How do we prepare students for practical skills they conduct in the laboratory? Practical skills involve psychomotor development, as they typically involve handling chemicals, glassware, and instrumentation. But how do we prepare students for this work, and do we give them enough time to develop these skills? Farmer and Frazer analysed 126 school experiments (from the old O-level Nuffield syllabus) with a view to categorising practical skills and came up with some interesting results.[1] Acknowledging that some psychomotor tasks include a cognitive component (they give the example of manipulating the air-hole collar of a Bunsen burner while judging the nature…