Dare to do … Science

Our Reception class has had the unique opportunity to engage in the learning of science in the advanced science laboratory with the Year 10 students as the student instructors. The science experiment facilitated by the Chemistry team helped to nurture an environment that fostered interest and curiosity in real-world phenomena. Utilizing red cabbage as a pH indicator to provoke curiosity and motivate our early childhood students to learn and try new things and is a fundamental attribute to the scientific attitude.

This lesson which coincided with our Unit of Study on the human body and the 5 senses helped students develop exploratory questions and hypotheses to explain such events, and encourage them to test and refine their explanations based on scientific evidence. Also, during the prepared lesson our young scientists got to work on their scientific literacy learning lab safety and articulate themselves in a way to explain to others about neutrals, acids and bases. They were able to describe using acquired vocabulary all their observations during the color indication change. They focused on observations dealing with the 5 senses for example seeing the steam rise from the beaker and the smell of the cabbage when the hot water was added.

The Year 10 students were wonderful as mentors asking guiding questions to support the learning process. The mentors also contributed to the unique experience with helping to create smaller cooperating groups to drill down the focus of what each student’s learning outcome.