Linking Science to Creative Writing--Multidisciplinary Practice and Exercise for the Creative Imagination

A recent visit to Adler Planetarium's Cyberspace website and a second viewing of Avatar led to the creation of a new project at DrM-Resources.  The Adler-Creative-Writing-Project was developed to give middle school and high school students (and any adults who want to participate) an opportunity to try their hands individually or collectively at working with science "facts" (from the Adler Cyberspace website) and with ideas from science fiction and fantasy to create a science fiction or fantasy short story.

Too often students asked me why I was speaking about science in a social studies class.  Because middle schools and high schools are often set-up with courses that appear to be in isolation, science, math, and English (language arts) are not seen to be related.

Research indicates that more learning takes place when schools work with multidisciplinary thematic units (see the paper on multidisciplinary thematic units).  Award-winning authors in science fiction and fantasy create multidisciplinary novels that have elements from many different areas.

Let's see what can happen with a project like this.