Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

The Young Science Investigators (YSI): Project Kit is a free interactive Science resource for 7-11 year olds from the BP Educational Service. It invites pupils to become Young Science Investigators, using the cartoon characters Beepy, Dev and Kate with a focus on science at work in the real world and scientific enquiry skills.

The kit is based around three curriculum topics : Electricity, Forces and Materials.

You need to register with the BP site to access it, but it’s free to do so.Find out more at : www.bp.com/bpes/ysiprojectkit

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!

A presentation from the SSAT of 20 cool web tools that all teachers should know about. They can all be introduced to teachers in 3 minutes or less.

Solar System Scope is an amazing interactive 3D Model of our Solar System. You can zoom in and move the planets around the Sun to see how they move in relation to each other.

You can switch between an heliocentric view, geocentric view or a panoramic view of the Solar System. Earth centred view is great if you then use the play controls to move the time forwards as you can see the how day/night changes across the surface. Heliocentric view is good for showing how we get seasons as well as demonstrating the movement of the Moon around the Earth in the course of a month. The scales of the planets in relation to each other is not accurate – nor is the distance apart, but they’re necessary changes to make the whole thing fit on a screen and be useable!

Click on any planet to “visit” that planet and explore its surface – or get more information about it.

It’s a truly fabulous application -and every Science teacher should add it to their bookmarks for their next Space lesson alongside Google Moon, Mars and Sky. All of which are fantastic on an Interactive Whiteboard.

Visit it now at : http://www.solarsystemscope.com

Thanks to Stephen Baxter for tweeting the link.

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

Becta, the government agency that developed the innovative use of technology throughout learning, closed on January 31, 2011.

Thankfully, the ASE have archived some of the science education resources produced by BECTA.

You can download them here. There are guides for both Primary and Secondary Science covering different aspects of ICT in Science

Scimorph is a cute little website that uses Augmented Reality tech to provide Primary school pupils with opportunities to discuss and solve science-based problems.

Using a webcam and a special marker printed onto a piece of paper – Scimorph will appear on the screen. By moving the paper you can move him and view him from all sides. It’s a little fiddly, but persevere and it becomes quite simple. This should also work with a visualiser if you have one of those connected.

There are several scimorph zones you can investigate – The Bug Zone to look at microbes, Gravity Pulls and  The Vibe Zone to investigate sound.

Each zone provides a series of questions or scenarios. Scimorph is not a complicated simulation or anything like that. The main purpose is to promote discussion between children about the science underlying the different situations.

Guidance on how to use the resource can be found here. It does provide a useful introduction to Augemented Reality technology and is worth checking out if you want to try something a little different with your class. Visit it here.

Here’s a link to a great blogpost by Frank Noschese on his Action-Reaction blog which lists 15 different ways to use digital cameras in Science teaching. Go take a look!

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/