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1. Years 9-10
2. Science
3. Activities
4. Planning an Individual Controlled Investigation
5. Additional Information

Additional Information

View the Recording Templates for this Activity (Microsoft Word, 57 KB)

Guidelines for marking

The following guidelines for marking show one approach to assigning a value to a student's work. Other approaches may be used that better suit the reporting process of the school. Categories, marks, grades, visual representations or individual comments/notations may all be useful.

Range	A student in this range:
9-12 High	defines the hypothesis to be tested and describes a valid procedure that includes the selection of appropriate resources and relevant safety equipment identifies correct variables and suggests how some will be controlled describes a method for gathering and recording reliable experimental data
5-8 Satisfactory	defines the question and describes a procedure that includes the selection of resources and some safety equipment identifies variables including those variables that will be controlled describes a method for gathering and recording experimental data in an organised manner using correct units
1-4 Progressing	with assistance defines the question and outlines an investigation including some appropriate equipment suggesting some safety provision identifies some variables describes a method for collecting and recording some data, but without an adequate number of trials or the use of a large sample.

Feedback

Teacher provides written feedback to individual students covering aspects such as:

• a clear statement of the question to be tested
• a description of a valid procedure to test the question and collect and record reliable data
• identification of appropriate equipment/resources including safety equipment
• identification of variables that need to be kept the same
• identification of how variables will be controlled.

Future directions

In groups, students will discuss and evaluate their procedure, suggesting changes, modifications or alternative strategies that would improve the design of the investigation.

Once the teacher has approved the plan the students will carry out their investigation, and with teacher guidance will process and analyse their data to produce a written conclusion.

Resources

Investigation Worksheet 1.