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What could the future of primary education look like? How we can take things from where they are now and improve them to make the situation better for the pupils, for the teachers and for everybody involved in primary education?
In each episode, Ed Finch will be talking to guests within the educational field to talk about how things are, how we want them to be and the actions we can take to get them from here to there.
[00:00:00] Ed Finch: You're listening to the Primary Futures podcast from Hamilton Brookes, a podcast about the big ideas and big questions in primary education, brought to you in partnership with Oxford Brookes University.
How can we bring storytelling into the science classroom?
This is the big question my guest today, Jules Pottle, tackles in this episode. Jules is a primary science specialist teacher trainer, and author of picture books such as Gary Vity Uncle Jack Science Stories and many more. Let's join the conversation where I ask Jules what she sees in science classrooms that gives her hope.
[00:00:42] Jules Pottle: In a lot of schools, the science is great and often I'm invited into those schools where the science is great and sometimes I go into schools where the science really needs some support and they don't know which way to go and I'm doing things as straightforward as looking at the kit they have because, you know, if you don't have the kit it's really hard to teach. So yeah, I go in and look at the kit they have and I go in and help them with their curriculum and make sure that they've got everything on it that they should have, but often I go in and deliver something in the way of extra, beyond what's on the curriculum, and I help them with stories that link to the curriculum, we do training on how stories link to the curriculum and in those schools you can see how keen people are and often the science coordinator is super keen and really wants to learn and really wants to help everybody else learn, but there's a lack of confidence generally in teaching a hands on type lesson and pulling the threads from that, that are the science that's in the curriculum. So, what I can't bear seeing, I know we've talked about this before, we can't bear seeing is a lot of sheets and sheets say you've covered the content, but they don't show how much understanding there is and in order to teach a practical lesson where you're actually doing the science and then pull out from it, the things the children need to know, you kind of have to almost redo the science experiment afterwards and talk them through it and point out what they should have noticed and extend that with diagrams or whatever so that we're really understanding what you've covered in that lesson and it's really hard to do that in an hour.
[00:02:21] Ed Finch: Yeah.
[00:02:21] Jules Pottle: So how do you fit in all of the curriculum when a lot of schools, although we probably should be doing two hours a week, they're actually only devoting one hour a week because they've got overload on the curriculum.
[00:02:32] Ed Finch: So when you visited those schools that really make you happy and you're like, oh yeah, the science is singing in this school, what sort of things are you seeing there that give you that reassurance?
[00:02:42] Jules Pottle: Science in context. So the science feels real. It's not something that lives in a box and comes out and hello, this is science, and we put it away, it's looking at science and the world around us and I'm seeing children asking their own questions and they're being, I mean, that shouldn't dominate the curriculum because we have to teach them. We're not just letting children. Find out whatever they want because if you left it to children it would be mentos and coke and maybe what's in the pond or rocks, these are the things that children get really excited about but it should have an element of the child going but why does that happen? And in order for the children to ask those questions, the first thing you have to do is play. So you kind of have to get out some stuff and be relaxed enough as a teacher to let a bit of unstructured investigation happen all over the floor, all over the tables, in the corridor. It's noisy and they almost are hard to get back from it because they're so involved in it, but then you say, what did you find out? And they love finding out something for themselves. It stops being your science, the teacher's science, you want me to know this is what I found out, I did this and I discovered something really cool. Then they ask, but why doesn't it work when I do this? And then you can start building lessons around what they want to find out, but you've already sort of set this is the context in which we are finding out.
[00:04:05] Ed Finch: Right, yeah. So there's some barriers on there. I can, you know, that sounds like primary heaven to me. It's like the children are getting the stuff out and being guided to make their own intelligent questions, harnessing real curiosity. But I can absolutely imagine at least four or five reasons why a teacher might not do that and I think the mess is only one of those reasons.
[00:04:30] Jules Pottle: I think another reason is lack of confidence because they haven't done science since maybe their GCSEs. So if you ask a room of people teaching science, whether they're, you know, taking a group as a TA or whether they are working as a whole class with the teacher, those teachers, 97 percent I think it was, the last time I looked up the data, 97 percent of teachers don't have a science degree. So three percent do, ninety seven percent have history, music, English, or an education based degree and that means that they're not necessarily comfortable just playing and seeing where it goes, because they feel like they won't have the answers at the end of it. But it's always okay to discover alongside the children and to go, you know, I have no idea, but I'm going to find out before next lesson and then go and ask someone who can explain it and bring it back to them, that's a really great way of learning. So my foundation class came to me yesterday in the middle of cooking crepes for French Day. They came in and went, sorry, this is a really bad moment and they brought me a letter that said, Mrs. Pottle, please, will you come and teach us about rain? Because they'd had this whole discussion about where it came from in foundation, I love that when that happens. So I'll go down tomorrow, no, today after, teaching fractions, I'm going to go and do a bit of rain with foundation stage and I love it when they come up with those questions, but you also have a teacher that's going to grab the opportunity because they know that's useful and you also have to have teachers further up the school that feel comfortable teaching electricity and why are those two looking like they're off, those bulbs? Why don't they look like they're on? They have to have the understanding and when I do science training, I go into staff meetings with teachers and I get out the electricity box, it's amazing how many people have misconceptions or a lack of knowledge because they haven't done it properly since they were 15 and it's not their fault, it's not part of initial teacher training as much as it should.
[00:06:35] Ed Finch: Not their fault, but we, you know, we have this assumption that our teachers have the subject knowledge in science and geography and history and design technology and art and I don't know where we cut into that because to me, that's the elephant in the room, in just about every conversation about primary is like, they don't know it themselves. So it's very tempting to go to a popular internet site and download sheets. So where would you cut into that? Because I think, you know, initial teacher training is already busy.
[00:07:07] Jules Pottle: It's chock a block and you've got to be able to hold a class, you've got to be able to teach the English, you've got to be able to teach the maths.
[00:07:12] Ed Finch: That's probably not where you're going to learn about resistance and you know.
[00:07:15] Jules Pottle: Because it's too specialised but actually in Brookes they have one of the best trainings, I think, which is in conjunction with Science Oxford, they developed Talking, Thinking, Doing Science. I may not have got the words in the right order. Talking, Doing, Thinking Science. I'm not sure which way around it is, but it's a really good training because they take one teacher over the course of a year and they have homework to test it out in between different days of the training and they also get given kits to do the science, so they're not going back to school and trying to run something when they haven't got any mirrors or they haven't got any pots of the right size or thermometers, you know, they go back with an understanding, they explore the understanding with the teachers and then they show them ways to make it fun and applied and in context, lots of investigations or challenges to go back and try in their classroom and loads of talk, because there's definitely something to be said for. You can teach a lot of the curriculum with demonstration and talk. So if you don't have kit for 30, a good demo with all the talk layered up going through and getting the kids to join in before they fully understand. So you've got that dialogic back and forth between children going, is it this? Is it that? Oh, it must be this because of that. All of the thoughts out in the classroom with good structured talk, you can do stuff through demonstrations, but again, you can't do that until you understand the science. So you need a good chunk of science training for teachers to happen maybe after the, you know, initial teacher training in that first year.
[00:08:54] Ed Finch: Yeah, but then I'll have this conversation with other subject leads and they'll quite rightly say the same again, won't they? I think geography, to me, is one of those subjects where lots of people have this sort of folk knowledge, which is something I'd like to explore a little bit. They think they basically know the stuff. Like, they think they know what a continent is and then you ask them what a continent is, and it turns out that's a great deal more complicated than they'd thought and simply being able to name Africa, North America, South America, etc. doesn't quite get you there. So I think for a lot of my primary colleagues, they kind of remember science from school and it is quite memorable, because they might remember the exciting bits and think, oh yeah, I remember when we did make our bottle rockets, I remember when we did put the bicarb with the vinegar. But it's when the kid asks a question, they suddenly go, oh, I didn't know this stuff. One of the bits of folk science that I think a lot of teachers think they're clear on and aren't is like metal things feel cold, wooden things don't feel cold, that's fine, ask me any question about that, I'm stuck. Yeah. So I think this thing that we remember bits of science is actually really unhelpful to us and we need to unpick.
[00:10:09] Jules Pottle: Yeah, I mean, massive misconceptions I come across are all metals will be attracted to a magnet. So I do a fair amount of editing books and that comes up into a lot of them, that evolution is something the animals sort of choose to do and it's quite quick, that's another point. set of misconceptions and classification that mini beasts, I mean is a one of those words that encompasses so many things and what most people normally means it are invertebrates and a few smaller vertebrate species, which is not a great way of grouping stuff and is inconsistent for the children. They don't know that spiders aren't insects, you know, there's lots of bits which adults have gone all the way through school, like you say, sort of having a surface layer understanding, like you say, a sort of hobby version, rather than really understanding and I think if you still have those as a teacher, it's really good to find that out and to tackle it and to then try to unpick that for the children as well.
[00:11:12] Ed Finch: So, when you get invited into a school to do your consultancy work, they've noticed that science is something they want to work on, haven't they? They've said, well, this isn't a cheap piece of work for them, they're employing you to do it. I guess my worry is about those many schools that haven't noticed that and think they're fine.
[00:11:31] Jules Pottle: Yeah, I mean, I think most schools, well interestingly I'm going to go back a bit. Ofsted said it was something like 24 percent of schools had evidence of their children being over the line, so, you know, at expected level, at year six when they do their random testing. But 77 percent or something like that, I haven't got the numbers, were reporting that they were over the line. So I think that some people don't know, like you say, they think it's fine, and it's not necessarily fine and because we're no longer having SATs tests, there's no sort of actually prodding that to see if it's true and if they've got a lot of priorities, if you're in an area where, I've done quite a fair amount of work in Tower Hamlets, for example and the constant turnover of people because it's an area where they move to first when they arrive in the country, and then they move out again fairly soon, such that some of the classes were having an intake of 30 and there were only about two or three of those children still there in year six. There's a high turnover and the language was the priority and being, they have the same rules about SATs, they still have to get everybody up to a certain standard, so they focused entirely on morning and most of the afternoon on English and Maths and then they did science for six weeks, along with six weeks of art, DT, music, PE, all of those things sort of happened in the six weeks after SATS and that was for the whole school, not just for year six and yeah and so there's, and it's because the constraints upon them are such that they have to get over the line for phonics in year one and they've got to get over the line for year four times tables and they've got to get over the line for SATs in English and Maths and science doesn't prod that anymore and keep it at the top, because there isn't the SATs anymore and whilst I don't believe in SATs being the way to do it, it forces that school to then over prioritise just the English and Maths, because otherwise they're gonna look like a failing school and it's not, it's just the circumstance they're in.
[00:13:41] Ed Finch: It is, it is and I shouldn't think there's anyone in that system who likes it. I'm quite sure the head teacher doesn't think.
[00:13:48] Jules Pottle: Yeah. That it's a brilliant way to be.
[00:13:50] Ed Finch: Yeah, they're worried about getting children up to a standard where they can access the next bit of curriculum and whether they're getting to Key Stage 2 or going on to secondary. They're worried about that and of course they're worried about inspection and what that's going to look like. So I think we need to, you know, help colleagues because we've got to be off. I've got friends and colleagues listening to this who probably feel like us that science is one of those things can really capture a child's curiosity, can really set them on and make them think maybe school's not such a bad place after all, I like coming here, I get to learn stuff, how would you pitch it to that? Let's pitch it to that head teacher who's in that situation and go, we just have to do phonics, we just have to do math, this is what's going to be inspected, this is what's going to be checked at the end of key stage. How do we make them say, no, you need to get the science in.
[00:14:38] Jules Pottle: Well, do you know what? What makes you stay interested in something is having a bit of success. So, if your skills are overlooked because they're not celebrated in any way, it's very disheartening and it makes you want to stop bothering, doesn't it? So, for the child who comes in who doesn't have language, the same language as us. So they don't have the ability to show their skills in English, written English or spoken English yet, but they do have the understanding and the ability to sort of follow a thread of what is happening in a physical situation, in a scientific context. Those are the children where it can be the moment that they show how bright they are. So I have got tales from every class I've taught where it's a child with poor English, a child with some kind of issue that's stopping them from writing well or sitting still well, or you know, children who have If you have some kind of difficulty, if you put, you know, some kind of practical activity in front of them and talking about that you remove the writing, you remove the numbers, you just talk about the practical activity, it's amazing to watch them fly and so for those children, they have their moment of being recognised for being clever in that way and for that lesson, they're not the one that's always being told, you know, come on, you know, having someone on their back, they're being celebrated. So, at the moment, I've got a little girl in my class who has come from a different country and her language is not yet completely fluent. But it's mostly there and in science lessons her focus is amazing and she is absolutely on it and she is giving me, not always the right word, but I understand what she's trying to say because we have enough language between us now that I can understand her approximations and she can, you know, get enough.
[00:16:33] Ed Finch: And she's really developing her speech there. So this, I mean, this is the, maybe this is the sell for this poor harried head teacher, is to say, this is a place where speech is meaningful and where it is precise and where it's exploratory.
[00:16:49] Jules Pottle: Absolutely, and oracy can absolutely happen because they need it to, tell you, you know, it's very motivating. They...
[00:16:56] Ed Finch: Being the generation of teacher that I am, I would say, brilliant, this is where I'm going to get my, my, find ways into writing here, and maybe we're not allowed to do that now, maybe subjects have to stay in their boxes, but I think that child sounds like they're ready to mark, make, they're ready to record in some ways. So how would you get past this vocabulary thing? I think secondary colleagues, possibly more than primary, but I think primary too, we sort of think, you know, science is very vocabulary heavy and we need to pre teach it so that the child can use it. I mean, how do you feel about that? Can I meaningfully use a word before I've encountered it?
[00:17:33] Jules Pottle: Yeah well, I'll give you a for instance of a conversation we have, it's not science, but it'll illustrate the point. She said I was playing with my like sister and I said, cousin? Yes, cousin. So if you feed back the correct vocabulary in that situation, then she can, she can, you know, assimilate it but interestingly, I've done some research as part of the Primary Science Teaching Trust College. So I've worked with them, they've included me in the Primary Science Teaching Trust College, which is really lovely and that allows you access to some grant for research.
We made a picture book, my colleague Rufus and I, we made a picture book called The Molly Bird and it was in order to tackle the misconception that animals choose to change in order to evolve. They get to the edge of the snow, these brown bears, and they go, Oh, this is inconvenient, I show up, oh, there we go, I'll go white, that'll sort it and that's kind of what, children think happens, that it's immediate and that it's chosen. So we chose to tackle that misconception. We wrote a picture book and the children read the picture book and the misconceptions were in there and then you ask the right questions, you hear their misconceptions. So having done that, we asked the question, can you learn through a picture book and the answer was, yeah, you totally can learn through a picture book. But what's really interesting is they chat a lot, but we didn't quantify that. So we went on to do another, book in the same sort of vein called Jasper the Spider, which teaches how spiders are different from ants, they're not insects, they don't have the same body shape, but it's an emotional story, they're both emotional stories, the science is the context that the story's in, but ultimately we wanted to write a book that you'd want to pick up and read anyway. So it has an emotional arc, they both have emotional arcs and we asked the question on that one, do they retain the knowledge for longer? Maybe the story helps them to retain the knowledge for longer. So we compared it to a worksheet and the answer was actually they learn it and they retain it very much the same as the worksheet, but they remember and use the vocabulary more and when we then investigated that in a quantitative way rather than that was sort of, you know, by the by evidence. We said, right, okay, let's count the correct scientific terms used after the book versus after a worksheet, or a non fiction page, not a worksheet and the children who read Gary Vity, it was all about gravity, they used the words far more, having read the book, than they did having read a non fiction sheet. It's like putting in a story makes it part of everyday language. It's just another word, it's not a special word on the sheet. It's just another word and when we broke that down, interestingly, girls, it happened much more for girls. So after they'd read the story, the narrative version, teaching them the right words, and teaching them what, how gravity works, I mean, not at any great level, they're seven, but teaching them that it pulls you to the center of the Earth, they were able to use correctly scientific terms and phrases, almost double the amount compared to the boys after it. So really interesting that it might be different for the genders.
[00:20:50] Ed Finch: That is interesting, but overall, if we think about the number of people we know who really enjoy reading popular science books, whether it's, you know, Alice Roberts books, or you know, any number of books which put the science into stories, whether it's the stories of the people who discovered these science, or it's the stories of how these things happen, I can think of so many books I've loved and I've loved them, I think, because I find science interesting, but what I'm really hungry for is narrative, and that's what my brain latches into.
[00:21:25] Jules Pottle: Absolutely.
[00:21:26] Ed Finch: So I wonder what's happened in primary that we've, some of us have forgotten this because it seems to me, you know, is it the structure of the national curriculum that makes us think we just have to shuffle through facts? Or is it because we don't have the background knowledge a lot of us teachers and so we're gonna, we're gonna stick to the book?
[00:21:44] Jules Pottle: I think some of it is there aren't enough good science stories out there. So there are some terrible science stories out there that are once upon a time this child and that child had an issue so they did some science and all the science words are in bold at the end and frankly I don't care. Whereas if you make the children care about the issue because there's something in the story that's emotional and there's a good emotional arc, they do care about it and the science is just part of it, the story becomes part of the vernacular and that's sort of what I'm trying to pursue here and there aren't that many people doing that out there, so it's not easy to just go, right, I need a book on electricity. There's no fables on electricity. So you have to kind of invent those stories and put them out there for them to get used. So that's, I think that's part of the problem, and part of the problem is that feeling that science lives in a box and you know, as I said, not that many teachers have that science background to look at a situation and go, oh, that's a really interesting bit of science going on there and they're bringing that, you know, bringing the science out of it. They just go, well, today we're doing geography and this is where the geography lives and the science lives in this box and they don't have a way of sort of seeing it cross those boundaries. So hopefully the work I'm doing helps with that because there are books out there, they don't have to be written for science to pull the science from. So like Traction Man's my favourite, Traction Man is a great book by Minnie Gray and in it the Traction Man wears all these different outfits for different reasons and it's all about testing fabrics is, you know, a year two level is just laid out there for you. So, yeah, it's just being able to see that and I'm not sure that primary school teachers and actually they're losing all their STEM secondary teachers as well at the moment, because you know, it's poorly paid and a hard job, so why would you? And so there's not enough people with that background in education.
[00:23:42] Ed Finch: I mean, I think we hear that it's typically a subject which grabs children, but we've got a workforce who probably don't have the subject knowledge and maybe don't feel empowered to make creative choices in how they're delivering it. So we'll come back to that after the break, I think, because I think we wanted to see how we can help people to get on board and make science work for everybody. But we'll come back after a short break.
Before the break, we had a little think about some of the things which are causing us problems in science at the moment, celebrating the good, but also accepting it's not all perfect.
I was wondering if we could just open our minds up and imagine how Wonderful things could be, let's just say five years from now, if we asked the right questions and, pushed on the right doors, what would you like to see?
[00:24:33] Jules Pottle: Oh, I'd like to see so much. I'd like to see every school properly resourced with enough kit, that would be my first thing. But beyond that, I would like to have science that spills over. When I've taught in year five, the changing materials, separating, changing and separating materials, we've always done it through chocolate and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I mean, we've managed to teach all of that, linking it to a curriculum. But the thing that was most delightful about it for me was I was also teaching how to write an explanation text.
So one of my roles, because I have a bit of a portfolio career, is to work for storytelling schools and storytelling schools teach that power of speaking first and writing what you've just spoken and learning how to write separately from learning how an explanation works orally. But also you can put content into that. So I had this particular class because I'm part time. So I had a particular class on a, like a Tuesday afternoon and we did science all afternoon, it was a lovely moment and it was all linked to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So they were having a great time because they were being Oompa Loompas. It was part of a context and then the next morning, while it was still fresh in their minds, we were learning how to structure a letter to Willy Wonka or a report to Willy Wonka to explain what they'd learned and what that meant for his factory
and the joy of linking that writing to something they'd really done the day before that they'd had time to do properly and could explain well, that is something that I love to see and I love to have time to do and sometimes I've been given that, but not always. Bigger projects that go on for a longer time. So those things are hard to squeeze in, we did, I was given, again, I've had some lovely opportunities. I was given EcoSchools as enrichment one year. It was COVID year, so unfortunately we had six months rather than, but we did things like burying rubbish. We had time to go out and do something real, and we buried rubbish, and then we dug it up, and we had to dig it up two years later rather than one year later, because that's when we were finally back in school. I took the same kids out and we dug it up, and it was remarkable what was left and what was not left.
[00:26:53] Ed Finch: can imagine!
[00:26:53] Jules Pottle: Behind and because it was real, and because they had done it from scratch, and it was a big sort of question to answer, what happens to rubbish, and it was long over time. When you have a class for a year, you can't always do that, but because I float around the school, do a bit of this, bit of that. I was able to do that, so that's a joy.
[00:27:11] Ed Finch: There's two bits there, isn't there?
There's the bit about being brave enough to do topics which cross between curriculum areas, which is hard for schools at the moment. It's not long ago in my elderly brain that we had the Rose report that was going to link everything up and look at capabilities and of course, it has gone that way to some extent in Wales and in Scotland as well. So we'll have listeners there who are saying, well, this is exactly what we do, but that was something I'd like to see more of in English schools. But then the other bit is about time and you had time in two ways there, you were talking about time as like, well, I could spend the whole afternoon on it. I didn't have to do half an hour of RE and then 20 minutes of French and then squeeze in and it never quite happens.
[00:27:52] Jules Pottle: That's exactly how it works.
[00:27:54] Ed Finch: It is how it works, isn't it? And every time we get a report from Ofsted about how we should be teaching subjects, we find they say, yes, every subject needs a little bit more than it's allotted time and we don't know how that works. So there's that whole bit of just going, do you know what? I'm going to do an afternoon of science because there's no other way of fitting it all in and making it work and if it ain't going to work, what's the point of doing it at all?
And then that thing about longevity, I, you know, so I can imagine you burying a, you know, a crisp packet and a sock and a newspaper and wondering what's gonna, you know and a rat, what's gonna be there in two years? What a great question. The number of people who bury time capsules in the school grounds wrapped up in layers and layers of plastic and in a big drum. Yeah. Yeah. No, don't bury that, bury a tin of tuna.
[00:28:42] Jules Pottle: Yeah, see what happens. These things are lovely when you get that moment to do it and there are some lucky places where they have a lab 13.
[00:28:53] Ed Finch: PhizzLabs you find around the place, don't you? Yeah.
[00:28:56] Jules Pottle: Yeah, they, I mean, they are lovely to have. If you have that extra funding that you can have a person who can focus on the big stuff, but if you can't focus on the big stuff, how do you make it still you know, really interesting for the children and get that curiosity going.
[00:29:14] Ed Finch: Okay,
so in five years from now, we want our colleagues to be given that freedom.
[00:29:20] Jules Pottle: Yeah, but that requires trust in the teacher, doesn't it? And sometimes there's a need to have the same thing happen over three classes or the same thing happen over five schools because they're all part of a unit.
[00:29:35] Ed Finch: They're all going to feed into the same secondary. We want that year seven science teacher to have a common ground.
[00:29:41] Jules Pottle: Yes and I don't think they ever do, to be fair, but I do think that there's pressure to stick to the thing that you've got to do, rather than, you know, doing something that's a bit broader and a bit more exciting and involves things like, if the Olympics is on, going into what might be the scientific end from that or if we've got something like DT and science that will overlap and then taking that bit further maybe using some engineering skills or people in your community. I did a whole session, I have taught for a long time, I've got lots of ideas. My daughter is a design engineer and I got her to phone into my class and set one of the challenges that she was having to do, which was to make a cup you could use and sit down on the grass and it wouldn't tip over and I set them the challenge. They did that and then they presented their ideas to my daughter on Zoom and she listened to their designs and she sort of gave them hints and stuff, but it was really powerful for the children. It was year six class that were really good at drawing and they suddenly went, Oh gosh, this is a STEM subject that involves a lot of drawing and a lot of understanding of how 3D things fit together and I could do that. I could see them pricking up their ears and, but I was lucky I had someone on tap who could do that for me.
[00:31:04] Ed Finch: But we'd like everybody to have that experience, wouldn't you? So we would like, I guess we'd like schools to be talking to, you know, finding out who's involved in their local community, yeah, what the local industries are and then we'll say, yes, they need to get to the year seven with a common set of knowledge, common set of skills, because otherwise that's not fair to that teacher. Does that just mean we hack away a great chunks out of the national curriculum so we can deliver those bits, but still have the room to play that we need?
[00:31:31] Jules Pottle: I think there is an element of that.
I mean, personally, I don't think it's as important to know how to use the term subordinate clause. If you teach writing well, the children will hear it and they'll use subordinate clauses, but we spend an awful lot of time talking prepping for SPAC, which is something that they then won't use later, whereas I would rather we were reading, doing some maths or doing some, you know, science and maybe teaching science writing, you know.
[00:32:04] Ed Finch: I think, you know, if we teach science writing very well, that's going to call upon our, passive voice, isn't it? Exactly, and then we'll be able to say, isn't it interesting we keep using this structure? And maybe we'll go as far as saying, What's this called? Because it's quite useful to have a name for a thing that we use, isn't it? This thing's a screwdriver. This thing's passive voice. Seems to me that's the right way round and that science writing will demand certain forms, and, that will be fine. In my head, five years from now, there's going to be this independent curriculum body that's totally independent from government and on different cycles, so it doesn't get stuck into that and we'll recruit experts and I'm going to recruit you onto my independent curriculum body.
[00:32:44] Jules Pottle: I would love to do that!
[00:32:45] Ed Finch: Yeah, so lucky you, I haven't actually been given the job yet, but I think it's pretty much in the bag. So what areas of our current science curriculum are you going to axe to make room for our exploring and our discovering and our curiosity? And are there things that you would like to see in the primary science curriculum? If it's in your gift now, you're on the commission.
[00:33:05] Jules Pottle: Well, I would put some physics back into Key Stage One, because that's a sad loss. I think I would slim down the plants. Whilst plants are really important and really interesting, things like soils and plants together are going to help us, you know, understanding of that is going to help us save the planet. So you can't get rid of it, but I think you can slim it down. It's something that comes up a lot and could be done a bit less to allow for a little bit more in the way of, as I say, definitely physics in Key Stage One. There's no reason why they can't be doing light and sound and you know, some basic electricity down in Key Stage One. That was in there and got lost out of it. But I also think we need things like plastic needs a whole topic. Understanding quite how indestructible plastic is, something that's going to help us in our future. So a bit more materials in terms of the renewables and I think we should have more in the way of engineering to that idea of making something, it doesn't work but you tinker with it and I'll explain why I think that's really important.
We made wobble bots and I didn't bother teaching the electricity with the children. I basically helped them wire it up on a me with two children at a time basis whilst trying to teach other things in the background. So it was an adventurous thing to do, but the joy in the moment of having it work, but it only wobble a little bit and it didn't go anywhere, to adding Blu Tack to the spinning tail on the motor, so that it became more off centred, so it would wiggle more and it started to move across the desk. Just that little tinker, so I enabled them to do everything else, it didn't matter what the Wobble Bot looked like, I didn't care, what mattered was that once that motor went on and it started to wiggle, they had the experience of, you getting it to do something more impressive and seeing what made a difference, trial and error, having a go and fiddling about with it and there isn't time for fiddling about.
[00:35:07] Ed Finch: Isn't it funny that, in our computing lessons, a lot of us teach this very explicitly and we often, a lot of people will be doing that through using the Scratch block programming thing. We say, yeah, well try putting a different number, see what the difference makes. Well if you put that loop in a different place, oh my goodness, it's drawing stars now! How lovely, so we sort of seem to be thinking that maybe we need to look at the science curriculum and actually say, well, there's some engineering in there, there might be, you know, some other, sort of, definitely some design, yeah and then design technology will start looking over the fence and saying, well, do we need to be an integrated subject then? Wow. Which would demand an entirely new way of looking at things.
I want to know a little bit more about story. Now, you, I know of, you know, you've written quite a number of books now, which incorporate scientific thinking and scientific discoveries into real emotional stories that kids will want to read, reread, think about and talk about. In fact, I believe you recently won a prize for one of them.
[00:36:09] Jules Pottle: I did, yeah, it was very exciting. So, Gary Vity, which is a story which teaches about gravity, little girl, mishears. She's, her grandmother's Italian, she's Italian and they're living in England and she mishears, she has her own words for things. Grandma says, oh, that's just gravity playing tricks on you and she says, Gary Vitty? And Grandma thinks that's hilarious because it's another one of her bonkers words. Gary Vitty, what will she say next? So she keeps referring to instances of gravity pulling things to the floor as Gary Vitty and the girl goes on a journey to kind of find out why this boy is persecuting her, this boy called Gary and eventually she understands and we put the central part, the sort of explanation within it in a poem, because that seems to make a difference, weirdly, that if you put it in poetry, the words stick more easily. So we put the important words in that and we made it very playful and we made it grandma, not a scientist, you know, it was grandma that did the explaining and it was very playful. So there's a moment in where she just says, let's go to the moon and so there is sort of an imaginary moment within it, which you can do in a picture book, which you, know, it's harder to do in real life, but you can do it in a picture book and then you've got a point of reference.
[00:37:27] Ed Finch: Because if I was being a scientist, I might call this a thought experiment and if I was being a teacher, I might just say it's a story that helps us think about something.
[00:37:34] Jules Pottle: Yes.
[00:37:35] Ed Finch: We want to, 'cause we care about this child and we kind of care about the relationship with Granny and...
[00:37:39] Jules Pottle: Yeah and it's a joyous book to read and at the end she designs a rollercoaster using gra, using all the forces, but particularly Gravity 'cause it's her favorite. And it's called Defying. Defying Gary Vitty and then it also has, grandma in it looking very sick.
[00:37:58] Ed Finch: In our five years from now scenario, we're going to see science classrooms flooded with stories.
[00:38:04] Jules Pottle: I really hope so. I mean at the moment, it's not something that I can get publishers to be interested in 'cause it's a very small market, because it's just the teachers that will see it as joyous, but there's no reason why they can't be part of the normal picture book world, but they're gaining popularity in schools.
[00:38:21] Ed Finch: And that prize that you won was voted for by the Association of Science Educators.
[00:38:26] Jules Pottle: That's right, it was book of the year, so...
[00:38:28] Ed Finch: I mean, that's an amazingly hopeful sign because that's people who really care about science teaching and who are hopefully leading the way in science teaching. They've said that this funny little book, not some great big tome or some very millions of glossy photographs. This is the one they want to celebrate because it's helping them do their jobs, I suppose.
[00:38:47] Jules Pottle: And actually, if you think about it, if it's only 3 percent of teachers with a science background, there's probably 50 percent with an English background teachers love a picture book.
[00:38:56] Ed Finch: Oh, they do!
[00:38:56] Jules Pottle: I mean, it's a standard skill of a primary school teacher to be able to sit down and engage a class with a picture book. So it's a really nice way in for them and all the stuff they need to know is at the back.
[00:39:06] Ed Finch: I think there's a much better understanding of this growing in the profession. I see that Mary Myatt, who is a great hero of mine, she's really pushing the, you know, high quality text as a call for learning right across the curriculum. It's not an English thing. It's a, this is how our brains work thing. so to see her pushing on it, it only confirms work that lots of us have been doing for a long time, but it's good to see it, isn't it? So, in five years from now, we're going to have some time back to do exploring, we'll have planning which allows for longer projects and longer cycles of learning, not everything fits into 45 minutes on a Wednesday afternoon, so we might need longer sequences. We're gonna have you being paid to write loads of great books, but also loads of other people writing great, even people who didn't know they were interested in science are going to find that this is a way that they can create narrative and create interest and that kids love it, we know they love dinosaurs. that's broadly science, isn't it? Dinosaur science? I think so.
[00:40:05] Jules Pottle: What five year old can't name at least three dinosaurs that have massive scientific names? The vocabulary isn't an issue if you're interested in it or engaged by the topic.
[00:40:15] Ed Finch: Exactly, yeah.
[00:40:16] Jules Pottle: You know, it's just about getting into that part of their everyday life.
[00:40:20] Ed Finch: Do you know what, you've made me feel enormously positive and excited to stay on board the primary train as we go towards this rather beautiful sounding five year goal. How can we help our colleagues? What can they do to get on the, road towards this glorious outcome?
Well,
[00:40:34] Jules Pottle: if you're a new teacher and you don't feel confident organizing a room to do a practical investigation into something and what to say afterwards, if you go on to DK Book's YouTube channel on there, there's something called Stay Home Science Lab, which was what I did during COVID whilst trying to teach 30, you know, year six online some of the day on some days and the rest of the day I was filming myself doing science lessons and I took what I would normally do in an hour, condensed it into 10 minutes. So if you watch that, it's actually everything I would say as a teacher. So it's quite a good first way of learning is to imitate someone else, go watch it!
[00:41:18] Ed Finch: Well, that's really helpful. So and we will link to that in the, in the show notes. If you're watching this on YouTube or you're listening on a podcast platform, you should be able to find a link to that in there and they can watch you doing some great teaching, not pretending you're the world's greatest expert, but you're giving them a good example of something they can do in their classroom.
[00:41:36] Jules Pottle: Exactly, it's totally doable and it's all kitchen science. So you'll have, I only use the equipment I had at home because there was no point in telling kids in COVID to go and find themselves a microscope, they weren't going to be able to, so it was all kitchen science.
[00:41:49] Ed Finch: I think that's really handy, isn't it? Because you were describing schools right back at the start of this podcast, saying you're going to schools and you find they haven't got the kid and their skin and I don't think any of us think there's going to be vast amounts of money coming into primary in the next few years, sad though that is, but we can do this from stuff in our homes. And who's helping us do that other than you and your videos?
[00:42:10] Jules Pottle: There are some, so I'm going to plug them again, Talking, Thinking, Doing Science is the best training I've seen, so if you want to invest in some training for your school or for an individual teacher, that's the one to go for. Ogden also excellent. So Ogden really helpful. That's where you get the Phizzy Labs from. So Phizzy Forces and they are brilliant at again, training and giving kit. So I've been in my school for like 20 years, something like that and I have gathered things and one of my trays that I have of things that I go in my cupboard because you might not realise this is science kit, is an entire tray of Coke cans, empty Coke cans, because there's a lot of things you can do with the empty Coke cans and I like to have a full set there. So they're in the don't touch cupboard. Then there's other stuff that looks like science kit, like magnets that comes back. So you can build up your resources over time from stuff that might get thrown away. I do a balancing, activity, we talk about center of gravity and it's all about balancing the Coke can on its corner. When you put some water in a Coke can, you can lean it to one side. Doesn't work with all brands, which is why I'm using the brand name.
[00:43:19] Ed Finch: If people would like to see Gary Vity or any of her other books, how could they come across those Jules?
[00:43:24] Jules Pottle: So, all, everything that I've done is in one place, so you can look on, www. artfulfoxcreatives. com.
[00:43:32] Ed Finch: Artful Fox Creatives?
[00:43:34] Jules Pottle: We wanted it to be a creative name, but something that felt cunning because we are trying to sneak in the learning through a joyous way. But what it's ended up as is, playful teaching is what I'm kind of known for, playful but you know, you're absolutely required to do certain things and pay attention, but playful in the other moments and joyous as much as possible and using creative methods. So on that website, you'll find there's a storytelling schools book of 29 stories to use across the curriculum, which can be really helpful and they're designed to tell and when you tell the story back, the oracy is there. So children learn to tell the story and when they learn to tell the story, they learn to tell the science. So that's on there. There's also Science Fiction, Science Fact, which is a pair of books which are, if you're new to teaching, it's like every single lesson you need to use a book for one whole topic and there's one for, you know, Key Stage One and one for Key Stage Two and then all of the Artful Fox books that we've done, ourselves are on there, so that's like one for Evolution, The Molly Bird, one for Gary Vitty for Gravity, there's one called Uncle Jack, who is all about all the things that go wrong with his body, which I'm empathising with a lot lately as I've been to the dentist many times this week!
[00:44:53] Ed Finch: If we can drop the link to that in the show notes so people can have a look and thank you so much.
I've had a lovely time. I really think five years from now we're going to have a very joyful thing, particularly with you sitting on that curriculum commission, it's going to be great. So thank you so much.
[00:45:07] Jules Pottle: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:45:13] Ed Finch: So which ideas would you like to take away from this conversation? Download the Primary Pledge card in the show notes to continue the conversation and know actions that you'd like to take. Share your Primary Pledge card with us and fellow educators by tagging Hamilton Brooks on social media. At Primary Futures, we're on a mission to build a better future for primary education and you can help us to spread the word by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast to help more educators discover us and the inspiring conversations we have with our guests.