Chemical Science Research, Elementary School Children and Their Teachers Are More Closely Related than You May Imagine: The “I Bet You Did Not Know” Project

Topics associated with the chemical sciences form a significant part of the curriculum in science at the primary school level in the U.K. In this methodology paper, we demonstrate how a wide range of research articles associated with the chemical sciences can be disseminated to an elementary school audience and how children can carry out investigations associated with cutting-edge research in the classroom. We discuss how the Primary Science Teaching Trust’s (PSTT’s) “I bet you did not know” (IBYDK) articles and their accompanying Teacher Guides benefit children, primary (elementary) school teachers, and other stakeholders including the researchers themselves. We define three types of research articles; ones describing how children can reproduce the research themselves without much adaptation, others where children can mirror the research using similar methods, and some where an analogy can be used to explain the research. We provide exemplars of each type and some preliminary feedback on articles written.