Teaching Science at Upper
Primary Level
A Case Study
Development of NCERT Science
Text Books for Upper Primary
Classes
Teachers’ Role in the
Modern Context
Teacher should appreciate that
•Children are not passive
receptacles of knowledge, and
•Children are active learners,
creating knowledge themselves
from experiences, discussions
and activities
An Agenda for Teachers
•Make class lively and learning a
joyful experience
•Facilitate learning; teach less
and observe more
•Help children perform activities
themselves(not demonstrate
herself)
•Create opportunities for children
to discuss what they have done,
observe and steer discussion
towards the desired conclusion
•Make learning a joint venture
between children and herself: a
good teacher has to be a good
learner too!
Strategy for
Upper Primary
Science Textbooks
Developed
by the NCERT
Proceed From the Known
to the Unknown
Start with what children know
already from their experience;
this makes them comfortable.
Build on that. Introduce a few
simple activities and explain the
associated concepts
With this in view,
the present Science
Textbooks:
•Make Use of Children’s own
Experiences, or start with some
observations or situations
familiar to children
•Do not attempt to start from the
‘beginnings’. These are usually
more difficult at this stage and may
prevent children from learning
useful things. For example, children
can learn the useful skill of reading
a thermometer without knowing its
construction, or how it works.
•As another example, the concept
of force is introduced in class VIII
without recourse to Newton’s laws
What force can do is explained
without using terms like
acceleration, or vector.
.
•Introduce chemical changes and
chemical equations without teaching
symbols of elements and their
valencies. A common symbol, H2O,
which children may come across in
other contexts, is explained simply as
another name for water. They are told
that they will learn the ‘language’ of
chemistry in later classes.
•Let children play with lenses and
spherical mirrors and learn to
form images by them without
being asked to draw ray diagrams.
Introduction of concepts too
early in their lives makes
children shun thinking and
resort to rote learning.
[In fact, a few teachers being trained to
teach from these books, shared the
experience that if children are asked to
draw ray diagrams too early, they get
so occupied with the complexity of
drawing these diagrams that they do
not appreciate where the images are
actually formed in front of the lens or
the mirror when the object is moved,
and whether these images are real or
virtual]
•List ‘simple’ activities which can
be performed without a “Lab” or
a “Kit” by using mostly things
lying around and discarded:
having done something herself,
the child is not likely to forget it
soon; the child also feels more
confident of her abilities to
perform activities.
•Choose examples from child’s
own environment, and from
within her experience. In the
Chapter on Pollution of Air and
Water, for example, children’s
own experience is made the basis
to compare the quality of air in
places such as parks ,busy roads,
residential and industrial areas.
•Lay little stress on formal
definitions. For example, it has been
thought sufficient at this stage to
define acids and bases through
indicators and tastes, and not through
a pH scale. When there is little
understanding of the underlying
concept, children tend to cram the
definitions without understanding their
content.
•Do not make statements like
‘Current is flow of charges’. At
this stage children do not
understand the nature of
charges and how they move in
response to a potential
difference. So, such definitions
lead to cramming, while our
emphasis is on promoting
thinking.
•Have language which is simple
and direct so that children can
themselves read and understand;
they can use the books even
when the teacher is not present.
•Provide opportunities to learn
by cooperation, by role play,
and from peers.
•Minimise information overload by
transferring much of it to the nonevaluative boxes. In a Box in
Chapter on Sound, for example, a
Table gives the loudness of sound
from various sources. This is useful
information, but children do not
need to cram it.
[The reason that these boxes have
been made non-evaluative is that
teachers are tempted to frame
questions based on the information
in these boxes. Such questions do
not really test the understanding
and analytical ability of children.
Our aim is to encourage teachers to
frame more searching questions.]
•Explain how science and scientists work
through a few examples. A simple example
is the chance discovery of a blue spot
around one of the electrodes when Boojho
tests whether fruits and vegetables also
conduct electricity. He and Paheli repeat
the activity many times to be sure of the
discovery. Ultimately they decide to report
the discovery through a magazine. That is
exactly how a scientist works under similar
circumstances.
•Let teachers have the freedom to
replace the suggested activities by
those that they consider more
interesting and suitable in their
situation. They can develop their
own activities, too. This flexibility
aims at unleashing the creative
potential of teachers.
•Attempt to teach children the
real life skills for protecting
themselves, their families and
community at the time of natural
disasters like floods, storms,
cyclones, lightning and
earthquakes.
• Inform that the school is not the only source of
knowledge, there is much knowledge to be
gained outside the school that should be
appreciated. For example, in the Chapter on
Forests: Our Lifeline in class VII, a character,
called Tibu, is introduced. This person is a
tribal and has not been to school. But he has
acquired a vast knowledge of wild animals and
their habits and habitats by living close to them.
He shares this knowledge with the children
when they go for a visit to the forest. Children
appreciate this contribution to their knowledge.
•Attempt to sensitize children to
issues related to
1. Religion. Children of all religions
and groups are shown working
together.
2. Gender. Girls are shown
participating in all activities along
with boys. More importantly,
problems faced by girls and women,
such as the adverse sex ratio, holding
women responsible for giving birth to
female children, the burden of
collecting water falling solely on
women, have been brought to the
notice of children.
3. Environment. Concerns such as
deforestation, soil erosion,
pollution, use of plastics, acid rain,
etc., have been expressed to draw
the attention of children towards
degrading environment in the hope
that citizens of tomorrow will
behave more responsibly.
4. Health and Hygiene. Importance
of healthy food, regular exercise,
personal hygiene, sanitation at
home and outside, clean water,
etc., have been highlighted. Health
hazards associated with the misuse
of antibiotics have also been
brought to the notice of the
children.
5. Water scarcity. It is a major problem
that the world is going to face. It is
already a serious problem for us. How
people cope with this problem, how
water can be conserved by adopting
less water-consuming practices and
how wastage of water must be
avoided, are some of issues discussed.
A few case-studies of successful
voluntary action have been included.
6. Energy conservation. Energy
crunch, another serious problem
that our country, and the world,
face has also been highlighted. As
an example to conserve energy, the
use of CFLs in place of electric bulbs
has been emphasized to reduce
consumption of electricity.
•7. Differently-abled persons, such as
visually impaired or hearing impaired
persons. It has been explained that
these persons may have other abilities
enhanced which enable them to lead
meaningful lives. We should not pity
them or ridicule them. We must treat
them as normal persons so that they
can maintain their dignity and become
useful members of society.
8. Superstitions, prejudices, myths and
taboos. One of the goals of education
is to remove ignorance and the
attendant superstitions, prejudices,
myths and taboos. We have used all
opportunities to explain how ignorance
gives rise to practices which make the
life of people miserable. The hope is
that knowledge will help eradicate
such practices and beliefs.
9. Their social responsibilities now
and in future as citizens of India.
For example, they are urged to
give way to an ambulance when
they are on the road. As another
example, they have been asked to
keep with them always the
essential telephone numbers which
may be needed during
emergencies in their localities.
•Connection with life outside the
class room has been made
through
1. Non-evaluative Boxes,
2. Extended learning, Case studies
3. Exercises, and
4. Highlighting social issues
• Projects and Activities under
Extended Learning have been
specially designed to increase the
interaction of children with the
society around them and to come
face to face with some of the
problems it faces, hoping that as
adults they might strive to solve
some of these problems. Two
examples illustrate this:
•In one of the Projects children are
asked to collect information about
the types of fuels people use in
their area, hoping that they realize
how poverty drives people to use
polluting fuels like the cow-dung.
•Elsewhere, they have been asked
to design posters for a campaign to
conserve water.
•Attempt has been made to foster
habit of enquiry through questions
such as the ones posed by Boojho
and Paheli
•Special attention has been paid to
the development of skills like
reading scales, data presentation in
the form of Tables, and making
graphs.
•Special care has been taken that
the children in their formative years
do not develop practices that may
harm them academically in later
years. These practices are fostered
unwittingly by the carelessness of
authors of many books.
•For example, electrical circuits in many
books tend to place the key always at the
same fixed position, say next to the
positive terminal of the battery. The
result is that the children start believing
that that is the correct position for the
key, whereas the key can be placed
anywhere in the circuit. Not only has this
point been emphasized, we have also
made conscious effort to place the key in
different locations in our circuit diagrams.
•Exercises given at the end of
chapters are of varied types and
difficulty levels. They require
application of learning to unfamiliar
situations. These include also the
open-ended questions, which are
aimed at stimulating thinking,
enhancing the power of expression,
and to discourage rote-learning.
•Use better printing and colour
illustrations to make the books
attractive to children.
•Provide addresses of websites
where material for further
reading, better illustrations and
animations are available.
•Include interesting stories, facts,
anecdotes and case studies so that
children enjoy going through the
books.
•Issue cautions, where-ever
necessary, to prevent accidents in
the classroom and outside during
the performance of activities.