What is Differentiation & How Can It Be Used?

Over 11 years ago, I heard the phrase differentiation for the first time.  I found myself asking “what is differentiation?”  I found myself thinking back to when I was at school and realising that at the time everyone more or less got taught the same content in the same way.  Thinking back to then in comparison to how I teach now, you come to realise contrary to what the press would have us believe, things are much better now.    In part that is to do with a greater degree of differentiation within schools and especially within lessons.

The definition of what differentiation is:  Differentiated instruction is the way in which a teacher anticipates and responds to a variety of students' needs in the classroom. To meet students' needs, teachers differentiate by modifying the content (what is being taught), the process (how it is taught) and the product (how students demonstrate their learning).  What I think this actually means is that you don’t need to treat every student the same.  Because no two students are the same, should we teach any two students in exactly the same way?  After 11 years of teaching the only conclusion that I can make is “NO!”  So, the challenge is “how can we differentiate effectively without having to teach 25 lessons at once.”

Over the last 11 years the face of differentiation has changed drastically.  At one point differentiation consisted of producing a range of individual tasks or activities for each student to work through and then to mark each individuals work using a different set of criteria.  Whilst this seems like the ideal situation, in the world of full time teaching you physically don’t have enough time to do this without killing yourself or building a time machine.  Below I have tried to outline some of my ideas about how I differentiate and a few different approaches I use.

Know your audience:  I know that this can be easier said than done, however, over time this is what everything else I do with differentiation is built on.  On taking over a class it’s important to make sure you know what level your student’s should be working at, and if you get the opportunity, talk to their previous teacher to help you get a feel for them.  There are many important advantages to knowing your audience in term of differentiation:

• You can sit your students in specific groups based on their ability.
• You can direct specific questions to different students based on how much stretch they need to get the most progress out of them.
• If you are working with students that have been put into sets based on their ability range, you can either increase or decrease the difficulty of the content you include.
• It allows you to differentiate by task as you’ll get to know what works for your students.
• Using various Edtech, it allows you to set individualised homework for those students who need that extra bit of challenge to enable them to hit those top grades.

Objectives:  A few years ago, there was a point where every objective needed to follow Blooms, be levelled so that progress could be shown against the objectives and needed to follow the all, most, some model.  Whilst this seems like a good way to construct differentiated objectives, it never quite hit the spot for me.  The issue with focusing too much on blooms was that I focused too much on trying to fit the model rather than on the content of the objective.  The problem with having all my objectives levelled was that students would often only work to their target level instead of trying to push themselves to a higher level.  The biggest issue however, is the all, most, some part of objectives.  The problem was that lots of students did the all part, then didn’t go any further.  So, the question is how to use objectives to enable differentiation within a lesson?  The trick I use is to have reasonably generic objectives based on the content but without telling students differentiate my expectations of student outcomes to tasks based on my objectives in accordance to the level that individuals should be working at.

Differentiation by task:  Would you teach a top set using the same lesson as you would a bottom set?  As much as I’d love the answer to be yes, I think I’d have to say no!  If you work in a school where students have been put into sets based on their ability then you need to consider what extra support you need to put in place to support lower ability students, and how to step up your activities to challenge higher ability students.  Below are some things that you might find helpful to think about when differentiating the tasks within your lesson:

• Not all your students will learn in the same way so you need to plan a range of different tasks that will enable all your students to access the lesson.
• Use open ended tasks.  By using tasks that have more than one solution you can allow lower ability students to access the content whilst at the same time allowing higher ability students to stretch themselves.
• If your using exam questions with students, especially long answer ones, break the question up into smaller pieces with advice on how to answer each piece.  This works well with low ability students.
• Consider the level of questions you are using.  If you use a programme like exampro, the exam questions are levelled 1-3.  If you have a lower ability class you might want to use lower levelled questions, and with a higher-level class vice versa.
• Consider the content you are teaching students.  There is very little point I trying to teach high level concepts to low ability students as they will become disillusioned when they struggle to understand it.  At the other end of the spectrum think carefully about how you can use the content to stretch students.  Do you have to teach them everything or can you challenge them to find things out for themselves?
• The pace of the tasks within your lesson is vitally important.  With some classes, you’ll need to keep the pace fast in order to stretch you students, whilst with other classes you’ll need to take it more steady to enable them to access the content.  With low ability students, don’t be worried about spending longer on tasks even if it runs into the next lesson.
• Think carefully about your Power Point.  Lower ability students will find a slide with lots of writing on difficult to access.  In terms of differentiation, you need to change how you present content dependant on your audience. 
• Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic and through words. Not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and students could choose to work in pairs, small groups or individually. While some students may benefit from one-to-one interaction with a teacher or classroom aide, others may be able to progress by themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.

Questioning:  Possibly the easiest way to differentiate is by questioning.  Once you know the level that your students need to be working at you can target them with specific questions.  You can use open questioning to stretch higher ability students, or can use closed questioning to often help convince lower ability students that they are making progress.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can differentiate within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Top tips for AFL in lessons

When you teach for long enough you’ll see many ideas and acronyms come and go, and for the most part with good reason.  Anyone who had the misfortune of having to experience APP will be relieved that particular concept came, and disappeared just as quickly.   One idea that seems to have stuck however, is the concept of assessment for learning.  Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.  In short, it is used to assess how much progress your students are making. 

The most traditional form of AFL is marking; this doesn’t give you any real-time evidence for how students are progressing during the lesson.  I’ve found that lesson based AFL is one of the holy grails in teaching as when used effectively can be used to hang your lessons on.  Below I’ve tried to outline some innovative ways of using AFL which you can use within your own practice.

Simple class responses when questioned how much they know

The whole point of AFL is to get an idea about how much students have understood.  There are a few different ways of doing this throughout the lesson that take little or no planning or resources.  Some of the methods I have used are:

• Thumbs up or down:  The way I use this method allows students to angle their thumbs to show where on a scale their understanding is; thumbs up meaning completely understands, thumbs down meaning they understand nothing and anywhere in-between.   
• Coloured cards:  Students can have red & green coloured cards that they can have out to show if they have understood a particular part of the lesson.
• Stand up or sit down:  This method can be used by asking students to stay stood up if they understand what you have been through.  You can then ask the students questions who have stayed stood up. 

Literature Games

One key point in any lesson is how you use literacy within it.   In my opinion nearly every lesson should have some aspect or activity where students must read something to cover an area of content.  As it’s been proven that the more students read the higher their reading age becomes, and the higher their reading age, the better their chances of achieving higher exam results.  The trick is to firstly get students reading without any innate barriers going up, and secondly checking that they have read what they have been given.  This is where AFL comes in. 

There are a few ways that I’ve found work well in regards to assessing how much students have understood from what they have read.  So, the question is “how do I get students to work through a series of questions on what they have just read without realising that they are working through a set of questions?”  The conclusion that I have come to is to place the questions that you want to ask in some sort of game.  Some of the games I use are snakes & ladders, battleships, pacman, various grid games and many more.  Once students have had chance to work though the game and answer all the questions you can carry out a bit of AFL.  The easiest thing to do is direct the questions from the game to specific students and check the answers you get.

Dice games

Every teacher should have a big bag of dice in their class room that can be used for a variety of reasons.  AFL often includes a range of questions based on what students have just covered.  If you simply give students a list of questions to work through their likely to get bored as they probably spend a fair amount of their week just answering questions.  The solution to this problem is to use just six questions that students pick to answer by rolling a dice.  By doing this they don’t naturally equate it with answering questions and you can still assess how much they have understood.

The use of the letters A-D

One of the more baffling things I’ve found with the new structure of A Level papers is that the first few questions are multiple choice.  I have however, discovered that for whatever reason my students find answering this type of question harder that long answer ones.  As of late I have been trying to drop in a couple of these types of question into lessons which act as AFL questions for the content you have just worked through.

Directed questioning

This type of AFL doubles up as a type of easy differentiation you can use within your own practice.  This method relies on knowing your audience and the level that they are working at.  After you have finished working through an activity or in some cases during it, simply ask specific students differentiated questions based on what they are covering.

Peer Marking

Peer marking is often a contentious method. Using it relies on students understanding what the correct answer is and that they will be able to mark answer without being overly harsh or generous.  The other major problem with peer marking is the quality of the feedback that they give each other.  If the feedback they give doesn’t aid progress has it been worth the time it has taken them to give it?  The way that I think effective peer marking should be carried out follows a few key concepts.

Firstly, if I’m getting students to do any peer marking I get them to do it in green pen.  If students do their marking in green it is easy for them to distinguish between their marking and mine.  It also gives an opportunity to easily comment and give feedback on the quality of peer feedback.

When getting students to make each other’s work don’t presume that they will automatically know how to do it.  It’s been my experience that most students have no idea how to mark a piece of work.  The way to get around this is to give students a strict framework to mark to.  If you want students to mark for SPAG, give them the key words that need to be spelt correctly.  If you want students to mark for specific content get them using a mark scheme to allow them to see what the correct answers are.  Using peer marking takes some time to get right as your students will need some training, however, it’s a useful tool to have I your arsenal.

The last main way to carry out AFL in a lesson is to listen out for what students are saying.  By just listening you’ll pick up on how much students have understood.  I hope that this has given you some inspiration about things you use for AFL within your own teaching.

If you have enjoyed reading this, you can find me on Facebook @teachlikeahero and on Twitter at @teacherchalky1

Thanks for reading

David Chalk

Top tips for inquiry based lessons

Over the last few years, especially if you work with universities or student teacher, you’ll have struggled to avoid the idea of inquiry based lessons.  Ask yourself “what do we mean by an inquiry based lesson?”  The idea behind it is that a lesson starts by posing questions, problems, or scenarios, rather than simply presenting established facts, or portraying a smooth path to knowledge.  As far as I’m concerned within my own teaching, this means less chalk & talk, and a greater emphasis on students either finding things out of working things out for themselves.

The most important aspect of any lesson that you are going to build around an inquiry question is to have the right question to work with.  When starting to plan your lesson, I think as with any other lesson that it’s important to start with your lesson outcomes and work from there.  By taking this view point you’ll keep your focus on what your students need to be able to do by the end of the lesson, rather than running the risk of going off at a tangent.  Once you start to put together your inquiry question there are a few important things that you therefore need to consider:

Does your question fulfil what your students need to achieve by the end of the lesson?

How easy is your question; will it provide enough stretch & challenge for your students?

Is what you are asking you students to do achievable?   This one sounds a bit daft but over the last few years I’ve seen students asked to work things out that have been too high level for them or unrealistic within the time-frame they have been given.

Will your question engage students?  If your question is phrased like any other question then it probably won’t, however, if it’s phrased in a way that will make them feel that they should make a discovery you’ll be onto a winner.

The other main way that I’ve found that you can approach the structure of your question, especially if you are feeling brave, is to present students with a problem and then allow them to develop their own inquiry question.  I’ve found that this method can work particularly well when getting students looking at or constructing their own equations.  In these types of lesson, I like to start with discussing some form of primary data with students, getting them to describe patterns in it and if they can see any connections.  From this initial discussion, they can then start to put together their own question about what they need to find out. 

Once you have an inquiry question in mind you can start to think about building your lesson up around it.  Remember that in this lesson you are there as the facilitator.  It’s your task to provide students with opportunities within the lesson to help them make connections and ultimately answer the inquiry question by the end of the lesson.  The big key idea at this point is that students need to be able to answer the inquiry question by the end of the lesson.   This means that you do not need to start every lesson by asking students to think about the inquiry question as implied by many universities teaching new teachers.

The big idea behind most inquiry questions has some form of literature behind it that students at least need to be aware of before being able to access the inquiry question you want them to be able to answer.  The start of the lesson is an ideal time to allow students to research this information for themselves.  This does not mean sitting students down at a computer, telling them what to look for and setting them off!  Some of the sloppiest lessons I’ve taught have been when I’ve asked students to find something out without giving them some sort of frame work or pointing them in the correct direction.  Whilst it’s important that students can carry out their own research, for what you need them to be able to answer it’s not required.  I therefore make a habit of giving students the information I want them to have work through and then carry out an activity that ensures they have.  There are a few ways that I’ve found work well to do this.

• You can give students a game with questions in it for them to work through.  You can then ask students a few of the questions they should have answered.
• Give students an exam question based on what they have read to answer, then peer assess
• Students can work in groups asking each other questions on what they have just read
• Students could discuss what they have just read and you could help facilitate this by asking open or closed questions to specific students.

Once students have an idea about where the inquiry question has come from, you can introduce the inquiry question to them instead of going through the lesson outcomes.  I feel that this is an important step as if you told students what the outcomes are it defeats them trying to work something out for themselves.  The question that I ask myself “how am I going to allow students to explore the question without giving them the answer?”  At this point I apologise to anyone reading this who is not a Science teacher as I’m going to become a little subject specific.  If students are going to work something out for themselves then the easiest way to do this is experimentally. 

When planning this part of the lesson don’t try and rush it.  Now that the course work component of the course has been removed it’s a good bet that lots of practical content will be in the final exam.  It’s therefore important to take opportunities for students to explain a practical in the way they may be asked to.  SO, for the practical you ask students to work through it’s important to think about the following:

• Ask the students to make a hypothesis that they can test using their inquiry question
• Go through with students what the variables they are going to be using
• Ask students to discuss the method they are given, or construct themselves
• Look at constructing a risk assessment for the practical they are going to carry out
• Talk through some key terms such as reliability, reproducible, repeats ect…
• And finally get students to work through the practical taking readings and then doing some results or data analysis

Once you have reached this point students will now have enough data or information to answer their inquiry question.  As with the end to most lessons this can be done I a variety of ways, however, the choice of assessment I tend to use is to allow them to work through an exam question based around the inquiry question.  Once they have answered this they can then peer assess their answer so in turn see how they have done.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can use inquiry questions within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Difficult Physics! How to Teach Braking Energy

Why do formula 1 cars need better brakes than a normal road car?  This question was the start point to how I taught my students about braking energy and the key idea that I hung the rest of the lesson on.  In terms of teaching, breaking energy was something new to me, so gave me the opportunity to dip my toe into untested water and try out a few new ideas.  Once I realised that breaking energy is the same as work done, and that the work being done by a break must be the same as the kinetic energy of the car, the structure of the lesson evolves almost by itself.

Pre-Starter

The first thing that students must get their heads around for the rest of the lesson to make sense is what breaking energy is and some of the factors that affect the amount of breaking energy needed to stop an object.  Youtube to the rescue!  At times, I think that Youtue has made me a little lazy, but used sparingly and at the right point in a lesson, can be very powerful.  I found a range of different clips of different sized cars stopping under different conditions and start speeds ect and as a class we discussed what effects braking and how that is related to breaking energy.  This was a important activity as it ensures that everyone in the class is at the same start point so that no-one is left behind.  I’m not a great lover of how differentiation is crowbarred into lessons, however, this activity differentiates itself, and allows your higher-level students to help any lower level students.

Starter  

The first equation that students need to be able to use is how to work out kinetic energy.  Historically in my experience this is always the equation that students seem to get wrong since they type it into their calculators incorrectly.  So, how to force them to type it in correctly?  The only way that I’ve ever found to help with this is to write the process that they need to use up on the board, and then go through a few examples with them to make sure that they’re not missing steps out or trying to be overly clever with how they’re typing things in.  The way that I always explain to they to type the variables in is as follow; First work out what velocity times velocity is then press equals, times this by the mass then press equals, finally times this by 0.5 then press equals.  If students follow this methodology every time they should get the correct answer each time.

Once your student’s have gotten their heads around using the equation it’s time to give them the opportunity to have some practice at using the equation for themselves.  If you “gamify” the activity, then students will be happier to work through a series of calculation without moaning that they’ve just been given a list of equations to work out.  The activity that I use is to give students a 6 by 6 board with different variables in each square for them to use to calculate kinetic energy.  I then allow students to randomly pick questions to answer by rolling a dice twice.

The main part of the lesson

Now that students have been reminded how to calculate kinetic energy which is arguably the hard part, you can start to get students thinking about how they can work out breaking energy.  The first step I took was to connect the main part of the lesson back to the starter by quickly getting students to calculate the kinetic energy that different F1 cars have when travelling at different speeds.  This first activity will begin to let students start to build up a mental picture about what braking energy is in terms of the maths behind it.

The second activity during the main part of the lesson centres around allowing students to connect the equations for work done and kinetic energy for themselves.  By allowing students to work things out for themselves it will help them see why the equation works and why breaking force needs to be calculated how it is.  Depending on the level your class is working at will alter how much help or guidance they’ll need.  Show students the three equations they need to think about and they let them work through how to connect them together.  Once students have a single overall equation, allow them to calculate the breaking force needed by each of the cars travelling to break.

Plenary

Once students have calculated the breaking force for each velocity you can finish off the lesson with some data analysis as this will tie everything together and help stretch your higher ability students.  All my plenary activity asks students to do is quickly draw a graph of velocity the car is travelling against the breaking energy needed to stop it.  After students have a graph drawn you can ask them to describe what the results show and have a discussion which connects it back to the start of the lesson.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero , and you can download this lesson from my shop at  https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/chalky1234567

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

Top Tips on Collaborative Learning

As we move into the new year I find myself thinking about the exam session which is rapidly approaching, and find myself asking “how can I change my revision strategies to get students to be more independent?”  The holy grail in teaching is to get students to teach each other allowing teachers to take a step back an act as facilitators.  One method that has been discussed lots over the last couple of years is collaborative learning.  In this blog I have tried to discuss my experiences with it and some of the ways that it can be used day to day.

Before teachers can foster positive interdependence, we must use new techniques, skills and strategies which involve:

• Planning activities and tasks in advance – including how they will be assessed
• Forming different kinds of groups for different purposes
• Using different methods to compose and recompose groups
• Having ground rules with students
• Training peers to teach peers
• Using a range of techniques (e.g. carousels/jigsaws)
• Taking time to give feedback on the process of learning as well as the product of learning, and how well students worked together

One key thing when starting to use collaborative earning within your lessons is how your classroom is set up.  Some of the main things which you may want to consider are:

• The objective of room arrangement is proximity. Zones of proximity can create good behaviour.  Can you stroll/loop around the room to be close to all students in the minimum of steps?
• Can all students see the whiteboard?
• Can you see the faces of all the students in the room?
• Can students access resources?
• How will you seat genders?
• How will you seat abilities?
• How will you seat for behaviour?
• Do you need flexibility to ‘snowball’ – individual/twos/pairs/ fours etc?
• Do you need to move between activities e.g. from a circle to individual writing?

The first stage in any collaborative learning activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students must find things out for themselves, they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many ways.;

• Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
• Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students must pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
• Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
• Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity.

The simplest form of collaborative learning is to let students work in pairs.  As most of the time students will already be sat in pairs it takes very little organisation other than being careful that you sit students next to each other that work well.  The way that I use this is to give students the opportunity to discuss the answer to any questions I’ve asked with their partner before they answer.  By doing this, students are able to reassure each other so when they are asked for an answer they do not feel like they are being put on the spot by themselves. 

Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.  Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below:

Explaining large concepts to each other:  This is something that I have only tried out with A level students but I don’t see any reason that it wouldn’t work across other year groups.  I give each group a large concept model that they need to start off by putting together.  Once students have put together a model like one shown below they need to be able to explain the model to other students.  As this activity is used for revision, I like to get students to video themselves explaining the model and then share their videos with each other to aid with revision.

Revision hexagons:  This is a method that I have used a few times during revision with students for the first last year and it really helped them make connections between lots of different concepts.  How I ran this task was to produce a hexagon for a number of different topics with different questions relating to that topic on each side.  Students then needed to add a hexagon with the answer to a sides question to each side.  They then needed to write their own question relating to that topic on the other sides of their hexagons.  Different students then add their own hexagons which results in a large amount of interconnected hexagons.  Once there is enough information for a topic down students can then make concept maps using the hexagons.

Constructing exam questions:  Due to a lack of multiple choice questions available for the new A Levels this is an activity that I have tried with my Biologists, however, I see no reason that it couldn’t be used elsewhere.  The way that I’ve used it is to give each student a revision topic to focus on, then write four multiple choice questions for that topic.  After they have all written their questions they swapped topics and had a go at answering each other’s questions.  Towards the back end of the lesson the student who wrote the questions highlight the correct answers and the other students can then mark their own answers to see how they have done.

Collaborative exam question answering:  This is something that I use at all stages of different lessons as it can be used for a starter, main, plenary or during revision.  The way that this task is carried out is to have a number of exam questions printed out, one per sheet of A3 paper.  Each pair of students start off with a question and are given two minutes to start answering it.  After this time the students need to pass their question to the next pair and they need to continue answering it.  After the point when all the questions have been answered, the last pair to answer the question need to mark it using a mark scheme and then feed back to the rest of the class on how well the question was answered.  

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

How to teach students inertial mass using drag racing

Thank you Ofqual for chucking in another term into the new physics content that I have never come across before!  Most other teacher that I spoke to about it knew what inertia is but had not ever used the phrase ‘inertial mass’.  It turns out inertial mass is just a re-arrangement of Newton’s second law.  SO, once I knew that the next conundrum is how to teach it in a way that’s going to keep students engaged.  At this point I must thank old Top Gear which was being repeated on Dave.  For whatever reason they were drag racing and the idea to base this lesson around was born!

Pre-Starter

I am fortunate enough to have a long corridor outside my room, so as the lesson is based around drag racing it would have been criminal not to have used it!  Before students entered the room, I asked them to line up along both sides of the corridor.  At one end I set up a ramp and used four different cars, all different masses.  I asked students to describe what they thought would happen in terms of distance travelled, acceleration and other forces.  We set the cars off down the ramp and saw what happened.  This activity worked well and got students in the correct frame of mind to approach the lesson with.

Starter

As a concept, inertial mass is something that I had never come across, so it’s a safe bet that my students hadn’t.  To help students gain a basic understanding of what inertial mass is and where it comes from I used a tried and tested literacy game.  It’s always important in a lesson to ensure that your students have had to read something as it helps re-enforce expectations and as we all know, the more students read the better their reading age becomes, and the better their reading age the greater progress they are likely to make within their own journey.  I start off by giving students some information on the development of the idea of inertial mass to read.  Depending on the level of your students you could allow them to highlight key points or briefly talk to them before they start of what they need to look out for.  If you have a low ability class, you could almost turn this into a group reading exercise if you have the time.  Once your students have finished reading they can play snakes and ladders.  DO NOT ASSUME ALL STUDENTS KNOW HOW TO PLAY SNAKES AND LADDERS!  After students, have finished make sure that you leave some time to ask specific students answers to some of the key questions to ensure that they have got out of the task what they need.  By running this literacy activity as a game, it almost stops students from putting up any barriers to reading that they may if just given some information to read.

Task 1

Hopefully by now, your students should have some understanding about what inertial mass is, however, I always find that it never does any harm to go over the basics of it again.  This will also allow you to introduce the idea that force in terms of inertial mass is the amount of force it takes to get an object moving.  In this task, I like to get students to manipulate newton’s second law equation using an equation triangle, to construct the equation for inertial mass.  Once students have the equation they will need a chance to do some calculations using it.  You could give students a list of questions to work through which would do the trick but would be very dull.  The way that I like to approach this type of task is to let students work in pairs, rolling a dice to pick which question to answer.  After giving students enough time to have a go at working out three or four, pick specific students to give you the answers to the six questions.  As they give you the answers, note them down on the board as you will be using them in the next task.

Task 2

It’s at this point in the lesson that you bring it back to looking at inertia in relationship to drag racing b carrying out the slowest drag race in history!  Set up the four cars of different masses on a table, and attack a Newton meter to each of them.  Get four students to pull the four cars forward, recording the reading on the Newton meter at the point when the car just started to move.  This will give you a value for the force of each car.  You can then tell students how quickly the cars are accelerating so the inertial mass for each can then be calculated.  This activity is designed to help students see what inertial mass is and will ensure that they have full confidence in using the equation.  This activity will also give the lesson another element which helps keep students engaged in the lesson.

Task 3

Now that students are happy that they can calculate the inertial mass of an object, they can start to look at how inertial mass and force are connected.  Ask students to quickly get down a table with what they worked out earlier in the lesson, and include an extra column for momentum as they will be using it later.  Once students have these results down ask them to sketch a graph of force against inertial mass in their books.  This graph does not have to be precise as students just need to be able to comment on the relationship between these two variables.  If you had a lower ability class, you could sketch the graph on the board and then discuss what it shows as a class.  Students need to be able to explain that as inertial mass increases so does the amount of force required to get an object moving.  Once students can describe the relationship between inertial mass and force, they can start to think about how momentum is related to inertial mass. 

Task 4

Now that your students can work out inertial mass, momentum & have recalled how to work out acceleration I thought that I would take the opportunity to connect them to calculating acceleration from a speed time graph.  Dependent on the level your students are working at you may need to fully explain how to calculate acceleration from a graph again, however with a high ability class you can leave them to it.  After you have explained the task to students I placed six of these questions around the room for students to work through.  By placing the questions around the room, it got students up out of their seats so added another element into the lesson.

Plenary

The type of plenary I used for this lesson was quick and simple.  All I asked the students to do was to describe the inertial mass, momentum and the effect they would have on stopping distance to each other.  First get students into groups of four then give each student a vehicle to talk about.  Give them a bit of time to decide what they are going to say then set them off.  Whilst students are working circulate so you can assess how much they have learnt.

By the end of the lesson I found that my students understood the content and at the same time had a bit of fun.  One word of warning, students may start making car noises at various points during the lesson!

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

How to teach Newton's 2nd Law of Motion Using F1

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