The work presented is part of a research that studies the classroom practices in Primary Education. The paper studies the tasks involved in these classroom practices when teaching different learning subjects. One of the curricular aspects studied involves scientific literacy; that is, an analysis is made of those teaching methods used to teach the scientific literacy to pupils from 6 to 12. The research has adopted an intensive case-study model that has provided access to a systematic analysis of the classroom practices of the teachers involved (16 teachers, from five different schools). Each case, involved the video and audio recording of complete sessions (from 9 am to 2 pm), which means a total of 159.5 hours of class. Later, for this paper, the time corresponding to the subjects Mathematics and Natural Sciences was studied.

The last two regulations on the curriculum of Primary Education in Spain established as one of the aims the development of scientific culture in pupils. This scientific culture is reflected in the objectives and competences of subjects such as Mathematics and Natural Sciences. And it refers to the two senses that Norris & Phillips (2003) distinguished as components of scientific literacy: the fundamental sense and the derived one. Examples of the first would be in Mathematics: Interpreting simple mathematical language present in everyday life in different formats, acquiring appropriate vocabulary and showing understanding of the message; and the second in Natural Sciences: providing students with a solid and well-structured scientific background will help them to understand the world and encourage them to care for, respect and value it.

Thus, scientific literacy includes the specific scientific knowledge necessary for understanding reality in general (derived sense) and for reading and writing in particular (fundamental sense). The educational challenge that this idea poses is realised in the case of primary education because fundamental sense links science subjects with the rest of the curriculum subjects that are also related to fundamental sense. Particularly with Language and Literature. Therefore, working to promote a scientific culture in primary can be interpreted as part of a broader and more relevant project that has to do with the development of literacy throughout the primary stage. Starting from the fundamental sense of scientific literacy, science would not be possible without texts, without the capacities of comprehension, interpretation, analysis and critique inherent to scientific thought and communication.

Unfortunately this challenge has not been included in the basic core of Primary Education agendas so far in Spain (García Carmona, 2021) and raises important questions for teachers about what it means in terms of classroom practice to educate their pupils in a scientific culture (Smith et al. 2012). It is vital to know what literacy processes teachers undertake when they teach science and how they do so, as we can understand what learning opportunities pupils are offered (Rodríguez et al., 2018).

Knowing how teachers address scientific literacy is essential for understanding how pupils are helped to develop a scientific culture. The following research goals have therefore been formulated:

- Describe and understand how the scientific literacy process (fundamental sense) is undertaken in different classrooms across several levels in Primary Education where Mathematics and Natural Sciences are being taught.

- Analyse the teaching strategies teachers use to address scientific literacy in the classroom and compare them to our knowledge on the issue of Literacy in general.

- Develop a procedure that may help teachers to improve their teaching processes, to contribute to the development of the scientific culture regulated in the official curriculum.

This research has adopted an intensive study model of classroom practices that has permitted a systematic analysis to be made of the teaching activities of our cohort of teachers (sixteen teachers in total from five different schools). This method enables us to discover with some considerable depth and intensity the teachers’ practices in teaching scientific literacy, at the same time as it furnishes us with an understanding of the practices within their own specific context, whereby we can understand how the decision-making processes involved in the management of teaching are tackled. This study considers several teachers’ classroom practices over a number of years in Primary Education in five schools, which among other things will enable us to understand how this teaching evolves and whether the school itself is a variable that informs this process. The following procedure was applied: a video and audio recording were made of three full sessions of classroom work (complete session, 159.5 hours of class) for each one of the cases. The recordings of the sessions were then transcribed with a view to analysing the practices by identifying specific teaching tasks in order to subsequently classify each one of the tasks into a system of categories. The first step for obtaining a general snapshot of what happens in the classroom, detecting the groupings and the time spent teaching literacy, involves breaking the classroom session down into Typical Classroom Activities (TCA); each one of these TCA in the teaching of literacy is, in turn, broken down into tasks that are finally analysed through our system of categories. Our system of analysis is structured around seven main categories: 1) functions of the language; 2) representational aspects of the written language; 3) oral language; 4) reading (teaching the code and phonological awareness); 5) reading comprehension; 6) writing; and 7) literary knowledge. These dimensions are, in turn, subdivided into a detailed set of categories and subcategories for analysing the complexity of practices that teachers may undertake in this educational process.

Although this is still a work in progress, certain conclusions may be reached on the trends in the data: - During the moments when teachers work on scientific or Mathematical content, the work is mainly concerned with the written language, specifically with work on the comprehension of the texts that the pupils read, and to a lesser extent on oral comprehension and the consolidation of the writing system. - In the subject of Natural Sciences, teachers' work on oral language is greater than in Mathematics. There is a greater preference for oral language tasks because, for example, the explanation of some abstract and complex phenomena, such as a volcanic eruption, are oral texts which, mediated by the teacher, help the children to access meanings. - Throughout all years of Primary Education, content related to written language is dealt with in a generalised way, and there do not seem to be any differences linked to the different teachers studied. Written text composition tasks hardly appear in all grades of the stage, although in the sixth grade they obtain higher values than in the rest. In general, the teaching of scientific literacy is more receptive than expressive. Tasks focus on children accessing meanings, but there is little opportunity for children to express ideas, record learning graphically or do tasks that involve recording data. - Teachers try to ensure that children understand the meanings of scientific texts: that they access the main ideas and connect them together. Caution needs to be exercised with these strategies, because when opportunities are not provided to check pupils' prior ideas, knowledge of other subjects or other texts with what they read, children may access the meanings, but these do not become part of their knowledge. Access to scientific texts is promoted, but not to scientific knowledge.

García Carmona, A. (2021). The nature of science in the Spanish literature on science education: a systematic review covering the last decade. Revista de Educación, 394, 241-270. https://doi.org/10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2021-394-507 Norris, S. P. & Phillips, L. M. (2003). How literacy in its fundamental sense is central to scientific literacy. Science Education, 87, 224-240. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10066 Rodríguez, I., Clemente, M., Ramírez, E. & Martín-Domínguez, J. (2018). How and for how long is literacy taught in early childhood education? A multiple-case study of the classroom practices of seven teachers. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 26(5), 738-759. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2018.1522759 Smith, K.V., Loughran, J., Berry, A. & Dimtrakopoulos, C. (2012). Developing scientific literacy in a Primary School. International Journal of Science Education, 34(1), 127-152. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2011.565088