VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
Empowering staff and students to engage with science through an interactive, interdisciplinary approach
Tell us about your school
Park Gate Primary School, based in Southampton, aims to provide pupils with a safe, nurturing environment which empowers them to thrive. With around 398 pupils, we aim to guide and support our entire school community through our values of Partnership, Achievement, Resilience, Kindness, Growth, Aspiration, Trust and Excellence to ensure everyone can succeed. We work collaboratively to provide vibrant and challenging learning experiences for all our pupils. To achieve this, we have designed and implemented a rich, ambitious and enjoyable curriculum. This includes both discrete subject teaching as well as project-led learning.
Why was it important for you to introduce an interdisciplinary approach to science in your school?
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n our View from the Classroom feature, this month we hear from Park Gate Primary School teacher Anna Greenfield. Here, she discusses why the decision was made to take an interdisciplinary approach to science - and why it works
As part of our ongoing mission to ensure we provide our pupils with the most engaging education opportunities, we wanted to make science not only enjoyable, but as interactive as possible to drive full and genuine participation from all pupils. During lessons, we explore the journey of scientific enquiry and help them understand the context around their learning in a way that brings topics to life.
As part of our work to achieve this, we discovered “The Mary Anning Project: A Fossil Hunter’s Story”, a multidisciplinary project
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www.education-today.co.uk
resource produced by The Association for Science Education. Aimed at 9-11-year-olds, the project helps pupils learn about fossils and evolution, while nurturing creativity, scientific discovery, discussion and debate; all key skills that can support them in other subjects and beyond school.
While subjects like these aren’t always the easiest to teach, the interactive nature of the resources helped engage pupils in understanding the importance of evolution, the role of Mary Anning and the relevance it has in today’s society.
What did this look like in practice? We introduce all our projects with a ‘hook’. For A Fossil Hunter’s Story, we used the project’s award-winning SEA DRAGON film, which helped set the scene for our pupils, introducing Mary Anning and her journey of uncovering her discoveries. The 15-minute film reflects the themes and main ideas that would then be addressed through the learning activities. The pupils were immediately mesmerised; they were curious to learn more about Mary Anning’s story and the role she played in determining the significance of fossils in our understanding of evolution.
Once the film had finished, we set out exploring the resources and in line with our Integrated Curriculum structure, had two classes focused solely on completing the project for two
June 2024
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