Integrating Science and Social Studies

 I believe that the more interdisciplinary and holistic a lesson is, the more likely it is to resonate with students. That's one reason so many of the historical society lesson plans are interdisciplinary, incorporating math, ELA, art, and science. But the truth is, we have not done a good enough job integrating science.

Linda Rost, Baker High School science teacher and 2020 Montana Teacher of the Year, gave a great presentation last October at the MFPE Educator's Conference on ways to integrate IEFA and science, and my brain has been buzzing about her talk ever since. 

Linda wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on building science teachers' capacity to integrate IEFA, and that was the starting point of her presentation. She advocated for everyone to read and learn more from Indigenous scholars and culture keepers and gave a big shout out to Robin Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass. (I loved this book but only learned recently that there's a young adult version, too!) 

Pointing to ideas you can read about more fully on page 6 of The Framework: A Practical Guide for Montana Teachers and Administrators Implementing Indian Education for All, Linda believes that sprinkling a little IEFA into your classroom (mentioning that a plant was used by Indigenous people, for example) is inadequate. Instead, she advocates for a more transformative approach, placing Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) at the foundation of the lesson. 

At her session, she shared lessons focused on material science for fifth-eighth, grade, classifying materials as either strong or tough (or both), and one that looked at having students compare rawhide and tanned leather. Students investigate each step in the hide-tanning process (fleshing, braining, soaking, smoking) and observe changes to the hide using images from an electron microscope. See pages 6-12 of this document, which Linda graciously shared with me.

She also shared her lesson plan, "The Eagle Has Fallen," which she published in The Science Teacher. This lesson follows a format similar to several of Linda's other lessons: 

• Students to read (or listen to) tribal oral tradition stories to learn more about how a tribe regards and manages natural resources.
• Students do "casework"--in this case trying to find out why the eagle population has dropped in Flathead Lake.
• After students analyze the data and solved the case, they investigate different perspectives of resource management, engaging in a pinwheel discussion, during which students explore the perspectives of tribal governments and state governments to manage the ecological problem. 

Here's the PowerPoint she created to go with the lesson, which includes images from Bull Trout's Gift: A Salish Story about the Value of Reciprocity, the data students analyze, questions for the pinwheel discussions and the roles she has students adopt: tribal scientist, tribal council member, state scientist, and provocateur. (I was a bit confused by "provocateur." It turns out not to be a bomb-thrower, but someone who leads the discussion and keeps it going.)

Linda uses the same format outlined in "The Eagle Has Fallen" for several other lessons including ones focusing on climate change and cultural perspectives, using genetic testing for tribal enrollment, and grizzly bear management. For the grizzly bear lesson, her students evaluate grizzly bear data from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and determine whether they should have been delisted. She goes into detail on the grizzly bear lesson in this online video from OPI.

I think including social studies in science (or science in social studies) is a dynamite way to make science more meaningful--and to shed light on social studies issues--so I really appreciate Linda's willingness to share these lessons.

P.S. OPI has more IEFA/Science lessons here.

P.P.S. Don't forget to register for our February 12, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. PD: Connecting Past to Present.