Science Storybooks
Developmental research suggests that educational media like storybooks, TV shows, and games are effective for teaching a wide range of topics, including nutrition, social values, vocabulary, literacy, and math. More recent research has explored whether they can also teach science.
A recent report by PBS demonstrates that STEM can be effectively taught through a variety of modalities. Children who regularly consume PBS Kids educational science media such as Odd Squad or Wild Kratts performed better on science tasks compared to children who did not regularly watch PBS.
Storybooks have also gotten recent attention from the scientific community. For the youngest learners, storybooks can be particularly important for laying the groundwork for future science learning. The jury is still out about how effective storybooks and educational media are for science learning. Some research suggests that storybooks can promote science learning (Bonus & Mares, 2018), where are others are more skeptical. Often this is because children’s media frequently contains fantasy elements such as anthropomorphized animals or fantasy creatures which can interfere with learning (Li, Boguszewski, & Lillard, 2015; Geerdts, 2016;(Bonus, 2019; Ganea, Canfield, Simons-Ghafari, & Chou, 2014; Kotaman & Balcı, 2017).
To explore whether storybooks could effectively teach science, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted a study with 60 four and five-year-old children. In this study, children were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Either they would read a book with scientific explanations or a book without. The children and their parents co-read a modified version of Oscar and the Bird: A Book About Electricity by Jeff Warning. Children who were read the version that contained information about the way circuits work (mechanistic information) performed better on circuit tasks than children who were read the book that only provided general information.
Not only did children who read about science complete the task successfully more frequently, but they also spoke more about the way circuits work with their caregivers. This suggests that science storybooks are an important educational tool for parents and educators. Storybooks help children contextualize and familiarize themselves with difficult STEM topics, facilitating their ability to learn science.
Incorporate this research into your classroom or household by selecting a science storybook at your local library or bookstore. If you need help picking a book, check out recommendations from these amazing resources: A Mighty Girl, National Science Teacher’s Association, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
STEMSpark Science Storybook Recommendation
A goat and a hen turn a playful exploration of physics into scientific fun that rises to the top!
Archie the Goat has a delivery to make. He has several barrels of buttermilk that the queen needs, but in order to get them to her, he needs to cross the moat.
Testing several different theories to find out what will float and what will sink, Archie and his friend Skinny the Hen don’t succeed at first, but they do try, try, try again (and again). And with reason and persistence, they’ll get that buttermilk where it needs to be!