Things you'll need to decide on as you plan: Reflection and Refraction
Teaching Guidance
for 11-14
Bringing together two sets of constraints
Learners: Distinguishing–eliciting–connecting
How to:
- separate reflection and refraction
- avoid restricting the idea of reflection to shiny surfaces
- not conflate beams with rays
- reinforce the role of reflection in seeing
- connect seeing to both specular and diffuse reflections
- show where reflection and refraction occur outside the school laboratory
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:
- use ray diagrams to account for reflections
- use ray diagrams to account for refraction
- distinguish between shadows and rays
- show clear examples of the phenomena
- introduce a wide range of surfaces from which reflection happens
- introduce a wide range of changes of medium at which refraction happens
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.