Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

From XKCD

Discover Primary Science is a project run by the Discover Science & Engineering (DSE) awareness programme in Ireland. The programme aims to develop creativity in our children, show them how important science is to our everyday lives and more importantly how much fun it can be!

The Discover Primary Science programme is intended to be an invaluable resource for teachers and students alike by helping large numbers of young children to understand that science isn’t just about people in white coats carrying out difficult experiments. It’s about fun, discovery and adventure, and it is something which is fundamentally relevant to our everyday lives.

You can find some great science ideas and activities on their website. Go check it out: http://www.primaryscience.ie

Thanks to JPScience for the link!

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.

Finally, something from The Sun newspaper actually worth reading Hold Ye Front Page covers great moments in history/science told through the front pages of The Sun newspaper. A fun way of introducing a topic or sparking a discussion on the importance of these events/discoveries

Take a look here : http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/hold_ye_front_page/science/

Here’s a fun flipper toy that you can make for use in science investigations. It’s pretty easy to make, the hardest bit is sourcing enough of the plastic credit card things. I keep an eye out for any place that gives away store or loyalty cards, and sneak a few out each time… (Thank you Costa Coffee!)

To make one toy you will need

• 2 x plastic cards (credit card sized)
• 2 x paper clips
• A rubber band
• Sellotape
• A hole punch

1. Take your two cards and using a hole punch (the same thing you’d use to make holes in A4 paper) punch a hole roughly in the middle about 1cm from the end of the card.

2. Take the two ends that don’t have a hole in, and sellotape them together with a few strips of tape.

3. Turn the cards over and sellotape the other side.

4. Take a paperclip and open it out slightly. Take the longer half and sellotape it to the card, close to the join. Make sure the other half is free of the sellotape – this is going to be the anchor point for the rubber band.

5. Repeat with the second paper clip.

6. Hook the rubber band around the first paper clip. Poke it through both holes and attach it to the second paper clip.

7. To make the flipper jump – open it right out and back on itself to really stretch the rubber band. Hold it down on a flat surface

8. When you let go. It should jump up.

Like this:

As a science investigation – pupils could look into the effects of changing the thickness of rubber band, length of rubber band, number of rubber bands, surface used etc.  Measure the height it jumps, or release it on a slight incline and measure distance travelled.

Have fun!

The Kitchen Pantry Scientist blog contains some great ideas for simple science experiments you can do with kitchen items, and as such makes them very useful for the average Primary classroom too!

There are some fun ideas – go take a look at : http://kitchenpantryscientist.com/

Science Made Simple is a series of 15 animated short videos produced for a New Zealand TV channel aimed at demystifying commonly used, but little understood, scientific and technological jargon. The series focuses on the sort of words viewers may read in the newspaper, but don’t always understand.

Science Made Simple from Jacob Slack on Vimeo.

Might prove handy as part of a stater/plenary in KS4 Science lessons.

Hello to the new Billericay Scitt 2011/2012 cohort. Welcome to the course!

Here’s a copy of the presentation I used on your induction course the other day.

See you in September!

The already excellent Teaching Ideas website has added a whole new section comprising a bank of Science Inspiration Images for Primary Science lessons. Each image is downloadable as a high res PDF file.

Teachers can use these images to provide ideas and inspiration for Science in your classroom. They could be used as a lesson starter to review what the children already know, or as part of main activities when you introduce new concepts… or put them up on a classroom display!

It’s a great resource, definitely worth taking a look at if you’re teaching primary/elementary science.

Also check out the rest of the site at : http://www.teachingideas.co.uk

I was inspired by John Davitt’s excellent Learning Event Generator and wanted to produce a similar version for Primary Science. Partly because I wanted to create some fun ideas for science and also because I wanted to try to brush up my Flash programming skills (or lack of them)

The end result is the beta version of the Primary Science Lesson Activity Generator. This is very much a beta, and I may be tweaking the events that can be produced in the future. But at present there are over 3,600 possible permutations – click the generate button to produce a new lesson idea.

I hope you like the ideas that it generates.

Please also be sure to vist Johns other versions of the generator. You can now also get his activity generator as a rather cool iPhone application. I don’t currently have an iPhone, but if I did I’d definitely get this application!