How to teach practical planning skills

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Help your students learn how to plan and perform successful practicals

Practical lessons are difficult to do well. There is a huge cognitive demand. Understanding the purpose of the practical can be abstract and challenging.

Practicals help to explain concepts and give students the opportunity to use specialist equipment. They show aspects of a method, what certain reactions look like and develop transferable skills. Students going on to further study or STEM careers need to know how to plan practical work.

Planning practicals is an essential skill for learners at all levels

To reduce problems associated with practicals, we can:

carry out a practical only when students have sufficient prior knowledge;
scaffold the practical activity so students can link theory to observation;
check for understanding prior, during and after the practical through effective questioning techniques; and
isolate and practise the specific components of a practical.

To reduce problems associated with practicals, we can carry out a practical only when students have sufficient prior knowledge; scaffold the practical activity so students can link theory to observation; check for understanding prior, during and after the practical through effective questioning techniques; and isolate and practise the specific components of a practical.

Your behaviour management needs to be tight during practicals. Students have to avoid distractions from their peers.

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Practical planning: spot the mistakes, for age range 14–16

These exam-style questions ask learners to find errors in some common practical methods, scaffolded version available.

Download the student worksheet as MS Word or pdf. Download the support student worksheet as MS Word or pdf. Download the teacher notes as MS Word or pdf.

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Download this

Practical planning: spot the mistakes, for age range 14–16

These exam-style questions ask learners to find errors in some common practical methods, scaffolded version available.

Download from the Education in Chemistry website: rsc.li/3YLWkEn

Example: making salts

To understand the complexities involved in doing a practical, consider this standard method that will secure marks to the question: describe how to make pure, dry crystals of copper sulfate from a metal oxide and a dilute acid.

Measure out 25 cm³ of sulfuric acid and add it to a beaker.
Gently warm the sulfuric acid.
Add excess copper oxide and stir.
Filter the solution using a funnel and filter paper to remove excess copper oxide.
Heat the solution in an evaporating basin over a water bath to the crystallisation point.
Leave the solution on a windowsill to crystallise and pat the crystals dry with filter paper.

Each of these steps is made up of several components. Students have to fully understand these to be able to plan the practical successfully.

Getting students to do practicals

How do we reach the point where students can do this practical, write a method from scratch, fully understand why they do each step and use certain pieces of equipment?

A student planning a crystalisation experiment with lab equipment

Source: © Tobatron

How do we reach the point where students can fully understand why they do each step in a practical?

Consider disciplinary knowledge with your curriculum. Before students do a practical, think about where have they encountered things before in the curriculum. How have they progressed over the years? What do they need to know and be able to do? Is a recap needed? Do you have time to isolate and practise certain components before they do this practical? When do they repeat these techniques so that they can use them fluently during the making salts practical?

Be clear on the purpose of the practical. You may have to compromise in order to reduce the demands of the practical (eg having equipment trayed up or beakers ready-filled with water). You don’t have to test everything at once.

Use the slow practical method with Adam Boxer’s advice. Gather the students, demo the step, check for understanding, send them back to do that step, repeat. You will get a tighter grip on running a practical and this will teach students the processes in planning and doing a practical.

Use dual coding or integrated instructions. Take away and reduce split attention by providing resources that incorporate diagrams rather than just listing methods like a recipe.

Use the slow practical method; read Adam Boxer’s advice in his article Take a walk on the slow side (rsc.li/3Yaeorj). Gather the students, demo the step, check for understanding, send them back to do that step, repeat. You will get a tighter grip on running a practical and this will teach students the processes in planning and doing a practical.

Use dual coding or integrated instructions. Take away and reduce some split attention by providing resources that incorporate diagrams rather than just listing methods like a recipe. Read David Paterson’s article, Improving practicals with integrated instructions (rsc.li/3XaK66m) to find out more on how to do this.

The word skills with a molecule over the i and a measure on an l. Inside a circle.

This article is part of our Teaching science skills series, bringing together strategies and classroom activities to help your learners develop essential scientific skills, from literacy to risk assessment and more.

Give students methods that contain missing steps or errors. Have them identify these and suggest improvements. For example, you want students to make copper sulfate but the method uses hydrochloric acid rather than sulfuric acid.

Give students pictures of equipment and ask them to produce a method that leads to a valid outcome. Have them write their methods on mini whiteboards and compare them with the whole class.

Give students a method. Have them identify variables, explain the purpose of each step and why certain equipment would be best to use.

Planning practicals successfully is an essential skill for learners at all levels. Following these steps will help guide your students to getting the best results from their practicals.