This study aimed to verify the efficacy of a strategy for science learning acquisition based on contextual, metacognitive and socio-cultural perspectives, strongly linked to the paradigm of conceptual change. The teaching model we adopted is based on co-operation for the realization of scientific experiences, and included direct observation, pair or group work, individual written reports and confrontation through discussion by the whole class. The experiment also aimed at verifying the efficacy of our learning strategy on the acquisition of skills such as debating, prediction, description, narrative structure and basic cognitive linguistic competence (the capacity to activate periphrastic, inferential, logical, critical, evaluative and aesthetic-poetic reasoning during the reading of a passage). Our sample consisted of 79 pupils, aged 7 to 10 years: the experimental group (18 boys and 22 girls) and the control group (19 boys and 20 girls). The result show that the children belonging to the experimental group, unlike those from the control group, were able to give reasons why the scientific phenomena they studied occurred and were better to explain these newly acquired concepts, producing spontaneously a large amount of metaphors and analogies, while they tried to understand, record and discuss what they had observed. (Contains 8 tables and 3 figures.)