Explore, Discover, Inspire: Practical Work in Primary Science

This booklet, from Science Community Representing Education (SCORE), offers a range of practical activities and experiments for use in the classroom. Most are aimed at Key Stages One and Two students but a small number are provided for Key Stage Three to highlight the importance of the transition from primary to secondary levels. These activities may be particularly useful for middle schools.

Often activities can be adapted for use with more than one age group and, although they are categorised by purpose, many can fall into more than one category. These include teamwork investigations, extended enquiry, challenging existing ideas, out of the classroom, use of ICT, the ‘messiness’ of real data, stimulating demonstrations, and developing skills.

The activities are:
Primary level activities:
Make friends with a tree: living things
Peace at last: sound
Making sandcastles: materials
Curtains: light
Bone mystery: living things
Design a seed: living things
Paper towel magic: materials
Bishops can fly: forces
Colour mixing: materials

Transition focus: examples of lower secondary activities:

Biology
No stomach for it: modelling the effect of antacid medication
Biodiversity in your backyard: fieldwork using your school playing field

Chemistry
A matter of balance: the combustion of iron wool
Red cabbage indicator: making a pH indicator

Physics
Bolt from the blue: timing a 100 m run accurately
Feeling the pressure: investigating the effects of atmospheric pressure.