Acadia Greene wants answers. Who keeps stealing her blueberries just as
they ripen on the bushes? Why is her hair curly? Why does the sun wake
her up so early in the summer? Why does the tide submerge her
sandcastles? How do rocks become sand? Acadia doesn't set out to do
science, but she has these important questions and her scientist parents
refuse to simply feed her the answers. "Conduct an experiment," they
tell her. "Use the scientific method." So Acadia gathers evidence, makes
hypotheses, designs experiments, uses the results to test her
hypotheses, and draws conclusions. Acadia does science.
The author, Katie Coppens writes a recurring column for NSTA's middle
school magazine Science Scope on science and literacy called The
Integrated Classroom.