Thinking Together in Primary Science: An Oracy-Based Approach to Teaching About the Nature of Science and Scientific Thinking

Thinking Together in Primary Science offers eight fully resourced lesson plans aimed at ages 9–11 to get teachers and primary-aged children talking together about science and how scientists think and learn as a community. The lessons will help children to form a stronger relationship with science and to understand how scientific thinking can help them in everyday life.

By secondary school, many young people have already decided that science is not for them. One implication of this is that people are less likely to adopt a “scientific mindset” when evaluating the information they encounter online. Understanding the nature of science – what it is and the ways of thinking associated with it – helps young people to identify with the subject and can protect them from everyday misinformation. The book introduces children to key ideas, such as the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, the importance of scepticism, and the role of evidence. It highlights how science can be trusted because of the collaborative way the scientific community generates, tests, and refines knowledge over time.

The book empowers teachers to teach science with greater depth and meaning while embedding oracy into the curriculum. Building on the evidence-based Thinking Together approach, it uses stories to spark dialogue that deepens children’s understanding of science, fosters a closer connection to the subject, and helps protect them from the misinformation so prevalent in today’s world.

Neil Phillipson is an Associate of Oracy Cambridge and a freelance provider of training and support to schools with a focus on dialogic education. He was a local authority and National Strategies science consultant, and is a long-serving hub-leader with the Primary Science Quality Mark.

Rupert Wegerif is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. He helped to develop the Thinking Together approach to oracy education that underpins this book, and has spent 30 years researching and writing on the theory and practice of dialogic education.