never mind the optics

I’ve been thinking recently about numeracy, literacy and where they fit within my subject area.  While these thoughts have been bouncing about in my head for a wee while now, it’s only after reading Bill Boyd’s excellent post on literacy for all that I thought I would try to write something down.

Numeracy in physics is unavoidable.  At all levels, pupils are expected to analyse information and solve a problem by performing one or more calculations. This is the familiar face of physics, the side that often results in people telling me that they can’t/couldn’t/didn’t take physics at school because they couldn’t do maths.

After discussions with my maths colleagues, I had to look at my classroom practice and adjust my methods so that pupils see a familiar approach to problem solving.  The examples provided in our new whole school numeracy policy booklet have been very helpful here.

I’m also starting to discover where the literacy demands in physics are greatest. The closer I look, the more obvious it seems that literacy was an issue in Physics long before the Curriculum for Excellence ring binder appeared. Students who are confident in calculation-based tasks often find descriptions or explanations very challenging.

In my opinion there are two topics that stand out.  The electronics unit of Standard Grade and the Gas Laws in the Higher course are both particularly challenging in terms of the literacy demand placed on learners.  In each of these topics, pupils are often asked to explain behaviour of a system.  The skills needed to succeed in these tasks are outlined in the new literacy outcomes.

Learners require a command of the appropriate vocabulary

I can use a range of strategies and resources independently and ensure that my spelling, including specialist vocabulary, is accurate.  LIT 4-21a

and must be able to sequence the information (pupils often call this “cause and effect”)

I can convey information and describe events, explain processes or concepts, providing substantiating evidence, and synthesise ideas or opinions in different ways.  LIT 4-28a

So here are the strategies I have introduced so far with a view to enhancing literacy in physics.

• Create Wordle wall posters showing key vocabulary for the current unit. I’ve made these by copying text from the SQA documents and then blowing them up on the excellent Blockposters site.  I’ve mentioned this step before.

• Think-pair-share activities to encourage pupils to identify for themselves what is required.

• Pupils use the results of think-pair-share to gather together their agreed ideas of what makes a good description and generate a mind map

• Use the mind map as a starting point for additional descriptive work. These tasks can incorporate peer assessment to ensure all learners receive prompt feedback.  Use of peer feedback in pairs or trios ensures that pupils can compare their work and get a feel for quality.

I’ve trialled these approaches in S3-S5 and most pupils report that they find them to be helpful activities. Is it enough though?

Update: the above example relates to the electronics unit of Standard Grade Physics. I have posted a modified version for the Higher Physics gas laws topic on my classroom blog.

You don’t have to look too far into the internet undergrowth to find a Wordle these days.  These word cloud images can be a powerful, yet flexible, tool – as shown in Tom Barrett’s 38 ways to use Wordle in the Classroom.  I’ve used this tool before to analyse my own writing for a book chapter.  I found that it helped me to check I had the correct emphasis and was handy for pointing out my repeated use of some words in the piece.

Just before the summer holidays, I thought I might create a series of classroom posters to help pupils identify key vocabulary for each unit of the Standard Grade Physics course, starting with the Using Electricity & Electronics topics for my new S3 & S4 sets respectively.

To generate the wordles, I copied the SQA arrangements for each unit and pasted them into the text box on the wordle site.  I showed the inital results to a test group from the new S3 class and they were not that impressed.

They identified several problems with the output;

• too many words on display (Wordle.net’s default setting is 150 words)
• the random vertical/horizontal word orientation was difficult to read
• words that protruded significantly from the main cloud were distracting
• unappealing colours – particularly so whenever a white background was in use

We started work on these issues by reducing the number of words on display.  The panel felt that 50 words was a good compromise and setting the output preferences to place all words horizontally was straightforward.  Similarly, the positioning of words to avoid any jutting meant remaking the Wordle until it was more pleasing to the eye.  Colour selection, however, was more subjective and it was difficult to achieve a consensus.  Eventually, it was agreed that we would create our own colour palette as agreement could not be reached with the selection provided.

Looking back, I have to agree that the white background is not particularly stimulating and a more inviting word cloud was obtained using a custom palette.  Setting up a custom palette gave a much more visually interesting word cloud, here is the final layout for the Using Electricity vocabulary.

I have to admit the preferring the colour scheme for the Electronics design – it may be the way that the scheme evokes memories of chocolate lime sweets.

I took each of the brightened up designs and uploaded them to a site called BlockPosters.  This site can produce large poster-sized pdf files of any image you upload.  I choose to blow up each image to a 5×2 array – spreading the picture out over 10 sheets of A4 paper.  The printed A4 sheets can then be taped together to create the poster.

So I have 2 posters on my classroom wall now.

They are easier to read than the initial 150 words designs and have colour schemes that appeal to the people intended to use them.  Most importantly, they are being used! When questioning the classes, I see eyes moving towards the posters during “thinking time”.  Not because the answer is on the wall but because pupils know that the vocabulary to scaffold their response will be.

Both S3 classes had a brief glimpse at their survey results today. These were raw results, not filtered by class, so each bar chart shows 40 respondents rather than the 20 you would expect for a science class.

I realised that I had done something stupid in questions 8 & 9, with results that are sufficiently interesting for me to share them. Question 8 asked pupils to rate themselves using the statement

“I know that electrical energy transformed each second =IV”

From the image below, we see that only 50% of my S3 pupils are confident that they know this.

To help non-physicists see what is interesting, I need to explain that

energy transformed each second = power

current has the symbol I

voltage has the symbol V

Armed with this, have a look at the details for question 9 (below) and the responses I received to the statement

“I can perform calculations involving power, current and voltage.”

These two questions are asking the same thing, yet an extra 35% of the pupils felt that they had achieved the learning outcome.

The reason for the difference lies in the language used to express the question. What does this tell me? I think it tells me two things – three things if I include checking the questions before I set them!

First of all, the learning is not as secure as I would like. While pupils might know the relationship that exists between power, current and voltage, they lack a sufficiently deep understanding to put this relationship into context.

The second point is that the language we use to frame a question plays a critical role in determining whether or not pupils can provide an answer. In other words, how much of the assessment we put children through is a true assessment of the subject area in question and how much is a test of their ability to unpick the language of assessment to identify find the real question underneath?