April 16th, 2011 | 
Author: 
Posted in 
There are some concepts that may seem difficult for some kids to grasp. No matter how smart your child is, there are certain ideas or notions that are hard to explain. This comes about in many areas in school, but most especially seems to be an issue within science. This is one discipline that is difficult to define and often challenging to explain. One concept that continues to be difficult both contextually and from an educational standpoint is the scientific method. Some adults don’t even fully understand this concept, so how do you break it down for kids? Here are some simple ways to define and help explain this fundamental science lesson.
It is a Way of Exploring and Learning
Scientists and experts in this field are all about exploration and discovery. This can be a fun way of teaching students how the scientific method works and why it is so important. If you explain to them that the scientific method is a way of exploring and learning why things work the way that they do, they can really absorb this. Allow the kids to try this out and see how they do. Let them explore a specific idea, subject, or topic and see how in detail they can get on it. See how they start to form the basis of their learning method and explain to them that this is how the scientific method works—it’s just that easy though it’s really more comprehensive than that in actuality.
It is a Series of Questions Leading to the Valuable Answers
When students ask questions, point out that this is how they gain answers. This simplistic lesson that causes students to take a step back and understand that there is a path to learning can help tremendously. The more questions that they can ask on a given subject, the more they are performing the essence of the scientific method. This may not make sense at first, but let them fire the questions at you on a given topic and see how you can together develop good working solutions. This can be a great way of uncovering truths, but it can also be a great way of seeing the scientific method at work.
It is How Scientists Form the Basis for Experiments and Findings
Help your students to understand that scientists need to form ways of explaining how things work. You can start to teach this on a very basic level like “why does a dog have fur” or something at their level. Then walk them through the process of how uncovering answers can lead to experiments, solutions, and key findings. If you keep it on their level, they are sure to understand it. If they can see how this works on a real life scenario or subject matter, then that’s all the better for their comprehension.
Mary M Frederick enjoys discussing the elements that affect a student’s decision on what schools to consider for masters in science programs.