Archimedes is a task in a series of Brainpower questions and tasks. See also Project: Milk packaging. This type of questions and tasks require higher order thinking skills, meaning that students have to apply several types of knowledge and skills. Higher order thinking skills involve critical thinking, problem solving, research, argumentation, discussion, evaluation, collaboration, judgement etc. The questions and tasks require brainpower and often several different strategies can lead to the solution.
We give you examples that you can use in the classroom. We appreciate your comments which you can write in as a comment. With your comments we are able to improve the tasks and the information about them.
Brainpower Task: Crowns
Topic: Archimedes
Subject area: Science/Physics
Level : grade 8, 9 (?)
Download the PDF with the task: Archimedes
Download the PDF with guidelines for the teacher: Guidelines Archimedes
Brainpower tasks require a different attitude and behaviour from both teacher and students. As a teacher you guide the students without disclosing answers, strategies or algorithms. You will rather guide the students with questions that encourage them to think in different ways, which help them to discuss further, or to visualise the problem in a creative way. Usually, students work on a task in small groups and for quite a while.
DiScoro 