Vivian Cooke

This up to date text addresses primary science teaching in light of the new primary National Curriculum and the latest Teachers’ Standards. Aimed at primary trainees and teachers, it provides creative, inspiring and practical ideas and approaches for teaching the full range of science topics. Each chapter is aligned to an area of the new National Curriculum and provides key vocabulary, details of common misconceptions and how to address them, teaching strategies and activities, cross-curricular links and health and safety points. Throughout there is a strong focus on science subject knowledge development and how to translate this into practice in the primary classroom. The book also encourages readers to reflect on their own subject knowledge of science and challenges them to critically evaluate their teaching in order to become more effective.

This is essential reading for all primary science trainee and beginning teachers who want to strengthen their science subject knowledge. Each chapter tackles a major theme of the new national curriculum and breaks it down into key concepts. For each concept there is a detailed audit to help readers identify their current levels of knowledge and understanding along with areas for development. This is followed by concise definitions, key terminology, detailed examples and ‘in practice’ ideas to clearly relate theory to classroom practice. Finally, readers are invited to re-check their understanding and assess their level of competence at the end of each section. The text enables teachers to feel secure in their subject knowledge and confident about effectively conveying that information to their pupils through appropriate subject-specific pedagogy.

This up to date text addresses primary science teaching in light of the new primary National Curriculum and the latest Teachers’ Standards. Aimed at primary trainees and teachers, it provides creative, inspiring and practical ideas and approaches for teaching the full range of science topics. Each chapter is aligned to an area of the new National Curriculum and provides key vocabulary, details of common misconceptions and how to address them, teaching strategies and activities, cross-curricular links and health and safety points. Throughout there is a strong focus on science subject knowledge development and how to translate this into practice in the primary classroom. The book also encourages readers to reflect on their own subject knowledge of science and challenges them to critically evaluate their teaching in order to become more effective.