Learning objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
Identify forces and the way they work in everyday life;
Identify your own alternative conceptions about forces;
Understand the power of multimodal representations as a means of understanding forces;
Structure and plan constructivist learning and teaching sequences to build on primary school students’ prior knowledge about forces; and
Develop confidence in being able to plan and conduct science inquiry into forces.
Introduction
This chapter aims to help you as a primary school teacher to better understand key ideas in physics, particularly force, by exploring how they are relevant to everyday life. It also aims to provide you with a range of ideas about how you can help your students to connect physics ideas to their own lives through the use of hands-on investigations and multiple ways of representing their ideas. This will open up opportunities for a range of learning styles and approaches. In particular, this chapter takes a constructivist approach to learning and will help you to develop a deeper understanding of force and motion. Ultimately, you should be able to design learning and teaching activities that help your students to make connections between their experiences and scientific explanations of how the world works.
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