TI-AIE: Brainstorming: sound

What this unit is about

This unit aims to help to develop your expertise in using the technique of brainstorming with your students.

Brainstorming involves giving the students a topic or theme such as sound and asking them to give you all the ideas that come into their minds. This way, you build up a picture of their understanding about a topic. It is a way to encourage students to participate more in lessons without being worried about being wrong, because you accept all their answers.

The unit shows you how to use brainstorming and helps you plan how to use the information you gather to plan more effective lessons. These lessons build on what your students already know rather than just focusing on what is in the textbook, especially if they already know what is in the chapter. You will have a chance to assess the impact of such techniques on your students’ learning and their active participation.

What you can learn in this unit

• How to use the technique of brainstorming in your lessons.
• How to use brainstorming to find out what your students know.
• How to use a brainstorm to plan more effective lessons to meet your students’ needs and extend their understanding.

Why this approach is important

Brainstorming is important because it is a useful and quick strategy that you can employ to find out what your students know before you start teaching a new topic. It can be used at the beginning, middle or end of a lesson or topic so that you can see what connections students may be making within it. It helps you see what things the students regard as important, and may highlight some misunderstandings that they hold.

Pause for thought Have you ever asked your students for their ideas about new topics or about a particular phenomenon in science or environmental studies? If so, was it helpful? How? Why could this be a useful strategy?

1 What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a technique that encourages students to share their ideas about a topic. By using a single word or question, such as ‘sound’ or ‘How sound is made?’, you can ask the class to give you any ideas that come into their heads. As the students respond, all their answers are recorded on the blackboard by you (or a student), as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Recording a brainstorm about sound.

Brainstorming can be done with a whole class – even a very large class – because all students can be given a chance to voice their ideas. Using the technique with groups or pairs is also possible. Allowing students a few minutes to talk with their neighbour about the topic before brainstorming can help them to think more deeply about what they know. As each student speaks, so others are stimulated to think more widely as they hear what is said. The key idea is to encourage students to think more deeply and creatively around a topic such as sound.

Now read Case Study 1, which shows how one teacher first experienced the technique and then used it with her class.

Mrs Khan was impressed by the experience she had and its impact on her. Try the next the activity with a colleague if possible.

Pause for thought Did you enjoy doing this with your colleague? How much did it help you think of more ideas about sound? Think about how you might do this with your class or a group in your class.

2 Brainstorming in the classroom

Stimulating your students’ imagination and encouraging them to think about what they know means that you need to be creative in the ways you work. The exercise you tried in Activity 1 is just one way of brainstorming; as you will have experienced, it stimulates the brain and encourages you to think more widely. Now try this approach with your class before exploring other ways to use brainstorming.

Pause for thought After the brainstorming session, think about the following: What you did and said, and how this helped the students understand and participate. Did you manage this easily? How do you know this? How could you make what you did better if you did another brainstorm? How the students responded and what you learnt about what they knew about sound. Did they enjoy the activity? Did more students speak in this session than usual? Make notes about the significant things that they knew about sound and what they were not so clear about. Think about how you can use this information to help them extend their understanding in subsequent lessons.

All of your students will have some knowledge about most topics that you teach, including sound. But not all students will have the same ideas and the ideas they do have are unlikely to be fully developed.

As you plan a teaching session, be it a practical or more theoretical lesson, it is important to know what your students already understand so that you can target your teaching more directly. You need to extend their learning, not waste time teaching what they already know and understand. So brainstorming is a good way of helping learners to think about a topic and share their ideas.

A brainstorm on sound might show where students have confused or underdeveloped ideas about how sounds are made. With this knowledge you will be able to target your teaching more directly to their learning needs and challenge their thinking further. To do this you might, for example, plan some short activities that help them to think about what is happening when sounds are made and why the sound is produced as it is.

Some students who have special educational needs will require more support and may benefit from activities being broken down into more manageable parts.

Not only does brainstorming help you understand what your learners already know, but it can also build your students’ confidence by encouraging them to participate more actively in the lesson. Some of the key benefits are summarised in Figure 2.

Maximise

Figure 2 Key benefits of brainstorming.

Resource 1, ‘Talk for learning’, provides insight into the benefits of talk for students in aiding their learning. You might find it useful to read this now before you continue working with your students – it will help you explore ways to encourage students to talk about their ideas and understanding.

3 Using the information generated by a brainstorm effectively

There are different ways of recording brainstorming responses. The way in which you ask your students to record information will depend on what you want to get out of the activity.

At the end of the brainstorming session, you should have a range of responses to use as a starting point for extending your students’ understanding. You may wish to highlight a few that have real possibilities for the topic that you are studying, and others may be returned to at a later date. Or you may just want to let the students choose ideas to work with individually. In any case, show them how their ideas grew as they developed their thinking by talking with each other.

You could focus your lesson on how sound is made by perhaps planning some simple activities to see that sound is produced by creating vibrations. This could include simple tasks like plucking a rubber band or string, putting some seeds on a drum and watching what happens when the drum is beaten gently. The way you respond to their brainstorm will depend on your learning intentions and what you know about your students as learners. Because you teach the class regularly, you will know what kind of activities and ways of organising practical work benefit your students best.

In the next case study, Mrs Sharma shows how she uses musical instruments to capture her students’ interest and to explore how sound is made. Musical instruments are fairly easy to find in the local community and students can bring these in.

Case Study 2: Using musical instruments and small groups to brainstorm

Mrs Sharma is a science teacher in an MG government school. It is preparing for its annual function, so she uses the opportunity to introduce her students to the next topic of sound.

Dance practice for the function was going on and sitting in my classroom I could hear the sound of the instrumental music accompanied by the sound of ghungroos made by the tapping of dancing feet. I tried to identify the sound made by each instrument. I later visited the music room to have a closer look at the instruments [Figure 3]. There was the dholak, the tabla, the harmonium, the sitar and the flute, and some ghungroos. I tried playing each of them. I asked the music teacher to play each instrument separately and I recorded the sound of each instrument on my mobile phone. I also made a recording of sounds made by coins, marbles, stones and local birds. I wanted to use these recordings in the class and asked the students to identify the objects that produced these sounds.

Figure 3 Various musical instruments.

In the next lesson I played the recordings and asked the students to identify the source of each sound in their heads. I then asked the students to work in groups and list some commonly heard sounds from the surroundings and their sources. [The key resource ‘Using groupwork’ will help you to plan and organise groups in your lessons.] I gave each group a piece of paper to write their answers around the heading ‘Common sounds’. I had saved the paper from the back of some big envelopes that had been delivered to the school, as paper is hard to come by in my classroom.

Next, I asked each group to share their ideas with the rest of the class. As they spoke I picked out some key words and ideas and wrote these on the blackboard. These helped me to summarise what the class has said about what kind of sounds they had heard and how they were made.

By letting them talk in smaller groups, Mrs Sharma gave all of her class more chances to speak and join in the discussion. They were not frightened or embarrassed at speaking in front of the whole class and may not worry as much if their ideas are not well expressed or clear. This is very good for students who find learning difficult, as you can ask the rest of the group to help and support these learners.

Having to explain things to other students helps students to clarify their own understanding. Gradually students will become more confident in speaking out and sharing their thoughts. Brainstorming is a good activity for students of different abilities, since it helps both the talented and those who find learning more difficult work together without being in competition.

Video: Involving all

If you have young students, you will need to make sure that one of the group is able to act as the group leader and that another student can write their answers down. With older students this will not be such an issue.

You might also think of other ways to set up your groups rather than just on ability. You may do it by dividing the class into sections, so that you have groups of mixed ability. In such groups a more able student could act as the recorder of the group’s ideas, but everyone in the group would be able to contribute to the final brainstorms. If you have a large class, this may be the best way to organise group brainstorming, as the students do not have to move far. They may even just be able to turn around. Alternatively you could group the students according to their interests.

Another way to explore a topic is to choose one that has several different aspects to explore. You can ask each group to explore a different aspect. So if your topic was sound, you could ask each group to explore its own area, such as musical instruments, types of sound, how sound is made or sound pollution.

Pause for thought Think how this information you have gathered from the brainstorm will help you to plan your next lesson. Look at it and try to group similar ideas together. You may also want to look at the key resource ‘Planning lessons’. For instance, do you need to help them try a few simple activities or investigations to extend their experience of making sounds before analysing how the sounds are made like Mrs Sharma did?

4 Using the brainstorms for learning

There are many ways to use the outcomes from brainstorming. They can be your way of seeing the students’ initial ideas about sound or another area of science so that you can plan how to extend their understanding into the more scientific concepts that appear in the science textbooks.

The results of a brainstorm can be used to monitor students’ progress – they can do this either themselves or in conjunction with you. Brainstorming is fun, quick and fast to do, and so a good way of gathering pertinent information from a range of students with different abilities in your class.

Now read Case Study 3, which describes how one teacher worked with the results of her class’s brainstorm to plan a lesson that would extend their thinking about how sound is produced. Resource 2, ‘Assessing progress and performance’, provides insight into how make use of information gathered about students’ understanding and progress.

Case Study 3: Using information from a class brainstorm

Ms Dha had done a brainstorm on ‘sound’ with her class, which is shown below. She explored their understanding further with a few questions before she used the brainstorm to plan her next lesson.

I asked for all the words and ideas that had come into my students’ minds when I said the word ‘sound’. I listed them randomly on the blackboard. After a few minutes I stopped and thanked the class for their ideas. I asked a few questions about some of their answers so that I could explore what they knew about what they had said. I realised that most of them could describe types of sounds easily but were not as able to describe how sounds were made and what caused the variations in sound. I decided to use the outcomes of this brainstorm to plan how to help them understand how sounds are made and can be modulated.

First I looked closely at the brainstorm again and grouped the words into different areas [Figure 4].

Figure 4 Ms Dha’s students’ brainstorm about how sound is made and types of sound.

I listed the instruments that students mentioned first, then the descriptions of sounds and types of sound they had suggested. Finally I looked for words that could be related to how sounds are made. In this list I put ‘blowing’, ‘banging’, ‘vibrations’, ‘talking’ and ‘plucking’. Then I did the same with types of sounds. I had asked them to explain more about these ways of making sound, but they had not been able to explain what really happened.

To start my planning I had the idea of using four musical instruments that you had to hit, pluck or blow to make a sound, as well as gathering a few ordinary objects that could be used to make sound, like an empty tin, a gourd, some string and rubber bands. I realised that the students could make sound but did not know what caused the sound, so I also took in some rice that I could put on the drum to show the vibrations.

I planned a series of short activities where students working in pairs could try out different ways of making sound. As they did this I could ask them to think about what causes the sound. I will encourage them to put their hands on the objects and instruments so that they can feel the vibrations. I will then draw them a diagram about how sound is made when I think all of them have the idea of vibrations.

I will arrange all the little activities around the room and they can move in turn from one to another. They will not have to do all of them but at least four or five.

You saw how Ms Dha found out what her class knew and where gaps occurred in their knowledge. She analysed their responses and categorised them to into key aspects of sound, choosing to first focus on how sound is caused. Her next step might be to explore the range of sound that can be produced by modifying the way that instruments and objects are played. Giving students concrete experiences of producing sounds will help them understand vibrations much better.

Brainstorming has helped Ms Dha to direct her teaching more directly to her students’ needs. Such an approach could have the same positive impact for you.

5 Summary

Brainstorming is a useful way of determining and activating prior knowledge of a topic by your students. (See Resources 3 and 4 about setting up a brainstorming session and effective brainstorming.)

As you have observed, brainstorming has a great role to play in your teaching. Through brainstorming your students are encouraged to learn about the subject by actively sharing information, experiences and opinions. At the same time, this gives you information and insight into their current understandings so that you can plan their next steps in learning about sound or other science topics such as electricity, water and light. By using brainstorming you will find out which students need extra support with certain tasks if they are to understand a topic.

You may now want to revisit Resource 3, ‘Assessing progress and performance’, to remind yourself that knowing what your students already know can improve your teaching.

Resources

Resource 1: Talk for learning

Resource 2: Assessing progress and performance

Assessing students’ learning has two purposes:

• Summative assessment looks back and makes a judgement on what has already been learnt. It is often conducted in the form of tests that are graded, telling students their attainment on the questions in that test. This also helps in reporting outcomes.
• Formative assessment (or assessment for learning) is quite different, being more informal and diagnostic in nature. Teachers use it as part of the learning process, for example questioning to check whether students have understood something. The outcomes of this assessment are then used to change the next learning experience. Monitoring and feedback are part of formative assessment.

Formative assessment enhances learning because in order to learn, most students must:

• understand what they are expected to learn
• know where they are now with that learning
• understand how they can make progress (that is, what to study and how to study)
• know when they have reached the goals and expected outcomes.

As a teacher, you will get the best out of your students if you attend to the four points above in every lesson. Thus assessment can be undertaken before, during and after instruction:

• Before: Assessing before the teaching begins can help you identify what the students know and can do prior to instruction. It determines the baseline and gives you a starting point for planning your teaching. Enhancing your understanding of what your students know reduces the chance of re-teaching the students something they have already mastered or omitting something they possibly should (but do not yet) know or understand.
• During: Assessing during classroom teaching involves checking if students are learning and improving. This will help you make adjustments in your teaching methodology, resources and activities. It will help you understand how the student is progressing towards the desired objective and how successful your teaching is.
• After: Assessment that occurs after teaching confirms what students have learnt and shows you who has learnt and who still needs support. This will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your teaching goal.

Before: being clear about what your students will learn

When you decide what the students must learn in a lesson or series of lessons, you need to share this with them. Carefully distinguish what the students are expected to learn from what you are asking them to do. Ask an open question that gives you the chance to assess whether they have really understood. For example:

Give the students a few seconds to think before they answer, or perhaps ask the students to first discuss their answers in pairs or small groups. When they tell you their answer, you will know whether they understand what it is they have to learn.

Resource 3: Setting up a brainstorming session

Resource 4: Effective brainstorming

For brainstorms to be effective you need to:

• define the purpose of the brainstorm
• encourage all students to participate, letting ideas ‘come into their heads’
• write down the students’ contributions – it is important to emphasise that all contributions are recorded
• discuss and decide suitable categories with student help, if possible, to organise the information
• select a method of recording the information from the brainstorming session using the categories discussed
• discuss the information recorded then decide on areas requiring further research (‘What do we want to find out more about?’)
• write down the questions that still need to be answered
• plan how these question or areas for development can be answered in the classroom in ways that allow students to experience aspects of sound that make sense to them
• plan how you will organise your students and how you will support their learning – which students will need more support than others, and how will you do this?

Additional resources

• ‘How to jumpstart your child’s mind with brainstorming’ by Heather Vale Goss: http://www.education.com/ magazine/ article/ brainstorming-solutions-jumpstart-child-mind/
• Sound theme page: http://www.kathimitchell.com/ sound.htm

References

Acknowledgements

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated below, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3.0/). The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence for this project, and not subject to the Creative Commons Licence. This means that this material may only be used unadapted within the TESS-India project and not in any subsequent OER versions. This includes the use of the TESS-India, OU and UKAID logos.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce the material in this unit:

Resource 4: from http://www.tessafrica.net/ files/ tessafrica/ kr_brainstorming.pdf (CC-BY-SA).

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Video (including video stills): thanks are extended to the teacher educators, headteachers, teachers and students across India who worked with The Open University in the productions.