For this terms observation for my appraisal MTH observed a year 9 lesson where we were looking at thinking skills and applying knowledge they had learnt to real world applications. In this particular instance "real world" was a rather broad concept. The framework for this was from the Issues Presentations that I had seen at the ChemEd Conference and presented to the department.
This particular lesson was within the unit of work dealing with waves and energy and the class had just completed learning about sound and sound waves. The presentation dealt with the movement of waves in a vacuum, particularly in space, using the explosion of the Death Star from Star Wars as the initial image.
The class in question was a lower ability class with many students having literacy at Level 2 or Low Level 3 on the curriculum. Many of them do not display critical thinking skills and show little to no desire to learn them.
The students were engaged by the gif of the Death Star exploding with the Millenium Falcon flying away from the blast zone. Some could very clearly tell the class what had led up to that point and what came after, and could debate the plot points. When challenged some problems or falsities in the presentation of the explosion were identified which led us into the text reading.
Five students participated in reading out loud to the class, a selection of text from MovieTropes.com detailing how movie explosions in space defy laws of physics. Due to their previous learning on sound waves and wave behaviour some of this made sense to the students. I was still having to lead the discussion, positing questions for them to respond to, but most students were engaged, especially the low achieving boys.
The final step was to watch a video on the physics of sound explosions which explained with diagrams, pictures and animation in more detail.
There was very little writing in this lesson which helps get engagement from those students who struggle with literacy. I am trying to develop analytical and critical thinking skills in my students and to get them to see how what they are learning in class can help them to be better at interacting with the world and less likely to be taken advantage of.
