MAKING SENSE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD: LEVEL 2
ACHIEVEMENT OBJECTIVES
Students can
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- investigate and describe their ideas about some everyday examples of physical phenomena, e.g., pushes and pulls, magnetism, electricity, heat, light, sound;
- explore trends and relationships found in easily observable physical phenomena, e.g., colour and heat absorption, flotation and lightness in relation to size, shadow length and time of day;
- describe, in simple terms, how items of everyday technology work and affect our lives, e.g., pens, compasses, cranes, toasters, bicycles, skateboards, oars.
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SAMPLE LEARNING CONTEXTS
- Wind and water
- Keeping warm
- Bubbles
- Toys
- Making our own band
- Transport
- Making work easier
- Turning corners
- Cooking
- Space
- How much does it weigh?
- Sensing things
- Nga mahi
- Waka
- Ko ahau
- Te wera, te matao
POSSIBLE LEARNING EXPERIENCES
Students could be learning by:
- using easily available materials, such as rulers, combs, grass, leaves, tissue paper, to play a simple tune;
- building a leaning tower which only just fails to topple;
- reading about the role of electricity in producing light and heat;
- making a string telephone, and writing directions for its use, to explore the conditions in which sound travels;
- constructing simple circuits to make light bulbs glow;
- using a catapult to send marbles up a slide, and observing the effect of 'stretch' on the distance a marble goes up a slope;
- dressing puppets, when finding out about how people keep warm or cool in extreme weather conditions;
- working in groups in the playground to draw chalk outlines of children's shadows at different times of the day;
- conducting 'fair tests' on the temperature of different coloured objects placed in the sun;
- investigating where different children need to sit in order to balance a seesaw;
- graphing temperature changes in different places and on different days to establish patterns;
- using unconventional measures, such as thicknesses of paper, to test the brightness of different torches;
- measuring the strength of a magnet, using numbers of paper clips;
- working in groups to describe how different types of writing instruments work;
- asking adults to describe how a toaster works;
- drawing pictures of their bicycles to show how the pedals and wheels are connected;
- dismantling an old toaster and following the path of electrical wires inside it;
- comparing pictures or examples of oars for their shape and size.
ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES
Teachers and students could assess the students':
- understanding of how sound can be produced, when the students draw diagrams and write simple explanations of how five different musical instruments work;
- ability to plan an investigation, when the students explain how they would use simple equipment to test for the best material for making a handle for a soup stirrer;
- ability to describe how a person must have been standing in order to produce a particular shadow outline at a particular time of day, when the students demonstrate this;
- ability to communicate, when the students report on an investigation to find out the common characteristics of objects that float;
- ability to evaluate their work, when the students make simple weighing devices and compare them with commercial scales;
- understanding of the basis for an everyday technology, when the students identify uses for magnets around their home;
- understanding of the use of an everyday technological item, when the students explain how wheelchairs assist disabled people to move about.
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