A choice of sports-linked enquiry questions - which will your pupils ask, investigate and share?
Feedback from teachers has been overwhelmingly encouraging as they leapt into asking and investigating scientific questions focused on sports and fitness as part of this year’s Great Sports Share.
This guided enquiry is a little different in that it provides teachers with an overarching framework for progression in working scientifically. Recognising how tricky it can be to support all learners to make progress in disciplinary knowledge, this framework is a go-to resource for all teachers.
The enquiry provides an open-ended question of What affects our performance during sport? As sport and fitness are already high priority in our curriculum timetable, this resource capitalises on cross-curricular opportunities linked to Physical Education, Maths and Computing. Pupils have chance to ask different types of questions, providing the right ingredients for an inclusive and inspirational set of investigations.
The enquiry is structured to enhance opportunities for pupils to gather and interpret evidence that they have collected and to share this in a range of ways.
During the trials of this enquiry, pupils asked, ‘Do taller people run faster?’, ‘Do longer arms throw further?’ - the choice and options are yours!
“The range of enquiry questions really allowed me to give the pupils more choice and ownership over their science learning. It was great that they selected different enquiry types and were able to recognise why each question was linked to a particular enquiry type”
The Great Sports Share Ideas for Questions resource provides a range of scientific questions linked to each enquiry type:
Pattern Seeking
Research by Secondary Sources
Comparative Fair Testing
Observation over Time
Identifying & Classifying
Harnessing SPORT To foster curiosity
Teachers explained that they were surprised at how invested and enthusiastic the pupils became in their own investigations. They explained that more time was given to practical learning and that working scientifically skills were improved due to the dedicated focus the enquiry provided. The collaborative nature of the task meant there was lots of opportunity to talk about planning, gathering evidence and how patterns were being found in the data.
“Pupils were really engaged from the start - it’s amazing what a timer and a meter stick can do! They were interested to see results and how this differed to the experiences of playing races on the playground!”
Melissa, a teacher at Springfield Primary School, completed the Great Sports Share with her class of pupils, aged 5-6 years.
“By deciding on just one question to investigate as a whole class, I could really focus on the opportunities to model working scientifically. As my pupils were wholly invested in the practical activity they couldn’t wait to have a try on their own!”
Exploring equipment - “It is better to use quoits than balls because balls bounce and keep on rolling but quoits stop and stay where they land.” - Pupil, aged 6 years
“The pupils were really pleased when they realised this, we knew we had started to create aspirations early on in their lives.” - Teacher
Embracing cross-curricular links
Opportunities for cross-curricular links were purposeful and enhanced the level of practical work that took place usually.
“Are we doing science and PE together this afternoon? That is so cool - this is the best science lesson ever!” - Pupil, aged 11
Lots of the enquiry questions lent themselves to numerical data collection so teachers exploited the opportunity to put a real focus on different ways to present data the pupils had collected. From pictograms (5-7 year olds) to scattergraphs (10-11 year olds), their maths skills were applied to a real context with some choosing to use computers to create graphs.
what if…?
Christian, a teacher at Park View Community School, shared how impressed he was by the curiosity that this investigation created. His pupils were asking incredible questions and suggesting further investigations they could go on to complete to see if results could be improved. Questions included:
“How do athletes pick the shoes they wear? Do they try them all and see which ones help them to run the fastest?”
“I never thought about the size of someone’s hand and whether they are better at catching. Is that why some people are really good at rounders?”
“People with longer arms don’t always throw further… I wonder if they might have bigger muscles instead?”
Been inspired? try out the Great SPORTS Share for your #GSSfS2024
Link your annual sports day with #GSSfS2024
An opportunity to have pupils playing sport and gathering data all at the same time!
With thanks to teachers Melissa, Lauren, Hannah, Christian, Rachael and their pupils.
Get in touch if you’d like to share your experiences, email greatscishare@manchester.ac.uk