 My name is David Sange and I started off as a research finisist actually in times of about thirty and then I trained to teach and I taught in sixth form college in Huddersfield in Yorkshire and then at Sheffield Poly as it was then which became Hallam University and then I went to Sussex and I taught in a high school down there and I gradually got into writing o'n cyfrifwyr cyrraedd ac yn oedd i'n fawr i'r cryffogaeth Ballwg, ac mae'r myfyrdd i wedi ei wneud ar ôl yn eu cyflas wedi ni i'r ystyried o'u ddweud arall. Rydyn wedi'n gwrodd felly'n rせてf bod yn cyfle y cyfrifwyr ar gêmur ymlaenau theiru Cymru, ac mae'r byw, yn cyfrifwyr, o hyn a'r cyfrifwyr, yn oedd i'n myfyrdd y cyfrifwyr ymlaeniau i'r cyfrifwyr ar ymlaeniau a'r cyfrifwyr ar y ffordd ac yn y rhaid i'ch gynnwysau hyd oherwydd a i ni i gynnal y ffantafellol gan gynnal, dwi rwy'n gallu ddim gynnal, a'r bhefyd nesaf a'r organisio cysyniadau neu'r hyn mae'r cyfnod perneblogr. Rydyn iddi yn cyfreiddiol yn y localigau cystafeltau gyda'i chroniclau a gennym o'r tynnu fiaith. Yn cyfnod, rydyn ni'n gwneud, rydyn ni nad oedd yn llwyaf ar enghraifft. Rydyn iawn o'i gyrfaeth cysysg honno. A os ydych chi'n hefyd i Studi unemployed, byddwn ni weithio'r awgwynt gennym i'r cyfrifysgol? Rydyn ni'n dod o'r tawin sydd yn y sgolau ac odd o'r bysgol yn rwyf i chi wedi'i cael ei ddweud? Rydyn ni'n brinio'r pwy, roeddwn ni'n gweithio at yn gwneud? Mae'r hwn yn amlwg yn ni, dylunio i ni, drwy nhw i meddwl y cwysodol. Mae'r hwn mae'r hwn yn mynd i ddweud pwy'n ein sgolawr. Felly yna llwysgwydd yn cyfnod amllwysgwyddiol, eu bodwn, ac bod ydych chi i fi gydag parsleyniad rŵan, llwni'n ddref nhw'n gwnaen i wneud i gymryd cyflwytau, ond dyna'n ffwrdd yn ymddangos i yw, a'r cyflwytau i ddim yn gweithio, os ydych chi'n meddwl hyd yn gweithio, ond prefiwch yn wneud i fi ddim yn dda i'r sír mae'n yn fawr a'r prif. Dyna'r ffeith yna hwn i amser gan hynny? Most of the effects of publications are connected to some of the software that they have. Is that for GCSE? Yes, but I actually do it. I also see the publications I use quite a lot. To summarize my findings. I want to formulate new functions. Obviously schools all the time are saying that the masses and masses are part of the... Yes, how on earth do you find the ones you want? Right, so that really covers most of the different sources that there are. When I was asked to do this workshop, which I did run it in back in March, I think, on a Saturday, I thought, well, we can't sit and just, you know, I can't just ask you to sit and write some resource or other. So I thought, well, I'll you go to the Times Ed website and find some things there. And have you had a chance to look at this in advance? They were emailed out to us, I think. I'll give you copies anyway. So the idea was that you could look at the... You could look at these worksheets. They're all to do with the electromagnetic spectrum. I thought when I looked at the TES website I would find some load of rubbish. Because I have looked before and found some really bad stuff that was completely... This physics was wrong, which is a pretty bad starting point. But actually I was quite surprised by some of the things here. Quite inventive and interesting. And I thought that it would be a useful place to start having a look at some of these things and think about what it is that makes a good worksheet, a good worksheet, and what you might do to them to improve them. If you haven't had a chance to look at them, I think what we might do is spend about three minutes. The sheet on the front is a list of bits of terminology that we're going to discuss and that we'd like you to think about as you look through. Think about what do these different words mean. You might like to just jot some ideas down, flip through the sheets, the worksheets, and then write down and make some notes about what you think some of these things mean. Some of them are more obvious than others. We'll give you five minutes and then we'll talk about what some of these things mean and why they're important and what you can do about them. Don't answer those, but just see the sheet on the front. Just think about what you might write a few notes in there about what these terms are, but you need to maybe look at the worksheets together because we'll be referring to them as we go along. I think in order to get a reasonable amount done in this session, we'll just start talking now and I'll begin by, since you haven't had maybe a long time to look at the worksheets, I'll just go through briefly and describe them so that you know what we're talking about. This one has got some statements and you're asked to say whether they're true or false or partly true, so they say they're all about the electromagnetic spectrum. This one is you have some boxes of text at the bottom. You've got to put them in there, correct places in the table to do with uses and effects on living tissue of different types of radiation. This one is a diary sheet where the student is supposed to think about their day and where electromagnetic radiation of different types comes into it and write it out as a diary. This one is a word loop, which means you have all these cards that each has got an answer and a question on it and the kids have to get one each and they have to go round the room, get themselves into a ring in the room so that their question is answered by the person next to them and so on round. Has anybody ever used that kind of thing? I've used that right now. What are you supposed to do? Give them the whole thing, they have to do the whole thing, but it sounds a bit more rapid. I use this particular one. You've used this one? Yeah. Oh, good. Did it work? Yeah, it did. Obviously, I cut it off for them, so they'll sort that out of each group or a pair. Does we arrange it in your loop? Yeah. I think a really nice variety of activities in these things, some of them are better than others. This one, students were expected to... Well, this is information and then they're going to have to process all this information. This might be spread around the room or it might be in a PowerPoint or whatever. This one is a personal story about a patient who has cancer and is going to be subjected to X-rays and gamma rays, and then they're given a task at the bottom there. They have to provide, you know, interpret information for the benefit of the patient. And the last one is, says Waves. Waves uses a quick quiz, so it's just a set of questions. Okay? So, let's go back to my list of things that you need to think about when looking at worksheets, but also when revising them. As you were saying, when you get a worksheet like this, you often want to do things to it and make it appropriate to your class, make it appropriate to how you think it should be taught and so on. So, let's go through some of these things. This is what I would call a sort of thinking development worksheet where you write notes on there, but it's not going to be a final product. I've written my own things to go in here and I've got copies of that to give out at the end, but you might want to add notes as you go along on your one or whatever. So, topic. What does topic mean? Very difficult. So, it's the subject matter, the physics subject matter that you're trying to get across, but obviously you have to think about that in terms of how it fits with what you've been doing before and after. Asian ability, again, that's fairly obvious. You're thinking about who the learners are, what have they done before, how able are they, what sort of demands are you putting on them. Because any teaching experience has to have some level of demand in it, pushing them on further. You don't want it to be too great, but at the same time it's got to be asking something of them. What about this one? Motivation and engagement. Stretching, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, okay. It's making them interested. Yes, making them interested. Well, if you're looking about those worksheets, which would you say was the least likely to motivate? Bones that you know, the last one. Sorry, what were you going to say? I mean, if you tell your bottoms that you and I and go keep an electromagnetic diary, I don't think they'll enjoy it. The last one I think is, you know, sort of higher level, and you tend to battle with most patient engagement with low-retain and stability generally, don't you? So more able they're more likely to be ready to get on with it anyway. A lot of teachers rely on their own, the fact that you've built up momentum with the class and they're happy to keep going. I think it leads to more because even with students of a higher ability, if it's not challenging enough, they're not going to be engaged in it, so it could be a level of challenge for them as well. Yeah, yeah. Some of those worksheets show different levels of demand, don't they? The one about the medical history, I mean, that's clearly, you know, somebody has thought about how will we engage these kids with x-rays and gamma rays, and then they've got levels of demand down here where this is, you know, I find, there may be a bit dubious what's been put here, but at least it shows they're thinking how can we push, you know, show kids that they're doing better, doing harder and harder things, so, yeah. So that's motivation and engagement, what was the next one? Context, okay? So, in a way that's related. Well, looking at those worksheets, which would you say was anything lacking in context or...? You've seen back in on the petition of questions. Yeah, the quiz one at the end is completely devoid of context really, isn't it? It's just, you know, you're at school, so you will answer questions like this. And some of them, the context is on the page. Some in the context, like the woman with lung cancer, some of them the context is probably more in the teacher, you know, what the teacher is going to say to introduce the activity. Okay, what does activity mean? You're actually doing the task. Yeah, the task that's there. So you then have to think about how they're going to work at this. Are they going to be working together in groups? Are they going to be working individually? What sort of activity is it? I think there's quite a variety in these worksheets. Some of them are more physically active and some of them are more sitting, writing, talking, think. Okay? Something maybe a bit more uncertain, scaffolding. What does scaffolding refer to? Building up her knowledge and understanding, building up within a resource sheet, within an activity sheet. You might want to start off with something that will help them get in and then something that will give them plenty of steps along the way and then you might want to remove scaffolding giving them something more demanding at the end or something similar, parallel, but without all the steps laid out so that they can then feel that they've learnt it in the first half and then they can carry it through for themselves in the second half, which is something I think is not really obvious in these worksheets. Okay, open and close questions. What's the difference there? Yes or no or factual answers or based on recall, really? Yes. Can you point to a worksheet here that would be very open? Yes. That's a very closed one, isn't it? Except that I'm not quite sure what they're asking about. It says true, false or partly true, which is different degrees of truth, yes. But all it asks you to do is write true, false or partly true in the box at the end. Why is it partly true? Yes, it doesn't. They haven't really, it hasn't. Is it time to use it or go for true, false or not partly true? If you say X-rays, are they going to go with you? Yes. But yes, it can go with you but it's not definitely going to go with you. I call it that. But you need to take it further, wouldn't you? You would want them to be... The time will get closer as well. How long it's supposed to be. You would want to ask them to elaborate on that. It's not before elaboration. I don't see the purpose of that. What do you end up with? Is she to paper some statements of false and some statements of true and some are partly true? Do you really just throw a worksheet at a kid? Would you explain what you're doing? How do you deliver it? How do you set your workbook? Because you don't think it's going to go right with the do this to a kid like you? You shouldn't do it. I think he's going to deliver it. If you spoke about partly true, some of these might not be entirely true. Why do you think that is? It could be. You're going to ask them why is it only partly true? How are they going to fit that in that little box? It's quite difficult. It's not the resource, it's only half the story. It's the execution of that thing, which is equally important. I know a worksheet, he's written down, but equally important is some sort of classroom discussion as well. So you can have a discussion on that as well. Yeah. Do you accept that this particular one was used as a quickfire test just for the students to observe what is going on? Yes, I don't know. If it was me, if I was the student and I was sitting next to you, I'd be looking to see what you're writing down and I'd be copying it or maybe nudging you and saying, well, I've done that, but I'm not sure that kids learn terribly much from filling in a sheet like that. Okay. All right. So formative and summative, I'm sure of these are the words you've got. Well, they're methods of assessment, yes. So how do they relate to a resource, an activity sheet? The summative one might be helping you form your understanding, but the summative one might be testing. Okay. And if you looked at these particular examples, can you see, well, what would be summative that last, yes. It's a bit of a nerve calling it a quick quiz, isn't it? I mean, I think the quiz is supposed to be fun, isn't it? Yes. Very serious and written in a strange order. You've got this one as some kind of form your understanding a little bit if you've got the answers there for you. You've got to then discuss with somebody else why they should be standing next to you or why you should put this one next to that one. Yeah. But you need to, you know, you need to have decided as you go along whether your activity sheet is going to be a formative one or is it going to be a summative one or is it going to be formative at the beginning or summative at the end. Otherwise, you can get yourself in a terrible tangle with, you know, I've seen worksheets where there are three questions that are true, false, and then there's one that requires about two pages of writing, and then there's a diagram that you've got to write some labels on and you think, well, you know, what is this person's idea of this resource sheet? They've just written down everything they could think about that they might give to their students. OK. What about gradient and ramping? What would that mean? Getting harder. Getting harder, yeah. Differentiation rather than having different sheets that can be quite popular to certain students. Yeah. Yes. OK. So, yes. It's to do with differentiation but also to do with helping to build up so that they are learning as they go through it, getting harder as it goes on. And OK. So, and different students will, you know, you don't want them anywhere half the class is going to get to question one and that's all they're going to be able to do but so you do need to have some notion of how you're going to get them up the hill. What about language? Any thoughts on language in resource sheets? Yeah. Or it might, you might ask a question in a very convoluted way and often you can make things much you can think of a way to make it much simpler. Any other thoughts about Yes. That's quite a big issue really. Scientific language against layman's language. Key words. Yeah. It is a big problem and some people think they solve it by using everyday terminology but actually everyday terminology is not it doesn't do the job in physics really does it? Somehow they've got to get to the point of being able to use appropriate terminology but then they can be lost you can lose them very easily if you just have too much of it but if you do just try writing down using some everyday term instead of a technical term like energy or momentum or something then you aren't doing them any favours are you? Yeah. Yeah. I think the language bit also because I had an experience where I was advised to tune in to the students use their language but then I learned like vibration which is very sensitive to them and you have to explain some of the which other word you have to use to do that. I think language plays an important role. Yeah. If you dodge from vibration to use oscillations you see more up and down it wasn't really information you wanted to deliver but because it's causing a lot of excitement and laughter. You have some of the raskies the language in there they do kind of acknowledge the fact that it is true that we use this language so they give you the option of acceptable alternatives oscillations you said Yeah. So they do have to learn definitions but there's no point in just learning definitions if they don't have some kind of understanding Yeah, that's why they will talk about that. Okay, well we could have done a whole workshop on language really but I think you've mentioned some of the important points. One of the worksheets this which one was it this one here has these blocks of text that go in the boxes in the table and actually you can save some kids are doing this on a computer they can copy and paste or drag and drop and that kind of thing and that can be a great saving to some kids who don't want to spend all their time find it difficult to spend all their time writing and equally there are some children whose favourite activity is doing nice neat writing and not necessarily thinking about what they're doing cutting and pasting and making it all look lovely Yeah, so this is but this it's not a bad thing to be able to take that and stick it in the appropriate box and then you end up with it. They've had to think about it to get it there without having to necessarily copy out words that are not terribly familiar. The next one Output What do you think that refers to? What are they producing? Are they going to produce anything because some of these things like if they stand around the room with the word whatever that one's called word loop what are they going to end up with? You said you've used it, is that right? Yeah, it was like a stata So you weren't too worried about them producing something at the end? It was a loop actually cut it out so as they were pasting it it formed a complete loop so it would just hung it anywhere One student put it on his neck so it was placing So there was a product there in the sense that they would have felt satisfied that they got to the end of it and presumably it was checked in some way and Some will form notes as well will form more notes in their books some less so I mean it's what do you want out of it is it the learning but then you're going to remember that thing So sometimes it's both a great discussion and a lot of them will think a lot but then three years down the line if you teach for Jesus here in year nine just find that thinking When they get to the exam and you go back and read their books or do they use your revision? You've got to wait all of them Occasionally you see worksheets where there's like a load of text and then one or two questions at the end there's a little line for them to write their answer on and you think well what was the point of all that if they end up with this sheet with just one thing that they've written at the end so you want to think about what is it actually they're going to end up with it may not be anything directly from the sheet it may be that you will then tag on at the end talk your way through some notes or draw a conclusion and ask them to write it in their own words or something like that The last thing I put on here was additional resources what might that refer to Someone on the room Do you So you may give them a resource sheet but they may need to maybe things around the room or wherever that they're going to have to draw in order to complete the activity Sometimes it may be entirely on the sheet you may be able to get everything they need on the sheet which is quite a good thing it's good for homework because you can't rely on everybody to have access to whatever but you've got to think about you've got to think are they going to be drawing on other things and the resources might be the people they're working with or whatever Okay well all those things I think there are important things to think about when first of all if you're writing your own resources but if you're evaluating somebody else's and thinking about how you're going to adapt it for your own use they don't all apply to everything you do you don't have to do all these hit all these targets on everything that you produce obviously but you just need to be thinking about it so that you're clear about what it is you're doing if you just sit and start writing a worksheet on this and you haven't really thought about the whole context and what actually my feeling is the most important thing always is to start thinking about what's the activity going to be how are you going to get these you've got your physics topic and you've got to think about what's the activity going to be and that really focuses your mind on how it's going to how it's going to work and it's not always easy to think of a good activity so that's one of the reasons why I always look at places like Times Ed website and so on right the next thing I wanted to do was really for you to look at these worksheets again in the light of what we've been talking about choose one and think about how you would improve it how you could make it better so that you got more out of it because some of these I think are a bit thin in terms of what will come out of them but just by adapting one you might be able to get quite a lot more out of it and make it more we have to mention one of two things that could be improvements already so have a look through decide when the youth field could be improved and when you've done that can you suggest work in pairs explain to each other what your idea is and then we'll spend in about between five and ten minutes we'll go around and what I would like you to do is explain to us what the other person has thought of as the improvement which worksheet it is and how they suggest it will be improved so if you two could work together when you've had a look through and decided what it is we'll go ok, I don't know who's been discussing which one did anybody choose this one as their example you did so you're going to report on his ideas so the ideas were a simple one would be to change the colours around just the kids association so effects we think should be in red or gamma rays red for danger so we'd change the colours around and then also they could do this we were thinking to combine that and then use the one about the person with cancer sort of like an extension task so they go through the type of radiation the uses of it so that's just some sort of general recall but then move on to this next one a sort of application of that knowledge then so the idea good so plenty of so you don't miss an SMD just re-ordering making sure that he started with gamma rays but I started with radio waves even in the test books he started with the radio waves and the kids most often we teach it from radio waves to gamma rays and show them the training energies because you want to start with low energy and move up to high energy I have seen an exam question where they have put them the other way around but then you rely on the fact just praying that the kids have understood it and not just learn the pattern that's left to right I'm not convinced that prayer is going to work in this case ok that's good that's interesting so anybody else want to look to this one ok well we've heard a little bit about this one mrs Jones's medical problems anybody tackle that one yeah because the idea of asking to write a letter is quite daunting seeing if they can't see something that's a model ok I think you were saying put a tag on an exam more of an exam type question at the end so that in a way that drags it back to the sort of school learning scenario doesn't it whereas this is sort of a real world and yeah ok anybody any thoughts about that it would be like a writing frame I know that's sort of what we're getting at just an example because an example we can go ah I know I'll just sort of change the word but just to write I use seven starters all the time because I find a lot of kids they know what they're doing but they just don't know how to get started they would never know how to get started so I would just provide a sentence like a writing frame you know you can start with this sentence so you would put are you like giving them my paragraph beginnings and yeah ok which one should we look at next what about the did anybody do the electromagnetic diary no well I did my thought was actually that would be quite nice it would be a lot nicer if it was actually a fantasy day rather than you know maybe you go off to the space launch pad and go off into space and whatever so you've got much more opportunity or you go to the hospital today you have to go to the hospital rather than some kind of you know because I can't think of anything else after those two really did my toast with infrared radiation ok did anybody do anything with this one no the quiz that had one or two people doing things oh you did as well ok well let's hear first so would you present that then as you would write the answer here and just have gaps here is that what you're saying ok so it wouldn't be a question and answer it would be a statement ok some of the other ones was to give them a choice of answers some even see the answer so they can pick out some right answers and using pictures to illustrate some of these concepts like a talk in general infection because they'll be used to seeing diagrams related levels for kids who find although pages of words difficult just to have a picture gives you the clue as to where what you should be thinking about I think it happens in exams you never really get a question that doesn't have a picture or a graph interpretation skills are really important so I have one here yes what was said I think he spoke of grouping the questions making sure they build information as they increase actually grouping the questions grading them differentiating them by outcome those questions not just putting them as a they're a pretty arbitrary they're in a pretty arbitrary order aren't they they don't even all match the title they don't all match the title do they also try to change the language even though the question 6 and 11 have seen the same thing where there's an omission in question 8 yeah yeah then all time then when I open a closed question as well yeah are these all closed I can't remember now most of them you could argue I spoke what can the effect being affected long term exposure I suppose that's sort of open yeah but the teachers they'll have a set mask if I'm talking about effects I should be able to say these things but you could make it a more open question but yeah I was just saying group them because some of them are characteristics and properties are waved some of them are more EM spectrum so I would group them put them in order of difficulty maybe put little headings in so they know where put something that sort of arrow that gets wider and wider so it's getting harder or whatever I don't know as poor as I think it is do you think the questions are up to you quite relevant they are questions about the content that they're supposed to know okay and then lastly I think was anybody else want to say anything on that one lastly was you two been looking at this one yeah it was probably discussed it together and we actually talked about how we would execute a bit more as well we said that perhaps that you could have the question on the floor and you could have the kids sort of around and they could write their name on a little piece of card and then they put their name as close to the statement as much as they agree so the more they agree the closer they put it and then you can then sort of the kids then to discuss why do you think that why do you think it's true choose someone who has a contradicting opinion let them have a discussion and then we said that then they could have moved it afterwards yeah so yeah well that's good because often you put answer down and you're told it's wrong and that's it and it's a bit dispiriting isn't it whereas if you're allowed to develop your art then act differently we didn't say have a discussion before as well so nobody's just going to sort of like no sheep going to follow someone else and put it where they are so they've thought about it and ready to offer something I think that much is what scenario I found where kind of yes or not and no there or partly everyone had to move and you must move to somewhere and if you're moving to somewhere and if you're moving to somewhere you must have a reason so it sounds interesting and there are as you say there are sheep who will just follow there or whatever and make sure there's no one getting away with being a sheep okay so okay very good there's lots of interesting points there and I hope it'll help you to think a bit more about what makes good resource sheet and how to go about improving improving them and so on I should say why did I make the task think of an improvement tell your partner and they will report it why did I put it like that but I've got reasons to make sure that if I'm listening to him and I'm doing a PA correction or PA assessment not assessment but really on my own wisdom you're sharing the ideas actually you're sharing ideas he's got to be clear what his idea is and tell you you've then got to be clear what his idea is and tell us and vice versa whereas if you two you had a nice chat and you had good ideas but it's just a way of getting making every individual think be clear about what they're thinking and then passing it on to somebody else okay in passing okay well we're tea and whatever are available in about three minutes time so I don't know if anybody wants to add anything more to the general discussion okay one thing I would say is when you write your own resource sheets what you're what you're ending up doing is you'll find you develop your own ways of thinking your own thoughts of your own style and it doesn't matter if it's different from somebody else's that's quite good you can borrow their things they can borrow yours it's good to be in a school where people share resources a lot it's awful if you're left being everybody doing their own and thinking I'll get my class will get better grades than that class because I've done a better sheet or anything like that that's my idea of something not very nice so you're learning to find your own voice in writing the same as you are when you're talking about physics in a class you're finding your own ways of expressing things and tuning into your students and saying things in your way and that's a very important thing to do as you go on in your career you will find there are things some aspects of physics you will want to emphasize somebody else somebody else will be in their class always talking about Formula 1 racing cars or something which may be very motivating but if it's not you it's not you you have to find the things that work for you and I say I hope you will go on and do that over the years and if you do that your students will appreciate it and you're much more right to get them to want to carry on doing physics in life I'll be just at least being positive about physics as they go on is there anything else I wanted to say no thank you very much for all your contributions I did want to one other thing actually was I forgot to mention one of the things I'm involved with is I'm the physics editor of Catalyst magazine have any of you ever seen it it's a GCSE science magazine which if you register with the National STEM Centre you can every it comes out four times a year and they send you an email and you can get a free copy every time it comes out so it might be worth looking out for but it's again it's not a it's not a it's a sort of background resource really that people write activity sheets to go with and so on so each time each issue has got about eight articles mostly written by scientists in fact about their research work and the editors we spend our time making trying to make modern science intelligible to 14 to 16 year olds so okay right as I say 25 fast it's time for tea and I think that goes on