Few of our students have been to the Dead Sea, but most have heard that swimmers float very easily in this extremely salty body of water.  Although the idea that salt increases buoyancy is intuitive for some people, students in 9S were recently given the task of proving it.  With no background preparation, and no guidance, they were assigned the following challenge:  First, they had to come up with a way to make a test tube float upright in a beaker of water so that its height could be accurately measured, and then they had to find out the relationship between the amount of salt added to the beaker and the height of the tube. 

They were told that there was no single correct way of solving the problem, that they had to collect numerical data, and that they had to show their results as a graph.  The task required creativity, a bit of engineering, logical reasoning, organization, and the ability to turn numbers into pictures.  Many dyslexic students find these last three skills extremely difficult, but working together in groups of three, all the students achieved results within the allotted time.
                  
At the end of the lesson, students were told that this task was presented as a question on last year’s KS3 exam, and was designed to measure how well students think scientifically.  (One quarter of the exam questions measure this skill.)  As a result of this challenge, it’s clear that students at Shapwick are learning to think like scientists, but also they are better prepared to take this year’s KS3 exam on May 9.  It may not be as simple as floating in the Dead Sea, but we are confident they will do well!

Click here to see the photos.