Part 2:
Teaching with ICT
a.
Structuring the Lesson
As
this was to be an exploratory activity, the teacher wanted pupils
to start the practical task as soon as possible. Some initial
briefing and organisation was necessary to ensure that the pupils
had a clear idea of what was expected, but the teacher planned
that most of her teaching would be done through intervention following
activity. She would prompt and question pairs and the whole class
during the investigation, and would also review the conclusions
and the process at the end.
Here
is the plan:
- Ask
pupils about scientific experiments they have carried out. Have
they tried to find out what makes flowers grow? Explain the
idea that in developing a new plant food, ingredients are combined
in various quantities and used on different plants to see which
combination gets the best results. They are going to do something
like this, only using the computer to work out how high the
plant will grow with each food combination.
- Organise
them into pairs who will work well together - it is not too
crucial to have a mixture of abilities for this activity. Explain
how to load the spreadsheet FLOWER and enter values for the
amount of each ingredient. Tell them how long you expect them
to spend on the activity - 30 minutes should enable most groups
to make reasonable progress.
- As
some pairs get close to the optimum (or 15 minutes from the
end of the lesson if this comes sooner), stop the class and
ask for claims of the tallest sunflower. By further questioning,
identify the 'best' amount of each ingredient. (The values are
6.25ml of A, as much as possible of B, and none of C.)
- Ask
one of the more successful pairs to explain their strategy.
Ask whether any other pairs have done things differently.
- Summarise
the recommended approach - work on each ingredient in turn,
steadily increasing the amount. If it goes down again, look
at values in between and narrow down the best value (trial and
improvement). Then start changing the next ingredient.
- Ask
the final question - is this activity realistic? First, the
process (which is quite realistic, though it will be more complex
if the variables interact), and second, the model, which is
not realistic - clearly we could not keep adding more and more
of one ingredient and getting better results.
- If
there is time, ask them to write a summary of how to explore
the model. There is a box for this underneath the table of values.
Alternatively, set this as a separate individual task for homework.
Question
for Consideration
- Do
you think the teacher should have spent some time at the start
discussing strategies for investigation?
 b.
Managing Learning in the Classroom
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