Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

In the Zone is the Wellcome Trust’s major NEW initiative inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It provides a fun, free and fascinating way of using science to discover how our bodies work during sport, activity, movement and rest.

The website is aimed at both primary and secondary schools with two different sections. Both sections contain interactive games which can be used on the interactive whiteboard.

Teachers packs are available for download containing lesson plans, worksheets and ideas for science investigations.

If you are working in a UK school then keep an eye out for the In the Zone pack which is being sent to every school in the UK in Feb/March. Each box contains a teaching guide, curriculum guide, challenge cards and all of the scientific equipment you need to do the investigations on the website. Make sure your office staff know it’s coming, and not to put it in a cupboard.

You can access all the resources here :  http://www.getinthezone.org.uk

Just a short post to collate some of the links and things discussed during yesterday’s Scitt session.

Making Keys

Using Finger Puppets to make keys was written about here.

using Liquorice Allsorts

Activity taken from SAPS website (Science and Plants in Schools). Download their teaching materials here.

Wynne Harlen – Big Ideas in Science.
More information, and to download the booklet here.

HyperHeart

Animation of beating heart here. More heart resources on this page.

Lobster Moulting Video

Quite a few of you had no idea that arthropods such as Spiders, insects and Crabs/Lobsters need to shed their external skeletons in order to grow. Here’s a video of a lobster doing just that.

And if you can cope with it – here’s a cockroach doing the same thing.

Living Things Discussion Strip

The fab Discussion Starter cartoons from Bev Evans can be accessed here. Bev’s websites are well worth exploring: Communication for All, Technostories and Free Clip Art of the Day.

Human Body

The Augmented Reality body organs site is LearnAR.org

Google Body Browser can be found here : http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/

Other Resources

Some good resources from Primary Resources Website here.

Microbiologists grow the Google logo using bacteria coloured with special dyes.

Plenty of scope for working in some good science questioning with your biology class.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) is the trade association for more than 75 companies in the UK producing prescription medicines. Its member companies research, develop, manufacture and supply more than 80 per cent of the medicines prescribed through the National Health Service (NHS).

The ABPI Resources for Schools website provides curriculum related resources for use by teachers and their pupils.  The resources have been developed by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and many link topics studied in school to their application in industry and in research.

Interactive resource on the site link the science taught in schools to its use in the workplace and, particularly, to the treatment of disease. Materials cover topics within the school curriculum from primary through to post-16, with information, animations and ‘test yourself’ quizzes.

Biological GCSE topics covered include:
Diabetes
Genes and inheritance
Heart and circulation
Hormones

Some of the content is useful in other areas of the curriculum, including PSHE/Citizenship, History, PE, Religious Studies, Health & Social Care.

The site also includes other resources and lesson materials which you can download.

http://www.abpischools.org.uk

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/

New from Teachers TV, Junk Food Science helps primary and secondary pupils understand the science linking health with diet, and inspires discussion around the options available to help improve the nation’s eating habits.

The videos, lesson packs and activity ideas, ideal for use during National Science and Engineering Week in March 2011, are organised into three different lessons, suitable for both primary and secondary science and PSHE classes.

Junk Food Science offers teachers free online resources and support materials created with the Centre for Science Education to help teachers plan and deliver Junk Food Science lessons at Key Stage 2, 3 and 4.

You can access the videos and lesson resources here : http://www.teachers.tv/junk-food-science

Many of you know that some of the foods we eat are “fortified” with extra iron. What’s not always known is that it is possible to use a strong magnet to extract this iron and take a look at it.

To do this, I followed a method from Bob Kibble in School Science Review (see end)

I selected Tesco own brand Rice Snaps. I checked many different brands of cereal, and this was one that had the highest amount of iron per 100g.

1. To extract the iron, first put the cereal into a large, sealable sandwich bag.

2. Then, use a rolling pin to smash the cereal into a fine powder.

3. When the cereal is a dust, transfer into a new bag. This is important as the bag you were originally using will now almost definitely be full of tiny holes

4. Fill this new bag with water until the cereal forms a messy, swimming, paste.

5. To extract the iron I used a very strong, small magnet. The one I used came from a set that I used to hang photos onto metal wires. To make it easier to handle I stuck mine to the end of a screw, but you could attach it to a piece of wood.

An alternative would be to use a magnetic stirrer and a white, teflon-coated stirring rod.

6. Fish around in the paste with the magnet for a few minutes. Make sure you trawl the whole bag.

7. Carefully clean the magnet in a bowl of clean water and gently pat dry.

8. The iron filings won’t be visible to the naked eye, but if you use a digital microscope (even a very cheap one) you should be able to see them.

8. The iron filings should be visible on the magnet. There’s wasn’t lots, but there was enough to be visible. You should just be able to see some along the edges of the magnet.

And that’s it. Proof that makers of breakfast cereal do indeed add extra iron into your food – and it’s possible to see it!

Reference

Kibble, B (2010) Iron in Cereal, Let’s take a look at it. School Science Review, 92 (339), 10-11

This is something I have been waiting ages to see. I love Google Earth, Google Sky, Google Moon etc. But there was nothing for the biologists.  And now there is. Google Body browser.

Google Body gives you a fully-explorable 3D body. You can move about, zoom in, like you can in Google Earth. And it’s fast – very responsive – at least on my home computer anyway. At the moment it wont run in every browser (see later) but hopefully that will change very soon.

The slider on the left hand side lets you reveal different body systems, such as the muscular, skeletal, digestive and nervous. You can turn labels on or off. You can choose between one global slider – or switch to having a slider for each system (the bottom icon does this)

Double click on any organ to isolate it from the rest of the body. It will stay visible while the rest of the body fades out to make it clearer to see it.

Unlike other web based body models that I have seen on, you don’t need to have Flash, Java, or other plugins installed. Google Body will run on any browser that supports the WebGL standard. At the moment this means that only developer or beta versions of FireFox and Chrome will run it right now, but expect to see WebGL will be supported by all browsers in 2011 for sure.

This will make teaching about the human body much better on an interactive whiteboard. Combine this with the desktop annotation or image capture and annotate to label organs and systems, or to just explore different organs in detail. Hopefully in the future there’ll be links to microscope or internal images, and maybe links to pages of information about each part. For now the tool is in beta, so there’s scope for more features to be added.

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.

Produced by the Field Studies Council, Where We Live is a practical guide for anyone who wants to educate and empower people to improve the environment of their community.

It provides a structure that allows people actively to investigate and examine the environmental issues in their own community and initiate practical local improvements.

It is about nurturing the values, understanding and skills needed to create a group of responsible, knowledgeable and active citizens who have the capacity to bring about change in the community.

The activities in Where We Live can be used with groups of different ages and abilities.

http://www.field-studies-council.org/resources/wherewelive/index.aspx