Your questions answered
Following on from his webinar and question and answer session on ‘How to teach Cambridge IGCSE™ Physics’, Michael Smyth, author of our new teacher’s resource, shares the answers to your questions. In the first of the series of blog posts Michael offers tips and advice on Cambridge IGCSE™ Physics remote teaching. You can find out about our resources for Cambridge IGCSE Physics on our science hub page.
Michael is an experienced author who began his science career with research fellowships at the University of Oxford before becoming Head of Science at a UK 11 – 18 private school, where he was instrumental in raising learner achievement.
Cambridge IGCSE™ Physics remote teaching
Remember to be positive with remote learning and focus on what can be done rather than what cannot be done and encourage learners to do the same. Why not try to harness the power of email / file transfer to enhance lessons, or use e-books, send video links, use simulations and make use of free learning software. You can also share good practice with colleagues and keep up to date with regular internet searches to see what the latest ideas and developments are.
Remote learning tends to be more effective for learners with better organisational skills and a more conducive home environment. Parental support is always important in education, but is even more important in remote learning, so encourage your school to reach out to parents about this. We all need to remember that remote learning is still in its infancy and continues to present many challenges for those of us who are more used to face-to-face learning with classes.
Active learning in remote teaching
Active learning means that the educational process is learner-centred and not teacher-centred. Things to avoid are: too much lecturing or extended instruction; too much on-screen reading and excessively long videos. All of these are passive for the learners and don’t require them to use higher levels of cognitive skills.
Provide tasks for the learners to complete. These could be sketching graphs, rearranging equations, labelling pre-prepared diagrams, on-line quizzes etc. Videos should be short and get straight to the learning point, and then there should be a follow-up task to assess understanding of the video content. Written analysis or discussion, composing advantage and disadvantage points, or providing a counter-argument are all activities that use higher level thinking. If your system permits, you can set up break-out rooms and allow learners to work in groups.
What about kinaesthetic learners?
Kinaesthetic learners need to be actively engaged in the learning process, so avoid passive learning methods (see above). Make sessions interactive – even simple drag-and-drop activities, or click-the-box exercises will engage these learners.
Ask learners to prepare mind-maps or even video themselves doing something: get them to make a video to show others how to do something. Kinaesthetic (like kinetic) implies movement, and these learners retain information most effectively when they can associate movement with the learned content. Ask them to draw diagrams, or even organise their bullet points into shapes rather than a simple list. Get them to use their hands and arms to model vibrations in longitudinal and transverse waves, for example. Get them to act out the process of refraction in their room, or act out how an electric motor works. Ask them to model current in a series circuit with a loop of string passing through their hands.
How would you handle experiments?
Very carefully! In schools we have safety rules and we are there to supervise, but at home this is not the case. Even asking learners to make a simple circuit using a cell and the lamp from a torch / flashlight is not recommended
Keep any investigations to simple measurements, observations and timing type activities.
Experiments for Cambridge IGCSE™ Physics remote teaching
Measuring thickness
Learners can use a mm ruler to measure the thicknesses of paper used in various publications such as newspapers and magazines. They do this by measuring the thickness of a known large number of pages, then dividing this by the number of pages. Ask how the number of pages chosen affects the accuracy of their answer. How can they achieve this large number with, for example, a newspaper of only 10 pages?
Measuring time
A simple pendulum can be made at home and its time period measured using a stopwatch app on a phone. Does the mass at the end of the pendulum affect the time period? How do you make this investigation a fair test? What are the difficulties in making the measurements? Learners should be advised to keep the amplitude as small as possible for best results.
Measuring time and distance
Use a stopwatch app to time passing vehicles over a measured distance and calculate their average speed. If you live within sight of a flight path, ask learners to estimate how far that aircraft leaving the white vapour trail has travelled in 5 minutes by researching typical aircraft cruising speeds. If there is a noisy construction site at a suitable distance, ask them to make observations to estimate the speed of sound in air. Running toy cars down home-made ramps etc. is also possible.
Measuring the night sky
Ask them to find the times and dates of meteor showers, comet appearances (if appropriate) or even the passing of the International Space Station at night in their location, and look for these things. Some people with good eyesight and low levels of light pollution can see the four largest moons of Jupiter without any additional equipment, but some may have access to even a modest pair of binoculars. Get them to make drawings of the positions of the moons, just as Galileo did back in the year 1610.
How effective are teacher demonstrations while students watch us through platforms like Zoom?
A simple demonstration can be very effective but remember that this, on its own, is essentially a passive experience for learners. Turn this into more of an activity by asking them to make notes, make their own labelled diagram, type predictions or type key variables into a chat box.
This may sound really obvious, but make sure they are observing what you really want them to observe. For example, how the wire moves in the magnetic field when current flows and not how your notes are being blown by your desk fan! Things like that are far more distracting on-screen than in the real lab. Ask how they would record the results, what they would plot on a graph. Should repeat measurements be made? If so, why? Would the graph be a straight line or curve? What are some of the difficulties in making accurate measurements in this experiment? How could the experiment be improved to give more accurate results?
How do you encourage students to talk and perform activities remotely?
It is difficult when we come straight out of face-to-face classrooms. However, once we get used to the remote environment, all it takes is a little more preparation. For example, send your students a true / false statement sheet that is to be completed during the session. If you really must give long instruction, then pause regularly and ask learners to complete a Zoom poll, or similar. Stop a longer video and ask questions or ask learners to comment through their chat box. Use quizzes for self-assessment; ask learners to reflect on their learning at various points during the session, or submit a reflection after the lesson. Break-out rooms can be used and learners can be assigned into groups, if your system permits. Remember, the key to successful remote learning is the same as in classrooms: keep learners active!
Follow our science blog for the next in our series of frequently asked questions with Michael Smyth on active learning.
