This chapter provides outlines of the ASCEND activities. For each activity, a brief introductory outline of the purposes and nature of the task is provided. A more detailed account of the activity, and the use of supporting materials is provided on the CDROM, and the outlines in the chapter are designed to help teachers decide if and when they might wish to access the more detailed account.
This chapter presents brief outlines of the activities that were developed and piloted through the ASCEND project. Most of the activities discussed are based around resources that are included on the accompanying CDROM, in a form that allows the classroom teacher to select, edit and modify materials for their own classes.
For each unit, there is a brief description of the nature of activity, and the rationale for its place in a programme of science enrichment.
The brief outlines here are intended as tasters, acting as 'abstracts' allowing teachers to decide if they would wish to find out more about that activity.
Teachers will find a more detailed account of each activity, along with supporting materials, on the accompanying CDROM. …
All the activities were designed with gifted and able upper secondary (KS4) students in mind. All have been piloted with able Y10 (14-15 year-old) students during the ASCEND project.
It is hoped that many teachers may feel that some or all of these activities may provide a useful basis for challenging lessons for their own students, or at least be useful as a source of ideas for lesson activities.
Activity 1: What is Science?
This activity allows students, working in groups, to explore their criteria for considering whether an activity is part of science.
This activity concerns the fundamental question of 'what is science'. Whilst a basic question, it is certainly not a trivial one. In the philosophy of science, this is called the 'demarcation' question, i.e. distinguishing science from non-science, and there is neither a simple clear distinction, nor a consensus!
The activity is based on a card sort, which allows students to classify activities as 'science' or 'not science' (or 'not sure'), and through this process make their tacit criteria (and prejudices!) explicit. It is expected that although some of the cards should offer fairly uncontroversial activities, there is likely to be lively discussion about others.
- The activity has three stages:
- Part a) sorting the activity cards
- Part b) making criteria explicit
- Part c) comparing with another group
The tasks require students to evaluate activities according to both their own criteria, and by applying criteria that another group has attempted to make explicit.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 2: Is there a method to science?
This activity introduces three models of 'how science works', and asks students to apply the models to historical case studies.
This activity concerns a key feature of the nature of science, which is the notion of a 'scientific method'. This has been (and continues to be) a very contested area within the philosophy of science, so it is not possible to offer a single prescription for how science can (or should) proceed. This type of complexity and lack of a closed answer should appeal to many gifted learners.
proposing three models of ideas about how science works. These are simplified models, but nonetheless offer an authentic taste of the issues involved.
The students are asked to work in groups to discuss how historical sketches of the work of scientists support (or not) three models of the scientific method:
The three models presented are:
These are linked to the ideas of Bacon, Popper and Kuhn.
The vignettes provided (and teachers may wish to substitute or supplement these examples) are of the work of:
- Marie Curie;
- Albert Einstein;
- William Harvey;
- Robert Millikan;
- Barbara McClintock;
- Crick, Franklin, Wilkins & Watson;
- Galileo Galilei;
- Lise Meitner;
- Jane Goodall;
- Johann Kepler
As with most of the ASCEND activities, the tasks are designed to encourage active discussion, rather than being focused on specified end points. The different vignettes do not collectively suggest any one of the models is adequate – and this reflects the lively debate among those who study such matters!
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 3: Learning Science
This activity asks students to identify and summarise key information from the 'learning sciences', and to produce a model synthesising the information.
In this activity, students (working in groups) engage with information about the brain and about learning, and produce two outcomes: a model of the learner and a set of 'tips for learners' that they could use as advice on study/revision skills for other students. The two tasks require the groups to organise and present information from the same 'database' in two very different ways.
The 'The brain and learning' text was designed to introduce a wide range of ideas related to learning, from both the psychological and the more physiological perspectives.
The text was deliberately designed to be 'dense' introducing a wide range of ideas, and new vocabulary for students to use. The text relates familiar science ideas (the brain, blood, cells), familiar everyday ideas (imagining, remembering), and (what is likely to be) new concepts and vocabulary (glial cells, cerebrospinal fluid). The text was designed to be a demanding yet interesting read for students. Students need to have the ability to 'read for purpose' – to identify texts, skim them, determine whether they are relevant to matters in hand, and then select the parts of a text from which they will obtain information. Gifted learners (in particular) are likely to take more responsibility for finding a suitable source and interrogating it when they need information.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 4: Explaining science
This activity explores the nature of a good scientific explanation.
The aim of the session was to help students
- a) appreciate that explanation play a central role in science
- b) to have criteria for 'good scientific explanations' -in science explanations are expected to
- i) be logical;
- ii) be based on evidence and/or accepted scientific ideas;
- iii) usually be consistent with accepted scientific knowledge
The session includes two activities. The first involves students working in pairs forming their own explanations for phenomena, and then swapping their explanations with another pair. The second activity involves evaluating a mooted set of explanations.
The first activity is designed to get students discussing possible explanations, and so provide a starting point for thinking about what a good explanation might be in the context of specific target phenomena.
The second activity involves the students, working in groups, considering a set of prepared explanations (many designed with specific flaws – some more subtle than others) and selecting examples of good and poor scientific explanations. For this activity, the students are provided with some suggestions about what makes a good or poor scientific explanation. Teachers may decide to only allow students access to this support material after they have spent some time working on the exercises based on their own ideas.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 5: Identifying patterns in science
This activity asks students to undertake three simple practicals, and collect data from which they can identify 'laws.' Students are supported to develop an explanation of the general pattern of exponential decay in terms of a negative feedback cycle.
This session is a laboratory-based session, where students are asked to identify patterns (laws) in three different physical contexts: cooling, water flow, capacitor discharge. A key purpose of this session is to introduce another important 'nature of science' (see chapter 4) idea, that of the 'law'. The three activities have been selected because they offer the potential for recognising similar patterns (i.e. the exponential decay curve), and for linking with some abstract theory (about feedback cycles) that could offer an explanation of the patterns.
The activities are set-up using the well-known POE – predict, observe, explain – approach, where students are encouraged to engage with understanding a phenomenon by initially making a prediction, which they then test against observations. The three practical activities are:
- Identifying patterns – cooling: "Everyone knows that 'hot objects cool down', but does this always happen?"
- Identifying patterns – water flowing downhill: "We all know that water flows downhill – but what determines how quickly water runs downhill?"
- Identifying patterns – capacitor discharge: "make a prediction: do you think the current will have a steady value during discharge?"
Two types of support material are provided for students. Information is provided on laws in science (complementing the sheet provided during the explanations activity), to be distributed near the start of the session, and some material introducing 'systems' is provided which relates to the particular common type of pattern being explored in the three experiments (i.e. exponential decay). Teachers should use their judgement in deciding when to introduce this, and 'differentiation by support' (see Chapter 3) may be appropriate.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 6: Scaffolding individual learning in science
This activity was a computer-based learning activity using level 3 (i.e. A level) physics materials designed for student self-study.
The computer-based learning (CBL) activity was an opportunity to work with some materials developed for independent learning of physics in the post-16 sector (see Chapter 6). It also allowed students to work independently, although they were allowed to work together if they preferred. Students were given the choice of working through a range of topics from the National Learning Network (NLN) Level 3 Physics CBL materials.
This activity was provided to give the students a taste of physics at A level. Physics is a highly abstract subject, involving a good deal of mathematical formalism (albeit largely limited to algebra at A level). These are features that readily deter many students, but can be attractive for more highly-attaining students.
In the ASCEND project students were advised to select from the NLN level 3 introductory units:
- electricity – conductivity and resistivity
- fields and forces – the gravitational field strength at different distances from the Earth's surface
- quantum phenomena – demonstration of the photoelectric effect
- radioactivity – properties of alpha, beta and gamma radiation
- waves – diffraction of water waves and light waves
Each of these units was considered to offer a taster of physics study post-GCSE which would be accessible for more able students.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 7: Integrated science?
This activity was designed to allow students to appreciate how ideas from different science disciplines can be synthesised, specifically in the context of a model of plant nutrition.
In this activity, teams of students work as project teams, and are assigned roles as project manager, biologist, chemist and physicist. The team has to produce a poster to explain how a plant manages to obtain the energy and materials needed to live.
The activity is set up so that the science specialists are each briefed with some of the information that is needed to provide a good overview of plant nutrition (at a suitable level of sophistication for students studying at GCSE level), and that a good overall 'picture' can be developed by considering how the specialist knowledge of the biologist, chemist and physicist may be related. This approach reflects a view that students readily compartmentalise their knowledge. Yet finding the links between topics (and so developing the overall picture) is both essential to appreciating the nature of science (which develops a largely coherent, and mutually supporting knowledge network) and, also, the type of activity that we expect to both challenge and motivate the most able.
The project manager's brief provides criteria for a 'good' poster – that it will explain:
- why roots often spread out into the soil
- why leaves are green
- why leaves have spongy tissue
- why leaves have pores
- why the stomata are usually only on the underside of the leaves
- why leaves are often supported on stems, and spread out in different directions
- why some plants have underground stores of starch
The students are also asked to ensure the poster provides information at a cellular level: that the "poster should make it clear how individual cells throughout the plant get their supply of carbon, nitrogen and energy".
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 8: Science in society
This activity asks students to respond to common public objections to the high level of scientific confidence in the theory of evolution by natural selection
Activity 7 was set in the context of scientists needing to communicate about their work to the public. Activity 8 develops this link ("It is the responsibility of scientists to explain our work to the public who ultimately fund our research"), and concerns public unease with 'gene technology', and more extreme views about the status of evolution (i.e. by natural selection) as a scientific theory. Students, working in groups, are asked to suggest how to respond to a letter from a pressure group which denies that life on earth could have evolved. This scenario is based on common objections that are raised, and which may appeal to 'common sense':
- something like a green plant, with all its complex structure, could not possibly come about by chance
- there is so much variety in living things that they cannot possibly be derived from common ancestors
- left to their own devices, living things are not going to breed to 'improve' the species
- no one has ever managed to breed sheep from dogs, no matter how much they have selected the parents
- parents always leave offspring of the same type
- if man had evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?
- why do the genes for some diseases seem to get passed on so effectively?
Responding to these objections with sound arguments requires a good understanding of the theory of evolution by natural selection!
As with the previous activity, this activity is set in the context of the public understanding of science. Also, as with the previous activity, the topic (natural selection) has been chosen because experience suggests that even able students may fail to see the 'whole picture' and take away from school science a partial understanding of the key arguments used to support evolutionary theory. As the students are told in the briefing information: "the reasons so many people doubt evolution are that (a) it has occurred over such a long time scale, and (b) evolution only makes sense when someone understands how a number of separate key ideas fit together". This activity, then, develops ideas from previous ASCEND activities on the need to integrate different ideas (Activity 7), and the nature of a scientific explanation (Activity 4), as well as – like most of the ASCEND activities – involving teamwork and a form of modelling activity.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 9: Judging models in science
This activity asks students to evaluate the usefulness of competing / complementary models in two different contexts by examining whether the models can explain data.
This activity comprises of two related tasks. In both cases, the task concerns comparing two 'competing' models:
In each case the students, working in groups, consider the merits of alternative models in providing explanations. The second task can include some simple practical work, making observations. The groups are provided with sets of cards with features of the models, and the phenomena/properties to be explained, to sort during the tasks.
This activity reinforces the central role of modelling in science, and the way that models are used in science to support explanations. In the two tasks students are asked to consider the merits of alternative models in explaining data. The tasks have been designed to generate discussion, and it is not intended that students will be able to simply select a 'better' model that fits all the data. This is especially the case in task 1, 'Using the particle model', where neither model is suitable for explaining all those phenomena that scientists use particles ideas to explain – and in school science different versions of particle theory are used at different stages, and in different topics. Part of the rationale of this activity is to help students appreciate that models are used in this way, and that often nature is too sophisticated to be represented by a single simple model.
Task 2 is slightly different in that the two models being compared are not of similar status in terms of school science. Model B reflects a level of scientific understanding that is suitable for explaining properties of NaCl at a level appropriate for students of this age group. Model A is based on the type of thinking about ionic bonding that commonly develops in students by age 16 but which has limited value in explaining the properties of NaCl. Despite its clear inferiority, this type of model has been found to be readily adopted by students, perhaps even being intuitively attractive. Therefore, although the evidence should offer a clear preference for model B as having more value, it is likely that many students will initially find model A attractive.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
Activity 10: Linking science to the everyday world
In this activity students are invited to use their imagination and understanding of science topics to create novel analogies for scientific concepts
'The analogy game' is a card game based upon finding analogies between scientific concepts and everyday activities. The game is suitable for groups of students, possibly group sizes of 5-6 (or even larger) depending upon the group dynamics. Students are 'dealt' blue 'concept cards' and green 'analog' cards, and must use their concept cards to form analogies that the other players find convincing. The first player to have successfully formed analogies for all their concept cards wins.
'The analogy game' was used in ASCEND as a 'fun' activity. However, the game was designed with serious purposes. One of these involved introducing the notion of analogy as a tool used in science. Scientists use analogies a good deal to make sense of phenomena – either making analogies with existing scientific ideas, or (as in the game) with more everyday phenomena. Although analogies of this type do not assure an understanding of new areas of science, they have certainly provided scientists with fertile starting points for exploring new explanations and understandings. Analogies provide familiar models to test, critique, extend or dismiss.
A parallel purpose of the game is to provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their creativity. The most gifted science learners may be those who are able to make connections and see links that others do not notice: the analogy game provides an outlet for divergent, creative thinking, making the task even more open-ended.
The default rules set out such parameters as how many cards of each type are dealt to each player, and when and how cards may be swapped. It is suggested that any attempts by players to improve the running of the game by modifying the rules should be encouraged, as long as such changes are made by consensus within the playing group.
Further details of this activity can be found here.
