Construction Studies Experiments

PS112

I am a Leaving Cert Construction Studies teacher and am looking for some advice from possibly more experienced teachers etc.

I got some feedback on the projects and design folders my students produced last year 2011. They lost quite a lot of marks on their experiments. The trend is that students don't carry out the three experiments and just do vague write ups for them. The markers were told to crack down on this unless there is evidence that the experiments were actually carried out.

My question is;

Is it possible to carry out three experiments as a class, take photos as evidence and the students then do their own write up of the experiments.

Or does each pupil have to complete their own 3 experiments?

Any help would be great, thanks.

dg647

I would say maybe do a few experiments as a class and get them all to take photos with their phones, this would be a start to having evidence of the experiments.

But I would also try and get them to do at least one individual experiment, a small one and have some physical evidence of this set out for the examiner when he/she comes.

Some of these could be:

Calculating moisture content of timber
Measuring the strength of timber
Conducting properties of different materials
(Look in any science book for ideas on experiments)

There is a good booklet from Technoteachers on the project brief but I can't seem to find it online.

I hope this is of some help to you

PS112

Thats a good help, thanks.

I have a challanging LC class, so I will carry out 2 experiments as a class and try to get each of them to complete one individual one each.

Much appreciated.

dg647

I was just reading the Technoteachers' guide to the project and that recommends that they do 3 individual experiments. This obviously would be the best thing for the students to do but depending on the ability of the group you might have to lower the expectations because you could end up having to do the experiments for them!