The Importance of the Scientific Method for Kids

The scientific method is the process of objectively establishing facts through testing and experimentation. The basic process involves making an observation, forming a hypothesis, making a prediction, conducting an experiment and finally analyzing the results. The principals of the scientific method can be applied in many areas, including scientific research, business and technology.

Using the scientific method regularly will teach the student to look at all the evidence before making a statement of fact, which makes it an integral part of science education. If we want our students to be prepared for higher education science, they must be comfortable with this most fundamental process.

Not only is the scientific method is integral to understanding science, but it is also a technique that trains the student how to answer a question in a logical manner.

This method teaches the student to analyze and process the information he is receiving.  It trains the brain to logically examine and process all the information it receives. There are six simple steps to follow:

1. Ask a question or identify the problem you would like to solve.
2. Make observations and do research about your topic. Observations means to study carefully. Once you have observed and researched your problem, you are ready for step three
3. Form a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated guess about how something works. In order to be useful, a hypothesis needs to be testable. This means that you can actually test it and see wheter it is true or not.
4. Design an experiment and test your hypothesis. When designing an experiment, you must be sure to only test one thing at once, you can do this by making sure to only change one thing, or variable, in each experiment.
5. Analyze your data. To do this you will look at the result of your experiment and try to figure out what it means.
6. Draw a conclusion. If your conclusion did not support, or agree with your hypothesis, it doesn’t mean it was a bad experiment. Using the information from your first experiment, you may need to form a new hypothesis, and create a new experiment to test it.