TP-14.4

www.teachwire.net | 77 “Ask childrenwhat physical attributes they think wouldmake a good runner, thrower or jumper” l Discuss the importance of looking after our bones and muscles. Talk about the need for different vitamins and minerals and the foods you can find them in, as well as the benefits of regular exercise. Children can present this information in an informative poster, leaflet or presentation. l Discuss how muscles work with bones and tendons to help us move. Watch a relevant BBC video at tinyurl.com/ tpbones then create your own model of a moving arm using cardboard tubes and balloons, like the one described at tinyurl.com/ tpballoons. l If teaching UKS2, teach a maths lesson with a focus on finding averages. Demonstrate how to calculate the mean, mode, median and range. Use the results from this lesson or collect more data. This is also a good opportunity to take a closer look at scatter graphs and interpreting data. EXTENDING THE LESSON l What are the three main functions of the skeleton? l What physical features do you think would make you a better swimmer, athlete or cyclist? l What data do you need to collect? l How will you make sure it is a fair test? USEFUL QUESTIONS correlation. Give children time to enter results and produce their graphs. This is a great opportunity to incorporate IT skills within your science lessons. The graphs can then be printed off at the end of the lesson along with photographs from the investigation. 3 | DRAWING CONCLUSIONS Looking at their results and the graphs they have produced, each group should be able to come up with a statement to explain their findings, such as ‘We found that the longer someone’s arm, the further they could throw’ or ‘We found no correlation between hand size and the distance thrown’. Groups should then share their statements with the rest of the class. Do children think that these statements will be true for everyone, everywhere?Why or why not? Explain that people are different in somany different ways; there is not just one characteristic that will affect their ability to complete different exercises. There are many different factors, such as diet, fitness, experience, health, etc. Because there are somany factors, we can only look for general patterns. Discuss how their investigations could be improved. Children should thenwrite brief evaluations explaining what they have learnt, any problems with their investigations and what they could have done differently. Julianne Britton, a qualified teacher with eight years’ experience, is a private tutor and author of educational resources. time, speak to each group about their investigation. This will help you to assess pupil progress throughout the lesson. When they have taken the measurements of each member of their group, demonstrate to the class how to enter results into spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel and generate an accompanying scatter graph. Explain how a scatter graph can help us to identify patterns between two sets of data. Show examples of graphs that show positive, negative and no 2 | RECORDING RESULTS Each group should now carry out their investigation, taking measurements and recording results in a table. During this