Suggestions for activities to aid the teaching of 'exploring magnets' based on the Physics Narrative and the Teaching Guidance.

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 EmphasisThis{Classroom Activities} for some examples of activities.

Strategies for supporting learning

• Listinguish 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.