Term 3 Week 3 Reflection

There were three lessons in total whereby pupils had done Physics experiments.

For the 3E1 Pure Physics pupils, they had done an experiment to tackle school-based practical assessment (SPA) on Mechanics. They were given a practice task which aims to determine the centre of gravity of an irregularly shaped plane lamina which is part of the Skill 1 component. Skill 1 expects the pupils to follow procedures of the experiment and to perform the skills needed to attain a level of mastery.

To ensure that the pupils were engaged in the activity, a demonstration set was placed on the teacher's bench for the pupils to use it as a sample of how their experiment setup should be. Pupils were instructed to read and highlight important keys words in the practical worksheet. Timeline for each segment of the practical was also explicitly written on the whiteboard for pupils to pace themselves to complete the practical in time.

Practical Experiment for SPA classes (Skill 1 and 2) is 1h 30 min. As each lesson is about 50 mintues, there was only adequate time for pupils to complete the performing and following procedure segment and not to the other segments of the practical activity. Therefore, pupils were briefed on the expected timeline and to constantly keep track of the time. Pupils who have completed the task were specifically told not to dismantle the set and the teacher would walk around the laboratory to ensure that the setup was well done and the pupils have done the task to completion. Specific questions on how they setup the apparatus was asked and pupils would answer to show that they were able to perform a similar task subsequently.

At the end of the practical session, the debrief on the important steps and the common errors done by pupils were highlighted and pupils were asked to answer a series of questions in a 'Checklist' of the skills that they need to master.

As for the Sec 5NA and 4E1 Science (Physics) pupils, they were tasked to practice a 2007 GCE O Level Practical Assessment. The experiment should have taken them 45 minutes to complete. As a similar experiment on finding the refractive index of glass was done in a previous experiment, the focus during the lesson was more of the ability to score higher in following the procedure, collecting accurate data, tabulate their reading, plotting a best-fit curve and answering specific questions relating the the experiment.