, and I’m never going to think again. It used to frighten me to death; it used to frighten me terribly, sleepless nights and everything.

I: Did you have a word for infinity?

E: I used to think about time and the universe; I knew those words. I couldn’t figure out about time, when it began and when it will end. If everything’s infinite, then there’s no way. I used to try to placate myself by saying I’ll be buried under a tree, and I’ll become a tree, fertilizer for a tree. I don’t know; I used to—I never wanted just not to be. It used to frighten me terribly; I had terrible bouts with it. After talking with people through the years I realize I’m not the only one who’s ever had these things, but I had it bad. A lot of it came from my mother who’s a very religious woman. She used to be always talking about God and telling me everything’s going to be O.K., but I never used to believe that ever, really. I used to go to church all the time, but I never really believed it. The fact is that it was always a topic of discussion because whenever you talk about God, you talk about people’s beliefs to make them feel better about dying. It used to come up in church. It used to scare me; it used to scare me terribly. I finally got over it.

I: Do you remember why you mentioned this after class the other day?

E: We were talking about entropy and infinity. I know somewhere deep down there there’s still that creepy feeling about things like that. I think that had something to do with my shunning the study of astronomy. When I was younger, my friend Donald and I were really interested and we even had a little astronomy club. We would go out at night, and I think that kind of pushed me away because when I used to look at everything, everything was so big and I was just a nothing compared to everything else. It really used to frighten me and I used to cry to my mother like little kids do.

I: It seems a strong feeling in you now. Does it or how does it manifest itself in you life now: Beyond the recollections, are you actively influenced by it now?

E: I think it influences me in a negative sense in that when I recall what it used to do to me when I should be concentrating on the concepts. In a class like this where all the concepts like this are constantly being brought to where you have to think consciously about them, maybe I say, “I don’t want to think about this because it used to scare me so much.” Like I can think about atomic structure all day long, but when we were talking about relativity and things like that and the end of the universe . . . that’s why I had so much trouble even when we were reading the Bertrand Russell book (The ABC of Relativity), which is a basic kind of book. I was scared in that book; I know I was. I didn’t think about it that I was scared, but maybe it was a subconscious thing.

I: What form does infinity have in your thoughts?

E: There’s this whole series I go through in my head. Time is forever and forever is just—feels like empty space, black and endless. I get this feeling of endlessness and emptiness. I see blackness; it’s ink black. I don’t think you can imagine nothing, but it’s about as close to nothing as you can get. It’s that whole very frightening concept of infinity. I used to go through the whole digression of how time must go on when I die and I’m just a little nothing. (Pp. 57-59)
	
Edward’s recollection suggests an emotional response to some of the ‘big ideas’ in modern science during his pre- and early adolescence. For many adolescents, social knowledge and social competence are of prime importance. The intentions of others and the meaning of their actions and words begin to dominate the waking thoughts of the pre-teen. The works of writers A and B and Edward’s recollection point to a yearning for passionate connection and profound significance with and in the world. Remember Atwell’s (1987) words? “My students write a lot of poetry about this syndrome.” (p. 31)
We educators often say that for learning to be effective, it has to be meaningful to the student. Perhaps we do not fully understand the implications behind such a proclamation. If the writings of our focal students are to be taken seriously, then that meaning goes far beyond what we might be prepared to discuss in science class. In fact, if we were to structure school science so that it was coordinated with the perspectives of our young writers, we might well return to a subject called “natural philosophy.” The awakening of knowledge in our writers does not emerge in isolation, nor does it develop simply from concrete to abstract along a cognitive dimension. Rather the new ideas “yearn” for integration in several domains. Meaning for the student writers does not seem to be principally about the conceptions (or misconceptions) that are invoked in trying to explain a phenomenon under study. Instead the reflective writing traces out the possibilities of significance and value.  
	What we might ask ourselves is whether the science curriculum in middle school disavows or cultivates students’ quests for meaning. Can (or should) science teachers and science educators invest the objects of study, the apparatus, and the concepts of school science with the same significance sought by children? If children do seek the meaningful connections by ‘drifting wherever they please,” will the power of science be lost? If children do not have the opportunity to carry out their searches for significance, will they find their way in objective and rigorous science? Or will they abandon the passion aroused in middle school and begin the long path of boredom that too many students follow? 
There is precedence for award-winning creative writing by authors who have a passion for and training in science.  Although we do not know what praise they may have received in the field of science, writers such as Barbara Kingsolver Annie Dillard and Mary Oliver (and there are a host more) describe the natural world and its biological processes with a keen view to accurate observation and inquiry or reflection that is enthusiastic and instructive. 
“By assimilating scientific insights, poets carry out a crucial realignment of Western tradition,” writes John Elder in the introduction to his book Imagining the earth: Poetry and the vision of nature. (1985, pg. 3) Perhaps there is a way of realigning the way we guide students towards a passion for and an intellectual commitment to science?

Implications:

For students
When we say learning should be meaningful, do we acknowledge the intellectual, emotional and social development of our adolescent learners?  Perhaps their meaningful learning does not look like what we think it should – are we prepared to listen to what they have to show us about their learning?

For teachers
Who decides what to do? Lemke (1993) makes two recommendations:

“Teachers should learn and use some of the language patterns of alternative dialects and languages other than English when teaching science to classes with large numbers of students who speak them…”
and
“Teachers should give the benefit of the doubt to students who express scientific propositions in unfamiliar ways and enlist the aid of their students in translating them into more familiar forms. “ (p.177)

For science
Enabling students to read and write science in a variety of genres may grant many of them more access to science as a discipline and an avocation.  We don’t suggest that creative writing is the only appropriate avenue for science teaching and learning.  However, when offered as one among multiple forms of writing and learning, it may be an effective window into the exciting and multi-faceted world of science that many students have not been able to open through traditional means.  Fresh ideas, new strategies and the development of a variety of inquiry practices would seem to promise a long-term benefit to science as a field of study and practice.

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