Living Books for Highschool Science

Last night at our local homeschool support group meeting, I shared about how I'd been having my 10th grade son read living books, which are non-textbooks that are written by one author who is passionate about his subject, instead of using textbooks for highschool science.

My son's math learning difference is the reason I first began using a living books approach to science. Traditional science textbooks are full of upper level math, which my son has not studied as of yet. I decided that since I was not going to have him just wade through the upper level maths just to say we'd done them (and barely pass them), there was also no reason to just wade through the upper level traditional science texts that are more math heavy.

We are a history loving family, so it made sense to try to tie his love of history to his science studies. My older son also is an animal lover, which is the reason I chose higher level books for him to read last year on the topic of animals (zoology for those who want to sound official:).

This is how we got started on this living books for science path. Now I will share why I feel this method of learning science is creating some life-long *learning* skills in my son.

He is currently a little more than 1/2 way through the book Microbe Hunters.  I read almost all of this book last year. I am a lot like my son in that I struggle with math and science, but this book captivated me. He's been enjoying it, but for the past couple of days has voiced that he's "not getting this book" anymore.

After I had arrived home from my homeschool mom's support group meeting last night, he shared with me that the last chapter was "over his head."

This morning, I pulled Micorbe Hunters off his shelf and reread about 1/2 the last chapter that he had read. Once he was awake this monring, I asked him if he was looking up any scientific terms that he came to in the readings. I know for a fact that he looks up terms, people, places and events when reading history and literature. He loves history and literature and desires to really understand what he reads in those areas, so HE *chose* to begin looking up things he came to that he didn't understand to help him comprehend his history and literature readings.

He had not been doing this while reading Microbe Hunter. Knowing scienctific terms is not important to him, but I told him that if he's going to fully understand what he's reading in this book and other's like it that are scientific in nature, he was going to have to keep his online dictionary open while reading or keep the hand-held electronic dictionary we have by his side while reading this book and other's like it.

I shared that this is a skill that I knew he used in other readings, but that he will need to use this skill of looking up things to help you better understand what your reading for the rest of his life in collge and in his job and sometimes as a spouce and a parent even.

He has used some formal science texts in the past. I explained that most of life's learning does not come in this textbook format where all the supposedly new and important terms are in bold print with a definition in the back of the book. Also, most of life's learning does not come from sources that have questions at the end of a certain amount of reading to supposedly made you think about what you just read. In life, you ask the questions yourself, then you find the anweres to those questions and you are in charge of making sure you thinking about what you are learning. In life, you most often do not have a formal/traditional teacher or textbook to guide you and force you to do this.

Thankfully, he understood this. Now, he's only a 17yo boy who finds pro-wrestling, loud rock music and chatting on face book tremendously more interesting than anything we are reading or doing for school.  I do not expect him to FULLY grasp this concept of how important it is to develop skills that will make him a life-long learner. I'm just confident in the fact that this seed has been planted and with maturing and also having parents who set an example by using this skill openly with their children, he will eventually take hold of this for himself and embrace it fully.