Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

In the Zone is the Wellcome Trust’s major NEW initiative inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It provides a fun, free and fascinating way of using science to discover how our bodies work during sport, activity, movement and rest.

The website is aimed at both primary and secondary schools with two different sections. Both sections contain interactive games which can be used on the interactive whiteboard.

Teachers packs are available for download containing lesson plans, worksheets and ideas for science investigations.

If you are working in a UK school then keep an eye out for the In the Zone pack which is being sent to every school in the UK in Feb/March. Each box contains a teaching guide, curriculum guide, challenge cards and all of the scientific equipment you need to do the investigations on the website. Make sure your office staff know it’s coming, and not to put it in a cupboard.

You can access all the resources here :  http://www.getinthezone.org.uk

Here are two great links to demonstrate the relative size of objects, from an atom up to the universe!

Scale of the Universe lets you scroll from the entire universe, down to the Solar System, a human, and then even smaller, down to sub atomic particles. It’s a great way to visualise aspects of scale. You can see it here.

Similarly the Cell Size and Scale interactive from the Genetic Science Learning Centre, University of Utah, takes you from a coffee bean down to a carbon atom.

A fun video to introduce food chains perhaps?

Cool song for teaching about Echolocation/Sound

Thanks to Sarah Dench at Brighton Aldridge Academy for passing on the link.

This is a great little comic strip that discusses many issues around evolution. Would be good for KS4/KS5

http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolution.html

rEvolution is a collection of online games, designed to introduce and reinforce key concepts in biology, ecology and plant science. They might make enjoyable activities for your science students at the end of term, as a plenary, or for a STEM Club. Suitable for KS3/4/5

Play the games here : http://www.saps.org.uk/secondary/beyond-the-classroom/545

This is part of the Science and Plants in Schools website which has some excellent resources for both Primary and Secondary teachers : http://www.saps.org.uk

Just a short post to collate some of the links and things discussed during yesterday’s Scitt session.

Making Keys

Using Finger Puppets to make keys was written about here.

using Liquorice Allsorts

Activity taken from SAPS website (Science and Plants in Schools). Download their teaching materials here.

Wynne Harlen – Big Ideas in Science.
More information, and to download the booklet here.

HyperHeart

Animation of beating heart here. More heart resources on this page.

Lobster Moulting Video

Quite a few of you had no idea that arthropods such as Spiders, insects and Crabs/Lobsters need to shed their external skeletons in order to grow. Here’s a video of a lobster doing just that.

And if you can cope with it – here’s a cockroach doing the same thing.

Living Things Discussion Strip

The fab Discussion Starter cartoons from Bev Evans can be accessed here. Bev’s websites are well worth exploring: Communication for All, Technostories and Free Clip Art of the Day.

Human Body

The Augmented Reality body organs site is LearnAR.org

Google Body Browser can be found here : http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/

Other Resources

Some good resources from Primary Resources Website here.

Ah go on then. It is Darwin Day after all….

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

February 12th is Darwin Day to celebrate the birthday of the great man himself, Mr Charles Darwin. Evolution has been under attack since the day Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859.

The amount of evidence which supports Evolution is overwhelming, but there is still a movement of people who advocate Intelligent Design (creationism) who try and discredit the evidence. This is a real bugbear for myself and for many other teachers of Science. Imagine if you are a maths teacher and a group of people who believed Pythagoras was wrong tried to make you teach “both sides of the hypotenuse argument”. Or that you are a geography teacher and the flat earth society tried to force you to teach “both sides of the Globe argument”.

For a comprehensive roundup of the wealth of evidence which supports evolution, you can’t beat the Talk Origins website.

Some guidance on the teaching of Evolution in the classroom can be found here on Teachernet:

If questions or issues about creationism and intelligent design arise during science lessons they can be used to illustrate a number of aspects of how science works. Such aspects include: ‘how interpretation of data, using creative thought, provides evidence to test ideas and develop theories’; ‘that there are some questions that science cannot currently answer, and some that science cannot address’; ‘how uncertainties in scientific knowledge and scientific ideas change over time and about the role of the scientific community in validating these changes’.

Here are some websites that will be of use to teachers to help teach Evolution in the classroom:

Here’s an audio guide to the life and times of Charles Darwin and more excellent resources from The Guardian here.

Here’s an amazing interactive Tree of Life from the Wellcome Trust.

This Evolution website, tied in with a PBS television series, contains lots of resources about Darwin and Evolution : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/ Plus links to guidance for teachers (in the US, but valid elsewhere) on teaching Evolution in the face of Intelligent Design claims.

Understanding Evolution is a non-commercial, education website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology. This site is here to help you understand what evolution is, how it works, how it factors into your life, how research in evolutionary biology is performed, and how ideas in this area have changed over time.

They also have a special site for K-12 Teachers: Understanding Evolution for Teachers.

Another useful website, when faced with statements such as “Evolution is Just a Theory” is this one: http://notjustatheory.com/

Also check out this blog post from Snapshot Science, which has some other useful links and ideas for teaching about Evolution.

Happy Birthday Darwin!

Primary Science teachers might be interested in this wonderful PowerPoint file produced in association with the rather talented Bev Evans. I produced the scenarios, and Bev produced all the eye catching graphics. It’s based on some numeracy resources Bev produced and linked on Twitter the other day. Bev calls them Discussion Strips.

There are three slides, each of which can be used to spark a discussion about what makes something alive, plus a summary slide which explains MRS GREN. Display the slide on the IWB and ask the children what they think. See what ideas they have.

You can download the Science “Living Things” Discussion Strip powerpoint presentation here

I thoroughly recommend that you follow Bev on Twitter for her “free clip art of the day” – and more ideas like this. Plus check out her Technostories Blog and her Communication for All website!

On similar lines – also check out this “Choose 1 out” idea from NGFL Cymru. Again a good discussion starter.