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Chemistry teacher Marcus Patterson unpacks why initiatives at Wimbledon High School to carry through students’ sense of wonder about the world, from Primary science right through to Key Stage 4, are so important

Curiosity may have killed the proverbial cat, but for us humans, it has been, and I’m sure will continue to be, our raison d’être. From the gastronomic delights we enjoy in restaurants to the latest technological gadgets we now take for granted, curiosity and investigation have been behind them all.

In Key Stage 4, students deepen and develop their scientific knowledge and skills in preparation for their GCSE exams. Some further their education by studying science subjects at A Level. However, for others, the science they study at KS4 will be the only science education they get. So it is important that they are not only exposed to high quality teaching but that they remain enthusiastic and curious about the world around them. Because we want – no, need – our students to leave Wimbledon High School equipped to face future challenges and to come up with creative solutions to current and future problems with knowledge, reason, and zeal.

Fading fervour?

My experience, as well as the consensus more widely, suggests that students’ fervour for science start to dwindle at Key Stage 4. All children come to primary school with their own ideas and questions about science; how nature works, what energy is, what things are made of, as well as a litany of whys about everything else. During Key Stage 2 at WHS, students investigate the phenomena of living organisms, materials, Earth, space and forces. Their curiosity and eagerness is evident in their exercise books, which contain some outstanding work.

However, at Key Stage 4, that same sense of enthusiasm and wonder for science is much more difficult to see in students’ work. To be fair, students spend more time taking notes and sitting assessments than they probably did in primary school. However, the point remains: many students’ eagerness for science starts to wane, and learning science becomes a chore, based on learning content and skills simply to receive some hoped-for grade in the GCSEs.

To turn the tide in this seeming trend, Key Stage 3 has a vital role to play, as a bridge between the zestful, open, and wondrous world of primary school science and the more sophisticated, yet more sedate, world of Key Stage 4 Science. At Wimbledon High School, teachers have come up with some interesting and effective ways to help primary school students transition to science education at Key Stage 3, enabling KS3 Science to become a more effective bridge between Key Stages 2 and 4.

Extending enthusiasm

One opportunity is the taster lesson. In May, Alex Farrer brought her Year 6 Science students to work alongside Year 7 Science students in the Key Stage 3 Science Lab located in the STEAM tower of the Senior School. In the past year, Year 6 students have studied electricity and have collaborated with Year 7 students to investigate electricity and cells, and to build coin-cell batteries.

In addition, Year 5 students visited the Senior School Key Stage 3 Science Lab for a taster lesson during which they explored the world of chemical and physical changes. Both Years 5 and 6 taster sessions allowed students from the Junior School not only to see and experience how science education is done at KS3 in the Senior School, but also to reinforce and buoy the learning experiences they have had so far in science, giving students a sense of continuity. What they have learned so far continues to be explored, albeit a bit more deeply, at KS3. Such continuity allows students to maintain and further develop their curiosity and enthusiasm for science.

In Key Stage 3, students’ scientific knowledge and skills grow, and their ability to communicate scientifically is starting to develop. To give students an opportunity to apply what they have learned in interesting and creative ways, Year 8 Science students put on a Science Fair. They spent the last five weeks asking questions, coming up with hypotheses, and investigating the nature of light and sound. They presented their findings in a poster session and discussed their projects with judges, parents, teachers, and each other. Students were inquisitive and worked enthusiastically on their projects, and the results were consistently creative and superb.

Cultivating curiosity

As Key Stage 3 Science teachers, we can keep students wondering eagerly about the nature of the world around them as we encourage them to reflect upon and evaluate the answers to the questions they had before: are they satisfied, and what more do they want to know? Encouraging this type of self-reflection among students, whether through class discussions or a science journal, can do much to help them maintain that zealous and inquisitive momentum for science into and throughout their Key Stage 4 Science experience.

Just as Junior School students are given an opportunity to experience science at the Senior School, Key Stage 3 students could be given an opportunity to have taster lessons in Key Stage 4 science areas. They will come to see that the topics and themes they explored in KS3 continue to be explored at KS4, but their knowledge, understanding, and communication of science will become more sophisticated. Some of their previous questions will be answered, and then they will then have new questions. Our aim is to get them to seek the answers to those questions with the same zest and wonder as they had when they were in primary school. Exciting times are ahead!

Ms Beth Ashton looks at ways we can connect the Arts in Primary Education, arguing that the discipline of ekphrasis (connecting visual arts with poetic form) helps learners to develop creative expression.

The power of the visual image in relation to development has been extensively studied. Many of the skills of analysis used in decoding an image are also present in the analysis of text. Images are the way we first experience the world, and inspire immediate and emotive responses from students. I chose to explore the use of paintings as a stimulus for poetry writing with Year 6 students. This discipline of using visual arts in dialogue with poetic form is a discipline known as ekphrasis, and has been used by celebrated writers throughout literary history.

It is significant to note that simply using an image as a stimulus for poetry would not meet the criteria necessary to achieve true ekphrastic work – the intentionality of the artist is essential in order to create a dialogue between poet (in this case Year 6 girls), painting, and artist.

Research shows that when using a painting as the stimulus for poetry writing, children invent a context, story and message around the image. They are thus inventing their own story and interpretation of the artwork, and communicating truths about themselves in the process, through the meanings they project onto the painting. The poet is not simply writing a descriptive piece about the subject (i.e. the painting), they are using the subject as a way to communicate truths about themselves.

This process of exploring context and creating a message through creative expression is one which can, if we are not vigilant, fall by the wayside in the classroom. The National Curriculum focuses on the structural elements of writing, such as grammar and syntax. Whilst these are of course essential, they are not, and should never be, the driving reason behind the study of English Literature. Reading objectives and national assessments currently require students to interpret a text in order to locate an absolute, definitive meaning, which is not open to subjective interpretation. Anyone who has any experience of literature, from Shakespeare to Horrid Henry, knows that meaning is fluid and highly dependent on the context of the reader; this is what makes reading one of life’s great pleasures.

By engaging children in writing based on visual images and artwork, we are encouraging them to embrace the idea of ambiguity, and the possibility that there are many different ways to interpret artwork, whatever the medium. We are also teaching our students that the meanings we make are dependent on our context, and may change over time. These skills are essential, as pupils learn to grapple with difference and tolerate alternative perspectives to their own world view.

In order to explore Ekphrastic poetry, pupils studied Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, analysing the image as a whole class and trying to predict what could be happening within the image. They then read Tennyson’s poem of the same name. The second intervention followed the same structure, with a different painting. This time, the pupils analysed George and the Dragon painted by Paolo Uccello in the 14^th Century. Pupils then read an abridged version of the poem Not My Best Side, by U.A. Fanthorpe[1], written in the 1970s. Through writing in role as the characters in the painting, Fanthorpe produced a commentary on established gender roles. The inner personalities of the characters are revealed in first person, showing a subversion of the roles played in the painting.

Following analysis of the second painting and poem pair, the pupils were invited to choose a piece of artwork to bring to class, from which they would produce their own poem. Poems ranged from first-person diary entries, written in role as Ophelia, to reflections on Monet’s Waterlilies, writing in role as a lonely bridge, stretching over a pond.

George and the Dragon painted by Paolo Uccello

Ekphrastic poetry is a useful and engaging way in which to encourage children to take ownership over different art forms and begin to see the links across the curriculum. It is also an impactful and insightful way to create a classroom which values ambiguity and open-ended meaning making.

[1] See http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/uccello.html for the full poem

Tag: Primary

Keeping the flame alive: stoking scientific curiosity from Primary to GCSE

Connecting the Arts in the Primary Classroom through Ekphrastic poetry