Grade 2 bean shoots in light and dark, charted daily in a shared Google Sheet.

The teacher sprouts broad beans in damp kitchen roll beforehand, so every shoot is just showing on the first day. Each pair plants two, one on the windowsill and one in a dark cupboard, waters both the same, and over two weeks uses a daily 10-minute slot to measure each shoot in millimetres and enter it in its row of a shared class Google Sheet. The teacher has set up a line chart of the class average for light and dark beans that redraws as each reading goes in, and shows it at the start of each slot; when the dark beans pull ahead, usually within the first week, the teacher asks pairs to predict why before the class compares how the two sets of shoots look. In a final 50-minute lesson, pairs compare colour, leaf size and stem strength as well as height, and write a sentence explaining why the tallest shoots are not the healthiest.

Tools: Google Sheets Nine ideas for your own version in Generate