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Why do we teach science?


Hester Binge Education consultant and trainer, specialising in science and wellbeing


Why do we teach science? Ok so it’s on the national curriculum but we teach it because it helps us understand and connect to the world we inhabit. We have, at some point in our busy lives wondered about the world that surrounds us. Why does the sea come in and out? How do the trees know when to lose their leaves? How come we lose our sense of taste when we get a cold? That’s why science can be truly cross–curricular. It can be the language we use to access other learning. Many other subjects need science to help them be understood.


Sir Paul Callaghan said, ‘Mathematics is the hand maiden of science’. Maths is needed to help quantify science investigations and English is often needed to help explain scientific findings and present them in ways we can access.


Most of us are confident in using maths and English to support in other lessons, but how many of us can confidently see the links between science and geography or science and history for example?


During my time as a teacher I taught all year groups and so have been at the starting point on many occasions, of working out the best way to organise subjects for the year ahead. As science is my favourite subject I always started with the science objectives. One of the reasons for starting with science is because some science lends itself to being taught at certain times of the year. By that I don’t just mean going outside in the summer term, as the national curriculum makes it clear that we should be accessing the outdoors throughout the year. For example, in the Year 3 plants topic there is the objective of: Explore the part that flowers play in the life cycle of flowering plants, including pollination, seed formation and seed dispersal.


To make this real and exciting for the children, they need to experience these different parts of the lifecycle when they are happening outside.


In the autumn term keep an eye out for when the fruits and seeds are ready to disperse, this can be any time from September to the mid–October. Go outside and be seed hunters, perhaps taking grid references for where the best conkers can be found. Once the science of how the different seeds can be dispersed has been explored, art and DT can be combined, and the children can create their own fantasy seeds, whilst


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