The students in Mrs. Seal’s 5th grade Discover class are learning that reading is a science. It involves making a hypothesis and checking the results. Nurtz is an invented alphabet for which students used their knowledge of reading to translate “Fat Cat” into English. Nurtz is a nonthreatening introduction to scientific inquiry. Students were give a story made up of pictures and the Nurtz language. Using the scientific method, students were asked to decode the message and translate Nurtz into English. After a few frustrating minutes, the groups had an “Ah Ha” moment and were able to decode the story.