10 Science

It’s a challenging time to be a teacher whose subjects rely on practical interactions. I’ve been really inspired by what Kate is doing in Theatre and Drama, and Ash and Emily’s efforts in PE. Science is a slightly different beast. My practical activities often involve chemicals and measurements that need to be accurate, which can be difficult to replicate at home.

Introducing the extended experiment

Students were asked to raid pantries and cleaning cupboards in order to design their own experiments to measure how changing factors alters the rate of a chemical reaction. Vinegar was popular, but some students raided their parents’ supplies of yeast, chalk, dissolvable aspirin and battery-powered talking birthday cards. Parents, your sacrifices in the name of science were appreciated!

This experiment process teaches resourcefulness and adaptation. It’s far too common for students, when given options in the lab, to all choose the same combination of reactants. These external limitations have led to a massive diversity in the reactions being studied by students.

Students also had the novel experience of having experiments fail. In the school lab, experiments are very carefully designed to avoid failure at all costs. At home (and in the real world) there is no such safety net. Negative results are still results. What is more important in these cases is the ability to reflect in a scientific manner about how an experiment failed, and how a method could be improved in the future to minimise the chance of it happening again. 

Asking students to design their own experiments is invaluable practice for their future Science DP studies. Asking students to reflect on how a method could be improved is invaluable practice for life.

by Amy Byrne, teacher of Science