If you haven’t got Science Bug (or even if you have!) and are coming to the annual ASE conference, this year at the University of Birmingham, then come along and meet Deborah Herridge on the afternoon of Friday 8th January.
Deborah and one of our Educational Consultants, Lavinia Willis, will be demonstrating Science Bug and doing some hands-on Science! I hope to see you there!
Why I’m passionate about Science Bug
There were many things I loved about overseeing the publication of Science Bug: going out and meeting teachers and pupils whilst doing the original research; working with the excellent in house team of editors, designers and media researchers and last, but not least, one of the things I loved most about working on Science Bug was working with our excellent author team.
Our authors, Anne Goldsworthy, Deborah Herridge, Debbie Eccles and Tanya Shields are all experts in the field of Primary Science and have an impressive flair for creating fun, engaging ways of teaching it.
Anne has been working with us since the publication of Ginn New Star Science and was involved in redrafting the curriculum.
Deborah Herridge is Senior Lecturer in Primary Science at the University of Northumberland. She was also part of the author team on Heinemann Explore Science and our APP for Science series.
Debbie Eccles is a Senior Lecturer at MMU and also wrote APP for Science and her, Deborah and our final author, Tanya Shields, are part of a partnership called Primarily Science which runs science training courses across the country. They were a fantastic team to work with as they marry up all the academic research of how best to teach primary science with their vast practical knowledge on how to do that through hands-on inspiring investigations.
Throughout the creation of Science Bug the authors and myself ensured that the practical side of primary science really came out. Looking at all the evidence and talking to many teachers it all told us that teachers were nervous about teaching the ‘working scientifically’ skills through practical, hands-on science.
Thus, when creating the programme, we ensured that we wove practical science throughout our units, matching up the right ‘working scientifically’ skills to the knowledge objectives being taught. We’ve ensured that our lesson plans give all the support to primary teachers who are non specialists so they can deliver great science lessons that really spark imagination, fuel curiosity and nurture inspired and confident young scientists.
Ashley Lodge is a Senior Publisher in Pearson’s Primary Learning Services. He oversees primary science publishing and Pearson’s ActiveLearn Primary Platform.