Does a hands-on approach to science help students to achieve in formal assessments? Read the full blog at our website for more information: http://manicscience.com/does-practical-science-increase-achievement-in-learning/

1. DOES PRACTICAL
SCIENCE
INCREASE
ACHIEVEMENT
IN LEARNING?

2. Science is a subject where there can be hours equally
dedicated to theory and application with Bunsen
burners and test tubes often the favourite sights of
children when they walk into a classroom.
But does a hands-on approach to science help
students to achieve in formal assessments?

3. SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS IN PRIMARY
SCHOOL
Teachers’ of KS3 science will recognise issues when determining
how much science year 7 students were taught in primary school, by
a non-science specialist teacher.
 Firstly, primary schools pupils have limited access to science labs,
so they have little or no practical science investigations and miss
out on ‘how science works’ knowledge.
 Secondly as teachers’ are held accountable for the performance of
their pupils in published performance league tables, this
encourages them to teach for tests rather than deeper
understanding of scientific concepts. This leads to teaching only
theory, or using only the very basic experiments.

4. OFSTED PROMOTE PRACTICAL SCIENCE
Ofsted promote practical work in a report entitled Successful Science
– An evaluation of science education in England 2007-2010 :
‘Students needed to participate in all aspects of investigation: forming
hypotheses, planning, carrying out and evaluating practical work. Only
following instructions from worksheets to complete a practical activity
limited the ways in which they could contribute and how they benefited.
Students’ involvement was key to engaging them with science and thereby
increasing their knowledge and understanding.’

5. GET CHILDREN STUCK INTO SCIENCE
The quality of practical work in schools can be an issue, with
another report finding the amount of time spent on practical work
decreasing, along with the range of activities available.
Practical work is necessary to increase achievement when designed
and delivered with the purpose of stimulating scientific enquiry and
thinking.
From my experience of teaching and coordinating STEM activities,
the ‘wow’ factor of practical science, complimented by scientific
thinking into what happens and how to investigate it has a lasting
impact on a child’s brain.

6. If we can help children think like a scientist, all we
need to do is then steer them in the right direction, so
give them that chance in lesson time at school.

7. FIND OUT MORE
Find out more about Manic Science on our website:
http://manicscience.com/does-practical-science-
increase-achievement-in-learning/