Combining science with other subjects such as poetry, art, drama, history and design & technology can help to simulate creativity. Science and technology can provide opportunities for solving real problems which involve thinking and doing. For instance, how can a large slab of rock be moved over several kilometres and then erected vertically in the ground as our ancestors did in the construction of monuments such as Stonehenge? (Geary 1987: 136).
In 2000, the Association of Science Education and Pfizer organised a very successful competition on science poetry writing. Over 13,000 entries were
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received. A selection of the best has been published in Science Is Like a Tub of Ice Cream: Cool and Fun (Feasey 2001). The following poem demonstrates divergent thinking about materials:
My Chocolate Teapot
Have you seen my chocolate teapot?
I left it on the jelly sofa
Maybe it’s playing hide and seek with you and me I lost it when I was washing the dishes with petrol When I was standing next to the plastic window Where was that strong smell coming from?
I was listening to the cotton wool radio
My dog was eating chunks of iron bars in his waxy candle bowl Whilst lapping up caramel syrup
I was reading my glass cookery book When my chocolate teapot disappeared.
(Shelley Joshi, Our Lady of Carmel Catholic Primary School, Doncaster)
Science is a creative subject, it provides many opportunities to stimulate chil- dren’s creative and critical thinking. Children become more skilled in using their senses in exploring phenomena. Their motivation, problem-solving and feeling aspects of creativity prosper in a productive environment where they can put forward ideas and question the evidence. The challenge in teaching science is to provide children with experiences and the opportunity for dialogue in order to reflect and move their thinking from the intuitive to the scientific. A final thought from Rousseau (1762):
Teach your pupil to observe the phenomena of nature: you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself, let him not be taught science, let him discover it.
(Emile, bk 3)
Creative touches
● There are many ideas for creative activities on the Planet Science website (www.scienceyear.com). Explore all the sections including ‘The Creative Classroom’ – many of the resources can be downloaded. The site also links to a wide range of other useful science websites.
● Create a wild flower garden in the school grounds. Invite children to collect seeds or make suggestions about which plants should grow there. Children carry out research using observation of the local environment, books and the internet.
Creativity in the Primary Curriculum
● Children observe the created habitat at different times of the year, collect and examine seeds, note the flowers produced and the insects and other animals which live in the garden.
● Design a flower for a specific purpose, e.g. to grow tall, to attract butterflies, to spread over an area.
● Model an animal which can survive in a particular habitat (Taylor and Jones 2001).
● Design an environment for the twenty-first century, e.g. what I need to live in space, underground, in the middle of the ocean, in a desert.
● Create a drama for a school assembly or presentation to parents, e.g. ‘The Body Show’ (Littledyke 2000).
● ‘Pop rockets: How can I make my pop rocket go higher?’ (Kibble 2001).
● Making a plaster of paris plaque. Ask the children to make a mould out of Plasticene 8–10 cm in diameter with a wall of 1–2 cm around it. Make a pattern in the Plasticene base by pressing the underside of a leaf or spaghetti shape into it.
● Catching the egg. Can your group make a structure out of ten pieces of A4 paper and 1 metre of masking tape that will catch an egg (raw) from 2 metres without it breaking? The winner is the team which uses least paper.
● Predict which fruit floats and which sinks. Test the fruits. Explain why.
● Create a mime based on pushes and pulls in various directions. Examine the forces involved: different ways of moving along the ground; tug of war. How can you make people speed up, slow down or change direction?
● How can you make a coloured shadow?
● Build the best kaleidoscope – use different numbers of mirrors; different end-pieces such as coloured marble or a rotating disc.
● Use a real-life graph to stimulate children’s thinking about a science and society issue, e.g. the type of snacks eaten at break or the ways in which children travel to school compared with 1988 (Harwood and Porter 2002).
● Visit a science museum, or an industrial site. A list of science and discovery centres around the country is available from www.ecsite-uk.net.
● Invite a speaker in to talk about science.
● Organise a science week in the school with the children contributing ideas and setting up science displays and activities for other groups in the school, parents etc.
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References
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Creativity in the Primary Curriculum
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