Asking questions and finding out
Biology · Key Stage 1 · The School
Questions you can answer
Some questions can be answered by looking, and some cannot. "Which of these leaves is biggest?" can — you can measure them. "Which leaf is nicest?" cannot, because everyone would say something different. Science starts by choosing a question of the first kind.
Ways to find out
There is more than one way. OBSERVING — watching carefully over time, like a bulb growing. SORTING — putting things into groups by a feature. COMPARING — testing two things the same way. PATTERN SEEKING — looking for something that happens again and again. RESEARCHING — finding out what someone already knows.
Say what happened
Write or draw what you actually saw, even when it is not what you thought would happen. A surprising result is the most interesting kind, and changing it to match your guess is the one thing a scientist must never do. If you are not sure, say you are not sure.
"Do plants like music?" cannot be answered — you cannot measure liking. Turn it into something you can measure: "Do bean plants grow taller when music is played to them?" Now you can. Grow ten with music and ten without, everything else identical, and measure height in centimetres after two weeks. Write down what you MEASURED, not what you hoped — even if the answer is no difference at all.