The principal focus of science teaching is to enable pupils to experience and observe phenomena; looking more closely at the natural and humanly constructed world around them.

They should be encouraged to be curious and ask questions about what they notice. This often requires us to use their areas of special interest or key motivators as a starting point. 

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Pupils are helped to develop their understanding of scientific ideas by using different types of scientific enquiry to answer their own questions e.g. what happens when I drop this? what does this smell like? what happens when I mix these two thing together ; including observing changes over a period of time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out simple comparative tests, and finding things out using secondary sources of information e.g. testing out the same explorations in different environments, looking at videos on YouTube or looking at a book in the library.

 

Most of the learning about science should be done through first-hand practical experiences, but there should also be some use of appropriate secondary sources, such as books, photographs and videos.