Tom’s Advice
Science Skills
- Make sure you teach the science skills
- Teach the pupils how to share ideas and collaborate in small groups
- Do weird stuff sometimes…..be out of the ordinary
- Challenge the pupils; if they are getting it right all the time your planning is not good enough! Its too easy.
- Give time for the pupils to learn and enjoy their science
- Make the learning relevant to the lives of the pupils or fun or on your really whizzy days, both
Assessment; try to
- make sure pupils know what they need to practice to get better
- motivate pupils by getting them involved involvement in assessment
- share with pupils statements such as ….’we are getting better at……’ or we are practicing to….’ Keep it skills focused
- make assessment rigorous and consistent with good formative written comments in books and oral comments given to pupils that help them make progress
- Know what you want the pupils to learn
- Why you want the pupils to learn it! Discuss with the pupls their ideas as to why they think they need to learn ……..You’ll get some interesting thought back
- How the pupils are going to learn it. Again, discuss with the pupils how they think they could learn ….
- Share all of these with the pupils