Lesson idea 10.
3
Teaching through everyday contexts
Type of activity Whole lesson
Timing 65 min
To use an everyday context to introduce a lesson and as a plenary to help
Aim
apply understanding.
Think about how the lesson topic is relevant to everyday life, and decide on
Preparation
useful questions to engage students.
Resources News reports and video clips to support the introduction of the context.
Using everyday contexts goes beyond simply mentioning how a scientific topic is relevant to everyday
life. Think about the topic you are teaching, and think about how students will have encountered it in their
lives. For example, students who skateboard will have encountered forces. Students with brothers or
sisters will realise that characteristics are inherited. Students whose parents have sugar in their tea will
know something about solutions. So if you use everyday contexts to frame the lesson, then you need to
begin with an inquiry question, where students think about a question related to real life, they then learn
the scientific ideas, and finally apply them to answer the question again. That question has to have
challenge – it has to make them think. For example, ‘When you turn on a skateboard, what do you do, and
how does it make you turn?’ or ‘Why do you share characteristics with your sister?’ or ’Why does the
sugar disappear when you put it in your cup of tea?’.
Stage Aim Action Time Focus
1 Introduce the Think carefully about the question you 10 min Teacher to student,
inquiry question ask. It should help students to think and class
about a relevant and useful context, discussion
drawing on their intuitive prior
knowledge, but also challenging them
to think up predictions and
explanations.
2 Propose Students should think up answers, 10 min Paired discussion
solutions and you should record them
somewhere to be returned to at the
end of the lesson.
© Cambridge University Press 2017 Lesson idea 10.3: Teaching through everyday contexts
3 Learn about the In this section of the lesson, you will 30 min Teaching and
scientific ideas enable students to learn the relevant learning activities
scientific ideas. How you do that will
depend on the topic. You may want to
keep using the context, or you may
want to teach out of context. It will
depend on how you are going to
teach. For example, sugar in tea
provides a good context for students
to learn the scientific ideas behind
solutions and dissolving.
4 Reflect on the Return to the inquiry question at the 15 min Student discussion
inquiry question end of the lesson. Ask students to try and teacher to
to answer it again on their own, then students
join into pairs, and then into groups of
four. Take feedback from a
spokesperson for each group of four.
Collate and integrate their responses
into class discussion. Finally, ask
students to comment on whether their
original answers were correct, and
explain why/why not.
© Cambridge University Press 2017 Lesson idea 10.3: Teaching through everyday contexts