To think that teachers need to teach stuff and not me.

[caroline161]

DS has just started at Grammar school. Ridiculous amount and type of homework. For example: Learn about Archimedes principle, explain what you have found. AIBU to email the school and say, " I would appreciate it if you could teach him this instead of me and what the f are you doing all day which means that I have to teach him Archimedes principle"

I haven't asked here for help. I asked if I wbu, you have mostly said yes I was bu. So I'll just carry on and I won't be emailing he school asking them if they can teach him stuff before it comes to me and Mr Google

Hilarious! My lesson on this, at my rubbish public school, involved us being made to recite Archimedes principle and each time we got a word wrong we had to first stand up, then stand on a stool in the lab, then stand on the bench, then hang from the I beam above our heads. Laughed till we peed ourselves. Teacher too! Can still recite it "When a body is totally or partially immersed in a fluid it experiences an upthrust equal to the weight of the fluid displaced." Archmimedes realised that when he got in a bath the water rose up. If the bath was full to the brim, water would overflow equal to the weight of the parts of his body that were in the water. He used this to prove to the king that his crown was not pure gold but an alloy. Which the king suspected. The water displaced had a certain weight. The crown had a certain weight. But not enough for its volume, given by the volume of water displaced. So the ratio of weight to volume proved it was not as heavy as it should have been. Thus alloyed with an inferior and lighter metal.
Just watched a really shit YouTube video on Archimedes Bucket, which really doesn't help and is actually innacurately made, and I was an MFL teacher! Just think about how they knew an iron ship would float. Iron is heavier than water so the ship should sink right? Wrong, cos it contains air which weighs nothing. The volume is high, the weight is low. If the ship was solid iron the same volume would weigh far more. The amount of water displaced is equal to the weight of the part of the vessel that is in it. when the ship is loaded, it floats lower in the water, it displaces more water thus getting more of an upthrust to keep it afloat. This is why the Plimsoll line is painted on the side of the boat.
But to answer your question, the idea of making a student do some research on a "thing" and then present his/her findings to the teacher or the rest of the class should stimulate interest in the topic, even if he/she is not really sure they understood it. The teacher will then teach the topic to a more aware class. The student will then either be chuffed to find they understood it, or will realise they didn't but will leran from the experience and hopefully be more thorough in their research the next time. Miss out the middle bit of this, the rest makes sense. www.sciencetopia.net/fluids/archimedes-principle

Maybe it's the way he learns , I always remember the Archimedes principle because I remember the story not the science.

The king suspected that a rogue goldsmith had replaced some of the gold in his crown with silver, a cheaper metal that is not as dense/heavy as gold.

i.e. if the crown was made of 100% gold, there would be less metal than if the crown was made of gold and silver as a larger amount of silver would be needed to make up the weight.

The king tasked Archimedes to figure out if his suspicions were correct.
Archimedes was flummoxed over how to do this because the crown was an irregular shape so he couldn't measure it.

He decided to a bath to wind down, so he jumped into to a full bath and a load of bath water sloshed, or was displaced, over the edge.

Archimedes yelled 'Eureka!' jumped out the bath and ran down the street to get the crown . - cos he'd figured it out.

He realised that the volume of water that was displaced was equal to the volume/size of his own body.

So to figure out if the crown was made of gold, all he had to do was place the crown in a filled bowl and measure the amount of water that it displaced.

Then do the same thing with lump of gold which equal to the weight of the crown.

If the amount of water that were displaced from both were equal, then the crown was made of 100% gold.

If there was more water displaced from the crown than the lump of gold it meant that the crown was made of silver and gold as it took more silver to make up the weight of the crown.

Oh and he was asked not to copy and paste so your first Google search would still have needed an understanding to break it down into his words

OP you should not be involved in this type of homework aside from "Is the bloody internet on mum?"

It's very usual for secondary schools ( Grammar is a red herring) to use this type of strategy as students have to become independent learners, capable of their own research.

If you want to complain about the fact that the curriculum is now so fucking enormous that no teacher could possibly cram everything into the time allotted then the current Tory Cockwomble filling the post of Secretary of State for Education is Gavin Williamson who has no teaching qualifications whatsoever.

Good Luck!

Gosh there are some snidey digs at the child and his abilities...such as this...

22:13Smileyaxolotl1

He seems to be taking up a place at that school that could be used by an actually bright child.

I like the story!

I know but apparently no one has felt that they have been horrid to me or about my son so thats ok. Even if I've felt they have, they don't accept that.

OP, what will probably happen here is that the teacher will say "Did anyone find out anything interesting about Archimedes?" The class Hermione Grainger (me) will shoot her hand into the air and give forth.

So long as your Ds has something written down that proves he bothered to do some research, (archimedes/bath/water displacement/gold) nothing else will happen.....

I think most children learn about the Archimedes principle of sink or float when they learn to swim or float a boat. They just don't know what it is called.

Gosh people have been truly horrible to you. I was a secondary teacher and have older primary school children. Some thoughts.

My primary children were never set research tasks in that way. Home learning was either structured homework or make model/find out something avout vikings type vague homework.

Many schools near me are the other extreme where "self quizzing" is in vogue so the studnets just learn preprinted facts and are never expected to go outside the box.

As adults on mumsnet we know how to research. A year 7 who has never had to navigate the web that specifically doesnt. They get a phd paper or A level explanation and then just feel stupid. Yes googling bbc bitesize would help but the teacher didnt say that.

If Id set it I would have set some websites to look at and given it a timelimit of 20mins or however long yr 7 homework is suppposed to be. Otherwise some students spend hours on what was supposed to be just and introductory idea.

I do flipped learning with 6th form but its mainly from the text book and linked sources Ive set as there simply isnt the time to go down rabbit holes.

My child is off to grammar next year and if set this would print something off (probably the story) and say didnt understand it fully. Job done. Wouldnt spend ages on it.

I think you've had a really hard time OP. Def worth mentioning to the tutor they're having a hard time balancing it. I used to say to my very keen yr 7s to set a timer on their wok and just put a line and the time they stopped ao the teacher can see theyve worked on it and how far they got!

Its a good time to learn which youtube sites are good for demonstrating science. Yes their are many but their are a shit load more that are crap.

Youtube can be great if you know the posters content is sound. I have several channels that would be my first port of call, but do NOT use youtube randomly.

The class Hermione Grainger (me) will shoot her hand into the air and give forth.

I was always thankful for our class Hermione.

Teacher here. Sounds like flipped learning.

@eddiemairswife I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's only Thursday night...

Blindly googling is a terrible way to learn things. Children need to be able to differentiate the quality and level of information they are given. TreePeeping's guidelines are good ones.

My dd will google but then try and read an explanation that is beyond her depth (GCSE) and get discouraged or quote a source that is wrong because it is the top hit.

I much prefer school children being given textbooks as a primary source to refer to and then fill in the gaps, particularly extension work, with intelligent googling.

OP's son got into a grammar school without tutoring. He is clearly bright and will pick up the skills. It is early days.

I disagree that Archimedes Principle is an easy concept to learn on your own. It is hard for a Year 7 child. It is a trickier concept than Newton's laws of motion, which is part of the GCSE syllabus.

I was generally good at Physics and Math and used to self-teaching (or flipped learning, in today's parlance). But Archimedes is one where I do have to think and having a teacher is helpful.

OP, don't lose heart. By the time your ds is doing GCSE, it will all have clicked. It is good practice.

Some comments have been totally unnecessary. We're talking about an 11 year old boy who is probably unsure how to present what he finds out, and how to reword it so he's saying what he found out and yet not copying it out word for word.

There are adults who struggle with that!

OP, the simplest way to understand it is the story.

To present his research, tell him first to read through two different websites about the Archimedes principle.

Second, divide his draft into six headings:
What
When
Where
Who
Why
How

He should then write a sentence or two, answering those questions, without looking at the websites.

Ta-dah! Done!

If he wants a neat, finished report after that, he just needs to join his sentences up into paragraphs.

If he's been in a primary where they have focused upon teaching 'to the test' (whether SATS,11+ or Common entrance Exam is irrelevant), he might be finding that they are using phrases and expecting skills that his previous school just didn't use or develop in their kids.

It's not really just about the actual principle (useful though it can be if you need to find out the weight of 20,000 bricks that have fallen off a ship into a dock to hire the equipment capable of lifting it without buckling - or to get an elephant that's fallen into a swimming pool out), it's about developing the skills to work out what they are asking, plan how to look for the information, how to deal with issues (such as inaccessible language), how to check if what you've researched is reliable and then, to understand the 'thing' and the practical application - the point of learning that particular thing.

It's not 'get your Mum to explain it to you' - that's not what they want.

He's done part of what they expected by trying to research it - you've then gone on to try and do the next step (get to understand it).

Neither of you are thick, it's just not a way of speaking or learning you've encountered before - and I think some educators forget or aren't aware in the first place that what they do/have learned about at university is not what everybody learns by age 10 and a half - chances were that at that age, they were still presenting fully word processed essays for holiday homework, researched and typed up by Mum or Dad (and at 13 they were probably submitting five pages of Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V from Wikipedia).

I could teach my DDs about research methods at the end of Primary because I was studying at the time - the way I worded it (thanks to being an 'orrible little guttersnipe with ideas above her station as a child, but I'd had a couple of teachers who had found I was less trouble if given something to look up in the school library once I'd finished everything they'd given me to do) was What Do They Want From Me? How Do I Do That? What Have I Got? Do I Understand It? How Do I Show Them That I Understand It? Show Them.

Being able to do that first means your DS isn't relying upon the teacher to tell him everything - he's developing the skills to not have to rely upon somebody else to tell him what to remember, to understand and apply concepts without having to rely upon somebody to hold his hand throughout. And, in time, to be able to work out who is bullshitting him.

Trouble is that some of the people saying 'flipped learning' is THE way to teach aren't explaining the Point (or What They Want) themselves.

Just read NumberblockNo1's post. I agree wholeheartedly with it. This is from observing my dd's homework and learning over the course of her secondary school.

Especially this:

I do flipped learning with 6th form but its mainly from the text book and linked sources Ive set as there simply isnt the time to go down rabbit holes.

I google a lot for my work and know how to zoom in on information. It takes skill to rapidly sift through volumes of random stuff. I am a lawyer so used to digesting reams of information and analysing it. I don't want my dcs wasting time on google and would be deeply suspicious of a teacher who encouraged it as a way of learning.

I found these on googling:
Archimedes Principle Formula is known as. Where, The buoyant force of a given body = F, The volume of the displaced fluid = v. acceleration due to gravity = g.
&
(wiki)Archimedes' principle states that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body's displaces and acts in the upward direction at the centre of mass of the displaced fluid.

He'll understand it better when he actually does a practical experiment.

What is the English stuff he is finding difficult?

Wven with 6th formers proepr flipped learning was about them coming ready to the class to discuss the topic. That meant setting flipped learning from the textbook or specific sites as it was a body of knowledge I wanted them to have interacted with ready to learn and apply/evaluate with it. Blind googling doesn't achieve that aim, but can be okay in a "find soemthing about" way with younger kids but they need to be taught how to do it and the skills built up over time.

I woulsnt go all guns a blazing into school though. But don't go overboard either!

@StanleySteamer

You've really muddled that ship analogy there.
The amount of water displaced is not equal to the weight of the part of the vessel which is in it. Water displacement isn't a measurement of weight of the object. It's the measurement of the upward thrust. The water displaced equals the upward thrust, not the weight of the object.

I have issues typing on my phone 😳

By the way, if either of you have a library card, log into your local library's online portal. You can always access the Children's Encyclopedia Britannica through your library membership. It's brilliant for this kind of thing.

I am under the impression from other mn threads that posters can barely do simple math but suddenly Archimedes Principle is so easy to google and understand.

I call bullshit. It is just cut-and-paste monkey work. Throw in some calculations and figures and let's see how deep this 'knowledge' is.

OP, please don't you and your son feel stupid.