Primary Science

Primary Science

Effective science learning is essentially a process of inquiry and discovery. At our Centre, our teachers foster an intellectually-stimulating learning environment to help our students acquire science knowledge and process skills as well as develop a keen curiosity and interest towards science. It is our goal that our students will enjoy science and value science as an important tool in their daily life.

Our Curriculum

At our Centre, we align our science learning programme closely with the current Singapore Science Curriculum which focuses on ‘science as an inquiry’ to develop the spirit of scientific inquiry among our students. Our primary science curriculum consists of five main themes which align with the Singapore Primary Science Syllabus: Diversity, Cycles, Systems, Interactions, and Energy. Our curriculum will also emphasize the development of scientific process skills among our students. Our lesson activities will provide ample opportunities and guidance for students to acquire the following scientific skills and thinking processes:

Skills:

  • Observing
  • Comparing
  • Classifying
  • Using equipment/apparatus
  • Communicating
  • Making inference
  • Formulating hypothesis
  • Predicting
  • Analysing
  • Formulating hypothesis
  • Generating possibilities
  • Evaluating

Integrated Processes:

  • Creative problem-solving
  • Decision-making
  • Investigation

Our Teaching Approach

At our Centre, our science programme is guided by the learning philosophy of social constructivism which emphasizes that meaningful learning will take place when learners are actively involved in the knowledge construction process and in collaboration with significant others. Particularly in the 21st century context, we believe that it is important to develop our students to be self-directed learners and effective collaborators. With this in mind, our teachers take into consideration the interdependence of social and individual processes in their design of science lessons to optimize our students’ learning. In our science lessons, students are actively engaged in independent work as well as collaborative work with their peers. Our teachers thus play the role of facilitator of inquiry in our students’ learning process by guiding the students in developing their scientific process skills through active experimentation and meaning dialogues.

Our science programme uses a six-stage inquiry-based learning model to actively engage our students in a hands-on and minds-on science learning process.

Six-stage inquiry-based learning model

STAGE 1

Arousing curiosity

Children are generally curious about things around them. The teacher will pose a problem/scenario or present a demo/experiment (which are related to the concept(s) to be learnt) to arouse students’ curiosity and allow them to think further about the problems or counter-intuitive scenarios.

STAGE 2

Learning collaboratively

Students will work in small groups of 3-4 to explore and investigate the problem/scenario and provide their explanations. Through this collaborative learning process with peers, students will verbalize their thoughts and views to share with their group members. Each group will consolidate their discussion to formulate the best possible explanation or solution.

STAGE 3

Communicating understanding

Each group of students will present and verbalize their explanations/solutions to the rest of class and the teacher. This will allow students to make their thinking visible and at the same time develop their communication skills and confidence in oral presentation.

STAGE 4

Clarifying concepts

After listening to the group presentations, the teacher will clarify misconceptions and explain the concepts to the students with the use of multimedia tools, scientific models and other concrete teaching aids.

STAGE 5

Learning independently

To reinforce each student’s understanding of the concepts taught, our teacher will provide the students with worksheets for further practice. Our carefully designed worksheets contain exam-style questions related to the science concepts taught. This will allow our students to be prepared for their school examinations.

STAGE 6

Consolidating understanding

Teacher will go through the worksheets with the students to reinforce students’ understanding of the concepts learnt.