Science Investigation

Today (2nd March 2007) eight pupils and parents from 3B met in the large study room for the first curriculum workshop. Mrs Bell explained the methods of a Science investigation to the parents and how she would run this session. As soon as the children joined the group, the learning objectives and success criteria were shared. Our investigation was to find the strongest paper towel from a selection of four. Children and parents discussed what strongest meant and then felt the papers to predict which might absorb the most water.

A child noted that the word 'absorbed' was also a word we use in our Building Learning Power methods. Well noticed! More talking was done on how we might test the papers. Mrs Bell had taken in some resources and she made some suggestions. Fair testing was talked about before a quick recording exercise. Two of the four paper towels were predicted as being the most absorbent. Our task was to prove this theory.

Parent and children worked together, dropping coloured water onto to the paper towel to find out how many drops it would take before it leaked through. We were amazed to find that all the papers appeared to be very absorbent! As time was whizzing by, we decided to look and talk about the data collected so far. The results were interesting and perhaps not all that accurate. We talked about reasons behind this.

The plenary was to see how much of each paper would be absorbed by 5ml of water. This seemed to be a fairer test. The group were left thinking about how they might record these findings. Due to the fact this was only a one hour lesson, the full investigation was not completed. However, children went back to their maths lesson, claiming to have had a wonderful science lesson. Parents, too enjoyed helping and watching their children. Mrs Pearson said, "I did not realise my son was so confident."

Mrs Bell was left feeling proud of her class. Well done, everyone!