Introduce middle school scientists to scientific variables and the scientific method with a musical video. The song is a delightful parody of One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful." It belts out the definitions of controlled, manipulated, and responding variables, and explains why it is important to know which variable is which when doing a scientific experiment. While the song plays, accompanying visuals show various aspects of conducting an experiment, such as steps in the scientific method, flow charts, tables of data, and graphs.  

Concepts

conclusions, controlled variable, variables, the scientific method, graphs, charts, data display

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Additional Tags

conclusion, hypotheis, variables and tables, science

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Instructional Ideas

• Assign groups other terms they will need to know for the course and have them develop their own parodies
• Post student parodies to a class blog

Classroom Considerations

• Presumes class members are familiar with the One Direction song

• This video is hosted on YouTube

Pros

• A catchy way to catch and the keep the attention of learners as they learn the concepts

Cons

• None