Selecting and developing activities for exploring magnets
Classroom Activity
for 5-11
Teacher Tip: Based on the Physics Narrative and the Teaching and Learning Issues
Ideas to emphasise here
- one thing acts on another without touching it
- the physical experience of feeling the interactions between magnets, or between a magnetic material and a magnet
- distinguishing between a permanent magnet, and magnetic materials
- magnets have two different ends, which we call North or South poles
- no matter how small you cut a magnet you always have two poles
- like poles (South and South or North and North) repel each other
- different poles (South and North or North and South) attract each other
- a few, but not all, metals are attracted to magnets. These metals are iron, cobalt, nickel or their alloys – like steel
- you can make a new magnet by stroking an existing magnet on a piece of iron
Teacher Tip: Work through the Physics Narrative to find these lines of thinking worked out and then look in the Teaching Approaches for some examples of activities.
Strategies for supporting learning
- distinguish action at a distance from action by contact
- build a way of thinking about permanent magnets that supports children being able to make predictions
- having in mind an explicit model of permanent magnets
- root your approach in the phenomena; a full theory of magnets is very complex
- being consistent in the drawing of force arrows
- ensuring that children have access to a variety of representations when asking for descriptions
- use a sequence that encourages children to formulate ideas about an unseen force
Teacher Tip: These are all related to findings about children's ideas from research. The teaching activities will provide some suggestions. So will colleagues, near and far.
Avoid these
- listing rules about attracting and repelling as simple ad-hoc statements
- conflating magnetic and gravitational effects – more easily done than you might expect as both are action-at-a-distance forces
- suggesting that gravity is a magnetic effect
- presenting magnetism as a series of unlinked effects
Teacher Tip: These difficulties are distilled from: the research findings; the practice of well-connected teachers with expertise; issues intrinsic to representing the physics well.