• Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Energy stores and transfers). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
• Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

1. Which energy store is most important here: a stretched rubber band? (thermal (heat) / kinetic (movement) / elastic potential (stretch or squash) / chemical) → elastic potential (stretch or squash)Prompt: Is it moving, raised up, stretched, hot, or able to release energy by reacting?
2. When you rub your hands together, the movement energy is transferred to… (chemical energy / thermal energy (they warm up) / nuclear energy / elastic energy) → thermal energy (they warm up)Prompt: How do your hands feel?
3. Which of these mainly has a chemical energy store? (a piece of coal / a stretched rubber band / a rolling football / a drawn bow) → a piece of coalPrompt: Think about what each object is doing.

• Wind up a toy or stretch an elastic band and ask where the energy goes.
• Share the objective: Conduction, convection and radiation. Read the success criteria together.

• Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
• Example: Which kind of energy transfer is this: a metal spoon in hot soup getting hot?
• Step 1: Conduction passes energy through a solid as particles vibrate and pass it on.
• Step 2: So the answer is: conduction
• Answer: conduction
• Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

• Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
• Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.

1. Which kind of energy transfer is this: a metal spoon in hot soup getting hot? (conduction / convection / radiation) → conductionPrompt: Is the energy moving through a solid, carried by a moving fluid, or travelling as waves?
2. Why is a radiator usually placed low down near a wall? (So it can conduct heat through the floor / It works only near walls / Warm air rises from it and sets up a convection current around the room / Because cold air rises) → Warm air rises from it and sets up a convection current around the roomPrompt: Which way does warm air move?

• Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
• Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 6 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

• Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.

1. Why is a radiator usually placed low down near a wall? (So it can conduct heat through the floor / Because cold air rises / It works only near walls / Warm air rises from it and sets up a convection current around the room) → Warm air rises from it and sets up a convection current around the roomPrompt: Which way does warm air move?
2. Heat transfer: which statement is NOT true? (Convection cannot happen in solids. / Air trapped in materials makes good insulation. / Radiation needs particles to travel. / Dark, matt surfaces are good absorbers and emitters of infrared radiation.) → Radiation needs particles to travel.Prompt: Which way does energy flow: hot to cold, or cold to hot?

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/science/grade-7.