Meap Support Materials For Science

When children begin secondary school, they already have knowledge and ideas about many aspects of the natural world from their experiences both in primary classes and outside school. This collection of support materials is designed especially for teachers of the early years in secondary school to give guidance both on the ideas which children are likely to bring with them and also on using these ideas to help pupils to make sense of their experiences in science lessons. The materials are in 24 sections, structured around three themes - life and living processes, materials and their properties and physical processes. Included in each section is a science map identifying key science ideas and also a set of learning guides which give detailed advice on helping children to develop these ideas. Written in collaboration with teachers, field-tested in schools and suitable for use with any published science scheme, these materials will be an essential resource for all science teachers who are planning teaching schemes and developing science lessons within the National Curriculum. A separate paperback, Making Sense of Secondary Science: Research into Children's Ideas comes with the file and is also available separately. This provides a summary of research in the area and a detailed bibliography for those who want to pursue certain aspects further.

Education has traditionally studied the world by bringing it into the classroom. This can result in situated learning that appears to students to have no relevance outside the classroom. Students acquire inert, decontextualized knowledge that they cannot apply to real problems. The obvious solution to this shortcoming is to reverse the situation and bring the classroom to the phenomena: to learn in a rich, real-world context. The problem with the real world is that it is complex and filled with interactions that are hard to sort out. The editors and authors believe that the right tools might help students with this sorting process and result in learning in rich contexts. This book is an account of a series of experiments designed to explore the validity of this insight.