But the stories don’t move me. I don’t care about the characters. I don’t care what happens so I don’t care about the science and I don’t remember it. A good story grips the reader. It is full of emotional content and characters we want to love or hate. We feel that rollercoaster of mood as the story progresses. Use in any topic, but especially space or microorganisms to offer a sense of scale for these things. One way to use stories is to tell the story of the scientist. If the scientist faced a particularly difficult set of circumstances then the story of the scientist can be engaging.

These are just some of the comments I loved to hear, when a class came in to explore The Nature Collection set up for a workshop. Susanna Ramsey has created a huge collection of physical specimens and photographs of British wildlife. She has been working with Fellows from the Primary Science Teaching Trust to create some wonderful new resources to support science in the Early Years. In this blog, Susanna shares the story of how the collection began, her passion for wildlife and photography, and how teachers can access her collection.

Wow Science

All to often, stories for science can be simplified into ‘One day some people needed to solve a problem so they did some science and it worked. The end’. I have been given many books about characters who see a problem that can be solved by science and they do some science and they solve the problem. Sometimes the science words are even highlighted in the book. Mary Anning is the classic example. A poor girl, who survived a lightning strike as a child, has to scrape a living selling curiosities found on the beach in Lyme Regis. One day she comes across an enormous fossilised ichthyosaur and she manages to excavate it and sells it for a large sum of money. She becomes a recognised name in palaeontology, although she is never given credit in her lifetime, as she is a woman.

A good key stage 2 example would be ‘The Northern Lights’ by Philip Pullman. Lyra’s friend Billy Costa goes missing. It appears that he has been stolen by the GOBblers but it is not clear why this organisation is taking children and hiding them away in the north. Lyra is determined to find out more so she can travel to the north and rescue Billy. This is a gripping story where we care about Lyra and she cares about Billy. We feel her pain and her frustration and we, as readers, put our hope in Lyra as she journeys north. Children can use the scroll bar below the screen to zoom in or out to explore objects of another size. History is an obvious candidate for teaching through stories as the content is largely cause and effect and there is often an emotional content to a historical story too, which engages the reader/listener. But what about science? How can we engage that story-processing brain when learning about science?To prompt questions, scientific discussion, and support independent learning (probably just for KS2 children): Ask children to find out objects the same comparative size, smaller or larger than an area you are working on….. e.g. “What is smaller than an ant?”