Ideas
A Context For the topic
The sets of mythical creatures: the ice trolls and their friends the lava dragons. Bothe creature live in Iceland, the trolls amongst the frozen glaciers and the dragons around warm volcanic vents. They are friends but they have a problem: the trolls melt and get poorly if they try to visit the dragons; whilst the dragons chill down and get poorly if they to visit the trolls. Some trolls have heard that if they wrap themselves up and it will help them stay frozen but many other trolls think this is bad idea. The trolls want to know what the children think and ask for their assistance to help find out if wrapping up would work. This is great context for learning about thermal insulation but it also allows the general exploratio of materials required for conceptual change.
Facts
Magnet
Iron is the easiet metal to magnetize and it also loses its magnetism easily. Steel is harder to magnetize but retain it's magnetism much better. This is why our school magnet are made of steel
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Primary Science teaching the tricky bits by Neil Rutledge
How Children Learn
Constructivism holds that the major influence on children's learning is their prior experience which results in their developing constructs that govern how they interpret and relate to the world around them. These constructs are formed from a very early age. We also called them misconceptions if these ideas are scientifically incorrect and yet sensible.
When we are attempting to change children's misconceptions, the key point to note is that simply telling the children the correct answer is most unlikely to work. If children are to modify their ideas, they must themselves accept that their initial ideas were incorrect and build an alternative, scientifically correct, construct to explain the phenomena they are encountering.
To do this, we need to plan the children's learning as shown below:
A learning cycle for Primary Science
In class, we need to get used to " helping pupils to learn" rather than " telling" the pupils. Often many of the activities we present the children with end up being only to reinforce what we are already "telling" the children.
Pupils need to be aware of what they are thinking and why. Their ideas must be properly challenged in a targeted manner. Then , it is easier to consolidate the appropriate ideas.
Open-ended and discovery learning
There are serious potential pitfalls if the approach to learning is too unstructured.
Effective Learning Contexts
It is important to realise that the context of our pupils' learning has a major influence on how effectively they learn.
Constructivism holds that the major influence on children's learning is their prior experience which results in their developing constructs that govern how they interpret and relate to the world around them. These constructs are formed from a very early age. We also called them misconceptions if these ideas are scientifically incorrect and yet sensible.
When we are attempting to change children's misconceptions, the key point to note is that simply telling the children the correct answer is most unlikely to work. If children are to modify their ideas, they must themselves accept that their initial ideas were incorrect and build an alternative, scientifically correct, construct to explain the phenomena they are encountering.
To do this, we need to plan the children's learning as shown below:
A learning cycle for Primary Science
In class, we need to get used to " helping pupils to learn" rather than " telling" the pupils. Often many of the activities we present the children with end up being only to reinforce what we are already "telling" the children.
Pupils need to be aware of what they are thinking and why. Their ideas must be properly challenged in a targeted manner. Then , it is easier to consolidate the appropriate ideas.
Open-ended and discovery learning
There are serious potential pitfalls if the approach to learning is too unstructured.
Effective Learning Contexts
It is important to realise that the context of our pupils' learning has a major influence on how effectively they learn.
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