Excerpt from Aug 2008 STATIC magazine - Open-ended Science Research in the Classroom: Have a go! Help is at hand!
Excerpt from Aug 2007 STATIC magazine - TSTS Research Investigations: Don't miss this opportunity!
Excerpt from 2006 STATIC magazine - TSTS Research Investigations: Where do we start?

 

Young UK scientist career profile videos

[ CLICK HERE ] to view a set of 14 young UK scientist's short video careers profiles (Snapshots). These short award winning programmes were funded by the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) widening participation team and were produced by the BBC  They were first shown on BBC2 and now stream from the Vega Science Trust's website you can access from the link above.  They each give an insight into what it is really like to work as a young scientist in order to encourage the up-take of careers in science.

This series is linked to from some school resource sites and from the UK Government's Connexion's careers website. We hope to promote the programmes with the aim of applying for further funding to make more science career profiles so any links and advice would be much appreciated.

NOTE: Vega is a registered UK educational charity working to promote science - if you consider their resources useful, links to their site can only help to further their work.

 

Science Research Investigations.

Science Research Investigations. “Science research investigations are an excellent way to integrate all strands of the science curriculum. The various elements of identifying, conducting and interpreting an investigation can allow teachers to assess student achievement against both the Scientific Inquiry and Scientific Communication strands. In researching and writing up their investigation students should identify and comment on the relevant science concepts, bringing in the Science as a Body of Knowledge strand. If students are asked to comment on the relevance and implications of their investigation to society, this will bring in the Science as a Human Endeavour strand.” Denise Devitt PEO Science

 

 

Using Primary Connections as a springboard for TSTS

TSTS and Primary Connections.

Are you using Primary Connections to supplement your science program? Primary Connections is an excellent science resource which helps teachers to cover a range of literacy outcomes through science and provides a significant resource to support the busy primary teacher. However you may be unsure as to if you can still enter TST if you are basing your science on PC. Well be assured you can. You can work it in several ways. First each Primary Connections units has an Inquiry research focus as part of the Elaborate section of each unit. You can use the inquires suggested in the book as the basis for a student investigation and depending on the age group you can guide the children through it or have them work a little more independently to complete the investigation. For example Weather in my World is an early stage one unit where children make a wind measuring instrument. From that starter you can begin an investigation on an aspect of the weather.

A second method of approaching research investigations is to use a Primary Connections unit as a background to an area of study and a jumping off point. A unit such as Plants in Action, a stage 2 unit, can lead to further investigations of plant additives or conditions that affect plant growth. The unit Water Works also a stage 2 unit can lead to a variety of investigations into how to clean water or how to best use and conserve water.

While the themes for the poster creative writing and games section are tied to the National Science Week theme for the year sometimes these themes will fit with a primary connections unit. For example in 2009 the NSW theme is Science Without Limits. The unit Spinning in Space would fit well with this theme .