Things you'll need to decide on as you plan: energy

Bringing together two sets of constraints

Focusing on the learners:

Distinguishing–eliciting–connecting. How to:

• draw on everyday conversations about energy
• build on concerns about energy supply
• formalising the discourse about energy by connecting it to calculations

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:

• access values for energy
• emphasise the atemporal facet of energy: it's always stored
• distinguish between the physical descriptions of the lived-in world and the descriptions using the idea of energy
• build in the conservation of energy as an assumption in analysis

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.