Things you'll need to decide on as you plan: Designed Devices Switch Pathways
Teaching Guidance
for 14-16
Bringing together two sets of constraints
Focusing on the learners:
Distinguishing–eliciting–connecting. How to:
- discuss dynamic equilibrium, where nothing seems to be happening
- develop precise enough physical descriptions of processes to enable discussions about power and energy to be well grounded
- connect the insights from physics to the lived-in world
- maintain a strategic view when developing multi-step arguments
- link actions with apparatus to accounts with words and diagrams
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.
Focusing on the physics:
Representing–noticing–recording. How to:
- emphasise what many different devices have in common
- make appropriate use of quantification, as being essential to arguments relying on energy and power
- show the uses for ideas such as
field
- exploit the idea of compensation
Teacher Tip: Connecting what is experienced with what is written and drawn is essential to making sense of the connections between the theoretical world of physics and the lived-in world of the children. Don't forget to exemplify this action.