Science Notes

Singing makes Science more fun - and helps pupils retain knowledge. Dr. Duncan Reavey shares nine top tips for teaching Science effectively through song.

Helping new primary teachers learn how to teach Science is challenging enough, given the negative experiences of Science that so many have had, but getting them to sing about it too? The research says that singing can make Science more engaging and more memorable. However, knowing what the research says isn't enough to get new teachers to sing Science. What is?

Nine great ideas

1. Believe it or not, campfires are on the curriculum for our student teachers. We found they had to fall in love with their environment before they could engage with environmental issues. But things happen around campfires - someone brings a guitar and then somebody else remembers past experiences at camp. The marshmallows help. The songs begin. Link the songs to the science of the outdoors and you're there - a rekindled love of singing as well as a new love of the outdoors. Give them time to rewrite the words to old favourites, and you'll find the songwriters reflect together on their understanding of science and choose the right vocabulary. We model this with our student teachers - and it works just as well in school.
2. Timeless classics we love include Tom Lehrer's Periodic Table and 'Why does the sun shine? (The sun is a mass of incandescent gas)', which originally came from an album called Space Songs by Tom Glazer. There are quite a few versions of the latter, some more formal than others, which you can find via searching on YouTube. You'll be singing along louder than your year 6s.
3. Our favourite rock music must be the Igneous Cha Cha by Joan Corner. Add five more songs, the Identification Rap, and the Rock Cycle Rhapsody and your teaching on rocks is complete. For more details see here.
4. Want songs to fit your different moods? Try the many samples online. Our favourites include Bill Oliver's Habitat and Banana Slug String Band's FBI (Fungus! Bacteria!Invertegrates!). If you choose to get CDs of the latter, you might end up with your very own psychedelic tie-dyed Slug Band tee-shirt perfect for the next Sixties event.
5. Should the ant get squished or the ant go free? That age-old dilemma is recounted as a rap or a song in the book, Hey, Little Ant (by Phillip and Anna Hoose). It's the focus of a series of lessons on respecting differences, standing up to peer pressure, and more.
6. Why not take Science cross-curricular? For Year 1s doing pushes and pulls in science, first teach the song The great big turnip ("There's a great big turnip at the bottom of the field, I'll get it! I'll get it!...He pushed and pulled but he couldn't get it out..."). Talk about pushes and pulls, and then use the song as part of a Drama piece in which farmer, wife, daughter, song, dog, cat and mouse each join in with the pulling. It's a great finale for an assembly when all the school can join in with the song too.
7. For a brain gym to combine science and song, try your own versions of action songs rewritten to fit the science theme that week. Move on from Head, shoulders, knees and toes to technical language and different actions to match different body parts: "Cranium, Mandible, Clavicle, Scapula" (great to the tune of Mary had a little lamb).
8. Harold Baum's version of 'Photosynthesis' from the Biochemist's Songbook, sung to Auld lang syne is a masterpiece of scientific writing.
9. Our student teachers create 'One Minute Wonder' Science movies. They choose an eclectic range of backing tracks - a predictable one was Willie Nelson's Bubbles In My Beer for raisins that dance when dropped into a fizzy drink. Try this next time you have raisins and lemonade, and sing along too. We also challenge you to come up with some more classic tracks.

A challenge: watering cancan

I'm convinced there remains a song waiting to be written, one which can have a timely and creative environmental message: The Watering Cancan. My students have tried, but never performed nor published their lyrics. Dare you have a go? At the moment the reward is the glory of having done it first, though maybe we can persuade Sing Up to publish attempts on the website, and surely my trainee teachers will sing it and even dance it each year. For the music click here. Please send your best attempts to Duncan Reavey.

Sci shanties

Creative writing about wildlife habitats can be put to music through writing new words for familiar old songs. Depending on learning objectives, teachers may write these themselves or engage the class. Children enjoy singing, and learn from such songs on coach trips to outdoor sites. Songs can be accompanied by actions or used as part of a longer expressive arts activitiy. With beach studies it's possible to make simple shakers from natural and manmade strandline debris eg. sand, grit, different-sized pebbles, or broken shells inside plastic bottles. Schools unable to reach the coast can always dip into a coastal and marine 'treasure chest' of collected items. For indoor studies, plastic models are available from educational suppliers. These two counting rhymes are fun:

Five green shore crabs (to tune of Ten green bottles)

Children with clean hands can make the plop noise with a finger in their cheek!

Five green shore crabs

On the harbour wall.

Five green shore crabs

On the harbour wall.

And if one green shore crab

Should accidentally fall...

PLOP!

There'd be four green shore crabs

On the harbour wall.

Five slipper shells (to tune of Five currant buns)

This can be used to introduce new words and concepts like waves and tides. A slipper shell is an alien invasive species, threatening our native oysters. With actions, five children stand out front with a slipper shell on their fingers, or pretending to be one. Another child pretends to be the big wave and washes the shell and/or the child out of line.

Five slipper shells

One a shingle beach,

High on the strandline

Nearly out of reach.

Along came a wave

On the tide one day,

Caught a slipper shell

And washed it right away.

Dr. Reavey is the Principal Lecturer in Learning and Teaching in the School of Teacher Education and at the University of Chichester's Centre for Learning and Teaching. He leads modules on the Environment, Environmental Education and Wilderness on the Adventure Education Degree. He has a PGCE in primary education and enjoyed teaching Years 1-5. Duncan received the Thomas Henry Huxley Medal for his research in Ecology. He publishes widely and has recently been nominated for a National Teaching Fellowship.