A less academic set, last period Friday afternoon, a lesson of helping them understand how to solve electric circuit problems – how to engage them, give them some success at the end of the lesson and even better consolidate some ideas?

Silent sentences, a plenary that I first met during the Key Stage 3 science initiative:

Students sit (in silence, which either feels wonderful or creepy) in groups of four or so per table, and deal the cards face up, so everyone in the group can see all the cards. Their aim is to arrange the cards into sentences. At the end each person should have some complete sentences in front of them. The difficulty is players can only give, not take.

The cards – About 8 sentences, each sentence chopped into 3 parts. So cards either start with a capital letter (first in sentence), end with a full stop (last in sentence) or neither (middle card). There is an example set at the bottom of the blog.

The exit ticket – the group has completed the sentences, each person has a photograph of the complete set.

Students collaborate, there’s competition, and once you’ve made the cards you have a resource to re-use in following years – just be careful to bag up each set separately.

Electric current in wires is / a flow of / electrons.
A series circuit has only one / path from positive / to negative.
Components connected in / parallel can be switched on / and off separately.
Connect the voltmeter last and / in parallel / with a component.
Ammeters are connected / in series and measure / electric current.
Resistance is measured in / ohms, work it out by / voltage divided by current.
P.D. stands for potential / difference and is measured / in volts.
A diode only / allows current to flow / in one direction.