ABSTRACT
Science is the third core subject of the primary curriculum. It was one of the fi rst subjects to be published when the National Curriculum orders came out in 1989. Unlike English and mathematics, it does not have a long history of being taught in primary school. In some form or another, English and mathematics have been taught since before 1870 but science really only became a core after the ERA 1988. From when we were at primary school, we remember not science but nature study. In our urban classroom, there was something called a nature table. On it there were objects such as acorns in autumn, and willow twigs in spring, and often a picture of red squirrel. We were introduced to the mystery of hibernation, usually by considering the dormouse, all rather odd in urban primary schools. This work was often conducted by pupils listening to a radio broadcast and reading an accompanying booklet, which suggests that at the time teachers needed support even in the teaching of nature study. Pedagogically, these lessons were closer to literacy lessons than to contemporary science lessons.
