A flexible 60-minute forensic science lesson to help students observe, compare and reason from evidence. Adapt the activities to your class, curriculum and available resources.
Keep the activity classroom-safe: use images or teacher-prepared cards, not unknown substances or biological samples. Follow your school’s usual safety and safeguarding guidance.
These connections show how the lesson can generate evidence of scientific learning across the UK. Choose the framework for your setting, then check your local scheme of work and requirements.
Curriculum focus: Working scientifically: experimental skills and investigations, analysis and evaluation, and developing scientific explanations.
Use the investigation to practise asking questions, making and recording observations, interpreting evidence and evaluating conclusions. It supports working scientifically; it is not a substitute for a required practical.
Evidence from this lesson: Students record observations, compare samples against shared criteria, use data to support a claim and identify evidence that could challenge it.
England science programmes of study ↗Curriculum focus: Scientific inquiry and investigation skills, selected for the relevant CfE level and the class’s current progression.
The activity provides a context for planning an inquiry, gathering and analysing information, and communicating findings. Select the Experiences and Outcomes and Benchmarks that fit learners and local planning.
Evidence from this lesson: Teams share observations, compare findings, explain how they reached a conclusion and suggest what further investigation could test it.
Education Scotland: Sciences ↗Curriculum focus: Progression in scientific inquiry: asking questions, investigating evidence and communicating explanations.
Use the fictional scenario as a flexible context for curiosity, investigation and interpretation. Connect the task to the school’s curriculum design, progression planning and relevant statements of what matters.
Evidence from this lesson: Learners distinguish what they observed from what they infer, discuss alternative explanations and describe uncertainty in their account.
Curriculum for Wales: Science and Technology ↗Curriculum focus: Scientific enquiry alongside Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities, including managing information and working with others.
The investigation can support enquiry, evidence handling and scientific communication. Map the activity to the relevant science content and skills in the school’s KS3 scheme of work.
Evidence from this lesson: Students organise observations, agree comparison criteria in a group and present a reasoned conclusion with its limitations.
CCEA: Key Stage 3 ↗Curriculum frameworks and local plans vary. These are planning links, not a claim of formal accreditation or a replacement for a school’s curriculum documents.
Keep the evidence fictional and the focus on scientific reasoning. Timings are a guide; adjust them for your learners.
Introduce the fictional investigation and the central question. Establish that the class will work from observations, not guesses.
Students inspect the evidence cards independently and write down only what they can directly see.
In small teams, students compare two or more samples using shared features such as pattern, shape, colour or visible marks.
Teams organise their observations, discuss which explanations fit the evidence and note what remains uncertain.
Each team presents one claim, the observations supporting it and one limitation. Invite peers to ask how the evidence supports the conclusion.
Students complete the reflection prompts and identify one new question they would investigate next.
Provide a short vocabulary bank, labelled evidence images and sentence starters such as “We observed…” and “This suggests…”.
Give teams a conflicting observation or incomplete evidence set. Ask them to explain how uncertainty changes their conclusion.
Link the comparison task to classification, fair testing, material properties, data interpretation or evaluating scientific claims.
Ask students to answer these before they leave: