This book provides teachers with 50 dynamic activities to teach science, through music, food, games, literature, community, environment, and everyday objects. The authors share tried and tested ideas from their collective 75 years of teaching experiences. For the busy teacher with little time to plan lessons, resources are provided that include…

Primary school topics involving abstract concepts are challenging to teach. Electric circuits can be simply constructed but complex to explain. New approaches in teaching students for understanding are needed to advance practice in primary science. This paper combines the strengths of multimodality research perspectives with variation theory to…

Floating and sinking (FS) is a key topic in science education, both at primary and secondary levels. The interpretation of FS phenomena, however, is challenging due to the difficulty of the scientific concepts and explanatory models involved (e.g., density, buoyancy), along with students' everyday experiences, which conflict with scientific…

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to revolutionize various sectors, including their incorporation into education, particularly in K-12 science education, which has become evidently significant. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis and systematic review that examines the incorporation of AI technologies in K-12 science…

The role of virtual simulations in the evolution of primary school students' mental models about electrostatics is investigated by analysing the answers of two groups of 9-10 years old pupils inside instructional sequences that combine two hands-on activities using balloons and jackets with the same activities using PhET simulations: one group…

This study explores the importance of scientific observation in primary education, highlighting how the use of observation sheets can facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and the development of students' observation skills. In the research, 153 second-grade students were divided into three experimental groups, each group observing a woody plant…

Science is one of the most important subjects for students at all educational levels. To promote engagement, hands-on experiments can provide a 'realistic and exciting experience of the content' (Holstermann, Grube and Bögeholz, 2010: 744) and hopefully facilitate motivation. In this article, George Stylos and Konstantinos T. Kotsis present four…

Sarah Bearchell is a science specialist working with primary-aged pupils and their families, with a passion for making science accessible for everyone. In this article she outlines how allowing children ownership of their hands-on activities leads to more engaged learning.

This article describes a lesson rooted in "tinkering," an approach to learning that encourages the use of authentic, hands-on experience to develop an understanding of content and physical materials. There were several desired outcomes for this lesson. First, the authors felt that tinkering was an appropriate approach to investigating…

By bringing everyday phenomena into the classroom, teachers can more readily engage students in authentic scientific inquiry. When working with young children, the best phenomena are those that students can directly experience and investigate. Meaningful phenomena can be identified by watching children at play, listening to the conversations they…

While curriculum designed as project-based learning is not suitable for use with every science standard, this methodology can be used when teaching concepts that naturally contain some flexibility. With small adaptations, teachers can implement these practices into the classroom regardless of the grade level. This article provides a detailed…

In this article, the author, a teacher at Cookridge Primary School in Leeds, West Yorkshire, reflects on the teaching of science from reception across the year groups. To really compare and understand the differences of teaching science in early years, the author looks at its place in the progression of science throughout primary school. The…

This article describes a self-guided, story-like game with creative drawing for grades 3-5 that teaches the evolution concepts of adaptation, natural selection, ecosystem dynamics, inheritance, and mutation following the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS"). Drawing reinforces concepts through emphasis on students'…

The scientists of the future will need to begin studying science to great depth, much earlier in life, in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of discovery and technological innovation. For this to be possible, engaging and child-friendly pedagogical approaches need to be developed that leverage the natural enthusiasm of young science…

To investigate how early elementary science and technology (S&T) education, with hands-on experimentation and inquiry-based learning, impacts pre-service teachers' attitudes and confidence to teach S&T education, we used a cross-sectional survey. Our participants were 27 pre-service teachers enrolled in an Ontario elementary S&T…