From BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10522188.stm

Primary schools in England do not have enough specialist teachers to provide youngsters with a high quality science education, a report says.

A Royal Society study of UK science and maths teaching for five to 14 year olds said every school should have a teacher with a sound scientific background.

The study said England’s testing regime “stifled creativity” as teachers “drummed” facts into pupils’ heads.

The report also called for maths tests for 11 year olds to be scrapped.

Key Stage 2 tests in science, taken in the last year of primary school, have now been abolished and were sat for the last time by pupils in England in 2009.

The Royal Society, which champions science in the UK, called for a move away from “teaching to the test”, a major new drive to recruit specialist science and maths teachers, as well as a greater emphasis on practical work to help youngsters understand the subjects.

The society found testing in England’s primary schools became high-stakes when it was used by central government to compare schools and drive up standards.

But the focus on targets had had “little effect” on pupils’ results, with any improvement more attributable to “teachers becoming increasingly adept at, and focused on, teaching to the test”.

The study said this caught up with pupils when they went on to secondary school.

“Their [pupils'] ability to perform in the tests masks an inadequate conceptual understanding of these subjects that is exposed at secondary level when science is disaggregated into biology, chemistry and physics.”

It went on: “Science is a practical subject and it needs to be taught and assessed as such and greater emphasis placed on building understanding of how science and mathematics work than on rote learning of ‘facts’.

“Achieving this depends on developing a workforce that is confident in teaching these subjects.”

Prof John Pethica, vice-president of the Royal Society, said: “Early education is a particularly formative time for young people, when they can either be inspired by the way that science helps them to understand the world around them, or switched off from exploring it.

‘Raising standards’

“It is essential that we ensure that children have positive experiences with science education, from teachers that are qualified to provide it.

“The UK government must increase the number of science specialist teachers at primary level to ensure that all children have the best start in science.”

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the government would take the reports findings into account as it developed plans for curriculum and qualifications reform.

“This government is committed to raising standards in maths and science – one of the main reasons we are not proceeding with the previous government’s planned primary curriculum is that it risked moving away from traditional subjects like these,” Mr Gibb said.

“We also want to go further in recruiting excellent science and maths teachers and are looking at how we can encourage even more maths and science graduates to come into teaching.”

Read the report here

Here are a few ideas taken from some of the talks I have given this year for ideas on using your Interactive Whiteboard during lesson starters. They could also be used as plenary tasks. Some of the ideas you will have seen before in various places, but I’m bundling them up into one file.

Here are some of the activities that are in the file:

Organ Reveal : A student comes to the board and pulls out an organ. They then have one minute to talk about the organ and its role in the body without repetition or pauses…. I’ve also included the fishing rod and balloon activities from previous presentations.

Put it in the box : This activity makes use of the layer feature. One group will go into the box, the other group will not go into the box. Drag the insects into the box….

Keyword Bingo : Pupils use a selection of words to create a bingo grid on a piece of paper. Teacher can then reveal definitions at random. Cross it off the grid and see who can get three in a row and a full house.

Plenary Circle : Simple idea, but can be used at all key stages. Pull in pairs of words to make “I know that…. ” sentences. If you have a more able group, you could leave one word in for the next pupil to use in their sentence – this means you have to think more carefully about the range of words you put around the edge of the circle.

Word Builder : How many words can you make that relate to science. Give everyone time to make as many words as they can. Students can come to the board to show examples of the words they have made.

Use the links below to download a version of the file for your whiteboard:

Promethean ActivInspireVersion : Download here

Smart 10 Version : Download here

If you use the files, I’d love to hear how they went. If you do adapt them, please let me know what you did – I’d be interested in having a copy.

The class of 2010 display their skills with diet coke and mentos.

Coke and Mentos 2010 from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

The ASE has collated some guidance on Outdoor Science – making use of the school grounds and beyond to teach Science.

You can find the guides, including links to some ASE journal articles, here:

http://www.ase.org.uk/htm/teacher_zone/outdoor_science/outdoor_science.php

The Diet coke and Mentos guys from Eepybird are back with their new venture – a rocket car!

Here’s an interesting animation that will help to illustrate Night and Day as well as phases of the Moon on your interactive whiteboard.

http://www.ictgames.com/dayNight/index.html

I’ve also put together a quick animation that demonstrates how the moon rotates around the Earth. The Moon always keeps the same face facing towards the Earth (and so the same face pointing away). This down to two important facts.

1. The moon rotates on its on axis, it takes approximately 28 days to make one full rotation

2. The moon orbits around the earth. It takes approximately 28 days to make one full orbit.

In the animation below, I have coloured the moon to make it clearer. This is the view from above as it rotates.

View Full Screen

As the moon rotates, it is also travelling around the Earth. The Moon has become locked into a pattern – the time it takes to orbit the Earth is the same as the time it takes to make one full rotation – approximately 28 days.

View Full Screen

As you can see, as the moon travels around the Earth, it is also rotating. The Red/Yellow face is always kept facing towards the Earth. If we were standing on the Earth looking at the Moon we would only see the Red/Yellow face. We would never be able to see the Blue/Green face.

Another animation that may be useful can be found here: http://www.edumedia-sciences.com/en/a213-earth-moon-system-1

The collapse of honeybee colonies has been widely reported, but in fact most of the UK’s 250 bee species appear to be in decline.

This loss of bees has serious consequences for crop pollination, so Bee Part Of It will be helping all of our bees by creating 40,000 new bee-friendly wildflower rich spaces.

From 17 May, with help from the National Trust, local BBC radio stations are adopting a local bee hive in their area and following the plight of a new colony of our favourite pollen collectors over their busiest months

This would be a great idea for a class or school project. You could make a bumblebee home, or grow a bumblebee friendly garden area.

The BBC website has some other interesting ideas for things your pupils can do to help wildlife in your school environment : http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/things_to_do/

Heres a link to a great lesson starter/plenary idea from the ICT Games website. Science Bingo. It uses the Primary Science vocab words from the Kent Scheme of work, which will suit most Primary Science classes.

Download a pack of Bingo cards to photocopy for the children – then use the Word generator to select words to cross off the bingo grid.

It’s a simple, fun idea  to help with keyword recognition.

Thanks to Jason Dilling (@jasondilling) and James (@Wigglemyears) on Twitter for coming up with the resource!

Just a quick post to flag up this fun little resource site for Science called Science Storybooks.

It contains a stack of Flash animations that can be used to introduce many different science concepts, some include songs that would provide a fun way to start a lesson.

The resources are completely free, and also contain links to lesson notes and other information. Well worth taking a look at.

Thanks to the iLearn Technology Blog for the heads-up on this resource.

Thanks to fellow twitterer Sophie Bessemer for tipping me off about these science resources from BP Educational Services, the education department of the energy company.

For Primary Science, there are some very useful resources in the Young Science Investigators series aimed at KS2 pupils. These resources include the following modules:

• Energy
• Our Environment
• Online Experiments

All these resources are free, but you do need to register with the site to get them although registration is also free.

It’s also worth taking a look at the free resources that you can order and have sent to your school such as posters and CD-ROM materials.

Take a look at these resources and see what you think. Could they be used to support science on your Interactive Whiteboard?