The penny dropped in the second half of my first term of teaching. I was preparing a lesson on white blood cells for the sixth form. I had some awesome images of phagocytes in action, a terrific diagram that I had photocopied for the students, with which I planned to project onto the board so that the class and I could label it together. A short video clip of a phagocyte chasing a bacterium to the Benny Hill theme. A longer animation of the mechanism of phagocytosis. It was classic talk and chalk, classic information delivery – tick the box, job done, notes complete, bingo. And it was, I blush to confess, unutterably dull.
And then, tidying up a filing cabinet, I found an exercise left behind by my predecessor. It looked ancient, tatty and blurred, and would win no prizes for slickness of presentation. But it flipped everything upside-down.
Instead of giving the students the information, it told them to use a prepared blood smear, a microscope and a Histology book to find, identify and draw a phagocyte and a lymphocyte. It asked them to label and annotate the key features of each cell. It then asked them to find out about phagocytosis and produce a cartoon outlining the process. The teacher didn’t have to do anything, apart from order the slides, microscopes and histology books. The students had control and, critically, ownership of their learning. By finding things out for themselves, they became invested in the outcome and excited by the process.
So simple. So obvious, yet it transformed my teaching. My CPD, if you can call it that, is based on seeing how far I can push this “flipped practical” approach. I’ve found that Year 9 students can work out the principles of diffusion and osmosis for themselves. I’ve found that Year 12 students (and bright Year 10 students!) can work out the Mendelian laws of inheritance with regard to dihybrid crosses based on their own experimental data. I’ve found that Year 13 students can design a pregnancy testing kit using their own biological knowledge and understanding. I’ve found that the quality of microscope drawings improves beyond recognition if the students don’t know what it is they’re meant to look for – they’re discovering it for themselves. I could go on, and in my blog, I do!
But it all comes down to enabling my students to experience the most exciting words in science – “that’s funny…”
If you are interested in learning more about practical approaches in teaching science, take a look out the National Science Learning Centre’s range of CPD activities.
Here are a list of the our upcoming CPD activities:
- Practical work: planning, preparing and practising
- Creating a buzz about science
- Towards outstanding in Science
Related resources for practical science: