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Ben Newsome: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments, and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

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Ben Newsome: Welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Glad to have you again for another chat around science and STEM, and importantly, making it relatable and fun for students of all ages. And you know what? A person who really knows this is Jacqueline McCarthy, who is currently a science specialist at Abbotsleigh, and she’s a qualified primary and secondary science teacher. Loves her science, and she actually specializes in agriculture. She used to work prior to teaching with the Royal Agricultural Society as their education manager. As we have a chat with Jack, you’ll really find that she’s incredibly passionate about nurturing the curiosity of primary-aged students, and she really likes doing the hands-on stuff, the easy stuff with materials that you can get around the home or at the local shops and making it fun and engaging for learners. So let’s head on right in.

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Ben Newsome: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, EdTech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s Fizzics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S and click 100 free experiments.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: I’m Jacqueline McCarthy and I have the joy of being a science specialist in a primary school. I teach years 4, 5, and 6, so they’re anything from 10 to 11, 12-year-olds, and I get to teach them science. I teach them once a week, and I also happen to be on the Science Teachers Council here in New South Wales.

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Ben Newsome: Firstly, what a gig! How great would it be to just be able to go, “You know what? I’m just going to teach science with that age group and as a specialist teacher. I get to dive right into it.” What fun!

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Jacqueline McCarthy: It is joy. It is absolute joy. As my brother always says, “I can’t believe they actually pay you to do that.”

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Ben Newsome: I know that feeling. I was running a show this morning and I even said to people, “By the way, this is a real job,” because it doesn’t look like it sometimes.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: No, I’m outside, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, and the girls love it. That’s the main thing.

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Ben Newsome: Oh, it’s awesome. Now, one of the things I know that you’re a massive champion for is teaching science with simple stuff.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Yes, absolutely. I’m very fortunate. I teach in an independent school here in Sydney and we have a budget, which is lovely and fabulous and sometimes I do dip into it, but most of the time I teach science with everyday things. Those things that you can go to Woolies or Coles or your local supermarket and purchase. And that’s the reality. We can teach science with those things that are easy and at hand.

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Ben Newsome: Absolutely. I mean, I love just even showing extremely simple things with frankly just water. It’s ubiquitous, it’s everywhere. A glass of water and a piece of paper can be inverted and the water doesn’t fall out and it shows air pressure, and people have paper, they’ve got a glass and they’ve got water. It’s so easy to do.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: You add a bit of food coloring and it’s magic.

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Ben Newsome: It actually reminds me, there’s a thing. By the way, as a heads up, Jacqueline and I are going to just riff off each other a little bit because we both do teach so much of this for young kids. One thing for sure is magic. There’s an experiment you can do where I love doing this where “Is there air inside the glass, yes or no?” And so you turn this glass upside down, place it over the top of the surface of water, and you push down. Of course, the water rises because of displacement, but now for the “magic” in quotation marks, you then put a tissue paper inside that clear glass and you repeat the experiment. Of course, the same thing happens, the water rises, and lo and behold, as you take that glass out, the paper comes out and it’s dry. Now those poor little eight-year-olds and seven-year-olds think that you’re some sort of a magician and go, “Hang on, it’s not really magic, it’s just air was in there. That’s all.”

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Jacqueline McCarthy: What’s the difference? I ask the question, what is the difference between science and magic? Science is real.

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Ben Newsome: Science is real. Yeah, actually the magicians are also very good at saying, “Hey look at the shiny thing here,” and so you look and they hide something over here that you missed. Or they just simply take advantage of what you don’t know.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: I often do actually magic and show them the science behind it, which again is great fun.

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Ben Newsome: Well let’s be honest, teaching is magic in its own way. You have done this work for many years and inspired a lot of people to do the same. I almost feel like it would be unfair for me to ask you your favorite experiment because let’s be honest, it’s like choosing your favorite child. But what are the sort of things that you’re teaching that age group where it’s about middle school, 10 years old up to 12-ish, what sort of things are your go-to to make them say wow?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Well, it’s interesting you ask that. A week or so ago I got to take some students to speak to some parliamentarians at State Parliament. I had that opportunity to go, “Okay, so what experiments do I want them to show and explain to the parliamentarians?” So I took a kilo of clay and we had done it in class. The girls had to make a thorny devil. A thorny devil is an Australian native animal which has some amazing adaptations because the girls had been learning about adaptations and how they help to survive. The task was the girls had to be able to drip the water at the animal’s tail and it had to land in its mouth. So I got the girls, I took the clay, I gave the clay to the girls, and then when the parliamentarians came and asked the girls what they were doing, I gave the parliamentarians a piece of clay and asked them to do the same. What they can learn out of that experiment is absolutely amazing. We look at nature, we look at what’s out there, and then they use their clay to replicate it. Then we look at biomimicry because there’s a whole lot of products out there now which have been based on the skin of the thorny devil.

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Ben Newsome: This is really cool. So if you’ve never seen a thorny devil, it’s this little yellowy-black looking thing about the size of the palm of your hand and the word thorny devil, it is, it’s thorny. So you think it’s all about protection, and yet it’s got to do with moisture too. It’s very interesting.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: The thorny devil walks, as you would know, walks through the spinifex in the morning because obviously it’s in a desert animal, so it’s a very hot part of Australia typically, and it’s able to collect the water from the spinifex and survive where there is so little water in that desert environment.

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Ben Newsome: See this is interesting. So first up, clay, unless you live in a sandy space and some people just do, but clay is frankly dirt.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Interestingly enough, I make the girls collect the clay. At the back of our school we have clay, so we go and collect it. So it’s actually even no cost at all.

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Ben Newsome: Actually, this is okay. One of the things I love doing with geology is when you have a bunch of different sieves. Now of course you can get the laboratory sieves, you can get the fancy grade sieves, they exist, but you don’t have to. If you find these cheap sieves and more expensive sieves and whatnot, they’ve got different meshes, they’ve got different holes in them, and what you can do is grab a scoop of dirt and pour it through a stacked set of the sieves and you can work out what percentage of clay, silt and loam you have. And there’s this thing called Northcote’s triangle you can actually look at.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: It is, absolutely. I look at that as well and we do a whole experiment on how does soil sound, how does it feel, and what can you see? We get them to look at it in that way too. I love it. You give the children a magnifying glass and it’s amazing how many hours they can spend looking at the soil.

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Ben Newsome: Oh totally. Some of the other things I sometimes see when we go work with all sorts of different places is people are concerned about mess and they’re concerned about the bits, “I need to gather the bits, I need to get all this stuff and I need to do all the cleaning,” and I kind of feel like well, couldn’t the students do the cleaning maybe?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Yeah, or do it outside. There’s no problem with being outside. You take a hat and some sunscreen and outside is the place to be. It’s amazing what they can observe out there.

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Ben Newsome: Well one thing that was crossing my mind when you’re describing the thorny devil is you could have said a standard experiment, it could have been bicarb and vinegar and kids would happily show the fizzing stuff, but modeling something on an Australian environment brings in a narrative that goes far beyond the science.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Yes, we actually fit it into an integrated program, so in the week they had been learning about deserts in geography, and so when they got to science they were looking at the adaptations of a desert animal because we’d been looking at adaptations prior. So that’s my current favorite, but next week I’ll have another one.

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Ben Newsome: Absolutely. Have you ever had a situation where you go, “You know what? That really just didn’t work”? Let’s be honest, we’re teachers, that happens all the time, right? Any stories where you’ve gone, “You know what? I did this thing and it went this way pear-shaped”?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Over the years I’ve done so many different things or things where you expect them to be able to do it and it takes ten times longer. I had this experiment where we were making out of popsicle sticks, so paddle pop sticks and masking tape and some rubber bands, and it was the looking at the leg of a kangaroo and looking at how and why a kangaroo can jump. And I said, “Oh, it’s only like putting four paddle pop sticks together, we’ll get through that and a whole lot more.” It took an entire lesson because the masking tape required to be cut! Sometimes you just go, “I can’t believe this is taking so long.” Yes, I think as teachers we’ve all had those lessons where you just shake your head and wonder why.

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Ben Newsome: Oh totally. I did that with grade nine, not making a kangaroo leg. I remember trying to make a robotic claw. So you know when you go to like a toy store and you’ve got those extendable grabber things, so you pull on the handle and now at the very end is this robot does a claw thing and I thought, oh that’d be fun. Surely we can do this with cardboard and some bits and pieces, and by the way you totally can do it. However, I probably should have given more scaffolding. It took way longer. And this is a challenge isn’t it as teachers? Because you’ve got the fine motor skills side of things and you’ve got the “Does the student on earth possibly understand what it is that you’re trying to ask them to do within their capabilities?” It’s a fine line when you’re trying to push their knowledge, right?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: But you also want to interest and engage them too, and sometimes you think this is really exciting and they look at you like, “Will you just stop talking?” Today I was teaching about technology in agriculture because we’re doing an agriculture unit, and I was talking to them about how drones work on farms and I thought they’d be really into it because they love drones. I could just see half of them going, “Will she just stop?”

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Ben Newsome: Jacqueline, you’re droning on! Yes I did that, I’m sorry. I’m in a mood. But it can happen, and I guess in some ways, us as adults, drones and all those tech things, they weren’t around when we were kids, and so for us we find them incredibly exciting, and for them they go, “Okay, it’s a drone. Next.” It’s brutal isn’t it? Kids are brutal.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: They are, but tomorrow I think I’m going to have year four in the palm of my hand. We are doing Minecraft fact or fiction.

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Ben Newsome: Oh, I like that. Interesting. That actually reminds me, I think I’m going to mess it up. It’s one of the geology groups. Might be Minerals Council of Australia.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: You mean Geoscience Australia?

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Ben Newsome: Geoscience Australia, thank you. You know where I’m going. They produced the poster, and now you’re bringing it out for me, you have got it. Look at that! The Geology of Minecraft.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Yeah, and they’ve made a video to go with it too, talking about is it fact or is it fiction. So that’s going to be our provocation and they’re going to go from that and they’re all going to make a block, is that what they call them? I think that’s what they call them, and they’re going to have to put together a little report to go beside their block, “Is it fact or is it fiction?”

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Ben Newsome: I love this because I’ve taught plenty of times igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic rocks, many, many times, and you’d give examples, quartz and obsidian and blah blah blah. And the kids would look at you like I might as well be speaking some other language. I suppose we are really. But very much so at the time. And then suddenly all these kids knew what obsidian was. They suddenly knew. And I had to ask what’s going on because maybe I should be paying more attention. They’d say, “Oh, it’s in Minecraft.” And actually even recently when we do color mixing with light, you put blue and green together, you make cyan. And all the kids would just start smiling when I say cyan because it turns out cyan’s one of the colors of Among Us, the game they play. So there you go. It just keeps on happening. Popular culture matters.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: It does, and it’s really a great way of engaging them. We might think that it’s only a video game, but to them it’s really important, so we can link that popular culture with science. How awesome.

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Ben Newsome: Absolutely. And there’s often contexts that go far beyond science as well, there’s the applications of it, there’s the historical side of things. I love the stories of the Bone Wars between these two paleontologists in North America, they just really went at it at each other. All those stories are just fascinating.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: There’s so much that they can learn. I always ask, my favorite two words that I have on my wall in the classroom are “Why? Why do things happen?” And then to find I always say it’s the power of the “because”. To understand the “because” is where science really begins.

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Ben Newsome: So what’s your work that you do with the Science Council?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Okay, so I am the primary school rep. So I represent all of those teachers here in New South Wales who teach the primary or the junior years of kindergarten to year 6. And we try to put together a network, so we have people come together to talk about different areas of science, and we also put together professional development to get them to come together and learn hands-on skills of how to teach science better. Because you know what? We all want to be the best teachers we can be, but being a primary school teacher’s a bit different to most people. I know that I’m very lucky to be a science specialist, but most of my colleagues teach everything. They’re a generalist, they’re expected to know everything, and so I love the fact that I get to support those teachers to build their science skills.

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Ben Newsome: It’s really challenging too because let’s be honest, what’s expected of teachers in terms of hours is borderline insane. And trying to fit in professional development as well, even when there’s something valuable, sometimes they just can’t make it.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: And at the moment there’s such a teacher shortage here, especially in New South Wales and from what I read the rest of the world, it means that it’s hard for teachers to leave their own classrooms to go to professional development because there’s no one to fill in for them.

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Ben Newsome: There’s none, let alone the budget of getting the person to fill in.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Which is why we try to do a lot of these professional developments online after school for an hour. Just check in for an hour, learn this new skill, and then take it off and learn it and teach it in your classroom.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, and there’s the formal side and there’s the informal side. So there’d be people listening to this who do professional development or attend professional development events. This podcast is professional development! I mean me listening to you right now is development for me. It all depends on your context.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: No, we are very fortunate to be able to have this technology now that we can literally go on and go, “Oh actually, I know that I’ve listened to one of your podcasts before about biodiversity and I’ve got, I can use that, I can use that citizenship project. Yeah, okay, I know how to do that,” and off I go. And that’s the advantage we have of modern technology.

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Ben Newsome: It’s amazing too because in previous lives we would have had to drive to the place, grab seat A-19, listen to the sage on the stage and then leave and that’s it. And if you didn’t write all your notes that was it, tough. Nowadays as we talk as a podcast it’s recorded. I mean I know that we’re 140-odd episodes at the time we record or something, and I still know people look at ones that were recorded like four, five years ago.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: That’s really cool. And you know what? We are very fortunate to be able to do that, and we get to learn so much from everyone because you know we don’t know everything.

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Ben Newsome: Which makes me think about near-peer learning. The idea of as students grow and go through the years etc., they’ve been through these classes, the classes that you taught, and maybe the Minecraft class that you’re going to do tomorrow. There could be an opportunity for reflections that could be passed down over time. I mean of course there’s the issue of sharing someone’s image and audio etc., as long as parents sign off, kids could actually learn from last year’s group.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: That’s right, and it’s really quite interesting. We spent so much time learning online last year that we can now go, “Oh actually, we can use that resource, or we can show what this particular child did on such and such,” and it’s quite interesting to be able to do that. But what another thing I love in science teaching is being able to upskill our older students to go and teach our little ones. So we do a program on space with our year five children and they learn all about space and an element of space and then they come up with a picture book. So it’s a part of their English integration, they come up with a picture book and then we take it down to our kindergarten children and teach them that aspect about space. And they know that when they get to year five they’ll be able to go back to kindergarten and teach the next little kindergarten something about space. So it’s quite a gorgeous community growing activity.

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Ben Newsome: It’s fantastic for growing community but also for the student it’s empowering because you’re trusting them to do said teaching. And when you think about it, we’re both teachers so we really know, to have a bunch of people listening to you or following some activity, you kind of have no choice but to know something. It’s sort of a bit hard. Mind you, every now and then it’s actually really fun to go, “Guys, girls, whoever’s in front of you, I don’t know. I’ve got some stuff and I’ve got some questions, let’s see if we can solve said questions because honestly I frankly don’t haven’t got no idea.” Now sometimes I’ll pose it and I know very much know what’s going to happen, but every now and then it’s genuinely “I don’t know,” and we got the time.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: And that’s okay, isn’t it great for them to know that we don’t always know?

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Ben Newsome: It can be fun, and it’s really good for students to see it’s alright if you get a null answer, a lack of result, nothing changed. In fact I often get students will say, “Well did we mess something up? I didn’t get a result, the color didn’t change.” I’m like, well that’s a result, it didn’t change because it didn’t change. That’s what happened, lack of change. So let’s describe that, why.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Exactly right. And that’s fine, but it’s hard for them to come up with that. And the other thing I do a lot of time is observing results and saying whatever result you got is okay. You don’t have to try to fudge it, you don’t have to try to change it because you know what, Penicillin was a mistake and it’s saved the lives of millions. So let’s just remember that that’s okay.

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Ben Newsome: So how do you find students nowadays with variable testing? Because I’m still finding kids will combine variables and change several at the same time. Are you still finding that’s the case?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Well, we talk about “cows moo softly”. I’m sure you’ve heard that. Change one thing, measure one thing, and keep everything else the same. And they we start from they’re very little and we talk about is it fair or is it not fair? And we’re able to follow it through, so by the time they’re in year four or five they’ve usually got those variables quite succinct in their heads, which is awesome.

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Ben Newsome: I actually like the use of the word “fair” because kids when they’re four and five and six they know what fair is. If the child next to them gets more ice cream than you, you’re going to go, “That’s unfair.”

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Jacqueline McCarthy: So that’s what we talk about the start with. We talk about is it fair to change two things or is it not fair? And “No, not fair, not fair!”

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Ben Newsome: Over the years, and I’ve certainly been lucky enough to see them, misconceptions. They rear their head all the time, and knowing that they exist is actually helpful as a teacher because you can kind of steer them down a path that actually makes sense. What are the common misconceptions that you just see year after year after year? Here comes grade five and here’s their idea about gravity again, or whatever it is. What are the sort of ones that you see all the time that people listening to this could go, “Hey I better watch out for this”?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: One of my most interesting ones is when we talk about solids, liquids and gases. I get the students to list examples of solids, liquids and gases and typically they list fuel as a gas because it comes from an American, it comes from a gas station, and therefore it is actually a gas. So that’s the one I get year in year out. I just don’t seem to be able to get rid of that one. So that’s interesting.

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Ben Newsome: No, totally. I mean I actually kind of think about what you hook onto. I mean we understandably look at solids, liquids and gases using water because it’s so handy. We know what water is.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: And it’s so available and it’s free, or close to free, and yeah absolutely.

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Ben Newsome: Totally. I mean I know that we sort of prefaced the start of this conversation around teaching science with simple stuff, sadly I’m going to not do that right now just for a moment. So I was teaching with some liquid nitrogen today. So yeah, we don’t have liquid nitrogen all the time. However, the stuff boils at a crazy cold temperature. It really does. And watching kids’ brains frankly break around the idea that this stuff is boiling whilst ice is forming around it is challenging because we think of boiling as a hot thing. And it’s not, it’s simply a change in state, liquid to gas. And different materials do it all the time in different ways. You kind of think of like what happens with those little drinking birds, and they’ve got like they got an alcohol inside them and slight bit of warmth and it expands and off they go. All these different things just respond differently. Or no, they’re not responding differently, they respond at different temperatures.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: It’s the temperature, and that people understand that the temperatures vary for different items is quite mind-blowing for them.

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Ben Newsome: Oh totally. And I think I might have even mentioned on this podcast a while ago, so apologies if you’ve heard this before, but it does cross my mind when the if you get kids to hold ice cubes in their hands they can feel it melt etc. But if you put the ice cubes on different materials, it’ll melt at different rates or not even at all. And their interpretation will be that one thing is hotter than the other because it’s melting the ice faster. It’s like well, actually just the heat’s coming from a different space. Maybe it’s more conductive for heat.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: That’s right. It’s a bit like when you get them to take their shoes off and you get them to put one foot on a tile and one foot on a carpet. What’s going on? And that blows their mind as well, which is great.

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Ben Newsome: That’s a lot of fun with a whole bunch of grade fives with their shoes off.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: I’ve got beautiful girls, it’s okay.

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Ben Newsome: There you go then! But it is good fun. And as I say, just teaching and hands-on as much as you can just it brings it out and just gets that encouragement going, which is fabulous. So if you had to if you had a bunch of people in front of you, just say like a bunch of teachers you’re on another professional development day and you’re just giving just a couple of little bits of advice of where to start to set up an investigative classroom that makes sense, that works and not painful, what would be some of the just some simple tips that you’d suggest to help people out as they set up an investigative classroom?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: I’d ask them to get to know their own students first. I mean I had a class of year fours last year who were absolutely animal obsessed. So to be able to teach science through their actual loves just makes it just so much better for them. For instance like my Minecraft lesson next week, if we can center we can teach them where they are it just brings so much value, so much richness to the item. And as I say, you don’t need to spend a lot of money. Most of science can be taught from Woolworths or Coles or whatever your supermarket is. So I worry about people feeling like they can’t teach science because of a budget situation. Yes, budget, you need some type of budget, but in reality science can be taught on a shoe string and that would be my my wish that people don’t think that they can’t teach it because they don’t have the latest and greatest.

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Ben Newsome: Well one of the things I totally agree. One of the things that happens with innovation is it’s created out of austerity. You’ve got no choice, so you’ve got to come up with something else.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Absolutely, and it’s amazing what they can come up with. And we’ve got amazing children to teach who have amazing ways of looking at the world, that yet they can show that prototype out of recycled materials or something that that is around that doesn’t need to be the latest and greatest and I don’t want people to be scared from teaching science just because they think that they don’t have the resources. Just give it a go.

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Ben Newsome: I love it. This is very very true. And perhaps challenge someone in your classroom to be your helping teacher. If there’s a student in there who really loves their science, they might be a really handy resource.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Absolutely, and it’s quite interesting that.

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Ben Newsome: So Jacqueline, how would people be able to get in touch with you if they needed to know more?

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Jacqueline McCarthy: Well I go so I’m on New South Wales Science Teachers Council. I’m on the Science Teachers Council, so if they want to go to the STANSW website of New South Wales, my details are there. Otherwise I’m on Twitter at @JacMcCarthy. That’s J-A-C-M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y. So that’s @JacMcCarthy and I’m more than happy to help people wherever I can because the more people who are passionate about science the better.

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Ben Newsome: Totally so. Thank you so much for coming along. And by the way as usual those links will be in the show notes so you can click away and go harass Jacqueline. Not harass, I’m sure that you’ll be fine.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: No, never. I’m sure I’ll be fine. Well thank you Ben for having me. As I say, the more we can we can talk about science the better.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, absolutely. Have a fantastic afternoon.

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Jacqueline McCarthy: You too. Take care.

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Ben Newsome: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

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Ben Newsome: Well there we go, we just hung out with Jacqueline McCarthy. You can really tell really loves this science teaching gig of hers. I mean what a great job be able to do this every day with primary-aged students. And if you want to hang out with Jacqueline you totally can on Twitter. Go to @JacMcCarthy, so at J-A-C-M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y on Twitter and you can certainly reach out and find out a lot more about what she knows and thinks when it comes to science education. So that is enough of this particular episode. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education. This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast and I’ll catch you another time.

[00:30:12]
Ben Newsome: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new “Be Amazing” book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s Fizzics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S.

[00:30:40]
Ben Newsome: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. AEON.net.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I teach science effectively on a limited budget?

Science doesn’t require expensive laboratory kits. Most concepts can be taught using everyday items from local supermarkets, such as food colouring, vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, and even water. Investigating clay found on school grounds is also an excellent, no-cost way to teach geology and environmental science.

What is the “Cows Moo Softly” mnemonic used in primary science?

This is a simple tool to help students understand the variables in a fair test: Change one thing, Measure one thing, and keep everything else the Same (Softly). It simplifies the scientific method for younger learners.

Why is Minecraft a useful tool for teaching science?

Using popular culture like Minecraft acts as a “hook” for engagement. By investigating the “Geology of Minecraft,” students can determine if the materials in the game (like obsidian or quartz) match real-world facts, helping them learn about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks in a relatable context.

What is a common misconception primary students have regarding states of matter?

One frequent misconception is that fuel (petrol) is a gas. This often stems from the American term “gas station.” Teachers can use this as a learning opportunity to clarify the differences between liquids and gases and the importance of scientific terminology.

How does near-peer learning benefit science education?

Near-peer learning involves older students teaching younger ones, such as Year 5 students creating space-themed picture books for Kindergarten. This process empowers the older students, reinforces their own understanding, and builds a collaborative school community.

Extra thought ideas to consider

Biomimicry in the Classroom

Consider looking at the Thorny Devil as a lesson in adaptation and moisture collection. This leads naturally into a discussion on biomimicry—how humans copy nature’s designs to create new products and technologies.

Valuing the “Null” Result

It is crucial to teach students that if an experiment doesn’t produce a dramatic change, it is not a “failure.” A lack of change is still a scientific result that requires description and analysis, much like how many major scientific discoveries were made through unexpected outcomes.

Discussion points summarised from the FizzicsEd Podcast, verified and edited by Ben Newsome CF