There are very real physiological reasons why your students might seem to be sleepwalking through the first two lessons of the day. As has been widely documented in recent years, the biological changes that teenagers experience mean they operate on a later schedule than the rest of us: staying awake for longer into the night, and then sleeping in the following morning. Student productivity levels are also recognised to be generally lower in the afternoon, too - so not great if you’re stuck teaching photosynthesis during the post-lunch slump either.
Get outside and into nature
While scheduling lessons to coincide with times when young teens are at their most alert is a nice idea in theory, realistically it’s impractical without making some significant changes to the school timetable. So what’s the answer?
The good news is you don’t have to look far for one solution - just outside the window, in fact. A recent study of students who participated in an outdoor education programme as part of their science curriculum revealed that they were able to keep just as focused and motivated when learning in an outdoor natural setting. A separate study found that this student engagement even continued into the classroom after an outdoor lesson.
The “great outdoors” has been inspiring humans for centuries - and you don’t need to have the wilderness on your doorstep to experience the benefits; just a dose of fresh air and change of scenery will be enough to refresh a class of sleepy teens, and bring a new dimension to textbook learning.
Try some of these curriculum-linked ideas to bring science to life outside:
- Any hard surface outside provides an ideal spot to get to grips with calculating speed. Build an obstacle course and record students’ times at various distances;
- Collect samples of different plant leaves and extract the pigment to understand how they adapt for photosynthesis;
- Feed the ducks at a local pond for a ripple tank experiment to demonstrate constructive and destructive interference;
- Investigate the properties of flight and the correlation between wing area and flight time with a paper aeroplane contest, using this Flight Test Engineers activity;
- Combine science with design and technology by creating a shelter for insects; and classifying and monitoring the guests that visit in this Bug Hotel activity;
- Take part in a real-life scientific research project, such as What’s Under Your Feet?, created by The Pod in partnership with the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
In the What’s Under Your Feet? campaign, students dig up and analyse a small square of turf in their school grounds once a term to help the BTO’s scientists understand the impact of climate change on birds. It’s a fun and simple outdoor experiment that can be run over one or more lessons and adapted for students of different abilities.
It’s also a chance for students to see scientific methods and enquiry being applied in a real-life context. They learn about the hypothesis behind the experiment - that the availability of soil invertebrates (what birds eat) is having an impact on bird populations - and put into practice scientific techniques they’ve learned when they separate, count, identify, measure, weigh and record the number and types of soil invertebrates they’ve dug up. There are also the direct links to the biology curriculum: the interdependence of organisms, classification and the impact of environment on people, plants and animals.
Curriculum-linked teaching resources
The Pod provides teachers with all the resources they need to get started, including: lesson plans, recording sheets, identification posters, assembly and films, some of which feature Chris Packham, BBC wildlife presenter and the BTO’s president.
He says: “We can all do science and, in fact, it’s not that we can, it’s that we should - and we must - do it, because our planet has reached a critical point where our only chance of preserving what remains of it … comes down to us better understanding it.”
What’s Under Your Feet? takes place in June, October and March. Now is the perfect time for schools to sign up and start contributing to this research project, while also reaping the many benefits of outdoor learning.
You can find all these activities - and more - on The Pod, EDF Energy’s award-winning schools programme at jointhepod.org/campaigns/wuyf-2017
