Your brain is the planet’s most powerful learning machine. But our current systems of education aren’t doing enough to unlock our true potential. This is what Born to Learn is all about.

Born to Learn is the first animation in a fascinating series aimed to provide easy-access to the exciting new discoveries constantly being made about how humans learn!

Born to Learn from Born to Learn on Vimeo.

Principles and Ideas in Science Education is a report, developed by a group of ten international experts in science education and edited by Wynn Harlen, sets out the principles that should underpin the science education of all students throughout their schooling.

It argues that students should be helped to develop ‘big ideas’ of science and about science that will enable them to understand the scientific aspects of the world around and make informed decisions about the applications of science.

The report outlines the 10 principles of Science education along with 14 big ideas in Science that all teachers should be able to understand.

It was published by the ASE and is freely available, as long as the sources are credited. You can download a copy here. It’s a must-read for all teachers and student teachers.

This is Ricky. Ricky is very lucky in that he will soon be going on an expedition to Antarctica alongside a teacher called Lisa Woods, sponsored by the Fuchs Foundation.

You can follow Ricky’s adventures via his blog : http://antarcticapuppet.primaryblogger.co.uk/

Teachers could use Ricky’s problems as a stimulus for talk and investigations, as well as to encourage children to raise questions.

There are two main sections to the blog – both of which will of interest to teachers who want to use Ricky in their lessons.

“Ricky’s Diary” – this is Ricky’s record of his preparation and his trip. He started writing his blog entries over the summer holiday and will add to these when he gets responses to his problems or new things happen to him. You can help to solve the problems in whatever order you wish, either by following Ricky’s posts in date order, or dipping into them as you choose. You might decide to focus on one issue such as what Ricky should eat or how to keeping warm. You might choose something that could help Ricky even though he hasn’t yet thought about it.

You can post questions for Ricky, and ideas for investigations to be carried out before he goes or during his Antarctic adventure. He will try to respond to most ideas or questions. He will also choose some of the interesting ideas and questions from children to explore when he goes on his adventure in November.

“How can you help Ricky?” – this section contains idea for how to solve Ricky’s problems linked directly to the posts in Ricky’s Diary. There are also links to other support materials where relevant.

The Fuchs Foundation arranges for young teachers of science and geography to undertake scientific expeditions to the Antarctic and Arctic. The charity was re-launched in 2005 to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of Sir Vivian Fuchs’ Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1956-58, There is more information about the Fuchs Foundation expeditions on the Fuchs Foundation website. www.fuchsfoundation.org and you can watch teachers on the 2007 expedition recorded by Teacher’s TV – click here to watch the video.

If you’re looking for a way to make Primary Science a little more fun and interesting then you might like to incorporate Ricky and his antarctic adventures into your curriculum. It would be a nice way to introduce investigative work and become a stimulus for talk, as well as to encourage children to raise questions. It would also have some fun cross curricular activities such as creative writing.

Good Luck to Ricky and Lisa on their expedition. I look forward to reading more about it.

http://antarcticapuppet.primaryblogger.co.uk/

A few handy links by way of follow up to todays talk about KS3 and KS2/3 Transition

Science Transition Passport – a set of activities from ASE Science Year for a KS2/3 Transition Project

AstraZeneca STAY project – KS2/3 Transition project

The London Challenge – report on a Transition project

Impact of the new KS3 Curriculum – Ofsted Report

KS3 National Curriculum – revised

Here are some useful sites to supplement the work we did on Electricity yesterday.

Firstly – the Flash file with questions about circuits came from the Essex e-gfl site. You can see it here.

A battery with one bulb connected is your standard to compare things to. Electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other, flowing through the bulb as it goes, making the bulb light up.

Adding a second bulb in series will increase the total resistance in the circuit. The bulbs will be dimmer than the single bulb.

Adding a second bulb in parallel is a different situation. You have added a second pathway for the electricity to flow, The resistance is greater than a single bulb, but is is not as high as the two bulbs in parallel. The two bulbs will be brighter.

A “cars on the highway” analogy may help explain the distinction: think of a wide highway narrowing to a one-lane bridge to cross a river. Now imagine that in order to get rid of traffic jams, the highway department builds another one-lane bridge over the river. The “resistance” (in this case analogous to the width), of both bridges stays the same, but the amount of “current” or traffic that can cross the river has increased, so the overall “resistance” of the entire system has decreased. Taken from here.

In a series circuit, each bulb you add will make the brightness of the bulbs dimmer and dimmer

In a parallel circuit, the brightness of the bulbs does not change with the addition of more bulbs (but if you added many parallel circuits, eventually all of the bulbs would dim down as you approached the capacity of the battery)

This page from the BBC KS2 Bitesize site is pretty useful.

The GCSE Bitesize page may help explain things to you too.

It’s also worth looking at is this presentation from Skool.co.uk

More Links and Resources

Here are some more links that hopefully will help with teaching circuits

The free circuit builder Crocodile Elementary is now called Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can get it here. This will let you build circuits to your heart’s content!

From BBC Science Clips, try these resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/electricity.shtml

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtml)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/changing_circuits.shtml)

Other Links

Make an Electric Circuit Online

BBC Learning Zone – Electricity Videos

The Blobz Guide to Circuits

PhET Circuit Builder

Cleo Circuit World

For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.

Link to other Links Pages

E=TC3 6G Changing Circuits Page

E=TC3 4f Circuits and Conductors Page

TopicBox – Electricity

e-gfl Electricity resources

The full video in all its glory

Diet coke and mentos from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

Here’s a new site that may be useful, What Works Well. I saw this at Teachmeet and it looked like it’s something to bookmark and keep an eye on.

WhatWorksWell is a growing database of case-led studies which describe learning improvement. It’s the place where teaching practitioners can share real studies which have improved learning and teaching. They are ‘case-led’ studies because they start and end with the learning needs of the pupils and the difference made to their progress. You can browse or search for case studies relevant to you. If you register, you can add your own case-led study to describe the impact of your own work on pupils’ learning.