How was it used?

The resource was used by a Year 5 class as part of an introduction to Earth in Space.  The teacher wanted to establish the children’s level of knowledge and used the hidden questions within the resource to ascertain this.

1. Videos - Using the toolkit within the resource, the teacher was able to annotate the key words that the pupils used when viewing the videos in part one.  The teacher asked, ‘Who do you agree with?’  And asked the pupils to discuss this with their talking partner and then fed back to the rest of the class.
2. KWL grid – the pupils produced their own KWL grids in their books, but a short question and answer session established some of the ideas for the class to use.  The teacher annotated the ideas onto the resource KWL grid.
3. Animation – The animations were received well by the pupils and they made notes as thinking partners in the ICT suite.  Some pupils needed more encouragement than others to be able to make notes.  The emphasis was on short note making in order to feedback to the class later.
4. Questions – ‘How would you define a day?’  ‘How would you define a Year?’ are the prompt questions to guide the pupils.  Here, the pupils used a worksheet to make definitions of their own.  After a few minutes, the teacher referred to the interactive whiteboard and read the two prompt questions to encourage the lesser able pupils in the class.  
5. Sorting cards into two groups – (Wales, Earth, Day, Winter, Summer, spherical, leap year, month, 28 days, night, year)  This was firstly done as a class activity and sorted into two groups.  The pupils were encouraged to think critically and develop their own sorting method.  The pupils were asked to analyse the cards, ‘What patterns can you see?’  ‘How similar are some of the words?’  ‘Can you sort the words in a different way?’  ‘Can you sort the words into three/four groups?’
6. ‘What do you think this image is showing?’  Group work - Pupils initially had difficulty with this, but were allowed to send a group representative to the interactive whiteboard to read some of the prompt questions.   
7. ‘Where on the planet does dusk and dawn occur at the same time as in Wales?’  The investigative approach of the question led the pupils to develop their own ideas and put forward reasonable arguments.
8. Two pages for note making were beneficial for pupils to write key words they wanted to use when feeding back their ideas to the class.

The KWL grid in activity 2 was revisited in the plenary and the pupils were asked, ‘What can you change in the KWL grid now we have done the activity?’

As a next step, the teacher and pupils decided that they would like to make their own videos – similar to page 1 – to show their knowledge.

Impact and Outcomes

• Pupils were engaged by the questioning of the teacher.
• The pupils were keen to use the resource and found the layout helpful to be able to make notes about their ideas.  
• The step by step approach of the resource aids the teacher to lead the pupils and the teacher can choose to use all or some of the resource according to need.
• Many opportunities are available for the teacher to question the pupils using varying approaches using lower and higher order thinking skills.

Learner Feedback

• The pupils enjoyed the activity.  
• They were able to question each other effectively and develop their thinking skills.
• They enjoyed the animations.
• Pupils agreed that they were able to develop questions with the help of the resource.

Other Resources

Computer suite with 18 Windows PCs, note making materials.