Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

Microbiologists grow the Google logo using bacteria coloured with special dyes.

Plenty of scope for working in some good science questioning with your biology class.

I spoke about this at yesterday’s Teachmeet East conference at UEA in Norwich. Here’s a simple idea for using fingerpuppets in Primary science to teach about keys and classification.

To do this I use simple fingerpuppets. I got several sets of these from Ikea a few years back. I’m not sure if they still sell the exact puppets any more, but any animal puppets would do. At a pinch you could always use photographs of animals, but the puppets are more fun. The puppets have the added advantage of having other uses – perhaps for use in movie making/storytelling activities.

Hand these out so that every child has a different puppet. Give them a few minutes to get the “playing” out of their system Then ask them to get into pairs. In their pair they have to think of one question that they could ask that would differentiate their puppet from their partners. Does it have wings? Does it swim? etc. Get them to write it down.

Once done, ask them to join up with another pair. Then they need to do the same thing – think of questions they could use to differentiate the four animals. Then maybe get into an 8, or just use a table group and repeat.

Basically, we’re getting across the idea of making keys. Which is something children (and pgce students!) often struggle with.

In their groups they can then draw out a key to identify the animals on their table. Give them a large sheet of paper to do this on. Take photographs of their finished keys.

The questions need to be Yes/No questions. So you can’t have “How many legs does it have?”. Questions should be “Does it have 4 legs?” or similar.

As a extra activity – look at making a key for Licorice Allsorts (or biscuits) – more ideas on the SAPS website.

To help organise the finger puppets, I store each set in a small plastic pot so that I know each set of 8 has no duplicate animals.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) is the trade association for more than 75 companies in the UK producing prescription medicines. Its member companies research, develop, manufacture and supply more than 80 per cent of the medicines prescribed through the National Health Service (NHS).

The ABPI Resources for Schools website provides curriculum related resources for use by teachers and their pupils.  The resources have been developed by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and many link topics studied in school to their application in industry and in research.

Interactive resource on the site link the science taught in schools to its use in the workplace and, particularly, to the treatment of disease. Materials cover topics within the school curriculum from primary through to post-16, with information, animations and ‘test yourself’ quizzes.

Biological GCSE topics covered include:
Diabetes
Genes and inheritance
Heart and circulation
Hormones

Some of the content is useful in other areas of the curriculum, including PSHE/Citizenship, History, PE, Religious Studies, Health & Social Care.

The site also includes other resources and lesson materials which you can download.

http://www.abpischools.org.uk

These resources were originally part of the Science Year CD produced by the ASE nearly 10 years ago. For a while after that they were also available on the ASE website, but recently I noticed that the website links were no longer working. A shame as there were some great materials there.

I recently found them on the National STEM Centre website – who seems to be archiving a lot of the old ASE resources, amongst other things.

You can access the Inside Body resources here.

The Inside Body resource from the Association for Science Education (ASE) provides a template that students use to produce their own ICT presentations on the effects of a substance on the body.
By completing this activity students improve their ability to select relevant information for a presentation, develop their ICT skills and increase their knowledge on the effects of alcohol, tobacco and solvents on the human body.

Students are provided with a background resource document from which to select information. They insert this text into their presentation. They choose relevant pathological images, which are provided on the PowerPoint template, and use these to illustrate their presentation. They can also insert information that they have researched from other sources.

There are some very gruesome images that you can use in presentations about drugs/alcohol/tobacco and their effect on the body. Suitable for KS3/KS4 pupils.

The rest of Science Year resources are available here.

The RHS Campaign for School Gardening aims to encourage and support schools to develop and actively use a school garden.  The website contains ideas for what to do in your garden each month, downloadable resources plus lesson plans, case studies and recipes for using the vegetables you have grown.

A simple activity such as growing herbs can teach most of the basic gardening skills, and lead on to learning about food and healthy eating. Exploring the origin and uses of herbs provides interesting avenues into both history and geography, while the study of herbal aromas, or the many types of wildlife attracted to herbs, will contribute to science.

Growing plants can provide practical data for maths, real reasons for writing letters or keeping diaries to develop language skills, and inspiration for creative writing and art.

Even subjects such as citizenship can be approached through gardening; planning, developing and cultivating a garden are ideal opportunities for encouraging social responsibility and community involvement, and pupils may also learn something about local politics!

If you register your school (it’s free) you will receive a starter pack containing practical items to help you to get growing.

If you are interested in getting your pupils into gardening, you should also check out these websites:

• Gardening with Children : http://www.gardeningwithchildren.co.uk/
• The Growing Schools Garden : http://www.thegrowingschoolsgarden.org.uk/
• Growing Schools : http://www.growingschools.org.uk/
• Grow your own Potatoes : http://www.potatoesforschools.org.uk/
• Science and Plants in Schools: http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/

New from Teachers TV, Junk Food Science helps primary and secondary pupils understand the science linking health with diet, and inspires discussion around the options available to help improve the nation’s eating habits.

The videos, lesson packs and activity ideas, ideal for use during National Science and Engineering Week in March 2011, are organised into three different lessons, suitable for both primary and secondary science and PSHE classes.

Junk Food Science offers teachers free online resources and support materials created with the Centre for Science Education to help teachers plan and deliver Junk Food Science lessons at Key Stage 2, 3 and 4.

You can access the videos and lesson resources here : http://www.teachers.tv/junk-food-science

Many of you know that some of the foods we eat are “fortified” with extra iron. What’s not always known is that it is possible to use a strong magnet to extract this iron and take a look at it.

To do this, I followed a method from Bob Kibble in School Science Review (see end)

I selected Tesco own brand Rice Snaps. I checked many different brands of cereal, and this was one that had the highest amount of iron per 100g.

1. To extract the iron, first put the cereal into a large, sealable sandwich bag.

2. Then, use a rolling pin to smash the cereal into a fine powder.

3. When the cereal is a dust, transfer into a new bag. This is important as the bag you were originally using will now almost definitely be full of tiny holes

4. Fill this new bag with water until the cereal forms a messy, swimming, paste.

5. To extract the iron I used a very strong, small magnet. The one I used came from a set that I used to hang photos onto metal wires. To make it easier to handle I stuck mine to the end of a screw, but you could attach it to a piece of wood.

An alternative would be to use a magnetic stirrer and a white, teflon-coated stirring rod.

6. Fish around in the paste with the magnet for a few minutes. Make sure you trawl the whole bag.

7. Carefully clean the magnet in a bowl of clean water and gently pat dry.

8. The iron filings won’t be visible to the naked eye, but if you use a digital microscope (even a very cheap one) you should be able to see them.

8. The iron filings should be visible on the magnet. There’s wasn’t lots, but there was enough to be visible. You should just be able to see some along the edges of the magnet.

And that’s it. Proof that makers of breakfast cereal do indeed add extra iron into your food – and it’s possible to see it!

Reference

Kibble, B (2010) Iron in Cereal, Let’s take a look at it. School Science Review, 92 (339), 10-11

Here’s a rather cute use of Augmented Reality technology. Produced by London Zoo it gives you the chance to have your very own Augmented reality lemur, Loris, sitting in the palm of your hand.

Loris doesn’t do a lot, and you can’t really interact with her. But she’s very cute.

You’ll need a webcam to get this to work, and you’ll need to print out a special marker on a page for the camera to detect. Find out more here.

Scimorph is a cute little website that uses Augmented Reality tech to provide Primary school pupils with opportunities to discuss and solve science-based problems.

Using a webcam and a special marker printed onto a piece of paper – Scimorph will appear on the screen. By moving the paper you can move him and view him from all sides. It’s a little fiddly, but persevere and it becomes quite simple. This should also work with a visualiser if you have one of those connected.

There are several scimorph zones you can investigate – The Bug Zone to look at microbes, Gravity Pulls and  The Vibe Zone to investigate sound.

Each zone provides a series of questions or scenarios. Scimorph is not a complicated simulation or anything like that. The main purpose is to promote discussion between children about the science underlying the different situations.

Guidance on how to use the resource can be found here. It does provide a useful introduction to Augemented Reality technology and is worth checking out if you want to try something a little different with your class. Visit it here.

This is something I have been waiting ages to see. I love Google Earth, Google Sky, Google Moon etc. But there was nothing for the biologists.  And now there is. Google Body browser.

Google Body gives you a fully-explorable 3D body. You can move about, zoom in, like you can in Google Earth. And it’s fast – very responsive – at least on my home computer anyway. At the moment it wont run in every browser (see later) but hopefully that will change very soon.

The slider on the left hand side lets you reveal different body systems, such as the muscular, skeletal, digestive and nervous. You can turn labels on or off. You can choose between one global slider – or switch to having a slider for each system (the bottom icon does this)

Double click on any organ to isolate it from the rest of the body. It will stay visible while the rest of the body fades out to make it clearer to see it.

Unlike other web based body models that I have seen on, you don’t need to have Flash, Java, or other plugins installed. Google Body will run on any browser that supports the WebGL standard. At the moment this means that only developer or beta versions of FireFox and Chrome will run it right now, but expect to see WebGL will be supported by all browsers in 2011 for sure.

This will make teaching about the human body much better on an interactive whiteboard. Combine this with the desktop annotation or image capture and annotate to label organs and systems, or to just explore different organs in detail. Hopefully in the future there’ll be links to microscope or internal images, and maybe links to pages of information about each part. For now the tool is in beta, so there’s scope for more features to be added.