One of the things we love most about running science clubs in a school setting is how inclusive they can be for children who may find the confines of a classroom-based lesson challenging.
In this blog, we explore some of the ways in which we have been working to ensure our sessions are focussed on supporting all science clubbers to get the most out of their sessions, developing their curiosity, taking control and being as independent as possible!
Reducing cognitive load
We know that when your science clubbers are immersed in their sessions, they are able to explore with more freedom, develop their curiosity and ultimately learn more. Research and models around working memory tell us that humans have limited capacity to focus on more than one thing at a time, particularly when it involves two speech tasks at the same time such as listening to someone speak and reading something else. We know that when we consider the levels of cognitive load in a science club session, that this deep immersion will happen more readily. We do this by:
- Providing kit lists ready to go in the suitable quantities so the clubbers can grab and go
- Structuring the basics in small chunks supporting your clubbers to allowing them to get to the science quickly and easily
- Where the focus is on doing the science in the session, we have provided carefully selected printables for recording data to keep the focus in the right place
- Photos and key prompts are provided on our slideshows that can help reduce the need to keep repeating verbal guidance and thus allow the science clubber to focus on one speech based task at a time
Scaffolding sessions
The scaffolding we provide enables your science clubbers to focus on the parts of the activity, investigation or enquiry that is important in an environment that is often fast paced and often takes place at the end of a busy day. Some of our sessions may seem overly scaffolded at first glance but we have taken our time to consider what scaffolding is necessary to hand over responsibility to the science clubbers for the key part of the session and allow them to take the lead of their activity. We do this by:
- Writing clear guidance in our educator guides for you as leaders of the sessions to ask and answer questions, when to lead and when to guide from the side
- Scaffolding the use of our templates in our printables within the packs. Your science clubbers can then go on to create extensions to these or create new ones when they change the variables of their activity
- Provide visuals on the slideshows that scaffold steps for younger learners with photos of the steps within a practical activity
Explicit instruction
Sometimes, there is need to be explicit about how something needs to be carried out, at other times, it can be more guided by your science clubbers. For example, specific volumes of materials to be mixed need to be followed to get a specific reaction for safety reasons such as making Co2 to make a fire extinguisher for a candle. Other times, deciding how to build a invertebrate mansion can be left to the choice of the builder. When considering cognitive load in the first section of this blog, we referred to the challenges of doing two speech based tasks at the same time, however, doing a visual task and a speech based task at the same time can actually be really helpful and an approach we have adopted in our integrated instructions. It is worth noting that too much information in this way can actually increase cognitive load! We do this by:
- Creating integrated instructions using dual coding in many of our packs (often seen in the Chemistry packs) for our older science clubbers using images and carefully chosen and minimal words
- Keeping the background clean on the integrated instruction slides and ensuring the images are simple and easy to understand
- Taking a clockwise path around the integrated instruction slides allowing for easy following
- Providing photo based instructions for our younger clubbers spread across a number of slides including carefully chosen words to support independence and process
All of these approaches are designed to support all science clubbers to access the sessions and get the most out of their time with you. But, we also know that by doing this, we’re doing some of the heavy lifting for you. We know you are excited and passionate about science but sometimes running a science club comes at the end of a very long list of things to do if you are school based so we hope our resources go some way to making your job easier and more enjoyable too.
We’re going to be exploring some of this in our live session at ASE Annual Conference at University of Nottingham on January 10th at 1.15-2.05pm. We’d love you to come and join us and take home your very own terrarium too! See links below for details of the conference and our session.
We always love to hear from you about the things you and your science clubbers get up to so don’t forget to tag us in your posts on any of our profiles!
Bryony and Paul
Founders and creators of My Science Club
Links:
ASE Annual Conference booking link
Come and join our session at ASE conference here
Read more in our article in Vitta Magazine Summer Term 2024 issue page 18
Read more about the Learning Sciences and Primary Science in this report from Bath Spa University