Science experiment leads to enquiry

Year 2 pupils have been incorporating High Performance Learning (HPL) thinking skills into their science lessons this half term. At the start of last week, the girls were asked to collect different types of paper and bring them into class. When the girls gathered as a group they investigated two different types of kitchen paper, pondering the question “what are they used for?”. Once the girls discovered that the paper was to absorb water, they discussed, in groups, how they could carry out a test to see which kitchen paper was more resistant and durable when wet. They all decided that liquid should be involved, with one member of the class impressively suggesting we should put the papers over small bowls in order to see if any water dripped through.

The next stage was for the girls to answer the question “how do we make the test fair?”. The feedback from this problem-solving challenge was that the liquid should be the same for each test, and the same amount should be put on each piece of paper. The girls carried out the tests as fairly as they could, but they all reached different conclusions, which gives the group plenty of scope for further discussions and careful thinking about what to change in their next experiments.