Fireworks on school bench

Abstract

Presented here are two tasks with chemical substances of fireworks that reveal how much the knowledge of chemistrz helps students understand some products thez use frequently. To solve the problem students are expected to get engaged in the following activities: reading a short text - introduction to the theme of the task; formulating their own hypotheses; reading the presented explanations; critical assessment of the offered hypotheses; experimental checking of both the hypotheses and explanations given in the text of the task. The anticipated time for each task is 45 minutes (one period). The paper presents the analysis of the results obtained from testing primary school students (age 14) at one of the two tasks. The results showed that the students were not sufficiently successful in formulating their hypotheses based solely on their knowledge of chemistry. However, subsequent explanations and experiments improved the students' predictions and conclusions.