Chemical Science
Research, Elementary School Children
and Their Teachers Are More Closely Related than You May Imagine:
The “I Bet You Did Not Know” Project
posted on 2024-01-20, 02:29authored byAlison J. Trew, Craig Early, Rebecca Ellis, Julia Nash, Katharine Pemberton, Paul Tyler, Timothy G. Harrison, Dudley E. Shallcross
Topics associated with the chemical sciences form a significant
part of the curriculum in science at the primary school level in the
U.K. In this methodology paper, we demonstrate how a wide range of
research articles associated with the chemical sciences can be disseminated
to an elementary school audience and how children can carry out investigations
associated with cutting-edge research in the classroom. We discuss
how the Primary Science Teaching Trust’s (PSTT’s) “I
bet you did not know” (IBYDK) articles and their accompanying
Teacher Guides benefit children, primary (elementary) school teachers,
and other stakeholders including the researchers themselves. We define
three types of research articles; ones describing how children can
reproduce the research themselves without much adaptation, others
where children can mirror the research using similar methods, and
some where an analogy can be used to explain the research. We provide
exemplars of each type and some preliminary feedback on articles written.