Making Every Science Lesson Count

Book excerpt: Making Every Science Lesson Count: Six Principles to Support Great Science Teaching goes in search of answers to the fundamental question that all science teachers must ask: 'What can I do to help my students become the scientists of the future?' Writing in the practical, engaging style of the award-winning Making Every Lesson Count, Shaun Allison returns with an offering of gimmick-free advice that combines the time-honoured wisdom of excellent science teachers with the most useful evidence from cognitive science. The book is underpinned by six pedagogical principles challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, feedback and questioning and provides simple, realistic classroom strategies that will help teachers make abstract ideas more concrete and practical demonstrations more meaningful. It also points a sceptical finger at the fashions and myths that have pervaded science teaching over the past decade or so such as the belief that students can make huge progress in a single lesson and the idea that learning is speedy, linear and logical. Instead, Shaun advocates an approach of artful repetition and consolidation and shows you how to help your students develop their conceptual understanding of science over time. Making Every Science Lesson Count is for new and experienced science teachers alike. It does not pretend to be a magic bullet. It does not claim to have all the answers. Rather the aim of the book is to provide effective strategies designed to help you to bring the six principles to life, with each chapter concluding in a series of questions to inspire reflective thought and help you relate the content to your classroom practice. In an age of educational quick fixes, GCSE reform and ever-moving goalposts, this precise and timely addition to the Making Every Lesson Count series provides practical solutions to perennial problems and inspires a rich, challenging and evidence-informed approach to science teaching. Suitable for science teachers of students aged 11 to 16 years.