Holme Grange School's Tom Greenwood shares six steps to maximise the impact of your practical science lessons.

Science is more than just memorising facts and following instructions. True scientific thinking requires critical analysis, problem-solving, and creativity. Practical science provides the perfect platform for developing these skills, pushing students beyond basic understanding and into the realm of higher-order thinking.

Why challenge matters in science education

Practical science sits at the peak of Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), requiring students not just to remember and understand but to apply, analyse, evaluate, and create. These skills are essential for developing scientifically literate individuals who can tackle real-world problems with confidence and insight.

Steps to maximizing the impact of practical science

To truly challenge students and develop their higher-order thinking, practical science lessons must be carefully structured. Here’s how:

Step 1: Solve real-world problems

Practical science activities should be grounded in real-world applications. When students see the relevance of their experiments, their engagement increases. For example, testing water purity or designing a simple renewable energy system connects scientific principles to everyday life.

Step 2: Get the groups right

Collaboration is key in scientific exploration. Thoughtful grouping of students – pairing diverse skill levels or encouraging peer mentoring – can enhance problem-solving and communication skills.

Step 3: Maintain a relentless focus on variables

From Year 5 to Year 11, students should develop a keen understanding of variables. This means recognising independent, dependent, and control variables and understanding their importance in experimental design.

Step 4a: Leave out a variable

By removing a key variable from an experiment, students are forced to think critically about the design and purpose of their investigation. They must determine what’s missing and how it affects the outcome.

Step 4b: Omit the plan

Instead of providing a step-by-step method, challenge students to devise their own experimental plans. This pushes them to apply their understanding of scientific concepts and fosters creativity in problem-solving.

Step 5: Analyse data like a pro

Teaching students to collect, visualise, and interpret data is crucial. Using AI tools to display class results can make data analysis more engaging and accessible. By linking their findings back to the research question, students develop deeper analytical skills.

Step 6: When practicals go wrong (or right!)

Failure is an integral part of scientific discovery. Encouraging students to reflect on unexpected results – whether positive or negative – teaches resilience, adaptability, and critical thinking.

Bonus step: Harness the power of a Science Challenge Club

A Science Challenge Club can provide a platform for students to explore scientific questions beyond the curriculum. Such clubs foster independent thinking and offer opportunities for students to work on long-term investigative projects, deepening their understanding and enthusiasm for science.

Final thoughts: why practical science is essential

Engaging students in hands-on science doesn’t just make lessons more interesting – it equips them with crucial skills:

• Critical thinking: encourages deeper questioning and problem-solving.
• Collaboration: strengthens teamwork and communication.
• Real-world problem solving: helps students connect theory to practice.

As educators, we can design activities that challenge high-achieving students, encourage independent experiment design, and foster strong analytical skills. By doing so, we prepare students not only for exams but for real-world scientific challenges.

The future of science lies in the hands of the next generation. Let’s ensure they have the skills to think critically, innovate boldly, and explore fearlessly.

Related reading and resources:

• NACE subject-specific resources: primary science
• NACE subject-specific resources: secondary science

Amanda Hubball, Deputy Head and More Able Lead at Alfreton Nursery School, explores the power of metacognition in empowering young people to overcome potential barriers to achievement.  

Disadvantage presents itself in different ways and has varying levels of impact on learners. It is important to remember that disadvantage is wider than children who are in receipt of pupil premium or children who have a special educational need. Disadvantage can be based around family circumstances, for example bereavement, divorce, mental health… Disadvantages can be long-term or short-term and the fluidity of disadvantage needs to be acknowledged in order for educators to remain effective and vigilant for all children, including more able learners. If we accept that disadvantage can impact any child at any time, then it is essential that we provide all children with the tools they need to navigate challenge.    

More able learners are as vulnerable to the impact of disadvantage as other learners and indeed research would suggest that outcomes for more able learners are more dramatically impacted by disadvantage than outcomes for other children. A cognitive toolbox that is familiar, understood and accessible at all times, can be a highly effective support for learners when there are barriers to progress. By ensuring that all learners are taught metacognition from the beginning of their educational journey and year on year new metacognition skills are integrated, a child is empowered to maintain a trajectory for success.       

How can metacognition reduce barriers to learning?         

Metacognition supports children to consciously access and manipulate thinking strategies, thus enabling them to solve problems. It can allow them to remain cognitively engaged for longer, becoming emotionally dysregulated less frequently. A common language around metacognition enables learners to share strategies and access a clear point of reference, in times of vulnerability. Some more able learners can find it hard to manage emotions related to underachievement. Metacognition can help children to address both these emotional and cognitive demands.

In order for children to impact their long-term memory and fully embed metacognitive strategies, educators need to teach in many different ways. Metacognition needs to be visually reflected in the learner’s environment, supporting teachers to teach and learners to learn.   

How do we do this at Alfreton Nursery School?

At Alfreton Nursery School we ensure that discourse is littered with practical examples of how conscious thinking can result in deeper understanding. Spontaneous conversations are supported by visual aids around the classroom, enabling teachers and learners to plan and reflect on thinking strategies. Children are empowered to integrate the language of metacognition as they explain their learning and strive for greater understanding.

Adults in school use metacognitive terms when talking freely to each other, exposing children to their natural use. Missed opportunities are openly shared within the teaching team, supporting future developments.

Within enrichment groups, metacognition is a transparent process of learning. Children are given metacognitive strategies at the beginning of enhancement opportunities and encouraged to reflect and evaluate at the end. Whether working indoors or outdoors, with manipulatives or abstract concepts and individually or in a group, metacognition is a vehicle through which all learners can access lesson content.

We use the ‘Thinking Moves’ metacognition framework (you can read more about this here). Creative application of this framework supports the combination of metacognition words, to make strings of thinking strategies. For example, a puppet called FRED helps children to Formulate, Respond, Explain and Divide their learning experiences. A QUEST model helps children to follow a process of Questioning, Using, Explaining, Sizing and Testing.

Metacognition supports children of all abilities, ages and backgrounds, to overcome barriers to learning. Disadvantage is thus reduced.

Moving from intent to implementation

Systems and procedures at Alfreton Nursery School serve to scaffold day to day practice and provide a backdrop of expectations and standards. In order to best serve more able children who are experiencing disadvantage, these frameworks need to be explicit in their inclusivity and flexibility. Just as every policy, plan, assessment, etc will address the needs of all learners – including those who are more able – so all these documents explicitly address how metacognition will support all learners. To ensure that visions move beyond ‘intent’ and are fully implemented, systems need to guide provision through a metacognitive lens.  

Metacognition is woven into all curriculum documents. A systematic and dynamic monitoring system, which tracks the progress and attainment of all learners, ensures that children have equal focus on cognition and emotion, breaking down barriers with conscious intent.

 

At Alfreton Nursery School, those children who are more able and experiencing disadvantage receive a carefully constructed meta-curriculum which scaffolds their journey towards success, in whatever context that may manifest itself. Children learn within an environment where teachers can articulate, demonstrate and inculcate the power of metacognition, enabling children to be the best that they can be.

How is your school empowering and supporting young people to break down potential barriers to learning and achievement? Read more about NACE’s research focus for this academic year, and contact us to share your experiences.

Sue Jenkins, Head of Years 10 and 11, and Hannah Wilcox, Deputy Head of Years 10 and 11, share five reasons they’ve found The Day an invaluable resource for tutor time activities.

Howell’s School, Llandaff, is an independent school in Cardiff which educates girls aged 3-18 and boys aged 16-18. It is part of the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST). 

The Day publishes daily news articles and resources with the aim of help teachers inspire students to become critical thinkers and better citizens by engaging their natural curiosity in real-world problems. We first came across it as a library resource and recognised its potential for pastoral activities when the length of our tutor time sessions was extended to allow more discussion time and flexibility in their use. 

Post-Covid, it has never been more important to promote peer collaboration, discussion and debate in schools. There is an ever-increasing need for students to select, question and apply their knowledge when researching; it has never been more important for students to have well-developed thinking and analytical skills. We find The Day invaluable in helping us to prompt students to discuss and understand current affairs, and to enable those who are already aware to extend and debate their understanding. 

Here are five key pastoral reasons why we would recommend subscribing to The Day:

1. Timely, relevant topics throughout the year

You will always find a timely discussion topic on The Day website. The most recent topics feature prominently on the homepage, and a Weekly Features section allows you to narrow down the most relevant discussion topic for the session you are planning. Assembly themes, such as Ocean Day in June, are mapped across the academic year for ease of forward planning. We particularly enjoyed discussing the breakaway success of Emma Raducanu in the context of risk-taking, and have researched new developments in science, such as NASA’s James Webb telescope, in the week they have been launched.

2. Supporting resources to engage and challenge students

The need to involve and interest students, make sessions straightforward for busy form tutors, and cover tricky topics, combine to make it daunting to plan tutor time sessions – but resources linked to The Day’s articles make it manageable. Regular features such as The Daily Poster allow teachers to appeal to all abilities and learning styles with accessible and interesting infographics. These can also be printed and downloaded for displays, making life much easier for academic departments too. One of the best features we’ve found for languages is the ability to read and translate articles in target languages such as French and Spanish. Reading levels can be set on the website for literacy differentiation, and key words are defined for students to aid their understanding of each article.

3. Quick PSHE links for busy teachers

Asked to cover a class at the last minute? We’ve all been there! With The Day, you are sure to find a relevant subject story to discuss within seconds, and, best of all, be certain that the resources are appropriate for your students. With our Year 10 and 11 students, we have covered topics such as body image with the help of The Day by prompting discussion of Kate Winslet’s rejection of screen airbrushing. Using articles is particularly useful with potentially difficult or emotive issues where students may be more able to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of certain attitudes by looking at news events, detaching themselves from but also gaining insight about the personal situations they may be experiencing. The PSHE programme is vast; it is great to use The Day to plan tutor time sessions and gives us the opportunity to touch on a wide range of issues relatively easily.

4. Motivational themes brought to life through real stories

We have also found The Day’s articles useful for providing examples of motivational themes for our year groups. The Themes Calendar is particularly useful here; for example, tutor groups discussed the themes of resilience and diversity using the article on Preet Chandi’s trek to the South Pole. If you’re looking for assembly inspiration, The Day is a great starting point.

5. Develop oracy, thinking and research skills through meaningful debate

Each article has suggested tasks and discussion questions which we have found very useful for planning tutor time activities which develop students’ oracy, thinking and research skills. The Day promotes high-level debates about environmental, societal and political issues which students are keen to explore. One recent example is the discussion of privacy laws and press freedom prompted by the article about Rebel Wilson’s forced outing by an Australian newspaper. Activities can be easily adapted or combined to promote effective discussion. ‘Connections’ articles contain links to similar areas of study, helping teachers to plan and students to see the relevance of current affairs.

Find out more…

NACE is partnering with The Day on a free live webinar on Thursday 30 June, providing an opportunity to explore this resource, and its role within cognitively challenging learning, in more detail. You can sign up here, or catch up with the recording afterwards in our webinars library (member login required).

Plus: NACE members can benefit from a 20% discount on annual subscriptions to The Day. For details of this and all current member offers, take a look at our member offers page (login required). 

NACE is collaborating with York St John University on research and resources to help schools support more able learners with higher levels of perfectionism. In this blog post, the university’s Laura C. Fenwick, Marianne E. Etherson and Professor Andrew P. Hill explain how some classrooms are more perfectionistic than others and how reducing the degree to which classrooms are perfectionistic can help enhance learning and maintain student wellbeing. 

Research suggests that more able learners are typically more perfectionistic than their classmates. Accordingly, more able learners place great demands on themselves to achieve unrealistic standards and respond with harsh self-criticism when their standards go unmet. However, more recently researchers have begun to explore the idea that perfectionism may not solely be an individual problem. Instead, environments such as the classroom have perfectionistic qualities that can both increase levels of perfectionism among those in the environment as well as having a detrimental impact on everyone in the environment regardless of their personal level of perfectionism. This is of concern as perfectionistic environments are likely to hinder learners’ capacity to thrive, and contribute to a range of negative outcomes, such as greater stress and poorer wellbeing. 

A perfectionistic environment (or “perfectionistic climate”) refers to cues and messages that promote the view that performances (e.g. grades) must be perfect and less than perfect performances are unacceptable. The cues and messages are created by important social agents such as teachers, coaches and parents, and can be communicated both intentionally as well as inadvertently. In the classroom, the teacher is likely to be the main source of this information; in particular, though the language that is used, how tasks are structured, and the strategies used to reward or sanction student behaviour. Fortunately, teachers also have the potential to help reduce how perfectionistic the classroom is by purposefully avoiding certain cues and messages and promoting others. Here, we identify key components of a perfectionistic classroom and provide alternative strategies aimed at reducing the likelihood that the classroom is experienced as being perfectionistic by students.

Unrealistic expectations

Perfectionistic classrooms include expectations that are unrealistic and never lowered. The expectations are uniformly applied and do not account for the individual ability of the learner, their personal progress, or individual circumstances.

Key takeaways: In most classrooms, it is likely that learners will know what is expected of them in terms of behaviours and grades. However, what is most important about these targets and expectations is that they are realistic and adaptable for each learner. Standards that are personally challenging and lie within reach with concerted effort are the most optimally motivating and offer the greatest development opportunity for students.  

Frequent or excessive criticism

Frequent or excessive criticism is also a feature of a perfectionistic classroom. This can include a focus on minor and inconsequential mistakes or an undue emphasis on the need to get everything “just right”.

Key takeaways: Avoid pointing out unimportant mistakes and focusing on errors when work reflects a student’s best effort or shows progress. Remedial feedback is obviously necessary, but the language used is important. Effective feedback focuses on the quality of the work, not the qualities of the learner (“this aspect of the work can be improved” versus “you have made a mistake here”). Ensure that positives are highlighted and reinforced before offering critical comments, especially for more perfectionistic students.

Problematic use of rewards and sanctions

The use of rewards and sanctions are common and powerful motivational tools in the classroom but when used to create feelings of shame or guilt, they can become problematic. Public displays of reward or sanction are best avoided because they promote these types of coercive emotions and encourage social comparison as opposed to a focus on personal development. Withdrawal of recognition and appreciation based on performance, for example, also reinforces the view that personal value comes solely from recognition and achievement. 

Key takeaways: It is difficult to avoid the use of rewards and sanctions, but where possible these need to be provided privately. For rewards, focus on behaviours (e.g. effort) rather than innate qualities and for sanctions, encourage a sense of personal ownership and agency in proposed repreparation. Ultimately, it is important that students feel liked and valued regardless of their performances and behaviour, good or bad.

Anxiousness or preoccupation with mistakes

One final aspect of a perfectionistic classroom is anxiousness or preoccupation with mistakes. Risk taking is avoided and failure is discouraged.

Key takeaways: Mistakes (even big ones) need to be normalised in the classroom. A strong focus on creativity, problem-solving, and opportunities for learning through “trial and error” will instil a more resilient mindset and counterbalance undue apprehension regarding mistakes. 

Summary

The concept of perfectionistic environments emphasises the need for more purposeful construction of the classroom. In being mindful of each of the issues above, and better monitoring and changing the cues and messages provided in the classroom, we believe teachers can alter the degree to which the environment is experienced as perfectionistic by students. In addition, in doing so, this will help reduce perfectionism and its negative effects among all students and be especially useful and important for more able and talented students who are more prone to the problems associated with perfectionism.

References

Hewitt, P. L., & Flett, G. L. (1991). Perfectionism in the self and social contexts: Conceptualization, assessment, and association with psychopathology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 456-470.

Hill, A. P., & Grugan, M. (2020). Introducing perfectionistic climate. Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education, 4, 263-276.

Stricker, J., Buecker, S., Schneider, M., & Preckel, F. (2020). Intellectual giftedness and multidimensional perfectionism: A meta-analytic review. Educational Psychology Review, 32, 391-414.

Read more:

• Perfectionism in more able learners: what do we know and what next?
• Perfectionism and “mattering” in more able learners
• Survey results: understanding the impact of lockdown learning

Join the conversation… York St John University’s Professor Andrew P. Hill will lead a keynote session on 17 November 2020 as part of the NACE Leadership Conference, exploring current research on perfectionism and more able learners, and how schools can create learning environments that reduce perfectionistic thinking. View the full conference programme.

Join the conversation: NACE member meetup, 15 September 2020