student task sheet

Scenario:

You will take on the role as a sports coach who is trying to improve the overall fitness of athletes by monitoring their daily diet and fluid intake. It has been shown that energy supplements and hydration before, during and after sport activities, increases athlete’s performance. Therefore, you as the coach are particularly interested in assessing the quality of a variety of sports drinks and noting the impact each one has on the body. From this research you will select the best one for your athletes.

Science

The Aim:
For students to analyse any six sport drink samples for the presence of various ingredients by using the method of Fair Testing. (Things they may look for are starches, sugars, vitamins, fats (?), and minerals.

Exploratory investigations:
You will be introduced to the Fair Testing Model through 2 activities…Tea Bag Rocket and the Sugar Cube tasks. You will see the affects of changing the variables within simple experiments ti achieve the desired result.

Questioning:
Arising from the prior knowledge and the research activities done on the web about the various drinks, you will pose investigative questions about the topic with teacher guidance, through discussing, recording and modifying your ideas.
(Opened vs closed questions).

Investigation:
To be conducted after you have researched information in the Health section of the topic. This will give you more background information to assist you in formulating relevant investigative questions.

Choose an appropriate question to investigate in a scientific format. This should reflect thorough planning including fair testing, hypothesising, collection of equipment, safety features, observing, recording and conducting experiments where appropriate.
You should keep your specific question and hypothesis in mind and work within a designated time frame. Negotiate with the teacher if you need to.
Draw conclusions from your results.

Presentation of the investigation:
*Written presentation of findings in a scientific report genre which will be presented orally to the class. A checklist for the scientific report genre will be given to you.

Student Evaluation of the investigation process:
*You will be given a questionnaire sheet to complete.