As part of the new Science GCSE, and for the first time that
I can remember, Newton’s three laws of motion have to be taught as Newton’s
laws. As a non-physicist, when changes
like this happen in the curriculum I find myself filled with dread as it’s unlikely
that I’ll have given the content any thought since finishing my GCSEs (which is
longer ago than I’m willing to admit).
So, as we move into a new era in Science education I’ve decided not to
see new & unknown content as a problem but as an opportunity to improve my
teaching practice.
This story begins on a Sunday afternoon when I was watching
the F1, enjoying it however getting a little bored of the same two drivers
winning every race. It got me thinking
about how could I teach using formula 1 and hopefully make it more interesting
than this race? So, when I came to the
point where I had to teach acceleration this year I realised that my time had
come. That evening I reminded myself
what Newton’s 3 laws of motion are and set out planning Newton’s 2nd law on
acceleration using F1.
The Pre-Starter
It’s at this point of the lesson when you have one chance to
convince your student’s that they want to engage with the lesson and use
calculations. In the past I’ve always
had students that have moaned about having to do maths outside of a maths
lesson, however I’ve found that grabbing them straight away and introducing one
of the equations that they will need to be able to calculate answers with by
using something like racing works really well.
The way that my pre-starter works is by drawing a race track over a few
tables, then as a class, get students to use the basic equation for
acceleration to do a series of calculations around the track. The main stumbling point of this activity is
making sure that all students have a calculator handy, however, if your school
allows it phones have calculators on and the majority of students will have one
of them. After this activity student’s
should have a basic understanding about what the lesson is going to be about
and it really sets the scene for all of the other tasks they are going to work
through.
Starter
The starter activity leads straight on from the pre-starter,
so hopefully as students have just worked through something similar they should
have no problem working through it.
Before setting students off briefly on the board, explain to students
how to calculate basic acceleration again using the correct equation. Using the table off the board, get students
to calculate the acceleration of the car in each section using the information
from their race track diagram. By
working through this activity students will have a range of acceleration values
to use during the next part of the lesson when they have to calculate the force
of the car in each sector.
Task 1
The first task in the main part of the lesson continues to
focus on calculating acceleration, but this time from graphs. Students should have already have developed
this skill previously in the calculating basic acceleration lesson, however,
they will need this skill re-enforcing so this is the ideal opportunity to do
this. Start this task of by reminding
students how to calculate acceleration from a graph by working out the change
in speed & the time taken from it.
They can then use the acceleration calculation to work out the
acceleration shown in different sections of the graph. After your student’s have had the task
explained to them place a series of graphs around the room for students to work
through. This will primarily enable
students to become more confident with this way of calculating acceleration,
and will get students up and moving around to ensure that they don’t feel like
they’re just sat down working through equations.
Task 2
Now your students have been reminded how to calculate acceleration,
it’s time to finally tattle Newton’s 2nd law.
The first thing you really need to do is explain to students what it is
and then how it is calculated. At this
point I re-engaged the students by relating it back to F1 and showed students a
few youtube clips which as a class we calculated the force of different F1 cars
from. This first part of the task played
2 roles in that it gives the lesson another element which helps students engage
and it gives them a chance to use the equation in a low risk way as they will
be using it as a class. The task
finishes off with students going back to the starter activity and using the
mass of a F1 car, to calculate its force in each sector of a race track.
Task 3
Now that students can use Newton’s 2nd law they need to
manipulate it especially as in a few lessons they will need to use this
equation to describe inertial mass. This
task starts with as a class asking students to rearrange the equation using an
equation triangle. The way that I
stepped this task up to start off with is to give students mini white boards to
rearrange the equation on before holding them up to assess how many of them had
done it correctly. The second part of
this task lets students pick a series of questions to answer using their rearrange
equation using a dice. This gamifies the
task giving students the impression that they are playing a game rather than
using a calculation, and gives the lesson a different dimension as we move
towards the plenary activity.
Plenary
To finish this lesson off I, like to use a task that not
only pulls together what students have covered in this lesson, but brings
together many concepts they have covered over the last few lessons. It starts off by giving students a time
distance graph that they can use to calculate speed at different points. Once they’ve worked out the speed they can
calculate the acceleration at different points.
Finally using the mass of a F1 car students can calculate the force of
the car at different points on the graph.
This activity will not only enable you to assess how much students have
taken from this lesson, but will also let you assess how well students have
done over time.
By the end of the lesson I found that my students understood
the content and at the same time had a bit of fun.
You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook
@teachlikeahero
Thanks for reading
D Chalk
No comments:
Post a Comment