Teaching

Science in
Primary Grades
Text of Report
 THE SKILLS LEARNERS NEED TO LEARN SCIENCE: PROCESS SKILLS

Hellen Ward

DEVELOPING LEARNERS’ PROCESS SKILLS

Learners’ process skills are limited and unsystematic and are characterized by trial
and error exploration.

 The simpler skills involve observing, identifying, classifying, questioning and

performing simple test, but are fundamental to the development of more
advanced skills such as planning, predicting and data interpretation.

 Gott and Duggan characterize procedural understanding as ‘the thinking

behind the doing’. This thinking is the building block for understanding the
notion of evidence.

 Science is built on the idea of cause and effect. This process begins in the
Early Years with a focus on how things are either the same or different as a
result of carrying out simple tests.

 Millar and driver (1987) maintain that the process approach should be seen as
the means by which science concepts are learned, and not that they are a
buy-product of learning science; and Klahr and Simon (1999) encouraged the
specific teaching of process skills to primary-aged learners.

Observation is a basic skill that links many of the other identified processes, often
leading into and enhancing the quality of other process skills.

QUESTIONING AND QUESTION-RAISING

It is widely accepted that learners bring previous knowledge to a new situation and
this form the basis upon which to extend their understanding (Driver et. Al., 1985).

 Questioning, observation and simple testing are key aspects in developing

learners’ understanding of the world.
Ways to encourage learners to question

1. Question box – this method help show the learners that their questions are
important and valued and that they can be effectively linked into classroom
work.

2. Problem corner allows learner to pursue questions in their free time.

3. Question board – Strategy that encourages the involvement of learners.

4. The KWHL Grid (K- what I know? , W- what I want to know, H- how I will find
out, L – what I have learned) – It facilitates learners raising question at the
start of a unit of work.

 The maintaining curiosity report indicates that curriculum approaches that

focus on questions set up: “a climate of inquiry at start of the topic by asking
pupils what they want to find out. That approach particularly effective for
science, because it allows teacher to set up practical investigations to answer
questions that pupil have raised, providing a motivating purpose and context
for learning (HMI, 2013 :44)

 Time for science in the primary curriculum has become squeezed in the
recent years and Tomorrow’s world ( CBI, 2015) suggested that ‘unless
science is exciting, interesting and challenging in primary school, the pipeline
will clog long before secondary level’, and that 53% of the primary teachers
they questioned thought that science was less of a priority in the primary
school curriculum over the last 5 years.

GLOBAL QUESTIONS

Teachers can help to scaffold learning related to investigative work by providing a

“global questions” at the starting point. This enables learner to begin to identify
variables and offers a way whereby they can generate a range of appropriate
questions within an investigative work.

 Modelling allows learner to develop their skills further than if they were
unaided; however, the degree of support should be reduced over time.

 Learners should be provided with opportunities to practice their newly

developed skills, i.e. given the opportunity to generate new questions using
the same global questions but with different variables.
VARIABLE IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION

Variables are also called ‘factors’. Those that can be changed termed the
independent variables while those that can be observed and or measured are
called dependent variables.

PREDICTING

Prediction is commonly practiced in most primary classrooms. In fact, this could be

seen as one of the key outcomes of the national curriculums impact on practice at
key stages 1 and 2.

 Many lessons started with the question “what do you think will happen?”,
before any equipment is used or any activity that is undertaken.

 While prediction is important skill, perhaps this emphasis or overemphasis

should be evaluated.

 Franchesca Happe, one of the acclaim scientists, when asked what she would
do if her experiment is not worked, she stated “think about why it didn’t work,
every finding tells you something if you can think about it laterally. It is
important here to note that science develops through things that do not work
as much as through those that do and that this is true also of how learners’
understanding of science develops.

EQUIPMENT SELECTION AND USE

In the early years of primary education, learners are often expected to use
equipment provided for them by their teacher and only later are they required to
select their own. Learners need to be shown particular pieces of equipment and
need to be taught explicitly how to use them.

 While it is common practice in mathematics for time to be spent on teaching

learners how to use equipment by employing a range of approaches, in
science, equipment is often introduced within as part of an activity.

 It is better for scientific equipment to be introduced to the learners and that

this should be the focus of the learning intention within an illustrative activity.
This approach will not only lead to learners making informed choices about
the equipment to use in an activity, but will enable them to use the equipment
correctly and make more accurate measurements.
 It is crucial that before learners are asked to make and record any
measurements, they have been introduced to the relevant equipment in this
way, otherwise their results will not be accurate, and therefore not reliable,
and they will not be able to explain their findings.