Children are naturally inquisitive and want to explore and investigate; in doing so they make sense of the world around them. Piaget (Pound, 2006) suggests children make sense by themselves, by making choices and taking opportunities. Through exploration and investigation they also make sense of themselves through sensory, firsthand experiences.…

The author has spent almost all his life working in and enthusing about primary science. From being a class teacher in the 1980s, to running Curioxity, a small hands-on science centre in Oxford, to lecturing trainee primary teachers at Oxford Brookes University and finally working with Science Oxford to help create their wonderful new Science…

"Minecraft" is a computer game that allows players to move around in a virtual world, building almost limitless creations with a vast array of cubic blocks with varying textures and properties. Its representative settings and processes link to the real world, making the game a valuable tool for both presenting scientific concepts to…

In this article, Jude Penny and Colin Forster explore what makes a good question and how this links with developing science capital. This article outlines research that was undertaken with primary student teachers at the University of Gloucestershire, focusing on the development of their ability to deploy an appropriate number of carefully chosen…

As student teachers, authors Emily Clark, Laura Hornsby, Abigail Howard, and Kathryn Pople were aware of what the class had already covered on World War 2 (WW2). It was unclear to them, however, what knowledge the children actually had acquired from the lessons. In this article these student teachers describe their use of concept mapping as they…