How can educators provide children with a genuine experience of carrying out an extended scientific investigation? And can teachers change the perception of what it means to be a scientist? These were key questions that lay behind "The Human Condition" project, an initiative funded by the Primary Science Teaching Trust to explore a new…

This article describes how a third grade class (ages 8-9) conducted a temperature-related science experiment. The goal of the experiment was to build on the following question: What would happen if you took three different thermometers, all reading the same temperature, wrapped them in three different socks, one woollen, one silk, and one cotton,…

Nowadays, in the United Kingdom, citizens take for granted clean water pumped directly into their homes, but it was not always the case, and is still not so in many countries. Could people clean water themselves if they had to and what could they then use it for? Would it actually be "clean enough" to drink? The author presents children…

Is a "fair test" the only way to carry out science investigations? Many children (and primary teachers) following the National Curriculum in England and Wales would answer "yes" to this question. This is because fair test investigations have historically been promoted in national assessment, published curricula, schemes of work and assessment…

Primary science has been a major success story over the past 20 years in the UK. Children like science, and teachers, who may not have thought of themselves as "science-trained", have taken to the subject with gusto. Part of this enthusiasm is because of the practical nature of the subject. Science in UK schools makes good use of practical work to…

Why do people so often view science and art as polar opposites? Is it a view that is relatively new, or has it always been the case? Why is it a good idea to combine the two subjects and teach them in cross-curricular ways and what impact does it have on the learning of primary-aged children? These were some of the questions posted by science and…

Since the demise of the key stage 2 (age 11) science Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) in England, teachers have been getting to grips with the issue of teacher assessment. Although arguably providing a more valid picture of children's scientific enquiry skills than a paper-and-pencil test, observations of investigations in progress face the…

When carrying out investigative work in the primary school, one often considers how familiar the children are with the context. This usually means considering the practical and life experiences the children have already had. However, it is also valuable to consider the children's literary experiences. Think about all the stories, novels, folk…

In this article, the author features "Primary ConneXions", an outreach project of Queen's University Belfast that is funded and supported by "Queen's in the Community". The format of "Primary ConneXions" is a primary school version of a real science research conference. Children do "PowerPoint" presentations, telling their audience about their…

The children from Locks Heath Junior School, Southampton, had perceptive and thoughtful views about "Why science?" In this paper, the children share their thoughts about what science is and why they think it is important. This paper presents only a small selection of their far-ranging thoughts on the subject. The emphasis on investigating in the…

Computer-aided modelling and investigations can bring the real world into classrooms and facilitate its exploration, in contrast to acquiring factual knowledge from textbooks. Computer modelling puts a whole new "spin" on science education, redefining and reshaping the classroom learning experience. The authors used information and communication…

Start at the end; that's the way to improve children's plans for investigations. Strange as it may seem, there are times when beginning at the beginning of an investigation is not the best way to start things off. To give children the opportunity to ask questions and plan what to do, sometimes it is best to get them first to consider others' data…

The benefits of using investigation for promoting scientific skills and enhanced conceptual understanding within primary science are well documented. ISE (2000) defines investigations in primary science as "the means of carrying out a fair test to explore some of the children's own ideas on how the natural or man made world works". However, a…

Crime Scene Investigators (CSIs) are the bridge between the police and forensic science specialists. Their job is to recover physical evidence from the scene of a crime, and try to make sense of it to interpret and explain what probably happened--which is just what scientists also do. They recover many things: objects, photographs of the crime…

It is easy to take for granted that children often work together in groups unproblematically on practical science tasks. However, after a recent exercise in a small rural church school the authors realised that they had not considered fully the limitations they would encounter with group work. They had spent four one-hour sessions working with a…