Learning and Teaching Primary Science

Learning objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

Introduction

While the learning and teaching ideas explored throughout this book make sense on paper, the challenge for many primary school teachers is implementing and sustaining these strategies and approaches in their everyday practice. You will have already read about many of the problems that you might come across, but we hope that you have also made sense of the many ways that you can overcome these potential barriers. This chapter will offer some further suggestions as to how you can make science work in your primary classroom and school.

This book is crammed with ideas, theories and practical tips to ensure that you have the coni dence and ability to teach science to children in primary classrooms. Science is central to our lives in the 21st century and a vital learning area in the primary school curriculum. We all know that the primary curriculum is crowded, with literacy and numeracy dominating teaching time (see chapter 9 for an approach to how this can be overcome). Teachers are also aware that there are high expectations of what schools should be able to do with an increasingly diverse student population. We recognise that there are more assessment, reporting and public accountability measures in place than ever before. Even though science is recognised as a priority for governments on both sides of the Tasman, few primary schools currently provide science education programs that are considered to be generally, let alone highly, effective. And yet, this is a crucial time in a student’s education. They will either be encouraged and turned on to an endlessly fascinating subject, or they will view science as a collection of boring facts and useless information which is all too difficult to understand.