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- What were you measuring? - We were measuring...
Pete Hoskins at Westborough High School in West Yorkshire
is working with his Year 7s
to create visual comic strip presentations
that describe the experiments they've done.
It's part of a series of lessons that they've done on particles.
Within that we've been looking particularly at modelling
and trying to get across the idea
that particles behave differently in solids, liquids and gases.
Can you make sure, please, that you've got the goggles on?
Their practical investigation into the particle model
involves looking at the viscosity of oil.
So the pupils simply had two temperatures of oil
and then had to pour that through a funnel
and then time how quickly each oil came through the funnel
to actually see if the temperature affected the time.
- So was it 4.90? - Yeah, 4.90.
So you need to write that one.
We can talk about a whole range of things
such as which variables we're changing,
what we're measuring,
what we need to keep the same to control the variables.
We can start to look at the quality of the data they collect
and how they might interpret it.
We've taken one. Shall we take another one?
- How many did I say you need? - Five.
OK, including one of that.
If you've got one, how many more have you got to do? At least...
- Three. - Three.
Which of the two oils comes through the fastest? Hot or cold?
- Hot. - Hot.
So if that's the case,
if you were to describe the oil as runny or less runny,
which one would be the runniest?
- The hot. - The hot.
The class itself is our lower set class.
You've got pupils in there
who would be level 2, level 3 in terms of the National Curriculum,
and reading ages which might be anything from seven years old.
Remember you've got to take your photographs.
And then of course we ask them to take a number of pictures.
The focus of that, what we wanted
was for them to familiarise themselves with the apparatus, first and foremost,
to then start thinking about what it was they were changing
and what they were measuring
and start thinking about the actual procedure itself.
Stopwatch.
The laptops are then set up
so the class can start using the comic strip software.
That should recognise it now, that's fine.
The comic strip program,
it's really just a tool to produce comic strips
and, as such, it's just a series of templates
that you can actually use.
As long as you've got some digital photographs,
you can drag them into the template
and then add a whole range of speech bubbles and various effects as well.
So which of your pictures comes first?
This one.
- Can you click and drag? - Yeah.
OK.
Can you explain what you were doing there?
Putting the cold oil in the beaker.
- Did you do the cold oil first? - Yeah.
So get a speech bubble, put it in, drag it up.
OK?
If you want to make the bubble bigger
then you can double-click on the bubble
and then just make it bigger.
Try and explain what you were doing. What did you say you were doing?
We were putting the cold oil into the beaker.
So you were putting the cold oil in. What were you measuring?
How fast...
So add that in, OK?
We've written our second one today.
The hot or cold, how long did it take to go down.
I'm writing it. This is the hot oil, that's the cold oil.
And which one went faster and stuff.
I need to do another picture with me.
That's a picture with me but it's upside down.
You can put it in here and spin it round.
Put it in that one.
We sat down and thought about how we can go about
trying to produce, in particular, assessments
which would allow the pupils to put forward their understanding
and to express their understanding
other than something that was obviously just going to be paper-based,
because of the literacy levels.
And they really enjoyed actually putting those strips together
and looking at their own photographs.
But it was the discussions, I think,
that took place around that production of the comic strip
which were particularly strong.
We're changing the...
You had two different types of oil.
- Hot and cold. - Hot and cold.
And what were you then measuring?
The jug... No. Let me think.
- What equipment were you measuring... - The oil.
What piece of equipment... As you poured the oil, what did you start and stop?
- A stopwatch. - OK, so you're measuring what?
- The stopwatch. - A stopwatch happens to measure what?
- The time that the oil dripped down. - Great, the time.
So what do you find out from your experiment?
Which of the two, the hot or the cold, seemed to go through the quickest?
- The hot. - The hot.
By three-point-something seconds.
I think that the majority of them did get it.
They still need a little bit of coaxing.
There are one or two pupils who...
I can see their understanding is still not assured,
there's still doubt in their mind.
So as a classroom teacher now I can see
who in the class actually has got a strong knowledge of particles
and who is still unsure about it.
So obviously that can now be addressed in future lessons.