Trying to encourage your pupils to become more independent when writing up science investigations? How about using science talk partners.
Give them six cards, which, when put together are the same size as an A4 sheet of paper. Written on the cards are different ways to record their investigation, for example, drawing, photograph, graph, paragraph, bullet points, sentence, diagram.
The science talk partners then discuss which three or four cards they will use and arrange them on an A4 sheet of paper, this helps them to organise their work. The science talk partners might choose to use a digital photograph to show how the activity was carried out, a graph to show the results and a sentence for their conclusion.
Some of you might ask where the table is that becomes redundant when a graph is used. When writing up an investigation children should always record their conclusion, which could be a sentence, paragraph or a set of bullet points.
Don’t forget to model this approach first, perhaps on the interactive whiteboard with drag and drop cards*
Rosemary Feasey is a primary science consultant