Primary School Science

Forensic Science Provides a Fun Extension to Primary School Class Science Lessons

Forensic Scientists play a major role when it comes to solving a crime, as they examine any useful material left behind unintentionally. Finger prints

Chemicals

Hair, blood and DNA

Casts and moulds of footprints

What happens in this school matters. If our children are in the wrong school, there is unhappiness, poor achievement, worry and even bad feeling. We blame the school, ourselves or our children. They are unhappy - not just in the school but also in the evening worrying about tomorrow and feeling wretched on the journey to school. We waste precious time visiting the school in unhappy circumstances instead of feeling proud and pleased.

With a bit of care you can set the scene to avoid this and help to give your child a good school career.

Think: what do you want for your child? 1. you want your child to be happy

2. you want a good education for your child

3. you want to be able to trust the school

Happiness

Happy children learn quickly and grow confidently. Children are happy if they feel purposeful and appreciated; praised for their successes; encouraged through their mistakes; and treated fairly along with their school-mates.

Visit the school and watch the children. Are children playing happily together in groups? Watch the oldest children - the ones who have been in the school the longest. How many isolated children can you see? Is there a sufficient number of adults supervising and are they engaged in conversation or activities with the children? You know your child. Consider how your child will fit into this.

Education

Check the school's test and assessment results. The subjects that are tested or assessed at the age of seven are reading, writing and maths; English, maths and science at age eleven. These are vital to success in schools - but does the school promote good learning in the other subjects? Is your child going to be able to enjoy physical activity through organised games, dance and gymnastics? How important does the school consider creative activities such as art and music? Will your child learn about the world and what happened in the past? Will your child be taught effectively and treated fairly? How well does the school support those pupils with special educational, physical or emotional needs? Read the most recent governors' report which should include test results as well as tell you something about the school's broader activities and recent improvements. Read the prospectus. Trust

How can you recognise a good school that you can trust? Visit the school; be friendly and open. Has the school made an effort to look bright and cheerful? You can often see how much the school values its children by the quality and cleanliness of the toilets.

How do the teachers talk to the pupils? Are there after school activities?

Does the school have a clear policy on responding with parental complaints? Is the school a safe place for children to be in? What does the school do about bullying?

Are children given responsibilities around the school? The best schools get pupils involved thoroughly. Some have a "school council". Ten minutes before the end of school is a good time. How do they feel about the school? Don't forget practical issues

People can explore, invent, experiment, record, accumulate knowledge and pass on this recorded knowledge to help them better exploit their environment and make sense of life, thus increasing their chances of success. Mastery of accumulated knowledge over generations requires intentional learning, invariably in a formal educational setting. And this is no different to primary school education. Students may come to the classroom with preconceived notions of how the world around them works and if their initial understanding is not engaged, they fail to grasp the basic concepts. The images from a children's story, Fish is Fish, can help convey the essence of the above principles. In this story a young fish is very curious about the outside world and his good friend the frog returns from the land, telling the fish excitedly:

As the frog talked, his friend visualised birds flying through the sky with wings, fish heads and bodies covered in scales.

Clearly all new understandings are based on a foundation of existing knowledge and experience and the younger the child, the narrower the foundation tends to be. Understanding how children actively learn from the earliest days of life can help in education strategies when at school. Research studies have demonstrated that infants as young as 3 to 4 months develop an understanding and expectations of the physical world. For example, by repeatedly throwing objects from their cot they understand that objects need support to prevent them falling to the ground; that stationary objects need a force applied to them to move; and the direction of that force will determine the direction of motion.

Young minds are easily distracted and have short attention spans. In turn, that knowledge could eventually become the students' understanding of Newtonian physics theory.