Teaching ScienceIdeas and help for trainee Science teachers

Finally, something from The Sun newspaper actually worth reading Hold Ye Front Page covers great moments in history/science told through the front pages of The Sun newspaper. A fun way of introducing a topic or sparking a discussion on the importance of these events/discoveries

Take a look here : http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/hold_ye_front_page/science/

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 Kitchen Pantry Scientist blog contains some great ideas for simple science experiments you can do with kitchen items, and as such makes them very useful for the average Primary classroom too!

There are some fun ideas – go take a look at : http://kitchenpantryscientist.com/

Science Made Simple is a series of 15 animated short videos produced for a New Zealand TV channel aimed at demystifying commonly used, but little understood, scientific and technological jargon. The series focuses on the sort of words viewers may read in the newspaper, but don’t always understand.

Science Made Simple from Jacob Slack on Vimeo.

Might prove handy as part of a stater/plenary in KS4 Science lessons.

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.

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

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