Teaching ScienceHelp for trainee Science teachers

For new student teachers embarking on PGCE’s this year, you might want to brush up on your Science subject knowledge. There’s some good resources on the internet to help you.

One that’s worth bookmarking and working through is the bank of self-study materials produced by SCIcentre hosted by the University of Leicester. These materials have been specifically produced to support trainee teachers developing their own science subject knowledge and understanding.

You can find the materials here : http://www.le.ac.uk/se/centres/sci/selfstudy/selfstudy.html

Good luck!

Launched in 2005, Grow Your Own Potatoes (GYOP) was one of the first primary school based growing projects. Since then it has become the largest of its kind with almost 1 million children signed up for 2010 learning where potatoes come from, how they grow and that potatoes are a healthy food. Its simplicity and the fact that GYOP is a hands on activity makes it perfect for young pupils.

The twelve potato-based lessons are organised under the following headings:

• Growing potatoes
• Knowing potatoes
• Healthy eating and potatoes
• Cooking potatoes

The lesson notes are designed to provide the basic structure and content for lessons, but will need to be tweaked to meet the needs of individual classes.  Under the ‘task’ section there is a suggested task for children aged 5-7 and one for children aged 7-11 years.

Worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, factsheets, recipes, video clips and games are available to support the lessons.

Find out more here.

Newly qualified teacher Tim Handley (@tomhenzley on Twitter) has put together an excellent guide to surviving your PGCE year. It’s a crowdsourced book, pulling in the experience of Tim’s PGCE year as well as a wealth of information shared by experienced teachers via Twitter.

Inside the book you will find 143 pages full of  hints, tips and advice intended for those who are embarking on, or who are currently on, any form of teacher training.  There is a mixture of articles, blog posts and of course the  250 tweets which were sent into the #pgcetips hashtag via Twitter.

Every element of the teacher training year is covered- from the first day on the course, through the hectic world of placements (with lots of teaching tips!) to finding a job.  The emphasis is on practical and relevant content which will be of real use (and hopefully help) to a trainee teacher, not on educational theory.  It is based on the contributors, who are all teachers, advisors or trainee teachers with real, first hand, experience of teaching and teacher training.

You can download the guide for free, or you can purchase a printed edition for £6.91 via Lulu. Click here for the links to both versions.

Well done to Tim and to everyone involved in producing the guide, it’s an excellent resource for all teachers starting out on their PGCE.

I am proud to be able to announce that TeachMeet Essex will be taking place on the evening of Tuesday 19th October.

It will be taking place at the Pioneer School, Basildon. The event is open to anyone interested in education in the Essex area, as well as the unitary authorities of Southend and Thurrock. Plus anyone outside the area who is interested is also more than welcome.

I’m very nervous about getting this off the ground, and having seen some excellent Teachmeets elsewhere I know there’s a lot to live up to. But with the help of everyone we could make this an excellent unconference. Everyone is welcome, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.

You can find out more information at the TMEssex Wiki here: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/TeachMeetEssex

From BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10522188.stm

Primary schools in England do not have enough specialist teachers to provide youngsters with a high quality science education, a report says.

A Royal Society study of UK science and maths teaching for five to 14 year olds said every school should have a teacher with a sound scientific background.

The study said England’s testing regime “stifled creativity” as teachers “drummed” facts into pupils’ heads.

The report also called for maths tests for 11 year olds to be scrapped.

Key Stage 2 tests in science, taken in the last year of primary school, have now been abolished and were sat for the last time by pupils in England in 2009.

The Royal Society, which champions science in the UK, called for a move away from “teaching to the test”, a major new drive to recruit specialist science and maths teachers, as well as a greater emphasis on practical work to help youngsters understand the subjects.

The society found testing in England’s primary schools became high-stakes when it was used by central government to compare schools and drive up standards.

But the focus on targets had had “little effect” on pupils’ results, with any improvement more attributable to “teachers becoming increasingly adept at, and focused on, teaching to the test”.

The study said this caught up with pupils when they went on to secondary school.

“Their [pupils'] ability to perform in the tests masks an inadequate conceptual understanding of these subjects that is exposed at secondary level when science is disaggregated into biology, chemistry and physics.”

It went on: “Science is a practical subject and it needs to be taught and assessed as such and greater emphasis placed on building understanding of how science and mathematics work than on rote learning of ‘facts’.

“Achieving this depends on developing a workforce that is confident in teaching these subjects.”

Prof John Pethica, vice-president of the Royal Society, said: “Early education is a particularly formative time for young people, when they can either be inspired by the way that science helps them to understand the world around them, or switched off from exploring it.

‘Raising standards’

“It is essential that we ensure that children have positive experiences with science education, from teachers that are qualified to provide it.

“The UK government must increase the number of science specialist teachers at primary level to ensure that all children have the best start in science.”

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the government would take the reports findings into account as it developed plans for curriculum and qualifications reform.

“This government is committed to raising standards in maths and science – one of the main reasons we are not proceeding with the previous government’s planned primary curriculum is that it risked moving away from traditional subjects like these,” Mr Gibb said.

“We also want to go further in recruiting excellent science and maths teachers and are looking at how we can encourage even more maths and science graduates to come into teaching.”

Read the report here

Here are a few ideas taken from some of the talks I have given this year for ideas on using your Interactive Whiteboard during lesson starters. They could also be used as plenary tasks. Some of the ideas you will have seen before in various places, but I’m bundling them up into one file.

Here are some of the activities that are in the file:

Organ Reveal : A student comes to the board and pulls out an organ. They then have one minute to talk about the organ and its role in the body without repetition or pauses…. I’ve also included the fishing rod and balloon activities from previous presentations.

Put it in the box : This activity makes use of the layer feature. One group will go into the box, the other group will not go into the box. Drag the insects into the box….

Keyword Bingo : Pupils use a selection of words to create a bingo grid on a piece of paper. Teacher can then reveal definitions at random. Cross it off the grid and see who can get three in a row and a full house.

Plenary Circle : Simple idea, but can be used at all key stages. Pull in pairs of words to make “I know that…. ” sentences. If you have a more able group, you could leave one word in for the next pupil to use in their sentence – this means you have to think more carefully about the range of words you put around the edge of the circle.

Word Builder : How many words can you make that relate to science. Give everyone time to make as many words as they can. Students can come to the board to show examples of the words they have made.

Use the links below to download a version of the file for your whiteboard:

Promethean ActivInspireVersion : Download here

Smart 10 Version : Download here

If you use the files, I’d love to hear how they went. If you do adapt them, please let me know what you did – I’d be interested in having a copy.

Produced by the Field Studies Council, Where We Live is a practical guide for anyone who wants to educate and empower people to improve the environment of their community.

It provides a structure that allows people actively to investigate and examine the environmental issues in their own community and initiate practical local improvements.

It is about nurturing the values, understanding and skills needed to create a group of responsible, knowledgeable and active citizens who have the capacity to bring about change in the community.

The activities in Where We Live can be used with groups of different ages and abilities.

http://www.field-studies-council.org/resources/wherewelive/index.aspx

The class of 2010 display their skills with diet coke and mentos.

Coke and Mentos 2010 from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

The ASE has collated some guidance on Outdoor Science – making use of the school grounds and beyond to teach Science.

You can find the guides, including links to some ASE journal articles, here:

http://www.ase.org.uk/htm/teacher_zone/outdoor_science/outdoor_science.php

The Diet coke and Mentos guys from Eepybird are back with their new venture – a rocket car!