By Nicola Waller
The Annual Primary Science Conference held at the National Science Learning Centre, York, is always a highlight in my academic diary. I have been, without fail, for many years now both as a participant and as a presenter.
I will be there this year, networking in both of these guises on Tuesday 30 June this year. The session I have decided to offer is ‘Option F’ in a superb list of choices.It is titled ‘Exciting Science Activities for Early Years and Key Stage One’. I chose to offer this because, as an experienced primary school teacher, I have taught children in Key Stage Two for the majority of my career, however, after having my own children, I seem to have experienced a personal epiphany in just how wonderful and rewarding planning and teaching science activities for the youngest children in school can be. I also believe that sessions for Early Years and Key Stage One teachers can often be under represented at conferences and events and I wanted to do something to attempt to readdress the imbalance.
My workshop will be practical, whereby you can try out a range of carefully planned, tried and tested science activities either created for or adapted to suit children in Early Years and Key Stage One. I have put a real emphasis on the ‘tried and tested’ aspect of the session, as I believe it is of the upmost importance that every activity I bring ‘to the table’ has actually been carried out by me, in the classroom with children of the relevant age range. In many of my recent experiences, I have learnt from mistakes, evaluated and adapted ideas that I thought or presumed would work, but quite clearly required rethinking or improving. I have built up a bank of science lessons and activities that really do work, I am proud of the resulting product and I am looking forward to sharing these with you on the day.
Thinking scientifically in primary science
One of my favourite activities, which I will share with you on the day, requires children to think like real scientists and suggest what might be happening inside of my ‘magic bucket’. Using simple equipment such as different sized cups, sticky tape and drinking straws, you can make a mini model of the bucket to take away and show one possible way that the water could be changing from blue to red. The key learning outcome I aim to show is that even the youngest children can offer suggestions and ideas forwards and begin to understand that the bucket is working actually ‘not by magic’ but because of science!
The photo shows a Year 1 child demonstrating the ‘magic bucket’ he has made during this activity. You can see the blue water has been poured in at the top but red water is coming out at the bottom!