Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

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!

The brilliant Bev Evans over at Communication for All has produced an excellent bank of “I can” statements for science up to level 5.

Go check it out here : http://www.communication4all.co.uk/http/ICanScience.htm

And follow Bev on Twitter here and here.

Teachers Media is the new professional development service for everyone working in UK education, brought to you by the team behind Teachers TV.

This site contains a free library of over 3500 high-quality videos to help you and your team develop your professional skills, and support teaching and learning in your school and classroom.

The whole of the now defunct Teachers TV archive is available on the site. You can only view through the site – there’s no embed or download options. I don’t know if this will be added, or is due to rights issues… time will tell.

Visit it now : http://www.teachersmedia.co.uk/

With the demise of the Teachers TV website and the opening up of the archive to other companies to distribute, expect more sites like this to appear in the near future such as the The TES website and SchoolsWorld.tv. There was also Leon Cych’s project for a crowdsourced attempt to archive and #SaveTTV.

Watch this space.

Science on the Simpsons contains a collection of short clips from the Simpsons TV Show. The clips would make great lesson starter clips to introduce topics such as Natural Selection, Newtons Third Law and Angular Momentum. Thanks to Dan Burns for putting the collection together.

The clips are in mpeg format, and it’s recommended that they are downloaded to your computer before you use them. They could be inserted into a PowerPoint file or just played in your regular video player software – media player, vlc etc.

The clips are intended for use by science teachers in the classroom and so the posting and use of theses clips for educational purposes should conform with fair use in terms of copyright.

http://www.lghs.net/ourpages/users/dburns/scienceonsimpsons/clips.html

Thanks to Humphrey Jones via Twitter for the link.

Nice cartoon from XKCD on women in science, and a zombie Marie Curie

Science Bootcamp provides links to lots of resources to help with Ks2 Science SATs revision. Take a look!

http://www.compare4kids.co.uk/learn.php

The site also has a Literacy and Maths bootcamp page.

King’s College London has launched a brand new, free CPD resource for KS3 science. Thinking Beyond the Classroom brings together three strands of King’s well-known research in science education: Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education, Assessment for Learning and Science Beyond the Classroom.

You can browse the project materials at Thinking Beyond the Classroom website

The unit is supported by ten activities fully trialled and tested in schools. The activities support and encourage observation, group work and discussion and are easily carried out in school grounds, parks and local open spaces. The CPD unit includes video-clips of the activities being used by KS3 students in an inner city location and the unit is designed to show how teaching strategies used in the classroom can be transferred to the outside.

Thinking Beyond the Classroom was developed by Melissa Glackin, a science education tutor on King’s PGCE course.

Thinking Beyond the Classroom website

A presentation from last year. Blogs and Wikis in Science teaching… most of the links should still work (hopefully!)

Border Crossings is designed to explore the opportunities for science and mathematics teachers to cross their traditional subject borders and explore the potential for outdoor learning. It builds on the success of earlier projects such as Let’s Think Through Science (aimed at teachers of science at KS2), London Outdoor Science, Thinking Beyond the Urban Classroom and Trailblazers.

Border Crossings is funded by the AstraZeneca Science Teaching Trust.

Border Crossings have produced a pack of 8 teaching resources incorporating best practice in terms of assessment for learning and cognitive acceleration which can be used by both mathematics and science teachers in ways which promote cross-curricular work.

You can download all the lesson ideas from the Border Crossings website here:

http://www.field-studies-council.org/projects/bordercrossings/index.aspx