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Making the invisible visible: how White Rose Secondary Science simulations can strengthen classroom teaching
I
n every science classroom, some of the most important ideas are also the hardest to visualise. Students can watch a wave move along a spring, but the relationship between frequency, wavelength and wave speed is not always easy to isolate. They can observe a reaction taking place, but they cannot see the particle collisions that explain what is happening. They can draw a ray diagram, but the drawing itself is already a simplified model.
That is where well-designed simulations can
make a real difference. White Rose Education’s Secondary Science digital tools have been created to make abstract and invisible concepts more visible, giving students another way to explore and understand the science behind what they observe.
Simulations and practical science: stronger together Simulations are not designed to replace practical science. Students still need to handle apparatus, make measurements, control variables, encounter uncertainty and experience real scientific enquiry. Instead, simulations can sit alongside teacher explanation, questioning and hands-on investigation, supporting the “real experiments, virtual enhancements” approach identified in the Gatsby Foundation’s Good Practical Science report.
For teachers, this means having a flexible resource that can be paused, reset, repeated and manipulated. One variable can be changed at a time, a model can be slowed down and a misconception can be tested. Students can make a prediction before seeing the outcome, while the teacher remains in control of the learning.
This is particularly helpful when practical work is limited by time, equipment, safety considerations or the need to repeat an investigation several times. A simulation can give every student access to the same clear example before, during or after the hands-on activity. It can also help pupils rehearse the thinking that sits behind practical work in identifying variables, predicting patterns, interpreting evidence and explaining why the result makes scientific sense. In this way, the digital model does not reduce the importance of practical science; it prepares students to get more from it.
From observation to explanation
Take waves, for example. A slinky remains a valuable practical tool: students can create waves, observe movement and feel the effect of changing how they move it. However, there is a great deal happening at once. Using the White Rose Science Waves simulation allows the teacher to focus attention on a single relationship. Students might first be asked, “If I increase the frequency, what do you predict will happen to the wavelength?” The model can then be adjusted so they can connect their prediction with what they observe.
The same principle applies in chemistry. In a rates of reaction practical, students can observe changes such as gas production or reaction time. A particle simulation can then reveal the sub-microscopic explanation:
what changes when concentration increases, why collisions become more frequent and why not every collision results in a reaction. The simulation becomes a bridge between observation and explanation. This works best when simulations are used actively rather than simply watched. Their value lies in the questions that surround them: What do you predict? What changed? Why did that happen? What does the model represent? What has it simplified? How does it compare with our practical results?
Used in this way, simulations can support high-quality classroom dialogue and help teachers move deliberately between different representations: the practical activity, the digital model, the diagram, the equation, the graph and the written explanation. This movement between representations can help students turn isolated observations into secure scientific understanding.
It also gives teachers a useful opportunity to surface misconceptions at the point they appear. If students think, for example, that particles move faster simply because there are more of them, or that amplitude and frequency always increase together, the simulation can make that thinking visible. The teacher can then test the idea, adjust the model and guide students towards a more precise explanation. This kind of immediate feedback is difficult to achieve with a single practical demonstration, but very powerful when pupils can see the consequence of changing one feature at a time.
Using simulations to deepen thinking
Research into virtual laboratories and simulations also suggests that their value depends on how thoughtfully they are integrated into teaching. The key question is not whether a simulation is “better” than a practical, but what each contributes. A physical experiment gives students contact with the real world; a simulation can strip away complexity and reveal a hidden mechanism. Together, they can strengthen the learning sequence.
White Rose Secondary Science simulations have been developed with this balance in mind. They are designed for busy classrooms, supporting explicit teaching, responsive questioning and carefully structured exploration. For schools using White Rose Science, they provide another layer of support within a coherent, small-step curriculum approach. They can also support retrieval and consolidation. A teacher might return to the same simulation later in a unit and ask students to explain it using more technical language, link it to a graph, or identify the assumptions built into the model. This helps pupils see science as a connected discipline rather than a series of disconnected activities. Ultimately, simulations do not replace practical work or effective teaching. In the hands of a skilled teacher, however, the right simulation can open up a concept, focus attention, challenge misconceptions and help students see what would otherwise remain hidden. White Rose Education’s Secondary Science digital tools are designed to help teachers make every interaction count: predict, simulate, explain, investigate practically and return to the model with deeper understanding.
Explore the White Rose Secondary Science digital tools at: u
whiteroseeducation.com/resources/digital-tools
October 2026
www.education-today.co.uk 7
Hannah Burke, Head of Secondary Science, White Rose Education
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