YEARS 7–12 IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM
Year 7 Practical Skills for Inquiry Learning – Part 4 (continued)
Scientific Method. Whether you choose to introduce terms such
as controls, variables, independent and dependent variables ...
will depend on your class and whether you think the discussion is
necessary at this time, but I think students should cope with the
ideas of ‘what will we change?’, ‘what changes will these cause?’
and ‘what will we keep the same?’ – especially if they have done
the previous activities.
control them so that they do not interfere – also part of the
method for the experiment.
• Often there are other things which could interfere but which
we cannot control – however we do our best to limit their
interference – also part of the method for the experiment.
• It may also be important to decide if the experiment needs to
be repeated, which is very frequently the case – this is also
part of the method.
• Hopefully, the students are by now ready to be introduced
to some of the ideas of the ‘Scientific Method’ and some of
the terminology associated with it. One of the important roles
of the teacher, even if using student-centred approaches,
is to introduce students to the terminology used in science
and by scientists. This is one case when telling students the
information is actually the most effective approach – along
with helpful explanations.
• What you do to the independent variable automatically causes
something else to change, and this is called the dependent
variable because what happens depends on the changes
the experimenter puts into the experiment. This is linked to
what you are trying to find out by doing the experiment – the
results.
• We now need to decide if the observations we have made and
which give us the results of our experiment actually provide us
with the evidence needed to answer the question we started
with. If so then we can write the answer to our question – the
conclusion.
The Scientific Method
The Scientific Method begins with asking a question you want
answered, and the steps you need to take to answer this question
by doing carefully constructed experiments. This question
often arises from observations you have made, which raised
questions about how? what? when? who? which? where? why?
etc. At this stage of the method, we are particularly interested
in the things students need to consider when constructing an
experiment to answer a question they have been given.
Writing Up the Experiment
I have referred to this previously, because having to write up
every experiment really ‘puts students off’ and takes much of the
fun out of doing practicals. This is especially true if they have to
do this using the traditional method of reporting. If you decide
your class is ready for this, some suggestions were made for
‘writing up’ experiments in Part 2. The ideas below follow similar
lines.
• Perhaps begin by discussing their ideas on what ‘fair test’
means, and reminding them of the previous experiments they
have done in Parts 1-3 where they were using this approach.
They may have met this in primary school also. This then leads
to the idea that using a fair test approach to do an experiment
means using the ideas from the Scientific Method.
How you choose to proceed depends on how far along the
continuum to carrying out scientific investigations your class has
come. If they have come a long way you may decide that it is time
to introduce them to a more formal way of writing up experiments.
Let them do one bit at a time, e.g. What were we trying to do?
(i.e. what question were we trying to answer?)’ ‘How did we do it?’
What did we observe happening?’ ‘What decision did we make
about the answer to our question?’
• When students used the fair test approach in today’s (and
previous) experiments, there were changes to be thought
about, changes to be made; changes which were caused;
things which may have caused changes they did not want
to happen and therefore needed to control. Scientists call all
these changes variables – because they are things which
may be varied (i.e. changed) in the experiment.
They work in their groups and write a draft from their flow-chart (it
is useful if you can check the flow-chart first to check that ‘nothing
is missing’). If two groups have answered the same question they
could then collaborate and produce a joint effort? You could then
introduce the terms Aim, Method, Results, Conclusion. Only when
the Aim, or Method etc. is perfect do they each transcribe it as
a neat copy in their note (or prac.) books. However, I would not
insist that it is written in the past tense etc. – that can come later!
• There will be one variable which you will want to deliberately
change (vary) because it determines what you are trying to
find out in the experiment. This is called the independent
variable, and it is the change the experimenter puts into the
experiment – part of the method for the experiment.
• There are other things in the experiment which need to be
kept the same, so that we can be sure that only the change
we are deliberately making is causing the result we need to
observe. These things are called controls because we must
You need to decide if this is the time to introduce ‘Hypothesis’
to the students? It may be too much at this time, and can be
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 68 NO 4