It can be a continual struggle to develop interesting and engaging experiments for use in primary schools, especially when related to electrical phenomena. Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of charged objects picking up paper or attracting hair, but there are number of simple and highly engaging activities within this area that are…

The purpose of this article is to outline some activities using resources that can generally be found in most kitchens and involve very little expense. It is based upon a workshop at the 2019 International Primary Science Education Conference (PSEC) in Edinburgh, which consisted of a wide variety of demonstrations of science in action, where…

Pupils often find the concepts of heat and temperature difficult to understand and differentiate. The authors believe that an image-to-writing approach can help pupils learn these two abstract concepts -- an approach that uses a series of guided enquiry activities involving heat and temperature. The basic premise is that pupils produce images to…

Teaching science through counterintuitive events is an effective way of engaging students in exploring science; such events motivate and involve students in solving problems with a high degree of creativity and critical thinking. This can push students into a seeking explanation mode, setting the stage for discovery. In this article, the author…

The author believes that science within a primary school is there to enable children to be interested in the world around them and to help them start to understand it, getting them interested in the very basics, and pointing out things around them that they had not considered, so that they can start asking the questions 'why' and 'how' and 'what'…

Anything messy, noisy, cute or unexpected will usually generate an excited reaction or a 'wow' moment for children when they experience a new or surprising phenomenon in science. not to lose the moment after the wow but to ensure that the enthusiasm and interest of the children is channelled into new learning experiences. This involves careful…

Easy-to-use classroom resources that support science teaching are always welcomed by time-poor teachers. Ideally these resources should be easy to find, useful and have the flexibility to be incorporated with minimal adaptation into an already full teaching day. Using food in the classroom is certainly not a new idea--especially for primary school…

The Eden Project, an educational charity based in Cornwall, is home to the largest rainforest in captivity and is a unique and awe-inspiring destination. It is one thing to talk about the idea of adaptation to environment but quite another to actually go into the rainforest and use your senses to explore up close living examples of ingenious plant…

The new English Curriculum requiring not only the study of sedimentary and igneous rocks but also understanding of fossil formation, is a great opportunity to make this one of the most exciting units any science teacher can present. When an animal or plant dies, it "disappears" completely as it is degraded by a range of organisms. It may…

We cannot expect every child to leave primary school with the aspiration of becoming a scientist. It is, however, achievable for children to move through their education seeing the implications of science in everything we do. Questioning, predicting, interpreting data, drawing conclusions, communicating evidence and evaluating procedures are all…

The Discovery City Learning Centre (Wirral, England) is an educational centre specializing in technology and science. The Centre has up to four primary school classes visiting every day to undertake workshops and utilize technology in all aspects of the curriculum. It also has a science laboratory that was specifically designed for use by primary…

Electricity can be a fun topic in a primary school class. It includes many practical experiments and links to real life contexts. However, teachers can feel daunted by the subject as they think they do not know enough about the science behind it to answer off-topic questions. The reason for the difficulty is that much of the science takes place…

Teaching children about circuits and the way electricity works is a "tricky business" because it is invisible. Just imagine all eyes are on the teacher as he or she produces for the class what looks like a ping-pong ball and then, with a wave of their hand, the incredible happens! This wonderful white sphere begins to glow red and a…

During a final seminar with BA year 4 science specialist trainee teachers, the authors posed a question about the difficulties associated with understanding magnetism. The ensuing discussion focused on a number of concerns commonly identified by students, which may also be of interest to classroom teachers teaching magnetism. Issues raised…

Children are engaged by finding out about science in the real world (Harlen, 2010). Many children will be cyclists or will have seen or heard about the success of British cyclists in the Olympics and the Tour de France. This makes cycling a good hook to draw children into learning science. It is also a good cross-curricular topic, with strong…