Category Archives: Science Teaching

Posts relating to Science teaching

How do you develop children’s scientific ideas through play – #ASEchat summary

Posted on by
Reply

The question was asked how do you develop children’s scientific ideas through play. Richard Needham (@viciascience) recommended that educators check out the new EYFS framework. The discussion opened with what we mean by play. Cardiffscience said to them ‘play’ means exploration and investigation, preliminary to deciding what to explore in more depth. Cleverfiend referred to a session at the NSLC (National Science Learning Centre) in which teachers were given a selection of toys to play with (investigate) and generate questions about how they worked. Cardiffscience went on to suggest that play tasks be open ended and not simply guessing what the teacher is thinking.

Ideas for play included acids and alkalis with indicators, use of indicators from plants/food, parachutes, electrical circuits and playing with cornflour and water. Apps on a tablet or phone were suggested as good play activities including physics based games like Angry Birds.

When asked “does science play have to be structured to be useful or is promoting interest and asking questions enough?” the group decided that all three are useful for types of activity. Lethandrel made an excellent point “I say “Don’t play”, I say “Explore” which implies there might be a purpose to the activity.

@TESscience mentioned role play as a possible activity and cleverfiend pointed out that his students love role play activities like hot seating. The discussion went on to talk about different apps/software that could be ‘played with’ including Beebot (See links). Paramount to the idea of play based learning is teacher confidence, and the idea of modelling play based activities in our teaching.

A wide variety of points and comments were made and I’d recommend that you read the full transcript of the chat if you are interested in taking play based learning forward in your own classroom.

Top Tweets

@cardiffscience ‘play’ means exploration and investigation, preliminary to deciding what to explore in more depth #asechat

@Mr_D_Cheng #ASEchat here’s some acids, some alkalis som ui. In ten minutes I want to know what you found out!

@agittner Does play sometimes promote trial and error rather than a systematic approach to problem solving (not necessarily a bad thing) #asechat

@cleverfiend Does science play have to be structured to be useful or is promoting interest and asking questions enough? #asechat

@Lethandrel I say “Don’t play”, I say “Explore” #asechat

@NeedhamL56 Is play best used as part of a project, ie not over in 50 mins. Certainly good for group work communication, and reflection #asechat

@agittner I think play can be powerful at second when you start to get the stdts to talk about the play strategies they used (metacognition) #asechat

@anhalf @iSciTeacher definitely..use ofblooms and question dice to genrate qns..#asechat see that som qns cannot be answrd

@RevErasmus hot and cold water and watching the hot water swirl, and chromatography. I let them play in golden time too. they love it.

Top Links

@cardiffscience Great blog post btw ks2 enquiry, literacy and science

@mrNeilButler http://fantasticcontraption.com/

@TESscience http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Atomic-Bomber-app-games-to-learn-about-vectors-6212877/

@iSciTeacher http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami/thingdom.aspx

@TESscience http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Element-Book-6050645/

Summary available from ASE website or from here

William’s Words – a useful book for supporting literacy in science lessons

Posted on by
Reply

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that I am an advocate of literacy across the curriculum and of literacy within science lessons. I was interested to come across a book that could be used to support literacy in science, written by an experienced science teacher. The book, titled “William’s Words in Science” is written by Dr William Hirst and is a useful reference material for students at KS3 and higher. The copy I received was a weighty tome of over 400 pages and with a useful plastic cover that would extend the life of the book in a student environment.

The main part of the book consists of a dictionary of useful words and terms, complete with definitions written in pupil friendly speak (although the format, language and fonts may make the book inaccessible to some low ability learners).

The dictionary part of the book could be used in multiple ways in the classroom, perhaps for setting word based cover work, for looking up key words during lessons, for checking spellings or looking up important scientists. This is where the author scores a master stroke and provides FREE materials, categorised by year and topic that could be used without the book, but that add an extra layer of depth and usefulness to the book.

Not only does “William’s words” provide a useful reference material for students, but there are extra reference sections in the book that cover common formulae, cycles, periodic table, skeleton amongst other topics.

I can heartily recommend this as a reference material, both for schools and for individual students. I would like to see a set of “William’s Words in Science” in every school, being used to improve the scientific literacy of our students.

Visit the William’s Words site to find out more about this book and to download free supporting resources.

Reduced scale chemistry – the way forward for saving money?

Posted on by
Reply

Times are hard.  With resources being diverted to save front line staff, money to pay for chemicals and practical activities may be reduced.  I’ve come across reduced scale chemistry before (at ASE events) but was impressed by this video from CLEAPSS that I decided to give it a go.

Like all good science teachers I had to try the experiment myself and I soon produced a small plug of soap with minimal effort (and measuring chemicals was simple and easy since they are both liquids and  small quantities).

The final test of the technique was carrying out the practical with students.  Students found the CLEAPSS method easy to follow and by the end of the lesson we had several samples of soap.  The only problem was getting them out of the test tube since our rape seed oil based soap was very firm, but the students all got to experience making a useful chemical product (handy if you teach BTEC Level 1 Applied Science!).

I’ve tried micro-scale chemistry on courses before but this is the first time I’ve used it with students.  Small quantities of liquid were easy to measure with syringes and pipettes, and having everything in one test tube reduced the opportunity for mistakes.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has tried reduced scale chemistry with their groups and for which practical activities.