Continuing
from my last post I have now pulled together the last of my plans. Again I have
noticed that I have not fully explained all of my decisions in one place. Here
is my post-mortem of my final two lesson plans both old and new plans along
with explanations for my choices. Once again for this post all text that is not
part of the plans (eg. notes and explanations) will be highlighted via blue
text like I have done here. Within my version of the plan, script to be spoken
to the class are highlighted with red text.
Air Resistance
Original Lesson Plan
Whole class teaching:
Remind the children of their
friction experiments from the previous session and the fact that when two
surfaces come into contact with each other friction occurs. If moving over a
surface is difficult then surely moving through air is easier? Briefly discuss
with the children situations where they have felt the ‘force’ of moving air – running into the breeze on a windy
day, holding an umbrella being pushed inside out, cycling on a windy day, etc.
Give a volunteer child a
sheet of A4 scrap paper & ask them to drop it on command from shoulder
height. Use a stopwatch to record how long it takes to fall to the ground.
Record time on f/c. What happens if you change the shape of the sheet? Does a
scrunched ball fall faster or slower than the flat sheet? What about other
shapes (must use whole of A4 sheet each time)? Repeat with a few other children.
In the above two paragraphs there is clearly questions
and objects being set out, is it easier to move through air than on a surface,
does the shape of an object affect its resistance, etc. This structure of
question is what I took forward as it allows for good scientific practices to
be utilised.
In the second paragraph there is elements of
interactivity and competition. The competition is not between learners but
purely between the different shapes of paper. It is this competition and
interactivity which I wanted to work with and draw out, extending it to the
students. This is built upon further, later in the lesson plan.
Take a large parachute like
those used for circle time activities (in the Hall or playground). With all the
children standing in a circle start to raise and lower the parachute together.
What do they notice? – It’s
hard work; the parachute feels heavier than it did when it was still. Allow
a few children at a time to lie under the parachute while it is being raised
& lowered. What do they feel? – The
air rushing out and being drawn into the parachute.
Present the children with
four balls the same size - golf ball, squash ball, table tennis ball and a
bouncy ball – all same size, weigh those using digital scales - they are all
the same size but each has a different mass. Record on f/c. Ask the children to
vote for which will fall to the ground fastest when dropped from the same
height. All have the same force acting on them – gravity. Record the children’s
predictions as a tally on the board. Ask four children to come to the front to
drop them simultaneously from the same height. What do the children notice?
Repeat with several more drops… the balls fall at same rate when dropped. Why
is this? – As the shape of the
balls is the same they are all affected by the slowing air resistance in the
same way. It is thought that in 1590 Galileo climbed to the top of the leaning
Tower of Pisa and performed the same ball drop enquiry (& feather &
ball enquiry)! Allow children
to help Galileo carry out his enquiry once more by going to http://www.planetseed.com/node/20129 orhttp://www.planetseed.com/popup/41280 (more detail). He was the first
to conclude that all objects would fall at the same rate/speed without air.
Finding an environment without air (a vacuum) is hard although space is the
perfect testing ground! See a feather and a hammer fall at the same speed athttp://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_15_feather_drop.html.
Again there is interaction with the students along with
elements of competition. As before the competition is between the different
objects and not the students so I wish to draw this out and extended it to the
students to improved student engagement.
Group activities:
Tell the children that they
are going to plan and then carry out their own enquiry to explore how spinners
weighted with paper clips fall when dropped. Before starting they must agree in
pairs on the question they are going to investigate through discussion of the
Discussion Drawing (session resource). How
does the number of paper clips affect the time the spinner takes to fall? How
does the height a spinner is dropped from, affect the time it takes to fall?
How does the size of the spinner affect the time it takes to fall?
Allow the children to
consider how they are going to carry out their experiment to attempt to answer
their questions. Remind the children that to be a fair test they can only
change one factor and must keep all others the same. Discuss with each pair the
factor that will change – greater
mass, more height, etc. Allow the children to carry out their experiment,
repeating and recording all measurements as they go. Make suggestions to groups
investigating drop heights so that this can be carried out safely. Allow
students to use template to create spinners (session resource – this can be photocopied larger for
students who choose the option of increasing the area of paper used). Students
should cut along the dotted lines before bending one side strip forwards, one
backwards to create the blades, and folding the main body to make a triple
thickness for fixing the paper clips to.
For the above paragraph students experiment with
different variables to determine how these variables affect the flight of the
spinners. This has cooperation already rooted within so I decided that this
would also be an element I could take forward. At this point I decided that I
could easily apply competition to this section of the plan. However, the issue
I faced was that this task in its current form offered the students autonomy on
what variable they were testing. This is a key part of the lesson as it teaches
objectivity and good scientific practices. If I were to apply strict rules to
this, a large section of the learning outcome would have been missing. For this
reason, I decided to keep the lesson plan as it was and instead, add to the
plan by building on this concept at the end and forming the competition that
way.
When the enquiry has been
carried out, support the children as they create a graph and describe any
patterns created by their results. Plot a line graph. Describe the pattern in
their results, in the form: the
larger the paper spinner, the slower it fell; the more paper clips added, the
quicker it fell. Encourage the children to draw out a conclusion from their
results, e.g. air pushes
upwards and gravity pulls down; it
is the size of the air resistance force that causes objects to fall at
different rates, etc.
While this final paragraph does not appear to contain
any gamified elements it does back up my previous thoughts on how it is vital
that this plan keeps its current form to achieve the learning outcomes. First
and foremost, lesson plans MUST meet the learning outcomes. With all of this in
mind, I proceeded to create a gamified experience to be placed at the end of
the lesson structure. If you have been reading along with my previous blog posts,
you will have noticed that my version of this plan is largely the same but with
my contribution added to the end. To make it easier to read I have left off
anything from my plan that is repeated above and just left my contribution.
Air Resistance
My Lesson Plan
Inform
the learners that now they will have a competition. In their pairs, they will
use the information they have gained from their experiments to design a spinner
that, when released from the same height, will take the longest time from
release to hit the floor. The rules are simple, all spinners will be released
from the same height and the stop watch will start from when the spinner is
released and stop the moment it touches the ground. Spinners cannot be thrown,
only dropped from a static position (to help with this the teacher may release
each of the spinners in turn) The students can make any shape spinner they wish
but can only use paperclips as additional weight and cannot use any more than a
single A4 sheet of paper. Each team may have as many test drops as they wish
during their allotted making time prior to the competition starting.
So above is the goal and rules for the
competition that the students will be participating in. I have taken forward
the elements I distilled from the original plan as mentioned above and created
this addition. It allows the students to take what they have learned though the
session and show off their findings. This was inspired by the final stage of a narrative
system called Kishōtenketsu. I blogged about Kishōtenketsu and how this applies to games and
gamification in December 2015 (Learning Theories: Scaffolding in Games) where
the final stage (conclusion) allows players (or in this case learners) an opportunity
to showcase what they have learned. This also plays heavily with the
gamification elements of mastery.
After
each spinner is dropped and its time recorded, give explanatory feedback to
help explain different behaviours due to shape and weight placement etc. When
all times have been measured, the winners are determined by being the team with
the longest time on the leaderboard.
The above section includes elements of feedback along
with leaderboards and increased completion. Finally, the conclusion of the
activity below includes points for the winning team which again works into the
gamification elements of points, badges, and leaderboards. There is also scope
to add replayability where students get a second chance but this is only
possible with enough lesson time remaining. I was aware that due to keeping all
of the original content, any additional content would extend the lesson time beyond
its intended finish. This is why the competition has been kept short and replayability
is optional.
When
the winners have been determined, award points to each of that team’s members
and, if time permits, leaners can be given another chance to redesign their
spinners and try again. On this second attempt do not offer points but instead
badges/stickers for any teams which break the class record set by the initial
winners.
And finally
this is my forth plan. This plan has a lot of interactivity mixed in with minor
elements of narrative and immersion. I will pick these parts out as we move
through the plan.
Water Resistance
Original Lesson Plan
Whole
class teaching:
In a
large space ask the children to imagine that they are standing in water up to
their necks, how does it feel as they start to move around? It’s hard
work - there is a lot of resistance (drag force) - discuss why it’s
so much easier to move around on dry land – less resistance/lower drag force.
This first paragraph opens with asking students to
imagine a scenario and places them within that scenario to get them thinking
about a situation they most likely have all been in, but never thought about,
being immersed in water. This immersion of the narrative was an element I
wanted to pull into my version and amplify.
Discuss how when you swim (actually kicking your legs and moving your
arms) you can move through the water, but if you stop applying the forces you
slow down (similar to when you are moving through air - compare to cycling,
when you stop pedalling you slow down). Tell the children that you are now
going to fill the pool with different liquids. What about oil? Syrup? How
does it feel now? Why is it different? Back in the classroom take a look at
three jars containing water, oil and syrup. Place the same small object (e.g. a
marble, penny) into each jar in turn. Use the Discussion Drawing to stimulate
discussion (session resource). How does it behave differently? What do
the children notice? Will it be placed flat or edge on? Remind children of the
opposite force theory as studied in the Session B.
Again the paragraph above pushed further on the narrative
and immersion aspects mentioned before, it was at this point I decided that I
wanted to create a stronger narrative similar to the opposing forces narrative
mentioned in my previous posts.
Remember the book on the table? The push force from the table was enough
to stop the book from passing through it, in water the pull of gravity is
greater than the pushing upthrust and so many objects sink. As a liquid becomes
thicker (more viscous) its upthrust force increases. Finally place
a plasticine ball into a bowl of water – it sinks as the forces are not
balanced. Retrieve the plasticine and make a large flat shape (&/or a boat
shape) - it floats – the increased surface area makes the most of the upthrust.
Finally, for the main session the above speaks of
making different shapes to demonstrate how surface area and shapes can affect
the upthrust exhorted on an object. This I felt was a good point to base a
competition on. This was further affirmed after reading the last section of the
group activities.
Group
activities:
Adult-led
activity:
Set up a demonstration for the children. Weigh two pieces of plasticine
so that they have the same mass and roll each into a ball. Fill a tall clear
cylinder with water and place it so that the children can see it. Tell the
children that you are going to drop both balls from the same height at the same
time. One into the water and one onto the table. Get the children to countdown…
3, 2, 1, Drop! What do they notice? The ball in water falls slower than
that falling through the air. What is the explanation for this? Water
resistance slows the ball travelling through the water in the same way that air
resistance can slow a parachute.
This activity has game elements present in the form
of mastery by asking students to predict results. This is a simple activity
with a simple answer however I wanted to include it in the narrative for my
version of the lesson plan.
Adult-led
activity:
Place a number of different objects (that don’t float) one at a time
into the fruit net and measure their weight using a force meter. Repeat the
measurements this time while the net is suspended in water. Record each measurement
in a table repeating if necessary to find an average/mean result. What do the
results show? – Gravity still works under water, even though the weight
seems different – water resistance is greater than air resistance. Remember
the mass stays the same!
This activity does not appear to have any gamified
elements in its current form, that said the task still inspired me when writing
the narrative and gamifying the content as shown below.
The final activity contains elements of competition
with students predicting the speeds of the boats. This section formed the base
for the last section of my gamified plan in which I attempt to increase
interactivity and thus, engagement from the students.
Adult-led
activity:
Challenge children to predict which boat design will move most quickly
through water (session resources).
I took the
above and used it to form the plan found below. The steps for this can be found
in my previous posts. When approaching this plan, I knew that I wanted to build
another narrative building on the previous session on opposing forces. I also
knew that I wanted to include a challenge with competition.
Water Resistance
My Lesson Plan
Whole class
teaching:
Open to
the class reading the following to the class:
It has been
two months since the museum incident with the class and Mrs Pennington and to
make up for the upset caused by this, the museum owners have paid for an all
expenses trip to see the Amazon Rainforest in in Brazil. No more than two days
passed before you and your class find themselves lost in the jungle being
chased by angry indigenous hunters! Somehow you have all managed to get a
little way ahead of the hunters but now find yourselves on the edge of a waste
deep swamp. You can see several different paths to the other side, all of them
involve wading waste deep through different areas of water and mud. How do you
decide which path will let you cross the fastest and let you escape the
hunters?
I started, as with previous narrative based lessons, with an intro to
help immerse the students in the gamified environment. I encouraged learners to
imagine themselves in this situation in much the same way that the original plan
asked students to imagine themselves in water. When immersed students show much
greater engagement and retain more of the lesson materials. With this narrative
I decided to follow on from the first lesson on opposing forces, this means
that characters have already been established and again, increases immersion.
And as before, this section introduces students to the first challenge to
overcome. Thinking of problems in a real world way helps students to retain information
and again, further engage in the materials.
Speak to
the learners and get their ideas on factors that could slow them down when
moving through a liquid such as water or swamp that wouldn't normally matter
when running on solid ground. If a learner mentions water resistance, then
focus and drill down on the subject. If not, then work water resistance into
the discussion. After this move on to explain/discuss that different liquids
can have different levels of resistance. Demonstrate this taking several sealed
jars with different liquids and a penny in, letting the pennies all rest on the
bottom and then turning the jars over to watch the penny fall. Ask students
what they notice. Explain that because each liquid has a different level of
resistance, the pennies fall at different rates. Ask students to think of a
way, in the jungle, they could test to see which liquid would be easiest to
move through with the least amount of resistance.
The above brings back the jar demonstration from the original plan as
well as encouraging students to engage with the lesson. Leading questions gives
hints to the learners as well as allowing them the autonomy of directing their
own take on the subject. This then fits directly into the narrative where
students need to find their way across, again linking the subject to the real
world. Below is another demonstration taken from the original plan. This
demonstrates all that the original did but frames it within the narrative and
gives it reason.
Explain
that if they took rocks from the ground and dropped them in the liquids they
can see that the fastest sinking rock would be the liquid with the least
resistance. Demonstrate this by dropping a stone in each of two containers, one
containing water and the other something thicker such as honey or syrup. Ask a
learner to assist by dropping one of the stones and use your spare hand to drop
a third stone onto the table through the air. Re-emphasise how the first stone
to hit the ground experienced only minimal wind resistance until it hit the
table, how the water rock has up thrust working against gravity causing it to
fall slower, and that the syrup rock took the longest as syrup had more up
thrust and more resistance than the water. After this proceed to read the
following:
The class
quickly grab as many rocks and stones as they can carry and start dropping them
in the different areas. Some sank straight to the bottom, others hit the
surface and sank much slower. These areas should be avoided as walking through
them will be much harder and will slow you down. The class quickly find the
fastest rout through the swampland and make it to the other side. They can no
longer hear the shouts of hunters, they must have given up when they got to the
swamp and turned back. You all breathe a sigh of relief. Mrs Pennington
suddenly speaks up, “Class I can hear running water, I remember on the map that
the camp beside a river, we should all head towards the sound and see what we
find.” After several minutes walk you all come across a large river and
amazingly, across on the other side you can see your camp! There is only one
problem, there is no bridge across. You will all need to build a raft to cross.
Using what you now know about water and air resistance, in teams you must
construct a boat or raft that will both float, and travel fast through the
water.
The above narrative piece both rewards the students
for their success in the discussion. This leads to the main challenge in which
I took the boat demonstration from the original and again, gives students
purpose and reason for the task which ultimately increases student engagement,
subject retention and motivation.
Ask the
learners to form groups of their own choosing to foster autonomy and then give
them 20 minutes (scale to fit the lesson time remaining) to build a boat using
the materials provided (paper, plasticine, tin foil, tape etc.) Explain the
rules of the challenge, the boat MUST float and will be pushed by the teacher
at the same force each time. The winners will be the boat the travels the
farthest OR in the event that more than one team reaches the other side, the
boat that reaches the other side the quickest. Remind learners about how the
spinners changed depending on where weight was applied and also encourage
learners to think about how the shape of the boat can change how much
resistance the boat experiences in the water.
The above challenges students to cooperate
autonomously on a simple challenge but with lots of scope to choose their own
direction. The rules and goals are set out along with the objectives and
purpose. This then links into the mastery and PBL (Points, Badges, and
Leaderboards) from previous session. This task also has the chance of failure (if
the boat sinks) which then, in turn, gives rise to replayability when students
that failed initially are given a short amount of time to change their approach
and try again. Badges are also used for achieving the task of reaching the
other side first time. All of these elements result in students engaging more
fully with the lesson materials.
After the
time is up, take each teams boat in turn and push each across the tank taking
care to push each boat with the same force. Have a student time each attempt
with a stop watch to find out how long it takes the boats to reach the other
side (if at all) and record this time down on a visible table (white board
etc.) If a boat does not make it to the other side, measure its distance
travelled and record that instead. If any boats sink (and time permits) allow
those teams to go away for a short time to work on their boat and try again.
Once all the results have been taken, award the winning team members points and
award badges to any team members whose boat made it to the other side, badges
for the achievement. Remember to give plenty of feedback to diagnose why boats
either failed or succeeded. After this read the next paragraph:
Congratulations,
all of the students in boats they reached the other side made is safely back to
camp. Any students in boats that failed to reach the other side luckily were
picked up farther down the river by search parties and brought back to camp.
The whole class managed to get over their ordeal and enjoyed the rest of their
holiday in piece.
Adult-led activity:
Place a
number of different objects (that don’t float) one at a time into the fruit net
and measure their weight using a force meter. Repeat the measurements this time
while the net is suspended in water. Record each measurement in a table
repeating if necessary to find an average/mean result. What do the results
show? – Gravity still works under water, even though the weight seems different
– water resistance is greater than air resistance. Remember the mass
stays the same!
Finally, I placed this activity from the original plan
at the end as it fit nicely to extend from the previous group activity into
showing how upthrust counters gravity to a certain extent.
References
Keeler, A. (2015) Gamification:
Engaging students with narrative. Available at: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/gamification-engaging-students-with-narrative-alice-keeler
(Accessed: 31 March 2016).
Kapp, K.M.
(2012) The Gamification of learning and instruction: Game-based methods
and strategies for training and education. 1st edn. San Francisco, CA:
Wiley, John & Sons.
Kapp, K. and
Learning, G. of (2014) Gamification of learning. Available at:
http://www.lynda.com/Higher-Education-tutorials/Gamification-Learning/173211-2.html
(Accessed: 27 April 2016).
