Teaching ScienceIdeas and help 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.