Seven tips for better science teaching

The government-backed Education Endowment Foundation has today issued seven recommendations for improving science in secondary schools.

They are:

1. Preconceptions: build on the ideas that pupils bring to lessons

• Understand the preconceptions that pupils bring to science lessons. 
• Develop pupils’ thinking through cognitive conflict and discussion.
   

2. Self-regulation: help pupils direct their own learning

• Explicitly teach pupils how to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning.
• Model your own thinking to help pupils develop their metacognitive and cognitive knowledge.
• Promote metacognitive talk and dialogue in the classroom.
   

3. Modelling: use models to support understanding

• Use models to help pupils develop a deeper understanding of scientic concepts.
• Select the models you use with care.
• Explicitly teach pupils about models and encourage pupils to critique them.
   

4. Memory: support pupils to retain and retrieve knowledge

• Pay attention to cognitive load - structure your tasks to limit the amount of new information pupils need to process. 
• Revisit knowledge after a gap to help pupils retain it in their long-term memory.
• Provide opportunities for pupils to retrieve the knowledge that they have previously learned. 
• Encourage pupils to elaborate on what they have learned.
   

5. Practical work: use practical work purposefully and as part of a learning sequence

• Know the purpose of each practical activity.
• Sequence practical activities with other learning.
• Use practical work to develop scientific reasoning.
• Use a variety of approaches to practical science.
   

6. The language of science: develop scientific vocabulary and support pupils to read and write about science

• Carefully select the vocabulary to teach, and focus on the most tricky words.
• Show the links between words and their composite parts.
• Use activities to engage pupils with reading scientific text and help them to comprehend it.
• Support pupils to develop their scientific writing skills.
   

7. Feedback: use structured feedback to move on pupils’ thinking

• Find out what your pupils understand.
• Think about what you’re providing feedback on.
• Provide feedback as comments rather than marks.
• Make sure pupils can respond to your feedback.
   

For more information, see the full report here.