Biographies of Active Scientists and Engineers
The Core Knowledge Foundation is excited to announce an exciting new initiative created to enhance your entire CKScience curriculum. This K-5 suite of units is called Science in Action.
Reading stories about real, living, active young scientists will help students connect science and engineering concepts to real-life situations.
This human-centered approach introduces students to active, young researchers—not only illuminating their professional lives but examining the younger, formative years of each. Your students will get a glimpse of each scientist’s youth, what they felt like, and what interested them when they were in elementary school, middle school, and high school. These biographies portray real people when they were your students’ ages, bringing to life moments and sparks in their young lives as they became interested in science and engineering.
Science in Action is designed to assist students in recognizing science and engineering concepts from a human perspective. Each person portrayed in Science in Action is currently an active scientist, engineer, or teacher.
Science in Action can be incorporated seamlessly into your existing planning guide. Each grade-level unit introduces at least two young scientists. Chapters and activities allow for teachers to assign readings in the SIA books either during a special week or may choose to integrate teaching biographies as a sidelight to your core curriculum.
There are three curriculum components to Science in Action (K–5). Each grade level includes a Reader, a complete Teacher Guide, and a wealth of Online Resources.
Each Reader is a student reading book (or to be read aloud in K–2). Each scientist is portrayed in two chapters. The first chapter introduces the scientist as a young person. What was this scientist like in elementary school? What caught their attention? Who influenced them? The second of the two chapters shows the person now, actively engaged in science or engineering research. Then, your students can read about the scientists of the past that most influenced them.
Each Teacher Guide provides a plethora of information to help you communicate to your students about the lives and interests of the scientists. The introduction lays out information on NGSS standards and three-dimensions, Common Core connections, activity pages, materials, and pacing. Each TG includes an activity and answer pages related to the content of the biographies. Teacher guide and prompts are also found throughout the TG.
Online Resources, are keyed with icons in the Teacher Guide, and provide links to outside sources for both curriculum help and extension of concepts via video links.
Visit our Science Overview page to learn more Core Knowledge Science offerings.