As a science adviser, the author visits many schools and experiences many approaches to teaching and learning and the curriculum. Over the years, he has developed a very close working relationship with a very "special" school, Marjory Kinnon School, in Bedfont, Middlesex. The pupils present moderate and complex learning needs or autism,…

Since many people tend to use photographs as memory anchors, this author decided she wanted to know whether the process of capturing and manipulating an image taken during a learning activity would act as a memory anchor for children's visual, auditory and kinaesthetic memories linked to their cognitive learning at the time. In plain English,…

Winter in the UK has, in recent years, brought a significant amount of snow and cold weather. This was the case while the author was a trainee teacher on placement at a rural primary school in Dartmoor early in 2010. The day started promisingly with the class looking at the weather forecast on the interactive whiteboard and having a short…

Most schools visit Magna Science Adventure Centre on the back of careful planning and preparation. Magna is a fairly unique environment. "Steelos", the local name for the former Templeborough steelworks in Rotherham, West Yorkshire, was a vast plant. It became home to Magna in 2001. The building is over half a kilometre long and 45…

"Let's Think!" is a cognitive acceleration programme aimed at developing thinking in children aged between 5 and 6. "Let's Think!" was described in "PSR" 69 (Robertson, 2001) using the acronym CASE @ KS1, as it was known before publication by NFER-Nelson. Since then, "Let's Think!" has spread beyond the…

Ever since the publication of the age 8-14 materials by the Science and Technology in Society (SATIS) Project of the Association for Science Education (ASE), teachers have been looking for a similar resource for younger children. This book of units is a first step to answering that request. In the SATIS project, science and technology have always…

The original project, the foundation for all subsequent work, was set up in 1981 by Michael Shayer, with Philip Adey and Carolyn Yates, and became known as CASE @ KS3 (Adey and Shayer, 1994). CASE stands for Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education. The original CASE project drew on Piaget's work on the stage theory of cognitive…

The Eden Project in Cornwall sets out to educate about the interdependence of plants and people. Its tropical and Mediterranean biomes are housed in the largest "greenhouses" in the world, which serve as a backdrop to plants that grow in the temperate zones of the world, grown in Eden's outdoor landscape. Eden has aroused worldwide…