3 Brainstorming responses
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.
Case Study 1: Mrs Gupta runs a brainstorming session on ‘Force and laws of motion’
Before I started teaching forces and motion, I looked at the elementary science curriculum. I read that my students had studied forces and friction, but had done nothing on motion. I also realised that it would be helpful to know what they remembered about this topic.
It was a large class (about 80 students) so I divided them into groups of eight. I did not have any large pieces of paper, so I taped two pieces of A4 together to make A3 sheets. Each group had one piece of paper. I asked them to write ‘Forces’ on one side and ‘Friction’ on the other. I told them to think back to their time at elementary school and gave them ten minutes to write down everything they remembered about each topic. After ten minutes I collected in the pieces of paper.
Then I wrote on the blackboard: ‘When is friction helpful?’ and ‘When is friction a problem?’ Each group was given some Post-it notes and asked to write down as many answers to one of the questions that they could think of. While they were doing the second brainstorm, I stuck the papers from the first activity on the wall. But I still managed to listen to what they were talking about. One student, Sangay, had some amazing ideas. He is usually very quiet, but seemed to enjoy this activity.
When they had finished, I gave them a few minutes to walk around and look at the posters on the wall, while I stuck the Post-it notes on the blackboard. At the end, I read out some of the ideas from the Post-it notes. They soon realised that friction was complicated – sometimes you need it and sometimes you have to try and reduce it. This led to a discussion about some of the ways we can reduce friction.
Halfway through the second activity, the head teacher came into the classroom because someone had complained about the noise. She looked cross and I was very worried. But when I showed her the posters, she realised that my students had been working hard. I explained that I had found out from the brainstorm that they did not remember much about friction, and that I was going to have to re-plan my lesson on Newton’s first law of motion for the next day.
Mrs Gupta’s class used both small and big pieces of paper (the Post-it notes and A3 sheets) to record the brainstorming responses. You could also use the blackboard, or a flipchart – it depends on what you have available and on what you want to do next. It is helpful to be able to keep the results of the brainstorm – especially if you are using it to find out what your students already know about a particular topic. If you have recorded the brainstorm on the blackboard, you could photograph it on your mobile phone for future reference. Having a record allows both you and your students to see how their thinking develops during the topic.
2 What makes a good brainstorming prompt?