How was it used?

This resource was used as a starter lesson to investigate how materials change, including reversible and irreversible changes.

1. The pupils watched the embedded video in Tab 1. They agreed that the video was informative and gave them a different view of how liquids could be turned to solids.  Traditionally they had thought of water freezing to ice.  The teacher recapped on their previous learning about evaporation and the rain cycle.  
2. KWL grid – Pupils made their own notes on their mini whiteboards and took photographs on a visualiser to store the information/images.  The teacher asked the pupils the embedded questions in order to encourage some of the lower ability pupils to use their knowledge to explain their ideas.
3. Thinking about changing materials – The teacher used the embedded questions “What ways have you found to change materials?”, “How did the materials change?”, “What other ways of changing materials do you know?” to encourage the pupils to apply their previous knowledge to the current task.  
4. Discuss how materials might change – Overall, the pupils had a good awareness of how the materials might change.  The teacher used the prompt questions as well as his own for the pupils to respond to.  Pupils were asked to discuss their thoughts with their talking partners and fed back to another pair of children in order to further develop their ideas.
5. How a pencil is made – the pupils were given a short ICT research task using the computer suite.  Instead of a one minute presentation, the pairs of pupils each gave a fact about pencils.
6. How do materials become objects was used as a class based discussion to talk about how materials change to become products – e.g. cotton to a t-shirt, leather to shoes, etc – With the next tab (7) in mind, the teacher asked knowledge and comprehension based questions to encourage class discussion.  Examples included; “Can you tell me other things that are made from cotton?” and “What needs to happen for clay to be turned into a ceramic mug”.
7. What materials are clothes made from? – the pupils prepared a short storyboard in pairs to examine an item of clothing and the process it went through from raw material to finished product.  The teacher asked questions of the children to encourage them to apply their knowledge. “Are you able to demonstrate how the product was developed, step by step?  Then, when presenting their ideas, the teacher the pupils to analyse their and other pair’s findings by asking questions like, “Can you explain the process?” and “Can you compare and contrast the changes in materials with another group?  Are they the same?”
8. KWL grid – As a class activity the teacher led the pupils to evaluate what they had learned from the activity.  The main feature was that the pupils had seen a different approach to changes in materials.  To evaluate, the teacher asked:  “What did you find out?”, “What makes a material suitable to a product?” and “What makes a good, e.g. t-shirt (relevant to product)?”   

Note making – This was used by the teacher during the lesson to make observations about the pupils and their progress.

Impact and Outcomes

• 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.
• The pupils developed ideas quickly and were confident in presenting their ideas and giving peer feedback.
• Boys seemed particularly focused by the short step nature of the tabbed resource and generally spoke about their ideas clearly using the notes they had made.
• The tools are useful throughout the activity.

Learner Feedback

Pupils generally enjoyed the resource.  They particularly liked the fact that they could type using the text typing tool to annotate their work, much easier than trying to write with the mouse.  They found the video informative and it led to much discussion  

Other Resources

Mini whiteboards and pens, ICT suite and PCs, pens, paper for making notes.

Lesson Learnt

Such a large and detailed resource could be spread over two or three lessons if the teacher wanted to give more opportunity for the children to develop their ideas and presentations further.  Perhaps using PowerPoint Open Office, Textease or 2Simple software.