The "working scientifically" strand of the new primary science curriculum for England has re-emphasised the importance of children having opportunities to carry out different types of enquiries to answer their scientific questions. To promote this as an ongoing aim of primary science education, it is equally important for trainee primary…

For some children maths and science are exciting subjects that work side by side, one providing the opportunity to practise and hone skills and knowledge gained from the other. For other children the subjects are disjointed and seem to bear no relationship to each other. Science can provide a wonderful opportunity to practise a variety of math…

We cannot expect every child to leave primary school with the aspiration of becoming a scientist. It is, however, achievable for children to move through their education seeing the implications of science in everything we do. Questioning, predicting, interpreting data, drawing conclusions, communicating evidence and evaluating procedures are all…

This article describes British Sign Language (BSL) as a viable option for teaching science. BSL is used by a vast number of people in Britain but is seldom taught in schools or included informally alongside lessons. With its new addition of a large scientific glossary, invented to modernise the way science is taught to deaf children, BSL breaks…

In the author's opinion, if teachers do not bridge the boundaries between science and religion in the primary school, then many children are going to find it difficult to think about questions on topics such as "how Earth came to be" once they are in secondary schools, where they appear to be required to think in subject boxes for most of the day.…

Katie Ridley, science coordinator at St. Gregory's Catholic Primary School, Liverpool, UK, states that the inspiration for "science ambassadors" came after embarking on the Primary Science Quality Mark programme at their school. Ridley realized that science was just not recognised as such by the children, they talked about scientific…

The 2008 science curriculum for Wales marked a landmark change in the way teachers planned and delivered science in primary schools. It was at the vanguard of the more pupil-centred style of curriculum planning and pedagogy that supported the dual initiatives of improving the quality of assessment for learning and thinking skills in all schools.…

Insects are easily the most abundant and diverse group of animals, with over 24,000 species in the UK alone. They can be found in almost every habitat on Earth and are fundamentally important to ecology, conservation, food production, animal and human health, and biodiversity. They are a prominent feature of almost every food web in the UK and…

Stories are a place where magical things happen, where ideas are challenged, where the imagination runs free and questions are asked. They are a safe place, where the reader can walk about with new identities, try new ideas, process life's ups and downs and make new meanings. This makes stories the perfect place for creative learning. In this…

As a teacher, author Verity Jones found for many years that the science knowledge and understanding of the children she taught in year 6 (age 10-11) was being compromised by the pressures of a government focus on maths and literacy and a short-sighted approach to how to teach those subjects in a cross-curricular way. As the science coordinator for…

This article describes a recent Oxfordshire Big Science Event (BSE), which was combined with Science Week in Bure Park Primary School and involved a competition in which primary school children throughout Oxfordshire devised, carried out, and recorded data from science investigations to answer questions that interested them. Teams of children…

Although it is itself a core subject, science seems to receive less priority and designated time on the primary curriculum timetables. Curriculum changes over the years have resulted in science being taught with other subjects as part of cross-curricular topics, rather than as a "stand-alone" subject. This cross-curricular pedagogy in…

In this article, Lynne Bianchi shares a project that has proved successful with helping schools to discover and overcome their barriers. "Deep Dives" was a pilot project supported by the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT), initially piloted in Sheffield, and now forms part of the continuing professional development toolkit offered by…

When Bob Kibble told an eight-year-old girl that he teaches teachers, she asked him, "So, who teaches you?" The question stopped him in his tracks, and has probably been the question that has made him think more than any other question. Kibble poses the following questions to those who are teachers or teachers of teachers whose…

Assessment pulls teachers in many directions: it can help them to adapt their teaching to meet the needs of the children, but it can also help to skew the curriculum in the direction of things that are easily tested. There is a wealth of evidence showing the impact of Assessment for Learning (AfL) but is it really possible for whole-school…