Apparatus, teaching aids and innovation in science

What this heading covers

What science is taught with, and what the syllabus means by innovation — which is not gadgetry and is not novelty for its own sake.

The heading exists because the commonest reason given for not teaching science practically is that the school has no laboratory. The syllabus's answer is that most of what an upper-primary child needs to investigate can be done with waste, and a question on this topic is usually checking whether you accept that or reach for the absent laboratory.

Improvised apparatus: what it actually is

Not a principle — a list. These are the substitutions that do the job.

Instead of	Use
Beakers and flasks	Glass jars, cut plastic bottles, tumblers
Measuring cylinder	A bottle marked with a syringe or a standard cup, in equal steps
Test tubes	Small transparent bottles, injection vials
Test-tube stand	A cardboard box with holes cut in the lid
Funnel	The top half of a plastic bottle, inverted
Filter paper	Clean cloth, a coffee filter, folded newspaper for coarse work
Dropper	A used syringe without the needle, a refill tube
Spirit lamp	A candle; a tin lamp with a cotton wick
Tripod and gauze	Three bricks and a wire mesh
Balance	A ruler on a pencil fulcrum with identical cups; a hanger balance
Standard masses	Coins of known mass, water by volume, packets of known weight
Spring balance	A rubber band or spring with a scale drawn beside it
Thermometer stand	A clothes peg clipped to the jar rim
Magnifying lens	A drop of water on a clear plastic sheet; a spare spectacle lens
Pulley	A thread spool on a nail; a bicycle wheel
Inclined plane	A plank or a stiff board on books, height set by book count
Electric circuit kit	Torch bulbs, a cell, foil strips or wire, drawing pins on card for switches
Electromagnet	Iron nail, insulated wire, a cell
Microscope slide	Clear plastic sheet cut square; a thin glass square
Specimen jars	Pickle jars; transparent polythene with a rubber band

What a question wants you to say about this: improvisation is not a poor substitute accepted reluctantly. It has pedagogic advantages of its own.

• Children can handle it without fear of breaking something expensive, so they do more.
• It can be made in many copies, so a class of fifty works in small groups instead of watching one demonstration.
• Children can make it themselves, which is a learning activity rather than preparation for one.
• It shows that science is about the phenomenon, not the equipment — a child who sees a circuit work with foil and a nail has learned something a sealed kit hides.

The limits, which an honest answer includes: improvised apparatus is less precise, so it suits qualitative and comparative work better than accurate measurement; and safety still applies — flames, glass and electricity need the same rules whatever they are made of.

Textbook and text material

The syllabus's position: the textbook is a resource, not the syllabus and not a script.

Using it well:

• Read it against the activity, not instead of it. The text explains what the children have done.
• Use its questions as starting points, including the ones at the end that are usually skipped — they are often the only non-recall items available.
• Correct or supplement it where it is thin, out of date, or uses an example remote from the children's surroundings.
• Teach children to read it — diagrams, captions, tables, and the difference between a statement of fact and a worked explanation. Reading a science text is a skill, and nobody else teaches it.

Other printed and written material: reference books, newspaper science reporting (good for the gap between a claim and the evidence for it), worksheets, and the children's own records — a notebook of observations is text material the child wrote.

The aids, and what each is good and bad at

Aid	Good at	Poor at
Chart / poster	Summary, structure, something seen daily	Process, change over time
Model	Three-dimensional structure — eye, heart, solar system	Scale and proportion, which it distorts
Specimen	The real thing; detail and variation	Availability; preservation
Demonstration	What is unsafe or scarce; focusing a whole class	Children watch rather than do
Video / animation	The invisible, the fast, the slow, the distant	Passive; convincing even when it is wrong
Science corner	Continuous, child-led, cheap	Needs refreshing or it becomes furniture
Field visit	Context, scale, real systems	Time, permission, cost
Science club / fair	Interest, initiative, depth for the keen	Reaches volunteers; can become a display of bought projects

The science corner deserves its own note because the syllabus names it: a shelf or table with specimens, a magnifier, a magnet, a balance, growing seeds, and children's own collections and questions. Its value is that it is always available, so curiosity outside the science period has somewhere to go.

A caution on ICT

Video and animation are powerful for the invisible — molecules, circulation, the solar system — and carry a specific danger the paper sometimes sets: an animation is as convincing when it is wrong as when it is right, and a child cannot tell. It also replaces handling with watching. The syllabus's position is that it supplements direct experience and does not substitute for it.

Innovation

What the syllabus means by innovation in science teaching, which is not buying equipment and not novelty for its own sake: finding a better way to make an idea visible with what is available.

It includes:

• Improvised apparatus, as above — the main case.
• Low-cost and no-cost teaching aids, often made by children.
• New activities for an old topic — a demonstration that produces the conflict a misconception needs.
• Using the local environment — the pond, the market, the field, the kitchen, the sky — as the laboratory.
• Reorganising the lesson so children investigate before being told.
• Science fairs, clubs, exhibitions and quizzes, where children build and explain.

The test a question applies: does it help children do and understand science? An innovation that makes a lesson more entertaining without changing what the children do is not what is meant.

A question of the kind the paper sets

A school has no science laboratory. The teacher should: (a) teach science theoretically from the textbook (b) take children to a nearby school's laboratory once a year (c) use improvised apparatus made from locally available and waste material (d) show videos of experiments instead of performing them

(c).

The other three are each a plausible accommodation and each gives up the thing that matters:

• (a) removes the method from a subject that is a method.
• (b) makes practical science an annual outing rather than how the subject is learned — and once a year is not where understanding is built.
• (d) substitutes watching for doing, and carries the danger above: an animation convinces whether or not it is right.

(c) keeps children handling, in groups, with equipment they can afford to break. The general rule for this heading: when an option has children making or handling something, it is almost always the answer.

Mistakes that cost marks here

• Accepting "no laboratory" as a reason for theoretical teaching.
• Treating improvisation as a second-best rather than as having advantages of its own.
• Choosing video over doing. It supplements direct experience.
• Treating the textbook as the syllabus to be covered page by page.
• Describing innovation as using new technology. It is making an idea visible with what is there.
• Forgetting safety when recommending improvised flames, glass or circuits.
• Claiming models are accurate. They distort scale, and saying so is part of using them well.
• Listing aids without saying what each is poor at — the comparison is what the question wants.

In one line

Most upper-primary science can be done with jars, bottles, wire and waste, and improvised apparatus is better than a kit for handling, numbers and ownership; the textbook is one resource read against the activity rather than a script; every aid has something it is bad at; and innovation means making the idea visible with what is available, not buying equipment.

In the classroom

The cheapest durable change is a box. One carton holding bottles, foil, wire, a cell, bulbs, magnets, a magnifier, string and a candle covers most of a year's upper-primary demonstrations, and it removes the daily excuse of nothing being ready.

Asking children to make the apparatus is the move that pays twice. A child who has built a balance from a ruler and two cups understands moments before the word arrives — and a class that owns its equipment treats it far better than it treats the school's.