Teach Primary Issue 18.7

36 | www.teachwire.net by doing, makes it much more impactful. In my mission to get people feeling more passionate about the subject, therefore, I focused on bringing it to life through more practical and investigative work. I also tried to create links to science across the curriculum. Creating a buzz I began by introducing bee hives into the curriculum. This gave children first-hand access to different strands of the science curriculum including studying the lifecycle of the bees, the colony, honey production, pollination and the lifecycle of plants. The children harvested and sold the honey, linking the project to topics such as food safety, production, marketing and accounting (maths). Robotics and plant biology We linked our Year 5 curriculum to our whole-school plant biology one. The children learnt about building and coding a robot to harvest and plant crops on Mars. They also investigated the different A round 24 months ago, I noticed my colleagues had lost their love of science – and this was impacting the pupils. Too many teachers felt it an insurmountable chore to set up practicals, opting instead for worksheet-led lessons. This is not uncommon: the 2017 ‘State of the Nation’ report of UK primary science found that only 30 per cent of primary school SLTs thought that science was ‘very important’ as part of their curriculum. It’s important to nurture a love of science in primary education if we want children to continue to study the subject into secondary and beyond. So, as someone with a lifelong love of the subject, I decided to make it my mission to reignite a passion for science across my whole school. Practical, practical, practical I believe that to teach science effectively, and to ensure every pupil has the best possible experience, you need to encourage children to be scientists. You can’t simply rely on imparting your own (or someone else’s) knowledge. Learning how and why something works, testing theories and ideas, getting things wrong and working out why, are all crucial in science and, most importantly, for generating a love of the subject. Practical science helps bring theory to life; and learning conditions required to grow crops. The children built robots using the LEGO Education SPIKE robotic kits purchased from a grant awarded by Let Teachers SHINE. They then programmed their robots using the same kit. Outdoor learning We’ve used our forest school for a wide range of science lessons for each year group, including bug hunts, tree identification and the lifecycles of plants and animals. The project has also linked to PSHE and has been used to not only enhance the biology strand, but also to create a great place for children to relax, play and de-stress. Healthy hearts Linking it to biology, maths and PE, I introduced a healthy hearts project and raised money to purchase outdoor gym equipment and an electronic orienteering kit. These have been used to improve children’s health and to create interesting ways for them to investigate how the heart and circulatory system work. In all the projects, we challenged pupils to find things out for themselves. From looking inside a hive to better understand the lifecycle of a bee, to having the freedom to design and build a working machine, everything was geared towards getting children excited about science and discovery. FOR SCIENCE Spark a passion Teaching pupils to think and act like scientists is the key to unlocking the subject for every child, says Darren Eales “The use of ‘pupil voice’ has proved that science is now a subject that the children really enjoy”