|
Asia-Pacific Forum on Science
Learning and Teaching, Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2003) Man-Tak CHAN and Ping-Wai KWOK Facilitating active learning through a thematic science curriculum
|
|
|
Asia-Pacific Forum on Science
Learning and Teaching, Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2003) Man-Tak CHAN and Ping-Wai KWOK Facilitating active learning through a thematic science curriculum
|
Results
Relevancy to learners' daily-life
"Relevancy to students' daily lives" was one of the features identified in the lessons of the JSSC. The title of the theme, "Clean Water", was established because of the consideration of the relevancy between water and students' daily experiences. In addition to teaching students how to produce clean water, this science unit included the content and examples closely relevant to students' daily life experiences, such as the water cycle in nature. In one of the lessons, teachers arranged some experiments that helped students discover where fog, dew and frost came from. The discovery of the formation of frost brought surprise and joy to students in most classes observed. Nelson (pseudonym) was the first student who discovered frost formed outside a breaker containing ice and salts. He shouted excitedly to notice his teacher. Then all students stopped their work and tried to touch frost from their beakers. Students said that they found ice and the teacher related their findings to the natural phenomenon of frost. Nelson was interviewed after the lesson. The following was the translation of the dialogue:
What did you feel when you found out that frost formed on the outside of the beaker?
I was very surprised in the first place so I called loudly Mr. Young (The teacher's pseudonym) and my classmates to see this thing. Have you seen frost before? What made you so happy in the class? Yes, my father brought me to Tai Mo Shan (the highest mountain in Hong Kong) to see frost one night last winter. That night was cold but it was fun. I've never thought that we could see frost in the laboratory. But it was really frost even though we could only get very little of it. It was not very cold in your classroom. Do you know how frost is formed? Yes, just like what Mr. Young said, frost will be formed when vapour is cooled down rapidly. Salt will make the ice inside the breaker very cold, below zero degree. So when vapour hits on the cold beaker, it will become frost. Do you like to learn more about frost, fog or dew ? Yes. Why? Because we often hear or see these things. We should know what they are made of and where they come from. There was another scenario relating to students' daily lives. Students watched a video about water pollution in Hong Kong. The teachers took the video themselves in the districts close to the school. Students were impressed by the familiar places and people and showed great interest in further investigating the problem of water pollution. Furthermore, students were asked to retrieve the information of treatment of domestic water by the Water Works Department from the internet. They displayed good motivation to devise methods of purifying water and performed the experiments, such as filtration, making filter columns, and decontamination (observe the effect of chlorinated water on micro-organisms). The learning atmosphere was very active as evaluated by the authors, the teachers and students themselves.
Copyright (C) 2003 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2003). All Rights Reserved.
