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 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ’ 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?