ChloeBumfordAOLE2 2019

Science and technology within the primary classroom ‘Science is not taught every day in most primary schools’ (Ofsted, 2011). Primary school teachers face many barriers with trying to teach science with on average 1 hour 24 minutes a week dedicated to the subject (Wellcome, 2017). Many teachers were asked what are the barriers, if any, they experienced when teaching or leading science the top four categories were lack of budget and resources (35 per cent), a lack of time and curricular importance (22 per cent), lack of subject knowledge (11 per cent) and issues relating to setting up space or access to resources (10 per cent) (Wellcome, 2017). However, according to Wellcome (2017) more than 8 in 10 teachers think that Mathematics (84%) and English (83%) are ‘very important’ to the senior leadership team of their school, but this number drops to just three in ten (30%) when it comes to science, implying that the subject is not seen as a priority for primary teaching. Ma...

Homework is a global phenomenon and children in primary schools spend increasing amounts of time on homework (Baker and LeTendre,  2005 ). Primary school children range from the ages of 3 to 11 years old. Should these children be made to do homework? Ofsted (1999) set out guidelines that expected children aged five to seven to be set an hour’s homework a week and then rising to half an hour a night for 7 to 11-year olds. Ofsted (1999) also suggested that all schools should have a homework policy. Homework, ideally just means tasks that are assigned to students by teachers that are meant to be carried out during non-instructional time (Bembenutty,  2011 ). For primary schools within the UK, this could include reading to or with parents (Brooks et al, 2008). In England, many home reading projects have embedded home school reading into the practice of nearly all primary schools (Brooks et al, 2008). What effect does homework have? There are small amounts of evid...

Collaboration/collaborative learning, what is it? Collaboration was previously defined as ‘a situation in which particular forms of interaction among people are expected to occur, which would trigger learning mechanisms, but there is no guarantee that the expected interactions will actually occur’ (Dillenbourg,  1999 ). Today ‘A collaborative (or cooperative) learning approach involves learners working together on activities or learning tasks in a group small enough for everyone to participate on a collective task that has been clearly assigned. Learners in the group may work on separate tasks contributing to a common overall outcome or work together on a shared task’ (Education Scotland, 2019). Using collaborative learning approaches puts together children of mixed ability into teams or groups so that they can work in competition with each other to pilot more effective collaboration (Education Scotland, 2019).   For collaborative learning in the class...