The Teacher Assessment in Primary Science (TAPS) Focused Assessment approach embeds assessment within normal classroom science activities. Essentially, a Focused Assessment is a lesson plan for a science inquiry, with an identified focus for assessment and guidance on how to interpret the children's responses in relation to expectations for that…

The author created a project aimed to develop and implement the assessment of working scientifically (WS) skills at Victoria Park Primary School. The author had previously identified a gap in the curriculum coverage and assessment of WS skills and his goal was to address the lack of provision for assessing children's WS skills and raise the…

Discovery sessions are usually based around a stimulus that the teacher has set up. When children are all doing something similar, watching what happens, talking about the science that is going on, the teacher has a way in to learn about their understanding, but then the teacher can take it deeper into exploring their skills in working…

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…

In September 2010 the Wellcome Trust published a detailed report which, for the first time, gave an in-depth analysis of the learning experiences of children in England and Wales as they prepare for science assessment at the end of their primary education (key stage 2), and the children's ideas about how the experience might be improved. The…