👣 Learning journeys for "A day at home"

Posing this hinge question...

What demands power in your home? Can you work out how much it costs?

may provoke responses which enable you to allow children to engage with exploring the importance of the idea of the power of appliance to energy paid for at one of three levels.

Teaching ideas from different levels can of course be introduced as appropriate to each child's learning journey.

Particular tripwires to bear in mind

⚠️ essence is how much

⚠️ compound quantities

Keep these in mind as you guide children through the selected level.

Shallow

🩺 One or other facet is likely to be seen to dominate, and you'll probably have to encourage children to make the data collection exercise their own.

I can just ask.

The electricity bill will tell us.

Maybe you can tell us what to write down.

🔎 To help children see what they think and to develop those thoughts you might promote discussions using the following set of thoughts as prompts for children to agree or disagree with.

List the kilowatts and hours for everything.

Yes, but just the time it's on, so we can work out the kilowatt-hours.

Then we'd need how much each kilowatt-hour costs.

Here are some approaches to extend exploration at this starter level.

🧭 starting to explore "A day at home"

Digging

🩺 Children will be more willing to devise strategies and consider a wider range of ways of recording the necessary data.

We'd need to make a list...

...and find out the power of everything on the list

...and find out how long it was on for.

🔎 To help children see what they think and to develop those thoughts you might promote discussions using using the following set of thoughts as prompts for children to agree or disagree with.

we have to record how long and how much power for everything.

We'd better record everything in kilowatts and hours.

What do we do with all the kilowatt-hours we've worked out?

Here are some approaches to extend exploration at this deeper level.

🧭 a deeper exploration of "A day at home"

In depth

🩺 Children draw on other data recording exercises and discuss both facets and how they will be recorded.

Write down how long each on is on for, and it's power.

Then we could use these quantities to find what each one costs.

Does it matter that each unit costs different amounts at different times?

🔎 To help children see what they think and to develop those thoughts you might promote discussions using using the following set of thoughts as prompts for children to agree or disagree with.

we'd need to draw out a table to record how much power and for how long

would it help to put the most powerful things or those things on for longest at the top?

Don't forget the third column of the table for working out the kilowatt-hours.

Here are some approaches to extend exploration at depth.

🧭 exploring "A day at home" at depth