Science is a very important aspect of the Curriculum for Excellence. Our world is forever evolving from developments in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), with many new career paths being introduced in this domain. This means that it is vital that we as teachers positively encourage science as much as possible to make as many children interested in it as possible. There are many ways of doing this.
A teacher can make lessons challenging, engaging and enjoyable for learners by involving stimulating activities. They can also include flexibility and choices in their lessons to help meet the needs of all learners. By doing this, it will help raise all pupils confidence as they won’t feel the lesson is too difficult or easy.
Following this, a way to positively encourage science is to create a positive ethos in teaching the subject. If you as the teacher act inspiring about the subject, it will automatically make pupils feel the same way. Also by creating this positive ethos it encourages pupils to feel at ease answering out and they wouldn’t hesitate to ask questions about the subject which promotes the development of thinking skills. This in turn shows that with pupils asking questions they are more interested in the subject, meaning they will gain more from lessons.
Furthermore, active learning is extremely effective in science. If the pupils are actively involving themselves, they will get out everything that they put in in the lesson. This increases the efficiency of their learning greatly as they are automatically more engaged without even realising than if they were just sitting writing notes in a jotter. Lessons can be made much more active by involving investigations and experiments. By asking pupils a variety of questions throughout investigations it helps them to consolidate their knowledge and increases their curiosity, for example it gets them to make predictions of what could happen at the end of an experiment or think deeper about why certain things are happening. By increasing their curiosity it encourages them to want to find out more and more about the subject, which inspires them to discover more and develop their thinking skills even further. Science is an amazing subject in the way that it can also involve lots of out-door learning and school trips. This helps children become even more inspired as it gives them a change of scene out-side the classroom which increases the active learning the children get to experience as they see the subject in a different environment.
Lessons that involve working collaboratively help to allow pupils to discuss and reflect on ideas through group discussions. Group work builds team working skills and encourages pupils to actively involve themselves by making good contributions to discussions and also by listening to the opinions of their peers which helps them to become more open-minded as individuals. Through discussion, pupils can learn much more than just writing as it gets them to think deeper into what they’re learning and it applies their knowledge much more which makes it easier to consolidate what they’ve learned. From this, a good lesson would involve less use of copying notes, cutting out sections from handouts, pasting into jotters and colouring in as these tasks don’t really actively engage pupils much at all. Copying notes is not stimulating enough as an exercise in science lessons as it is a much more practical subject. By making the lesson as practical as possible it brings more hands on work for the children which makes them much more inspired by the subject as they enjoy it more through learning actively.
Lastly, adding relevance to lessons has a massive impact. For example by basing the lesson on current environmental, scientific or technical issues it helps children to see a purpose in why they are learning what they are learning. A good example of this would be learning about the water cycle as children see the rain very frequently and already have a background knowledge of it. It means that they can talk about what they have learnt to their parents or carers with passion as they see how what they learnt is connected to their everyday lives, inspiring them to find out even more.
After the science workshops, they have raised awareness to me the importance of teaching science to children as it is important to get as many people to be inspired by it as possible. It is my job as a teacher to make my science lessons as stimulating and inspiring as possible to allow pupils to figure out if it is the area they wish to have a career in and I will do everything that I can to achieve this.
