Down to earth

“Help us! We can’t breathe properly. Convince Miss Brain to buy us different soil! Please!

Desperately yours, The Snails.”

Baronie Brain’s Year 5 class is on a mission. As nine-year-old Manu explains: “If you pour water on something with spaces in between it pushes the air out in bubbles.” They have already learned this from looking at things such as marbles and flour. Now they have to test two lots of compost to see which has the most air in it, and so help the desperate snails.

When they finish, they will write down the details of how they carried out the investigation. “Because,” Baronie Brain tells them, “you’re going to have to convince me of what you’ve done.”

The 20 children carefully pour water from large measuring jugs into beakers of soil. In the corner, Danielle, Manu, Ramazan and Ruya frown over their results. “At first we thought it was this one, then we thought it was that one,” says Manu.

“Last year we were doing the heart and keeping healthy,” says Danielle. “We put this cigarette in a bottle with cotton wool, and then squeezed the bottle in and out to make it smoke. Then we looked at the cotton wool. It was all yellow and brown. It was disgusting.”

“And we learned about balloons,” says Mark, at another table. “We had a coat-hanger and hung a deflated balloon on one side and a blown-up one on the other to see which was heavier.”

Welcome to junior science at Jubilee primary - plain, simple, low-tech, and very hands-on. The school is in a racially-mixed area of north London. Sixty-nine per cent of the pupils have English as a second language and 46 per cent are on free school meals.

“I don’t have a lot of money to go out and buy science resources,” says Baronie Brain, who is key stage 2 science co-ordinator. “So I improvise a lot. If you don’t have measuring beakers, you can use other things, like those plastic see-through cups from Sainsbury’s. We’ve also studied forces by building towers out of uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows.” She came to the school three and a half years ago, as a newly-qualified teacher with a degree in anthropology and environmental biology, a passion to teach science, and a steep learning curve in classroom practicalities ahead of her. “The main thing I’ve learned is that you mustn’t be over-ambitious in a practical session. You have to focus on just one or two aspects. All I wanted to do with the soil was to get them to relate the knowledge they already had to a practical investigation, and to write a set of instructions in a way that makes sense.”

She also learned to think her investigations through carefully, and to “practise first, to make them go right”, she says. “With this one, I had to find out what would show the biggest difference. We could have done it with things like sand and gravel, but that wouldn’t have been enough for them to see the difference. And when we weighed the balloons, I had to find the exact place on the coat-hanger to put your finger to make it work.”

But it’s OK if things go wrong, she says. “You turn it around and say: ‘Why didn’t that work?’ or ‘Why do you think that happened?’ And I always encourage them when they come up with ideas. When we poured water into a big tub of flour Danielle said: ‘What would happen if we poured the water off? Would it go back to being a powder?’ So I said, ‘Let’s do it and find out’.”

Her aims are to raise the profile of science in the school - “I’m always jumping up and saying ‘and science’!” - and to help colleagues find simple ways of assessing and teaching the subject.

“I’m always looking out for ideas. The Association for Science Education has some really good books, but I don’t rely on one scheme too much. I dip into others. The QCA sets out the learning objectives - Jthey’re good, they’re all there for you, and they progress them, but it’s really boring!” Her biggest hits include getting the loan of a skeleton to teach about the body, using balloon-powered buggies (bought as kits from the Southwark Science and Technology Centre) for teaching about thrust, air resistance and friction, and the “smoking machine” made from a squeezy plastic bottle and cotton wool.

School head Jacqueline Bruton-Simmonds says: “Baronie is also the out-of-school-hours learning co-ordinator, and science has spilled over into that, too. She’s started a gardening club and an environmental club. I’m not a great scientist, but once Baronie was here I quickly had to learn to include it in everything I do!” Divide and conquer

Balbinder Bhella’s Year 2 class is learning about “same” and “different”. “Divide yourselves into two groups,” she tells them. “The only rule is, you must have something in common with your group.”

They quickly divide into boys and girls, but later things go less predictably. Balbinder Bhella has given one half of the class bunches of leaves to look at, while the others focus on tray-loads of plastic animals. She wants them to work in pairs to sort these into groups, and the categories she suggests are lobes or no-lobes for the leaves, and slither, fly or walk for the animals. But she doesn’t mind if they choose to do something different.

After some thought, and a few false starts, Marriyah, seven, and Shamilah, six, come up with two animals that lay eggs, one that gives milk and one that slithers. The remaining 75 per cent are ruthlessly discarded into a job lot of “others”. Balbinder Bhella blinks in astonishment. She takes a moment to check their logic. Then she grins and cries “Brilliant! That’s brilliant! You’re amazing!” and the girls blush with pleasure.

Teaching science could be considered an uphill task in Alston primary, a large, busy school in inner-city Birmingham. Half of Balbinder Bhella’s class of 30 are on the special needs register, and most have English as a second language. But they come on in leaps and bounds as they go through the school, she says, and as a Punjabi-speaker herself, she knows that speaking a diversity of languages can be a strength.

Although a political history graduate, her enthusiasm for science spills out in everything she talks about, and as the school’s science co-ordinator, she is a bundle of energy. Among her many initiatives have been developing links with neighbouring secondary schools where Alston’s older pupils can work for an afternoon a week, and devising a detailed plan for assessing science throughout the school.

She also thinks displays are very important, and uses a central science noticeboard to keep an eye on progress across different year groups. “It’s a lovely way of monitoring without being intrusive,” she explains. At key stage 2, the number of children getting level 4 and above has gone up from 81 per cent in 1999 to 88 per cent this year. “And we also had our first level 6s,” she says proudly.

“She is wonderful,” says head Marilyn Bailey. “She is pro-active, and always follows things up. Our children are well below the national average, but we do so well in science.”

The TESPfizer Primary Teacher of Science Awards, run in conjunction with the ASE, will be presented during the ASE’s annual conference at Liverpool University by Science Year director Nigel Paine on Friday January 4. For further information, visit the ASE website at: www.ase.org.uk

WINNING TIPS

Other regional winners have offered these tips: Elizabeth Ward, Yateley infant school, Hampshire: “Use National Curriculum attainment targets to help shape your questioning. It works for any science topic, helps you know where to go next and gives you confidence. And cut down on recording. Find other ways of getting the message across, such as making a poster or giving a report.”

Eleanor Robson, Grindon infants school, Sunderland: “Get children fully involved by sharing the teaching objective with them at the start of the lesson. Encourage them to reflect on what they already know about the topic. Use paired talk to develop feedback. Develop questioning skills by displaying a list of questions and question stems in your classroom.”

Elizabeth Collins, Rhosymedre community junior school, Wales: “If you haven’t a microscope, try using the overhead projector. It can work brilliantly!Always try the experiment first, and make sure the variables can be clearly observed. When studying the effect of light, use broad bean seeds - cress seeds grow anywhere and don’t prove anything!”