Melissa Cole | Year 6 Teacher

Year 6 has been investigating how to work as a scientist and conduct ‘fair tests’ (changing only one variable at a time).

In small groups, students had to decide what they wanted to test and how they wanted to test it, so aims and methods were all student devised.

Students then had a lesson to conduct their experiments in the classroom and record their results, which will be written up as formal science reports.

A lot of learning took place, particularly around the idea that mistakes or ‘getting it wrong’ doesn’t mean we have failed – it means we have learned how not to do things and the more important thing is to reflect on what went wrong, what we learned from it and how we can improve next time.

Some of our aims were:

To discover which type of chocolate (white, dark, milk) melts the quickest

To find out which type of ball will roll the furthest

To discover which type of vinegar (white, apple cider or balsamic) reacts the most with baking powder

To find out which type of lolly is most absorbent