Why Bother

Things are a bit weird at the moment. I feel like I'm just killing time (and I'm sure some of the kids feel the same way). It's a bit like around the same point in the term before christmas so I have no doubt that a large factor is sheer tiredness. Still, a lot of lessons I've delivered have left me seriously unhappy.

In addition, I'm having to rush soooo much. Int2 still have Unit 4 to finish, assess, then resit their Unit 1 NAB, all in 4 weeks, with some attempt at final exam revision in there too. Int1s have finished the course, most are all up to date with NABs and LO3s, but are so hard to revise with. They seem to be much happier scrapping/swearing/whatever else. My first years are slowly... turning... into... monsters. Which scares me a bit - am I having some contribution to this phenomenon? Conversations with other teachers seem to suggest probably not, but it still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth after our lessons. Finally, my 3rd years are seriously behind. I've only really managed to do one and a half topics this whole year. I could make up some excuses about sounding things out, teaching to more depth etc, but on the whole I think I've just let things happen a bit too loosely. At least I still feel I can try more interesting teaching methods with the two younger classes.

However, I also wanted to talk about a few of things that I thought have been successes recently.

• Mario Kart Mechanics - I only keep calling it this because it rolls off the tongue better than the other games I chose. Both classes I tried it on got very engaged with it, even though it was only one person playing at a time in time trials. It's pretty clear that they're more interested in playing than calculating, but with a bit more structure I think the activity could work pretty well as an introduction to speed at lower levels.
• Radioactivity simulation - using an activity I adapted from my time at MH with Bob Kibble with 100 dice used to simulate radioactive decay. My typically obtuse 5th years all got very excited and were grabbing for dice and counting left right and centre even though there was about ten of them crowded around one tray. Definately a winner. I hit upon the possibility of doing some sort of bets with the class - didn't take it up as I was in a temp classroom with no board space to write on but something to think about for next time.
• A revision activity provided by my friend in Edinburgh which while apparently simple seemed to really work - I will be finishing it up next week and see whether it worked.
• Taking my first years out to the front of school to plant the bulbs that they'd potted a few months ago. The pots were taking up space and the plants were starting to get too big for them anyway and it was a nice chance to get outside with the class. Typically though, some took it as an opportunity for a mess about.

Looking ahead, I've just bought a flip camera. The plan (or one of them, anyway) is to get the kids to video themselves doing their SG investigations, maybe give a talk explaining what it's about. There are, I'm sure, lots of other exciting things that I could try, but I can't think of any just at the moment!

A While

Once again, I've been pretty bad at this. Nothing really to say, I guess.

I did think I'd better jot down some notes on my latest project though, if only for posterity's sake.

So, here goes:

Mario Kart Mechanics

The premise, simple: use a driving game to engage pupils with speed, distance and time calculations.

Why?

Well, my Int2 class are still struggling with the mechanics section. In particular most are still not getting full marks in tests when they have to do speed calculations, even though they've all done either Int1 or SG physics. The class is also hard to motivate, and most would much rather be doing something else.

How?

I decided on Mario Kart as I've used the Wii and Mario Kart in particular as an end of term reward and it went down really well. Plus it's easy to play and anyone can join in.

Unfortunately Mario Kart lacks any real data in the game. It has lap times, like all other racing games. But no information about distance.

This isn't really a problem - we could easily bring in a whole new lesson about estimation. Take Mario as an average human, for example, or guess the length of a Kart. So I decided that it was a step to far for my class. I might try it with another, but the time being it went back to the drawing board.

I did a bit of research on more realistic racing games, focussing on original XBox games, as I'd picked one of these up cheap a few years ago, and managed to find Forza Motorsport for £2 online.

Once it arrived, I had a quick look over. The game has track lengths and also an ingame speedometer, so on to a winner, I thought.

After setup, it went down pretty well. I only have one controller so they did time trials against each other and had to work out their average speed over each lap after they'd finished. Most seemed happy to do it, and there was a real sense of competition. There were a few problems with units, but this could easily be made into a teaching point - the track was measured in km, the time in min:secs, so there was lots of converting going on.

The engagement tailed off towards the end, but it was the end of a triple period and it was a subject we'd covered many times before. I think it would work better as an introduction to speed, maybe, or a better way of doing the repetitive practise questions needed to cement the algebra in pupil's minds. As a short pilot, I think it was a success.

The problems:
With a large class I think it wouldn't work as the sole activity - I only had about 8 and they were all happy to sit and watch while the others had a go. With a class of 20 this might be different. A multiplayer game would be more suited and would allow more pupils to get a go in lesson time.

Forza is HARD. I suck at it. A couple of pupils were "hardcore" driving gamers and did so much better than everyone else that it pretty much took out any competition. Something like Mario Kart, which is easier to play and more "fun" would work better in my opinion. The only problem being lack of data.

More scaffolding - I had to help the kids who struggled with the unit conversions individually as the game was projected on the board and I don't have any other space to write. This wasn't a massive concern, but it would be good to have a group of pupils playing then coming away into some kind of 'mini-tutorial' on working out their speeds.

One of the pupils asked if we could have another game of bomberman (the other end of term award game we played). I said if he could write a note on how it would teach them physics I'd be happy to. I'll let you know if I get anything back.