YEARS 7–12 IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM
Year 7 Practical Skills for Inquiry Learning (continued)
ideas from the students and once a measure has been added
to the list, expect the students to adhere to it. If they do not
then point it out to them. Sensible safety behaviour needs to
become an automatic part of the way they work in the lab.);
• ‘Throwing them in at the deep end’ also applies to building
their literacy, numeracy, communication, co-operative
group and thinking skills, and giving space for their
creativity to be expressed.
• start working on the class environment;
• Thus we hope to nudge them towards the highest standards
they are individually able to attain and hopefully these will
match – or come close – to the standards we would hope
they could reach.
• help them understand you will want their ideas;
• establish that your job is to work with them not in an ‘us and
them’ situation ….
• To have any chance of achieving these goals, we must let
the students ‘show where they are at’ and ‘use their own
ideas’ to improve – with helpful nudging from the teacher!
With respect to practical skills, I believe this can be best
achieved without any input from computers and so have
not included any IT activities here!
For the students:
This section aims to show what the students need to know in order
to be able to carry out their task. Often this is best done verbally
(as in this case) so you can pause while they get organised etc....
e.g. get into groups of 4; discuss Role Cards etc. ...
• This approach may also mean that teachers have to rethink
their pedagogy and learn new skills. No longer is their role
to tell (‘fount of all knowledge’, ‘sage on the stage’, etc.
...) but to devise activities from which the students can
work out the science. In essence this means that you must
resist the urge to TELL, and develop your skills in asking
‘open-ended’ or ‘fat’ questions which help the students to
think things through. Informal or formative assessment
is integral to this approach also.
• You will work in co-operative groups of 4 (for e.g.) and each
group will be given a number which will correspond to the
number of the lab work station at which you will work.
• At your station you will find a large piece of cardboard and a
box containing some ‘rubbish’ and some pens, glue, scissors,
sticky tape.
• You will also find some ROLE CARDS. Allocate the role cards
to individuals in your group and pin them on. You must work
in your role as you do the activity.
Lesson 1 with your incoming Year 7 class
• Your task is to build a 3D poster which shows your group’s
ideas about SCIENCE. There must be no (very little?) writing
on the poster but you can draw on it (limit the number of
words?)
1. Building a 3D poster
In order to embark on the practical activities, you will need to
have established good class management of your incoming Year
7 class and be willing to realise that students are much more
capable of doing practicals and working things out than you
may think. You have to be ready to ‘let them go’, and resist the
temptation to tell them what to do or give them answers.
• Write the word SCIENCE in the centre of the cardboard, then
talk about what you want to include. Try to get ideas from
every member of the group. Represent these ideas by making
a 3D poster using the ‘stuff’ you have at your station.
This is just a simple activity which will give you the opportunity
to ‘set the scene’ with the class and get a ‘feel’ for them before
launching into the series of practical activities. You can: • When each group has finished you will have the chance to
show and explain your poster to the class.
• sort them into co-operative groups; establish practical work
stations; This section aims to list the requirements needed for the task/
experiment; indicate what we are trying to achieve and give
indications of expected results.
For the teacher:
• introduce them to role cards – discuss with them what the
different roles are (these will help build their co-operative group
skills);
Requirements:
• begin a safety poster – perhaps ‘bags out of the way’ and ‘no
running’ to start with (these should be put up in the lab and will
be added to as more safety measures become apparent – get
• 2 sets of numbers – one for each work station and one for
each group;
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 68 NO 1