Design
Introduction
When assessing the Design aspects I give students a physical system or material and ask them to think of a research question, devise a hypothesis and carry out an investigation to test it. To test if the topic is good or not I try to think up some research questions for myself, if I can think of 10 in 10 minutes then its ok, I don't tell the students my ideas of course. I have tried many different things over the past 5 years, some were successful others not, here is a list of some of the good ones:
- Plasticene
- Jelly
- Conducting paper
- Salt and water
- Balloons
- Ice
- coils and magnets
- A battery drill
- Potty putty
- A plastic ruler
I can't give details of all the research questions my students have come up with because they will be able to read it here and then I can't use these examples again.
I always get my students to try to carry out their investigations but they don't always get any data. My students work in pairs but I only assess the report of one of the pair (the one whose idea it was).