Jules Pottle, a seasoned science educator and author, delves into the world of primary science education, exploring its current challenges and potential future. Jules shares her passion for making science playful, engaging, and relevant for children and discusses the importance of integrating storytelling into science teaching to spark children's curiosity and foster a love for learning. The conversation touches on the need for more resources, support for teachers, and a reimagining of the science curriculum to make it more exploratory and interdisciplinary.
About our guest
Jules is a part-time primary science specialist teacher at her local primary school. On her free-lance days she provides educational consultancy for companies such as DK, Pearson and the BBC. She also trains teachers in the Storytelling Schools method and using stories to teach science. She has written books for teachers on this topic and presents her work at conferences.
She also writes picture books which teach science through story. These books tackle common misconceptions and use an emotional, fictional story as the hook. The science is neatly woven into each story so that the children, listening, have a scenario to discuss and refer back to when they experience that science again elsewhere. The research behind the books shows that they have a very positive effect on the use of scientific vocabulary in classroom discussions. She has won two awards for these books.
Key takeaways
Quotes
"What makes you stay interested in something is having a bit of success. So if your skills are overlooked because they're not celebrated in any way, it's very disheartening and it makes you want to stop bothering, doesn't it?" - Jules Pottle
"It's always okay to discover alongside the children and to go, you know, I have no idea, but I'm going to find out before next lesson and then go and ask someone who can explain it and bring it back to them." - Jules Pottle
"So how do you fit in all of the curriculum when a lot of schools, although we probably should be doing two hours a week, they're actually only devoting one hour a week because they've got overload on the curriculum." - Jules Pottle
"The things the children need to know, you kind of have to almost redo the science experiment afterwards and talk them through it and point out what they should have noticed and extend that with diagrams or whatever so that we're really understanding what you've covered in that lesson." - Jules Pottle
Resource recommendations
Artful Fox Creative. Picture books to support science curriculum in primary schools.
Storytelling Schools. Training and resources on the Storytelling Schools method.
Thinking, Doing, Talking Science.Training and resources for teachers.
''Practitioner Perspective: Can a science storybook enhance children's science vocabulary and understanding?''available here.
''DK Stay Home Science Lab'' YouTube playlist available here.
Hamilton Science Resources, available through the Hamilton Brookes website, here.
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