The photos above are from last year’s course.
This term, we started by discussing the questions “What is science?“”What do scientists look like?” and “What do scientists do?” The children sorted some cards with pictures of real scientists and other famous figures. They also drew a picture of a (stereo)typical scientist on my whiteboard. The aim of this was to show them that scientists do not conform to the stereotypes and that anyone can be a scientist.
We used my mystery boxes (based on the instructions on the Understanding Science website) but I didn’t spend very much time on this. I’ve done this activity with some of the children already and it is a great activity but I probably should have cut it out from this class to allow more time for the measuring activity which followed.
I was trying to get the children to appreciate the value of quantitative observations. I had provided three activities that required the children to take averages. I asked them to find the mass of one M&M (without precise scales), the thickness of one piece of paper and the time for one heartbeat. I’m not sure that many of the children understood what they were meant to do. I instructed a few children on how to take their pulse, and I set a minute timer on my phone but not all children did this, and one child still insisted that his heartbeat was once every 2 seconds, without measuring it.
In the second class I talked a little about last week’s activity and then introduced the idea of testable and non-testable questions. In order to investigate a question scientifically, we must first of all pose it as a question. Simply saying “I am interested in the water absorption properties of nappies (diapers)” doesn’t provide a question that can be tested. Instead you could say “Do certain types of nappies absorb more water than others?” Then you can turn it into a testable question by choosing several named brands and setting up an experiment where a measured volume of water is poured onto them and you measure how much is not absorbed.