Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

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/

Succeeding with Science has 2 very handy books for KS1 teachers who want some poems to use in lessons about Light and Dark and Electricity.

These are: “Electric Man’s Big Book of Poems About Light And Darkness” and “Electric Man’s Big Book of Poems About Using Electricity“. They were written specifically to support KS1 Science unit 1D: Light and dark, and unit 2F: Using Electricity, the ‘shared text’ have been devised to be integrated within the National Literacy Strategy.

Each book contains eight fully illustrated poems and are both available as a free download from the Succeeding with Science page here.

There are some other useful free resources on that page which are worth a look.

Also take a look at the rest of the site as there are some fun little free Online Games which you might also find a use for.

Here are a couple of great resources for teaching Early Years:

EdTechLounge – websites for the under 5′s

Big Eyed Owl

Teaching Ideas – Early Years page

Launched in 2005, Grow Your Own Potatoes (GYOP) was one of the first primary school based growing projects. Since then it has become the largest of its kind with almost 1 million children signed up for 2010 learning where potatoes come from, how they grow and that potatoes are a healthy food. Its simplicity and the fact that GYOP is a hands on activity makes it perfect for young pupils.

The twelve potato-based lessons are organised under the following headings:

• Growing potatoes
• Knowing potatoes
• Healthy eating and potatoes
• Cooking potatoes

The lesson notes are designed to provide the basic structure and content for lessons, but will need to be tweaked to meet the needs of individual classes.  Under the ‘task’ section there is a suggested task for children aged 5-7 and one for children aged 7-11 years.

Worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, factsheets, recipes, video clips and games are available to support the lessons.

Find out more 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.

You are probably already aware of the problems with Sparklebox following the imprisonment of its creator

Here are three websites that are filling the gap left by Sparklebox – all of them provide free printable worksheets and display materials that teachers might find useful.

Twinkl : This is a brand new online resource centre created just for teachers. Resources for Literacy and Numeracy are already online, I’m hoping they’ll start to cover Science and other subjects to follow soon.

Primary School Teaching : Primary School Teaching is a platform for sharing and ranking teaching resources and ideas. Lots of subjects covered and a useful search facility.

Teachers Pet : Another new website with a growing bank of PDF resources to download. It was only launched this week – so give it time to grow. IWB resources are on their way apparently.

iBoard produce an excellent bank of interactive resources for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes in several subjects, including literacy, numeracy and science.

In November last year iBoard was purchased by the TES and made available free of charge to all teachers, which is an excellent development.

If you are involved in teaching KS1, this is well worth a visit.

You can access the resources here: http://www.tes.iboard.co.uk/

Here are 10 websites that will prove useful to any teacher of Primary Science looking for things to use on their interactive whiteboard:

The Children’s University of Manchester. Several excellent interactive resources for Primary Science.

NGFL Cymru : Early years, KS1 and KS2 Science resources from the Welsh Grid for Learning.

Simple Science : I love these excellent science song videos. Great for lesson starters or reinforcement of key facts.

IWB.org.uk: KS1 and KS2 interactive science resources (and other subjects)

BBC Bitesize. Always worth a visit, some excellent resources here for Ks2.

BBC Learning Zone - lots of videos to use in Science and other lessons.

Birmingham Grid for Learning – some excellent resources here, and links to other sites.

Crickweb – great flash-based games for KS1 and Ks2 Science.

Fossweb - US site with some interesting interactive science activities.

Primary Resources – Home to some great resources – IWB files, powerpoints, links and more! Also worth checking out is Teaching Ideas, which is on very similar lines.

Don’t forget, if your school subscribes to Espresso, there are some excellent resources for EYFS, KS1 and KS2 in there. (OK, so that makes 11, but Espresso is well worth a look)

Image Credit : Kevin Dooley

Here’s a fun poster that shows Blooms Taxonomy for Primary Teachers taken from the Learning Today site.  Bloom’s Taxonomy is a multi-tiered model of classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity.

Visit the Learning Today website to download this as a PDF file.

For more about Blooms Taxonomy – check out these websites:

http://techlearning.com/article/8670

http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+-+Introduction