Teaching Veteran Enlivens the Science Textbook with Stories

January 28, 2008 -- In the "Story of Science" series, Joy Hakim takes what can often be, literally, a formulaic retelling of scientific achievements and turns it into an engaging narrative that is readily understandable to students. With teachers under pressure to incorporate more literacy into science class, the original style of teaching science through disconnected formulas is losing ground. Many teachers feel the new approach just makes more sense. "If you talk to any first-rate scientist about a particular development, you will very quickly hear a narrative, because the way good scientists think about developments in their field is in terms of stories," science writer Timothy Ferris commented recently to the Washington Post. Hakim’s new books are targeted at the middle school level and focus on the accomplishments of Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein.