Elementary Science Curriculum In U.S. And Its Implication On ELT In China

In modern society, science and technology play a more and more significant role in the development of economy and society. As a consequence, countries all over the world, either developing or developed, strive to accelerate the progress of science and technology through every possible means. Among all those means, science education, undoubtedly, is the most basic and effective one. Therefore, science curriculum has attracted more attention than ever.It is well-known that the United States leads the world in the teaching of science and students in the United States are considered to be more academic, critical and creative. There are definitely some reasons. Science curriculum is one of the core courses in the United States which has an equal position with such subjects as mathematics, language arts, history and enough energy and time are spent on the teaching of science. When still at elementary school, they are taught how to study science and technology and how to solve problems by themselves with the guidance of the teacher. The focus of modern western teaching lies in guiding activities and adopting activity-type teaching procedures. During science classes, a lot of activities are adopted for the students to take part in. In this way, students’ interests will be greatly aroused and they certainly will take the initiative to cooperate with their partners and work out solutions to finish the tasks that teachers give them. Also, the content and structure of the teaching materials the American students use are more likely to show academic spirit, critical thinking and creativity. As a result, in such circumstances, students will shape the habit of being academic, critical and creative after several years’ science education.So we may consider the proposal about the way of science teaching in which Chinese elementary students use the U.S. elementary science teaching materials to study English curriculum, which gets involved in immersion teaching method. This kind of teaching method can not only benefit elementary students’ language ability, but also help a lot to make the Chinese elementary students to be more academic, critical and creative. It is the combination of foreign language learning and the teaching of science curriculum.Detailed information about science curriculum in U.S. elementary school will be described, including science curriculum standards, the goal of science curriculum, science teaching materials, elementary science curriculum models, and teaching process of elementary science in the U.S. Merits and demerits of science curriculum in the U.S. will be found out. The key point is how academic spirit, critical thinking and creativity are demonstrated in U.S. elementary science teaching. And then, we may obtain some inspiration to reform the current situation of both elementary science and English curriculum in China.