One of Nicky's KS1 activities
The Annual Primary Science Conference held at the National Science
Learning Centre, York, is always a highlight in my academic diary. I have been
there, without fail, for many years now both as a participant and as a
presenter and I will be networking in both of these guises on Tuesday 30thJune
this year. The session I have decided to offer as ‘Option F’ in a superb list
of choices is one I have titled ‘Exciting Science Activities for Early Years
and Key Stage One’. I chose to offer this because, as an experienced primary
school teacher, I have taught children in Key Stage Two for the majority of my
career, however, after having my own children, I seem to have experienced a
personal epiphany in just how wonderful and rewarding planning and teaching
science activities for the youngest children in school can be. I also believe
that sessions for Early Years and Key Stage One teachers can often be under
represented at conferences and events and I wanted to do something to attempt
to redress the balance.
My workshop will be practical, whereby you can try out a range of
carefully planned, tried and tested science activities either created for or
adapted to suit children in Early Years and Key Stage One. I have put a real
emphasis on the ‘tried and tested’ aspect of the session, as I believe it is of
the utmost importance that every activity I bring ‘to the table’ has been
actually been carried out by me, in the classroom with children of the relevant
age range. In many of my recent experiences, I have learnt from mistakes,
evaluated and adapted ideas that I thought or presumed would work but quite
clearly required rethinking or improving. I have built up a bank of science
lessons and activities that really do work, I am proud of the resulting product
and I am looking forward to sharing these with you on the day.
By Nicola Waller, CIEC Advisory Teacher for the North East
Nicky at a recent CIEC event
