3.3 – Conceptual heating/cooling
Allow about 20 mins
The Best Evidence Science Teaching
(BEST) resources contain lots of great ideas about the teaching of thermal stores of energy and temperature - and the misconceptions that students are likely to have.
The main document contains teacher notes giving an overview of the ‘Big Idea’ of Matter. The resources cover the following topics:
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Resources for age 11-14 |
Resources for age 14-16 |
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Temperature Heating and cooling Thermal conduction Thermal store of energy |
Transfer of energy by conduction Specific heat capacity Specific latent heat |
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Floating, sinking and density Pressure in fluids Convection |
Density Pressure
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There is a choice of two separate, but similar, challenges – one that is suitable if you mainly are interested in teaching KS3 (Thermal Stores of Energy) and one that is more appropriate for KS4 (Specific Heat Capacity, SHC).
Download either PowerPoint here:
In the full teaching notes for each BEST topic there is guidance that describes an increasingly difficult set of conceptual challenges, showing the progression of student learning; these are then mapped to a series of diagnostic questions for the topic. For example, in the KS4 materials there are five statements about the sort of progression that students should make alongside nine sets of diagnostic questions, all based around the topic of specific heat capacity.
In our PowerPoints there are a cut-down set of just five of the diagnostic questions. Read the progression statements, and try the questions to see if you can correctly connect each statement of conceptual understanding to a matching diagnostic question. The answers are on the final slide.
If (and when) you are unsure of any answers, you can download the corresponding worksheets from here, which include detailed tutor guidance for each task:
3.2 – Specific Heat Capacity calculations