Natural Science Lessons for KS1We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This costs the purchaser nothing extra. In this way I can continue to provide free resources. Thank you for your support. |
This post contains affiliate links.
Anna Botford Comstock wrote the above back in the early 1900's, long before technology took over our lives. I would suggest that unless a child has been so trained from an early age, initially it will be hard to convince the child of the benefit of nature study: the motto being - catch them young! Although some modern children will keenly look with little encouragement, many will not. So many youngsters are used to fast paced images flashing accross a screen that they will need patient introducing to nature, which they may at first consider to be boring and irrelevant. Such is the damage that has been caused by neglecting nature study for so long. But do not despair. Young children are not set in their ways and an enthusiastic teacher can do much. This brings us to the first requisite for helping children to see the nature around them, that Anna Botford Comstock describes so aptly in the above quote; a teacher who loves his/her subject - in this case, nature! A well prepared teacher is the second requisite for teaching children to see what is around them. Nature study in practice
​So you have your class ready to go out into the playground and they are all excited at being allowed free from the shackles of the classroom. You take them to a tree in the winter playground and ask them to look at it and tell you what they can see. The children appear to look, and say 'a trunk', or 'branches' but little more. The unprepared teacher can't think of anything else to add other than a 'bark'. The children begin to get restless, so the teacher hurries them back indoors to the safety of a formal lesson with books and worksheets.
Now we shall see how the preparded teacher approaches the same scenario. This time, as the children stand by the tree, the prepared teacher draws their attention to the twigs and more particularly to the buds on them. S/he asks them what they are, what shape they are, what colour they are. If there was another tree in the playground, they would move on to look at that one, and compare the buds with the former. S/he may then challenge the children to look for different kinds of buds on trees that they see on their way home, or in their garden, or while out and about. This gives children something purposeful to do - far better than homework - out of school time. Back in class, the children could use a simple book to identify the trees that they looked at by the kind of buds they had. The teacher could ask the children to sketch some twigs that she had carefully snipped from the tree. The teacher could then give a final challenge to the children to let her know when the buds change. This encourages the children to keep looking for themselves, and provides them with something to report back to the teacher, furnishing another nature study lesson to 'go and look at what's happening to the buds'. What is the difference between the two situations? ​ Telling the children to simply 'Look at the tree' is too vague. Children need to be directed at something specific to look at and to be drawn into looking. This is successfully done in the second scenario.
​The second scene was also better because it not only directed children's looking in that instant, but encouraged them to look for certain things themselves, either at playtime, or out of school hours - and this is when the most important nature work will be done: by the child, by him/herself, as it is then that the child will really take ownership of his/her learning and the greater amount of learning will take place.
These explorations by the children themselves need not be elaborate and are not beyond the scope of all children and may be as simple as lifting a stone to look for insects, or looking along the base of a wall for the same. However, again, they should be directed and suggested by the teacher, who will be eager to hear of the children's discoveries back in class in subsequent days.
When the children come into school with their reports, the prepared teacher will be ready to use them as a means of further extending their lines of enquiry and observation.
The reports will be heard, discussed, shared with the class, and then enriched by stories, interesting anecdotes, poems, or with the help of good picture books. The observations could be extended away from the child's immediate realm to a wider one. For example, observations about cats can lead to discussions about lions and tigers, and so working from the known to the unknown which is so important with young children. Occasional trips to more distant places can be used to supplement the children's own work. Therefore - in order to best stimulate the children to look and enquire, the prepared teacher needs to know what is around the school to be seen and what is likely to be seen at that particular time of the year and more importantly - knows it is there to be seen so that children are not asked to do something that will disappoint. ​We hope you find our resources helpful to you.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Welcome Hello, I am Lilibette (B.Ed Hons Early Years, Studies in the Environment Specialism Course), here to encourage the next generation to love the natural world, and thereby learn the necessary skills and knowledge to look after it in the years ahead. Read more... Categories
All
Popular Resources |