A printable required practicals tracker for GCSE science
Practical questions are worth a substantial share of a science paper and they are asked about practicals you did months ago, often badly written up. Log each one while it is fresh: the variables, the method in three lines, the source of error and how you would improve it. The vocabulary page covers the terms the mark schemes actually use.
Last updated 20 August 2026 · Written and checked by the GCSEwiz team
What is on the sheet
- A tracker row per practical with the variables split out
- An improvements column, which is what the six-markers ask for
- The practical vocabulary mark schemes use, defined precisely
3 sheets · A4 portrait · black and white
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Required practicals tracker
Page 1 of 3Fill a row in the same week you do the practical. Later is much harder.
| Practical | Independent / dependent / control | Main source of error | How I would improve it |
|---|---|---|---|
The vocabulary: variables and accuracy
Page 2 of 3These words have precise meanings in a science paper. Everyday use loses marks.
| Term | What it means in a science exam |
|---|---|
| Independent variable | The one thing you deliberately change. |
| Dependent variable | The thing you measure, which changes as a result. |
| Control variable | Anything kept the same so the test stays fair. |
| Accurate | Close to the true value. |
| Precise | Repeat readings close to each other. Precise and wrong is entirely possible. |
| Repeatable | Similar results doing it again, same method, same equipment. |
| Reproducible | Someone else gets similar results with different equipment. |
The vocabulary: errors and risk
Page 3 of 3The second half, plus the six things practical questions ask for over and over.
| Term | What it means in a science exam |
|---|---|
| Resolution | The smallest change an instrument can show. |
| Anomaly | A result off the pattern. Identify it, leave it out of the mean. |
| Random error | Scatter around the true value. Repeats and a mean reduce it. |
| Systematic error | Every reading off by the same amount. Check the zero. |
| Valid | The experiment answers the question it set out to answer. |
| Hazard | Something with the potential to cause harm. |
| Risk | The chance that the hazard actually causes harm. |
What practical questions ask for, over and over
- Name the independent, dependent and control variables
- Explain why a step in the method is done at all
- Identify an anomalous result and say what to do with it
- Suggest an improvement, and say what it would improve
- Read a value off apparatus or a graph, with the right resolution
- Give a hazard, the risk, and a sensible control measure
Why practicals get revised last and asked about first
The practicals happen across two years, they feel like a break from the theory, and the write-up often lands in a folder nobody opens again. Then the paper asks about the method of one you did in Year 10 and the memory is a vague picture of a Bunsen burner.
Filling in a row the same week costs five minutes and preserves the details that questions actually turn on: what was controlled, what went wrong, and why the method had that particular step in it.
Accurate and precise are not the same word
This is the distinction mark schemes lean on most, and everyday English works against you: outside science the two words are near-synonyms. A set of readings clustered tightly around the wrong value is precise and inaccurate, and describing it as accurate loses the mark.
The same goes for repeatable and reproducible, which sound interchangeable and mean different things about who did the experiment.
Improvements have to improve something specific
"Be more careful" and "use better equipment" score nothing. An improvement needs to name what it fixes: a thermometer with a finer resolution reduces the uncertainty in the temperature reading; a lid on the beaker reduces heat lost to the surroundings.
That is why the tracker puts the error and the improvement in adjacent columns. An improvement with no error next to it is usually a guess.